David Parker, New Zealand's Minister for Trade and Export Growth, accepted the interview.

Last week the Tripartite 2019 meeting between Auckland, Guangzhou and Los Angeles, was launched to promote trade and cooperation between the three Pacific cities.

New Zealand is looking forward to finding opportunities for win-win cooperation with China and particularly with Guangdong province, said David Parker, New Zealand’s Minister for Trade and Export Growth, in a recent interview with Newsgd.com.

New Zealand. (File photo from Xinhua)

Advocator of China-New Zealand cooperation

Since being appointed Minister for Trade and Export Growth in 2017, Parker has been acting as a strong advocator for Belt and Road project cooperation between China and New Zealand.

Last month Parker led a delegation of business representatives to China for the 2nd Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. The delegation consisted of senior executives from 17 New Zealand companies, including those from aviation, agricultural produce, pharmaceutical, entertainment and wood processing industries.

At the beginning of this month, when addressing an annual China-focused business summit in Auckland, Parker became ever more convinced that New Zealand should learn more about the Belt and Road Initiative and look for mutually beneficial ways of getting on board.

It goes without saying that Parker has tremendous reasons to do so. China is now New Zealand's largest trading partner, export market and source of import and New Zealand stands as one of the five largest food exporters to China.

During the interview, Parker introduced that besides BRI cooperation, his country now is working with China to speed up the work on upgrading their free trade agreement, strengthening cooperation on issues including climate change and reform and safeguarding of the multilateral trade system.

“More broadly, we aim to cooperate across a wide range of areas,” said Parker in the interview.

GBA is an even greater opportunity to enhance NZ-GD cooperation

As for Guangdong Province, New Zealand sees it as a key business destination, as well as a vital transfer hub giving access to the rest of the world. Statistics show that about 14% of New Zealand products were imported via Guangdong ports last year. Furthermore Guangdong is the largest source of Chinese tourists visiting New Zealand and Chinese students living in the country.

That’s one of the reasons why Parker chose to drop by Guangzhou before his visit to Beijing for the Belt and Road Forum.

When describing his impression of Guangdong, Parker. volunteered three words: “dynamic, innovative and huge”. He drew attention to growth in both traditional and new areas, particularly in the creative science and innovation sectors, as well as of course, tourism.

Also thanks to the Tripartite Economic Alliance, Guangdong’s capital city Guangzhou now enjoys even closer connections with New Zealand. In the five years since the formation of the Alliance, Guangdong and New Zealand have had frequent exchanges. Cooperative agreements in tourism, culture, innovation and education signed, the two places have developed a significant relationship.

Meanwhile, Parker thought the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) a great opportunity to enhance cooperation between New Zealand and Guangdong.

“Key areas where we see opportunities for New Zealand businesses include plans to build smart city clusters, create synergies in tourism and hospitality, adopting a green and low carbon development model, and focus on science and technology.”

Reported by Nan & Monica

Edited by Olivia & Simon