New Zealand–China Free Trade Agreement
The New Zealand- China Free Trade Agreement is a bilateral Free Trade Agreement between the People 's Republic of China and New Zealand. The agreement was signed in April 2008 and has an implementation period of 12 years up to the full entry into force reduction in 2019.
History
With the looming accession (1973 ) of Great Britain to the European Community ( EC) (now the EU ) and the consequent threat of loss of the most important market of the country, began in New Zealand in the early 1970s, a process of political and economic reorientation to Asia back. The beginning was made at that time the Labour government under Prime Minister Norman Kirk with the inclusion of diplomatic relations with China in December 1972.
In August 1997, New Zealand concluded his first bilateral agreement with China and was so since the establishment of the World Trade Organization ( WTO) (English: World Trade Organization) in 1995, the first western country, which to a contract with China on the basis of WTO contracts came.
Thus the first step to the fourth -first milestones ( four first - milestones) was how New Zealand today often referred to the development of economic relations with China, done. Furthermore, complained New Zealand for themselves, to have been the first developed country with April 2004 that China had acknowledged as significant market economy, and in November 2004 as the first in the negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA ) (English: Free Trade Agreement ) enter with China.
The fourth milestone should have been then Free Trade Agreement itself, the New Zealand- China, which on April 7, 2008 by New Zealand Minister of Trade Phil Goff and his Chinese counterpart Chen Deming in the presence of New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and Chinese President Hu Jǐntāo in the Great Hall of the People was signed in Beijing, and stepped through the ratification by the New Zealand Parliament on 1 October 2008.
Advantage for New Zealand ( government perspective )
On 1 October 2009, being the anniversary of the in- force of the Agreement, lifted the Minister of Trade, Tim Groser, through China, as now the third largest economic partner of New Zealand, the importance of the Treaty in New Zealand. A 23- percent growth in imports and exports had exceeded a volume of $ 10 billion NZ $ and let the export of New Zealand to China rise by 60%.
Critics of the Agreement
In addition to the rejection of the agreement by the representative in Parliament, Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand and the Māori Party is more critics spoke up. The general concerns that have been expressed, summarized the spokesman for the organization Global Peace and Justice Auckland ( GPJA ), John Minto in an article in the newspaper New Zealand Herald together on 10 April 2008. Since even before the conclusion of the Agreement New Zealand an external trade deficit with China of 2 billion NZ $ in 2005 - with the upward trend - had, and for each one million U.S. dollars, imports from China about 16 jobs would be lost, he suspected a loss of 50,000 jobs through China's imports. Furthermore, he calculated before a loss of about 20,000 jobs in manufacturing, with a migration to low-paying service jobs. He also criticized the agreement improves child labor in China and support to non-compliance with labor standards.
Quote:. "The real winners from free trade deals synthesis will not be the Kiwi shopper who pays slightly less for a shirt or the farmer who sells a bit more milk The real winners will be the multinational corporations and Asian entrepreneurs who make money Their off the backs of children, political prisoners and sweatshop labor. "
( German: " The real winners of these free trade agreements are not the Kiwi buyers who pay a little less for a shirt or the farmer who sold a little more milk the real winners will be the multinational corporations and Asian entrepreneurs who her. make money on the backs of children, political prisoners and workers in sweatshops. " )