Four New Zealand MPs have been banned from China for one year after visiting Taiwan as part of a cross-party Parliamentary delegation.
The MPs who took part in the five-day visit in May were National’s Maureen Pugh, Labour’s Duncan Webb, ACT’s Laura McClure and NZ First’s David Wilson.
The delegation was part of the ‘All-Party Parliamentary Group on Taiwan’, a cross-party group launched in 2023 to coordinate legislative relations, soft diplomacy and economic cooperation between New Zealand and Taiwan.
The ban was announced in an email to the affected MPs from a manager within the Office of the Clerk, which takes care of procedural aspects of Parliament.
The email, seen by Stuff, said the Office of the Clerk had a meeting on Tuesday with officials from the Chinese Embassy, a request made by the embassy itself to share some “important key messages”.
