Ahead of their meeting, Li extended a “warm welcome” to Hipkins, and said he was inspired by the points he had shared during the WEF event where they had dinner together.<\/p>\n
“Mr prime minister, you are a young and capable stateman of New Zealand and you led the people of New Zealand to successfully respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, this is a great achievement,” Li’s translated words said.<\/p>\n
Li, who took over the role in March from Li Keqiang, said he appreciated Hipkins stressing the importance of the relationship between the two countries, and making a visit to China within six months of becoming prime minister.<\/p>\n
![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/rnz-ressh.cloudinary.com\/image\/upload\/s--JR3HB06D--\/c_crop,h_987,w_1578,x_2,y_76\/c_scale,h_987,w_1578\/c_scale,f_auto,q_auto,w_1050\/v1687924751\/4L6P4R2_20230628163146_1P2A3380_jpg\")
<\/p>\nNew Zealand’s Prime Minister Chris Hipkins shakes hands with China’s Premier Li Qiang.\u00a0<\/span>Photo:\u00a0RNZ \/ Nate McKinnon<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n “The people of our two countries have a traditional friendship,” he said.<\/p>\n Li also spoke of the influence of Rewi Alley, a New Zealand-born writer and political activist who joined the Chinese Communist Party and set up the International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives in the 1930s.<\/p>\n “Chinese people of my age are very familiar with the stories of Rewi Alley,” Premier Li said. “I worked in Shanghai for five years and Shanghai has a memorial for Rewi Alley, the place where he lived for more than 10 years, and people of Shanghai are very familiar with him. He was an old friend of China together with revolutionaries of the old generation of China.”<\/p>\n He said the committee had made a major contribution to China’s socialist endeavours and revolution, and Alley’s work was a “precious legacy” for the New Zealand-China relationship, which was at the forefront of China’s relations with Western countries.<\/p>\n Hipkins speaking with President Xi Jinping at the World Economic Forum in Tianjin.\u00a0<\/span>Photo:\u00a0RNZ \/ Nate McKinnon<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n “Our relationship’s become a fine example of win-win cooperation between countries with different social systems, history, culture, level of development and economic size. Next year we will celebrate the 10th anniversary of our comprehensive strategic partnership. China is prepared to work with New Zealand to further deepen our traditional friendship, promote our cooperation across the board, so as to deliver more benefits to our people and more benefits to the Asia Pacific and the world.”<\/p>\n Hipkins responded in kind.<\/p>\n “Ni hao, kia ora, Premier Li. Thank you for your very warm welcome. I’m honored to have this opportunity to visit Beijing for my first time as the prime minister of New Zealand,” he said.<\/p>\n He said he had been pleased to visit China in 2018 as Education Minister and was delighted to return, and the World Economic Forum event had been a great opportunity to reflect on economic challenges and opportunties.<\/p>\n “And I enjoyed our conversation over dinner at the welcome ceremony there. Premier Li, our bilateral realtionship is wide-ranging, it encompasses significant economic, people-to-people and cultural connections. My large delegation is a reflection of the breadth, the diversity and the significance of our comprehensive relationship.”<\/p>\n He said the particular presence of senior M\u0101ori representatives and the winning kapa haka group signified the importance of M\u0101ori to the connection to China through trade and culture, and said he was looking forward to discussing “a range of bilateral relationship issues and other matters of mutual interests”.<\/p>\n Hipkins with Li at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.\u00a0<\/span>Photo:\u00a0RNZ \/ Nate McKinnon<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n VIA RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has met with China’s Premier Li Qiang for a one-on-one discussion as part of Hipkins trip. The meeting followed\u00a0Hipkins meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping overnight\u00a0(NZ time) at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Summer Davos event in Tianjin. Ahead of their meeting, Li extended a “warm welcome” to Hipkins, and said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5976,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5974\/revisions\/5976"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Prime](\"https:\/\/rnz-ressh.cloudinary.com\/image\/upload\/s--ZMhib_nX--\/ar_16:10,c_fill,f_auto,g_auto,q_auto,w_1050\/v1687916878\/4L6QI08_PM_speaking_with_Xi_Jinping_3_jpg\")
![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/rnz-ressh.cloudinary.com\/image\/upload\/s--TIY3s9Nj--\/ar_16:10,c_fill,f_auto,g_auto,q_auto,w_1050\/v1687924796\/4L6P4IW_20230628163640_1P2A3429_jpg\")