Anadolu staff<\/p>\n
30 July 2026\u2022Update: 30 July 2026<\/p>\n
China on Thursday criticized remarks by New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters telling a Chinese-born opposition lawmaker to \u201cgo back to your own country.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have absolutely no interest in being dragged into the domestic politics of other countries,\u201d China’s Ambassador to New Zealand Wang Xiaolong wrote on US social media platform X.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuffice it to say, sometimes, a statement says more about the person that makes it than anything or anybody else,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
His comments came after an exchange with Green Party MP Lawrence Xu-Nan during a parliamentary debate sparked widespread backlash.<\/p>\n
The exchange began during Parliament’s general debate on Wednesday when Xu-Nan interrupted Peters’ speech on New Zealand’s COVID-19 response to ask whether he had been vaccinated.<\/p>\n
Peters responded by telling Xu-Nan to “go back to your own country,” adding that New Zealand was “a democracy, unlike what you’re used to.”<\/p>\n
Xu-Nan, who was born in China, moved to New Zealand with his family in 1994.<\/p>\n
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the parliamentary debate was New Zealand\u2019s internal affair but urged respectful communication.<\/p>\n
\u201cChina always believes that it\u2019s important to respect the development paths and systems chosen by the people, and we oppose any form of discrimination and prejudice,\u201d Mao said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anadolu staff 30 July 2026\u2022Update: 30 July 2026 China on Thursday criticized remarks by New Zealand Foreign Minister…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69,201078],"class_list":["post-551047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sitekeywords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551047","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=551047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}