For the first time in a decade, more New Zealanders see China as a friend than the United States. The Asia New Zealand Foundation’s 2026 survey, which polled 2,300 residents between 21 January and 18 February 2026, found 43% naming China a friend, up from 38%, while the figure for the United States fell from 61% to 39%. Japan ranked as the most trusted major power, ahead of Australia, the UK and the US.
The shift tracks behaviour, not just opinion: trips to Asia rose 14% in the year to March 2026, while travel to the US fell. New Zealanders are recalibrating by trade and culture, not ideology.
New Zealand has done this before. In 2016 it deepened economic ties with Beijing even as enthusiasm for the United States cooled and the Trans-Pacific trade pact lost its anchor. What followed was not a pivot but a balancing act — closer trade with China, a cautious security relationship with Western partners, and an official line that managed to hold both at once.
The latest Asia New Zealand Foundation survey suggests that balancing act has now reached the public. For the first time in ten years, more New Zealanders describe China as a friend than the United States. The headline reads like a defection from the West. It is not.
Read the numbers closely and a different picture emerges. New Zealanders have not stopped trusting Western partners — they have simply stopped treating Washington as the default. Japan now tops the trust rankings. China’s rise is pragmatic, tied to trade and travel rather than shared values. The tension is not loyalty versus betrayal. It is whether a Five Eyes nation can run an Asia-facing public mood and a West-facing security policy at the same time.
The reversal that runs deeper than one election
The sharpest figure is the collapse in US warmth. The drop from 61% to 39% in a single year is steep enough to demand a cause. David Capie, director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, links it to specific US foreign-policy events during the polling window and cautions that answers about security partners often reflect general favourability, not a considered defence judgment. That caveat matters. A one-year swing this large usually says more about the moment than the structure beneath it.
The structure, though, is moving too. Behaviour is following sentiment, and the figures behind the reversal make the trend harder to dismiss as a blip.
China’s gain reads differently from Japan’s standing. Suzannah Jessep, chief executive of the Asia New Zealand Foundation, said warmth toward Japan and Singapore reflects high trust and perceived like-mindedness, while views of China are tied to its economic weight rather than any belief that it shares New Zealand’s values. That distinction is the whole story. Affection and dependence are not the same thing, and New Zealanders appear to know it.
The behavioural evidence comes from outside the survey. Official figures show short-term trips by New Zealand residents to Asian destinations reached 816,000 in the year to March 2026, a 14% rise, even as travel to the United States fell. The numbers behind the warming tell a more precise story than the friend rankings alone.
| Measure | China | United States | Change from 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seen as a “friend” | 43% | 39% | China +5, US -22 |
| Most trusted major power | Below Japan | Below Japan, UK, Australia | US fell behind Japan |
| Basis of perception | Economic centrality | Shared values | Pragmatic vs values gap widened |
So the attitudinal data and the travel data point the same way. The question the survey cannot answer is whether public mood will reshape the policy made above it.
The gap between the electorate and the planners
Official policy has not moved with the public, and it was not built to. New Zealand’s 2023 Indo-Pacific Strategy calls China the country’s most significant trading partner while describing Beijing’s activities as a complex challenge to regional security. The document holds engagement and wariness in the same hand. That is not contradiction. It is the design.
The closer precedent is 2015 and 2016. New Zealand pressed ahead with upgrading its free-trade deal with China while public interest in the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership faded, especially after Washington walked away in January 2017. The result then was deeper economic integration with Beijing alongside a values-based security tie to Western partners. Not a clean break from the Anglosphere — a hedge.
Three actors are pulling at the outcome. Washington wants New Zealand firmly aligned on Indo-Pacific security and offers defence cooperation and market access as leverage. Beijing wants a stable, non-hostile partner that quietly demonstrates Western fragmentation, and uses trade, tourism and education to get it. Wellington wants both — maximum economic gain, minimum hard-security entanglement, and the room an independent foreign policy provides. The survey shows the public has now made that last preference its own. The friend rankings are the symptom; the hedge is the condition, and it has not changed since at least 2016.
Beyond the headline
The bigger picture
New Zealand’s mood shift is a small version of a wider pattern across secondary powers: publics are deciding who counts as a friend based on trade, travel and everyday culture, not ideology or wartime history. That challenges the assumption that security pacts and value statements automatically secure long-term public loyalty to traditional Western partners.
The power behind it
Real leverage over New Zealand’s future orientation increasingly sits not with defence planners but with those shaping migration, tourism and education flows. Universities recruiting Asian students, airlines opening routes and councils managing diverse communities are quietly deciding how normal Asia feels to voters — and how much political cost a government pays for siding with Washington.
What isn’t being said
Missing from most official commentary is how fragile US soft power has become against a decade of steady Asian cultural and economic exposure. Treating the survey as a blip risks ignoring structural drivers such as youth media habits and workplace diversity, which will not swing back with one US election cycle.
What the recalibration asks of you
With New Zealand’s next Defence Policy and Capability Review update expected in late 2026, the gap between public mood and official posture is about to be tested in writing.
- Policy and security analysts
Review New Zealand’s Strategic Defence Policy Statement, which names public support as a factor in sustaining defence partnerships. If the late-2026 review elevates Japan, South Korea or ASEAN over the United States, that is your signal policymakers are aligning with the electorate’s mood.
- Trade and investment watchers
Track resident departures by destination at Stats NZ (stats.govt.nz) as new releases land. A continued climb in Asia-bound travel, or a reversal back toward the United States, will be the earliest concrete test of whether attitudes are hardening or easing. Pair it with how Wellington frames China’s trade centrality against security coordination.
- Regional diplomats and allies
Read this beside how Australia and Japan are offering Pacific islands a third way between Washington and Beijing. The same hedging logic is now visible in New Zealand’s public, and it narrows the room for assuming a unified Western bloc on China.
Explainer
- Asia New Zealand Foundation
- A non-profit body that tracks how New Zealanders perceive Asia and their place in the region. It has run its perceptions survey for 29 years, making it the longest continuous record of New Zealand public opinion on Asia. Its funding and remit are tied to building cultural and economic links rather than setting security policy, which is why its findings often run ahead of official strategy.
- Five Eyes
- An intelligence-sharing arrangement between the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It dates to a 1946 agreement and remains the closest such partnership among Western states. New Zealand is its smallest member, and its participation has at times sat uneasily with the independent foreign policy Wellington maintains toward China.
- Indo-Pacific Strategy
- New Zealand’s 2023 framework for managing relations across the region. It names China as the country’s most significant trading partner while describing Beijing’s conduct as a complex security challenge, deliberately holding both in tension. The strategy commits Wellington to balancing economic engagement against the protection of national interests rather than choosing one over the other.
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