On November 20, 2016, and during APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting held in Lima, Peru, Chinese Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng and New Zealand Trade Minister Todd McClay announced to officially launch the upgrading negotiation of China-New Zealand FTA.
China-New-Zealand FTA is the first FTA that China signed with developed countries. China-New Zealand FTA signed in 2008 made bilateral economic and trade relation step into new development era. Starting from the height of constructing bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership, in November 2014 and during his state visit to New Zealand, President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister John Key decided jointly to start the discussion on the upgrading of FTA. On April 18-19, 2016, President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang met with Prime Minister John Key respectively during John Key’s visit in China, and the two parties agreed to make efforts to launch the upgrading negotiation as soon as possible with practical attitude, through full consultation and in pursuit of win-win result.
According to the consensus of the leaders of the two countries, in March 2015, the two parties built the joint evaluation mechanism of the upgrading negotiation of China-New Zealand FTA. Under the joint evaluation mechanism, the two parties overcame their disputes, accelerated the consultation progress, and proposed the Suggestions of the Joint Evaluation Working Group on the Upgrading of China-New Zealand FTA recently. According to the Suggestions, the upgrading negotiation will cover many fields including service trade, competition policy, e-commerce, agricultural cooperation, environment, technical trade barrier, custom procedure cooperation and trade facilitation, as well as rule of origin, which will promote China-New Zealand FTA to upgrade to a higher level trade agreement. The two parties agreed that the first negotiation will be held in the first half of 2017, and the agreement will be reached as soon as possible.
The close bilateral relation brought rapid growth of bilateral trade value. The annual growth rate of bilateral trade was over 15% since 2008. China has become the largest goods trade partner and the largest export market of New Zealand for 3 years in a row, and the largest import source of New Zealand for 5 years at one go. At the same time, the two-way investment enjoyed rapid growth, the enterprises and consumers of both sides benefited from it. The upgrading of China-New Zealand FTA will further promote China-New Zealand economic and trade relation, boost the level of bilateral economic and trade cooperation, better benefit the people of the two countries and further consolidate China-New Zealand comprehensive strategic partnership.
