New Zealand's China recognition decision: Ian McGibbon notes the 50th anniversary of New Zealand's recognition of the People's Republic of China.

• Author: McGibbon, Ian

Half a century has elapsed since New Zealand recognised the People's Republic of China (PRC) as the government of China. It was the key to unlocking a relationship that would grow in importance as China became a vital trading partner.

New Zealand recognised the PRC 23 years after Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic in Peking (now Beijing) on 1 October 1949. The long delay had several causes, not least the hardening of the Cold War lines that resulted from the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 which forestalled New Zealand following the United Kingdom in recognising (it had done so in January 1950). In 1951 New Zealand troops found themselves fighting communist Chinese troops, albeit disguised as volunteers, on the peninsula. With New Zealand entering into alliance with the United States that year, there was no incentive to break with the US stance of implacable opposition to the PRC and support for the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan, which continued to hold China's seat in the United Nations.

Over the 23 years there were occasional moments when the prospect of recognition seemed to come over the horizon. National foreign minister Clifton Webb suggested the need for recognition, though finding no appetite in the National Cabinet for such action. Labour's prime minister from 1957-60, Walter Nash, also spoke of such a possibility without doing anything positive to achieve it. Secretary of Foreign Affairs George Laking would later privately decry 'a typically gutless approach by both of them'. (1)

The position remained unchanged until the late 1960s, when cracks had appeared in the Sino-Soviet alliance. A US-Chinese rapprochement culminated in President Richard Nixon's visit to Peking in February 1972. By this time, a dramatic development in the United Nations had shifted the international tectonic plates--on 25 October 1971 the United Nations General Assembly had voted to admit the PRC to China's seat in the world organisation, a vote that automatically led to the expulsion of the Republic of China, an outcome that Leader of the Opposition Norman Kirk described as 'a bad day's work'. (2) New Zealand had voted against the resolution that brought about this outcome. (3) The PRC duly took its seat in the UN Security Council in November.

Labour victory

It was against this background that Kirk's Labour Party won the general election on 25 November 1972. Across the Tasman, the Australian Labor Party, led by Gough Whitlam, did the same a...