China accuses New Zealand’s top spy of spreading ‘false information’

BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s embassy in New Zealand on Thursday accused Wellington’s top spy of lying after the intelligence chief warned of security risks posed by Beijing’s growing influence in the Pacific.

In a speech in Wellington last week, New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service Director-General Andrew Hampton said the focus of Pacific nations on economic and transnational crime issues had opened the door for China to sign strategic deals with them that linked economic and security cooperation.

“The relevant remarks are totally baseless, all fabrication, and amount to spreading false information,” the Chinese embassy in Wellington said.

“For someone holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

In recent years, Beijing has struck deals with a number of Pacific nations, worrying New Zealand, a member of the Five Eye intelligence alliance along with Britain, the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

Hampton had last week said China wanted to “create competing regional architectures, and expand its influence with Pacific Island countries”, which posed foreign interference and espionage risks.

The Cook Islands, a self-governing Pacific nation in free-association with New Zealand, is at the heart of recent tensions between China and New Zealand.

Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown travelled to China in February, signing a comprehensive strategic partnership deal with Chinese Premier Li Qiang. That angered Wellington, which complained about the lack of consultation and transparency around Brown’s visit.

Relevant cooperation documents have been made public, the Chinese statement said, adding that there is no “secret agenda” in China’s relations with the Cook Islands.

China’s embassy in Wellington also handles the country’s diplomatic relations with the island nations of Niue and the Cook Islands.

(Reporting by Xiuhao Chen and Ryan Woo; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)