Welcome to the June issue of Growing With China. As with the rest of the world China’s attention currently is very strongly on worrying developments in Europe, how they impact China’s economy, and potential responses should the situation degenerate further. Few expect a stimulus of similar magnitude to the 2009-10 effort involving a fiscal stimulus equal to near 16% of Chinese GDP and a lending boom over four times that nominal size. Instead recent easing of monetary policy is likely to be repeated, some back-tracking on property sector restraints is expected, and extra infrastructure development probable.

China including Hong Kong now accounts for 14.4% of New Zealand’s merchandise export receipts, near 10% of visitor spending here, and delivers a net migration gain just over 5,000 people per annum placing China behind only the United Kingdom as our largest net source of migrants.

This month we start a regular column written by NZ Trade and Enterprise representatives in China discussing conditions in particular sectors of interest to NZ exporters. This month the focus is wine.