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WELLINGTON: Beijing’s embassy in New Zealand said it had raised an official complaint on Thursday after Foreign Minister Winston Peters told a lawmaker of Chinese descent to “go back to your own country”.
Peters, a populist leader of NZ First party, was asked by China-born Green Party member Lawrence Xu-Nan: “Are you vaccinated?” during a heated debate about New Zealand’s response to the Covid pandemic.
In response, Peters said the lawmaker, who was born in the Chinese city of Tianjin but grew up in New Zealand, had “come here five minutes ago”.
“Go back to your own country. That’s where they lie like a flatfish, but they don’t lie like that here,” Peters said.
