Translating into Growth: Belt and Road spurs China-New Zealand cooperation

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By CGTN’s Owen Poland

China and New Zealand have been deepening their cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative since the latter became the first developed country to formally agree to support the scheme.

The New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra number on the gate of a dairy farm near Cambridge in New Zealand's Waikato region. /VCG Photo

China’s largest dairy producer, Yili, has set up a production base in New Zealand, while New Zealand's biggest company, Fonterra, is leading the way in the Asia-Pacific region with a groundbreaking funding agreement with the Bank of China to trade directly in Renminbi.

New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra is the world's biggest exporter of dairy products, and China is its biggest market.

Figures from Fonterra show that China's dairy imports were 41 percent higher in February than in the same month last year. As Belt and Road developments like faster customs clearance and preferential trade policies have helped the flow of quality produce into China, so the Initiative has benefitted New Zealand – Yili’s plant in Canterbury has driven business for related local industries.

"New Zealand has very good grasslands and a unique natural environment. And costs are relatively low. So we set up our production base here to provide the best dairy products to customers worldwide," said Pan Gang, the president of Yili.

More big China-New Zealand projects are on their way. Fonterra has partnered with the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba to explore the use of block chain technology to raise food safety standards. And Yili last month unveiled plans for another dairy production base in New Zealand with an investment of almost half a billion US dollars.

With an upgrade of China's Free Trade Agreement with New Zealand also on the cards, observers on both sides believe that exports and investments can be boosted even more.

"We know there are major opportunities for Chinese investment in things like infrastructure, in tourism, in agriculture, in construction, so I think there are many opportunities for additional Chinese investment," said John Ballingall of the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research.