Increasing numbers of New Zealanders are viewing China as a threat rather than a friend for the first time. ANALYSIS: As countries around the globe battle Covid-19 variants and hopes of a swift return to reality recede, the Otago Foreign Policy School’s focus on foreign policy in a ‘post-Covid era’ might seem a touch premature. Newsroom Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta has laid out a fairly grim picture of “an age of uncertainty and risk”. Indo-Pacific takes centre stageAnother interesting component of Mahuta’s speech came in its references to the Asia-Pacific – to be more specific, the lack thereof. It is little wonder then that US-China tension is “a new structural reality for international relations”, as University of Waikato foreign policy lecturer Reuben Steff put it, with some sort of military conflict no longer inconceivable.

Source: Stuff July 05, 2021 21:00 UTC