OPINION: Stay out of it - bugger off - this amounts to gross interference.
This is exactly what New Zealand businesses don't need right now - a massive fight with China.
Not when we have a $30 billion trade deal with them - we produce milk, wood, you name it, they buy it by the shipload, and tens of thousands of New Zealand jobs exist because of it.
The flow-on effects of this spat with Hong Kong, and therefore China, puts Kiwi jobs on the line at the worst possible time.
With China flexing its muscles, Hong Kong locals there have fewer freedoms. Democracy is disappearing, and Beijing has seriously tightened the noose which goes against the 'one country, two systems' approach.
And now New Zealand has finally joined our partners Australia, the US, Canada and Britain in protesting.
To be fair, we have been slow, hoping largely to keep our heads down.
But eventually we had to choose a side, and it's with our traditional allies we go - and boy, let's brace for the fallout.
China has swifty told us little pipsqueaks to back off - and we simply don't know how it will affect us.
Hopefully the trade relationship is strong and mature enough to endure, but China almost always makes you feel it. They just won't tell you it's happening.
They may stop buying certain goods, they may not clear our logs and milk powder on their wharves.
Post-COVID, they might be told to boycott New Zealand for holidays.
But in the end, you have to take sides because democracy matters to us. Freedoms, and the freedoms to say what we want, goes to the very heart of being a Kiwi.
Coincidentally, later in The AM Show we look at the issue of having a thick skin. I suggest the Chinese government tunes in.
For such a giant international player, the Chinese government takes offence too easily, and this continued approach is costly to the world.
Duncan Garner is the host of The AM Show.
