China’s ambassador has delivered a pointed response after Foreign Minister Winston Peters told a Chinese-born New Zealand MP to “go back to your own country” in Parliament.<\/p>\n
In a social media post on Thursday, Ambassador Wang Xiaolong said New Zealand’s domestic politics were not China’s concern, but: “sometimes, a statement says more about the person that makes it than anything or anybody else”.<\/p>\n
Peters launched his attack during Parliament’s general debate on Wednesday after being heckled by Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan.<\/p>\n
Xu-Nan interrupted Peters’ speech on the Covid-19 response, asking: “Are you vaccinated?”<\/p>\n
Peters shot back, telling Xu-Nan to “go back to your own country”.<\/p>\n
“That’s where they lie like a flatfish, but they don’t lie like that here, all right?” he said.<\/p>\n
“This is called a democracy, unlike what you’re used to.”<\/p>\n
Peters went on: “Go back to where you’ve come from, you loudmouth, and maybe you’ll learn something about the political system of New Zealand.”<\/p>\n
Xu-Nan was born in China but moved to New Zealand as a child in 1994.<\/p>\n
Wang published a post on X on Thursday morning, writing: “We have absolutely no interest in being dragged into the domestic politics of other countries.<\/p>\n
“Suffice it to say, sometimes, a statement says more about the person that makes it than anything or anybody else.”<\/p>\n
Speaking on TVNZ’s Breakfast on Thursday, Xu-Nan described Peters’ comments as a “desperate attempt to distract” from the coalition’s record.<\/p>\n
“It’s a little bit unbelievable to have a Minister for Foreign Affairs, I guess, scapegoating the migrant communities as a distraction to shift the blame away from all of the harm that this government is doing.”<\/p>\n
“What we want to see is Prime Minister Christopher Luxon actually stepping up and holding his ministers accountable for their behavioural patterns.”<\/p>\n
Asked about the comments later on Wednesday, Peters doubled down, calling Xu-Nan an arrogant “twit”.<\/p>\n
“He’s only been here for five minutes, can’t even speak the language properly,” he told reporters.<\/p>\n
Former prime minister Helen Clark also weighed in on X, describing Peters’ comments as a “dangerous way” to refer to New Zealand’s largest trade partner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China’s ambassador has delivered a pointed response after Foreign Minister Winston Peters told a Chinese-born New Zealand MP…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-550391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}