Breaking news: N. Zealand raises concerns with China over rights, Taiwan

Nanaia Mahuta made the first visit to China by a New Zealand foreign minister since 2018 – Copyright AFP GREG BAKER

Peter CATTERALL

New Zealand has raised concerns with China over human rights abuses and growing tensions with Taiwan, Wellington’s foreign minister told AFP in an interview Saturday.

Nanaia Mahuta held talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang in which they discussed “challenging issues”, she said, including human rights in Xinjiang, freedoms in Hong Kong and China’s influence in the Pacific.

“There’s a lot that we can agree on and we also discussed some of the challenging issues, working through where we don’t agree on,” she said at the New Zealand embassy in Beijing.

“Human rights was an area where we did discuss some of those issues where we don’t agree on.”

Mahuta this week made the first visit to China by a New Zealand foreign minister since 2018.

She earlier said in a statement she had told her counterpart that the New Zealand government had “deep concerns regarding the human rights situation in Xinjiang and the erosion of rights and free