>>2687260NZ has several weird conditions
- too small to be an imperial power outside a handful of tiny pacific vassals (for example, it did once bully Tonga for buying Chinese airplanes rather than continuing to contract a NZ airline. On the other hand, the Chinese airplane in question really was a poor fit for Tongan needs although iirc the Chinese did want to also build better airports.)
- basically invulnerable thanks to geography. Australia is all but unconquerable and to get to NZ you have to go through Australia, or thousands of miles of ocean. Even Australia is >900 miles away at its closest point.
- their main right-wing parties have a large number of ethnic chinese members and supporters. there was a comical point a few years ago where it kept coming out that National MPs were literal Chinese spies. they all host Chinese language websites too. NZ first is a partial exception, but NZ has the weird dynamic where Labour are more anti-immigration than national. (though, crucially, not in a cringe right-wing way like UK labour.)
- taking independent foreign policy stances is part of their national identity for various reasons that mostly amount to getting really invested in anti-nuclear politics during the 70s-80s and standing up to the US on that basis. they got kicked out of ANZUS temporarily for banning nuclear armed ships from NZ waters. (US policy was to neither confirm nor deny nuclear status, so it de-facto banned US ships)
That said, iirc NZ were slower to recognize Palestine than Australia or even Britain. What that was about, idk. Thinking about it, it's also economically odd given Australia's mineral exports to China are surely a larger share of Australian trade than NZ's agricultural exports to China are of NZ trade. Maybe it's one of those funny dynamics where, despite hostility, Aus and China are both so dependent on trade that they leave that alone while getting mad at one another over everything else. (NZ and the USSR did this, comically, in the 1970s because Robert Muldoon was a rabid anticommunist but NZ needed foreign trade and the USSR needed New Zealand mutton…)