Steven Joyce in China

So New Zealand’s Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce is in China for a visit. And once again, I find more information about this in the Chinese media than the NZ media. A quick Google NZ news search turns up not very much. Newstalk ZB continues to write radio-style. Topnews gives a little more. Stuff, well, noticed, at least. Scoop has the official press release – and oh, look, could that Sohu article be simply a translation of the press release? It looks awfully similar. Alright, the stats quoted a fairly impressive, but there’s one point that has me wondering:

Mr Joyce will also open the Shenzhen Hi-Tech Fair, China’s largest hi-tech event, where eight New Zealand companies will be exhibiting.

What is this fair and which eight companies are exhibiting?! This could be really interesting, perhaps even something to break the old “NZ as China’s dairy farm” mould. Well, here’s the China High Tech Fair, or in Chinese if you prefer. The search function doesn’t seem to work very well, and I can’t even see a search button on the front page of the Chinese version, I guess I could sift through the content of the links (pdfs!) on this page, though. Ah, this document (pdf!) lists Power by Proxi, NZ Natural Harvest Ltd, POLSOL International Ltd and Wellington Drive Technologies Ltd (but do they count? Well, HR at least is based in NZ and the state applicants must have the right to work in NZ…) on page 2. Four out of eight, and none of them making milk powder, cutting down trees, or edumacating. I’m not sure where the other four are, but this pdf, for example, has 24 pages of exhibitors, and it’s getting too close to lunch time, sorry.

So there you go: New Zealand: More than just cows, trees, and cheaper schools than Australia. It’s good to see that those 8 companies are getting exposure at the High Tech Fair. It would be nice to see the media doing more to inform people about them.

About the Author

wangbo

A Kiwi teaching English to oil workers in Beijing, studying Chinese in my spare time, married to a beautiful Beijing lass, consuming vast quantities of green tea (usually Xihu Longjing/西湖龙井, if that means anything to you), eating good food (except for when I cook), missing good Kiwi ale, breathing smog, generally living as best I can outside Godzone and having a good time of it.

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