Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has rejected the idea that New Zealand's on track to becoming full military allies with the United States after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern signed up to more defence cooperation with the US in the Pacific.
China has lashed out at the joint statement made by Prime Minister Ardern and Joe Biden, warning of "grave consequences".
Cosying up to the United States - Ardern called her meeting with US President Joe Biden a "warm" conversation, but it's resulting in a chilling effect on our relationship with our biggest trading partner.
"The US and NZ's joint statement hyped up relevant problems with ulterior motives, created false information, and smeared China," said Zhao Lijian, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson.
This was the line that drew Beijing's ire: "We are concerned with growing strategic competition in the Pacific region, which threatens to undermine existing institutions and arrangements that underpin the region's security."
Mahuta met with the Chinese Ambassador on Thursday morning, but wasn't clear on whether Beijing's blasting came up.
"Not in any particular detail… Not significantly actually, no."
A defence analyst says New Zealand has entered new, dangerous waters getting closer to the US - whose focus in the Pacific is security and defence, rather than Aotearoa's neighbourly concerns of climate change and fisheries.
"It [the US] sees it as an arena for great power of competition. It sees it as a place where military conflict is a possibility and that differs from NZ's perspective," analyst Paul Buchanan says.
Asked if New Zealand was on track to becoming full military allies with the US, Mahuta says: "I think that's reading a lot into that statement".
But Buchanan says "given how the US is approaching the Pacific as a zone of contestation between it and the People's Republic of China, we need to tread very carefully".
The Green Party is alarmed by what it sees as a shift away from New Zealand's independent foreign policy.
"Are we really following America into its very militaristic way of approaching the world," says foreign affairs spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman.
Meanwhile, new Aussie foreign minister Penny Wong is in Samoa chumming up to Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata'afa
"We have made a commitment to engage more closely and to listen respectfully," said Wong.
Gerry Brownlee, National's foreign affairs spokesperson, says "we do need a foreign minister who's taking a bit more interest in this".
New Zealand's pulled in all directions when it comes to the Pacific, walking the diplomatic tightrope between China and the US.
But foreign policy experts say New Zealand's greatest advantage in the Pacific is also being a small island nation and if we listen to our Pacific neighbours, rather than talk down to them, that solidarity will pay off.
