FBI director Kash Patel has sparked New Zealand’s diplomatic discomfort by suggesting that opening new offices in Oceania countries aims to counter China’s influence, causing polite layoffs from Wellington and anger from Beijing.
Patel was in Wellington on Thursday, opening the FBI’s first independent office in New Zealand and meeting senior officials.
The arrangement lines up New Zealand with five other FBI missions in the other five-eyed intelligence sharing nations, including the UK, the US, Canada and Australia.
The Wellington office will provide local missions to FBI staff who have been monitored and operated from Australia since 2017.
In a comment made in a video issued by the US Embassy on Thursday, Patel said the office would help counter the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in the contested South Pacific.
The New Zealand minister met Patel, the highest-ranking Trump administration official, to visit New Zealand, but quietly dismissed his claim.
A government statement on Thursday did not mention China and highlighted joint efforts against crimes such as online child exploitation and drug smuggling.
“We didn’t raise that issue when we were talking,” Foreign Minister Winston said Thursday.
Security Services Minister Judith Collins said the focus will be on cross-border crime.
“I will not respond to other people’s press releases,” she reported Radio New Zealand when reporters said Patel had mentioned China.
Trade Minister Todd McCray rejected a reporter’s suggestion that Wellington “celebrating” the opening of the office on Friday.
“Well, I don’t think it was celebrated yesterday,” he said. “I think there was a presentation and it was discussed.”
Beijing slams Patel’s comments
At a briefing on Friday, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Zi-Kun condemned Patel’s remarks.
“China believes that cooperation between countries should not be targeted by third parties,” he said.
“Seeking for so-called absolute security by forming small groups under the banner of countering China will not help to make the Asia-Pacific and stable.”
New Zealand, the smallest partner of the Five Eyes Alliance, faces pressure to carefully balance its relationship with Beijing while aligning with the US position in its biggest trading partner, China.
Analysts said New Zealand has faced such challenges before, but the FBI chief’s comments could disrupt these efforts.
“It is New Zealand’s interest that there is more law enforcement efforts to address our shared issues,” said Jason Young, an associate professor of international relations at the University of Victoria in Wellington.
“New Zealand’s interest isn’t going to let them say they’re doing this to compete with China.”
Anger among New Zealanders
Not everyone in New Zealand welcomed the FBI presence.
Online, the new office attracted Rancor from New Zealanders who posted thousands of overwhelmingly negative comments about the announcement on social media sites.
A weekend protest against the opening was planned.
Young said it’s unlikely that people who post in anger are generally having problems with cross-border law enforcement efforts.
“I think it reflects some of the deep anxiety that many people in New Zealand see some of the political choices that are currently being made in the US,” he said.
FBI expansion focuses on the fresh Pacific Ocean
Patel’s visit came when the Trump administration tried to promote global vigilance over Beijing’s design.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegses said China posed an imminent threat in June, urging Indo-Pacific countries to increase military spending to 5% of GDP.
New Zealand has traditionally avoided independence of individual countries when discussing regional tensions, Young said.
“I am confident that the US wants New Zealand to speak more openly and characterize China’s challenges in a way similar to the US,” Young added.
New Zealand is a remote country of 5 million people and was once assumed to be strategically unimportant on a large scale.
But its location and impact in the contested South Pacific Ocean that Beijing has been trying to seduce a small island nation over the past decade has increased its appeal to countries like the United States.
