Yang Jian: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeYang Jian: General Debate[Sitting date: 28 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18412. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr JIAN YANG (National): Thank you for the opportunity to speak in the general debate today. I would like to join the long line of others in congratulating our Minister of Finance Bill English on a great Budget 2014. It was a confident Budget and one that shows that the National-led Government is continuing to support jobs and higher wages and to help New Zealanders and families get ahead. These things really matter to us all. Budget 2014 shows New Zealand is heading in the right direction. It is the National-led Government that has an economic plan to help get New Zealanders ahead.I have had a lot of feedback from the Chinese community and it has been very positive. Members of the Chinese community have expressed their strong confidence in the National-led Government. It is clear to them that the National-led Government is committed to economic development and it is able to deliver. Why? Because many of us experienced the disastrous years before 1978 when China was closed and the Chinese socialist economy was on the verge of collapse. In those years everyone was equal but everyone was poor. New Zealand’s economy grew by 3.1 percent in 2013 and is forecast to reach 4 percent growth next year. This is despite the global financial crisis and the devastating Christchurch earthquakes. It is growing because the Government has taken the helm and has responsibly managed the economy over the last 6 years. We have not gone on a spending spree like Labour did when it was in Government. We are fully aware that there is not an unlimited pot of gold at the end of the rainbow yet our books are now back to surplus to the tune of $372 million growing to $1.3 billion in 2015-16 and $3.5 billion in 2017-18. We have achieved this by working hard to responsibly manage the economy.We need to continue to build a more productive and competitive economy and I am confident that we will be able to do even better. This is partly because New Zealand is well positioned to strengthen its economic relations with Asia-Pacific countries which include the largest economies in the world including the United States China and Japan. We have excelled at expanding our trade relationship with China. China was our second-largest trading partner over 2 years ago when I had just become a member of Parliament. Now it is our largest trading partner with a trade volume of over $18billion. I have no intention to take credit for that. However I did make a contribution to that.In 2010 the Prime Minister John Key and the Chinese PremierWenJiabao had a meeting. At the meeting they set a target. The target was to double our bilateral trade of $10 billion in that year to $20 billion by 2015. Obviously that target will be behind us very soon. This year in March when the Prime Minister was visiting China he had another meeting with the Chinese leader this time with President XiJinping. He proposed a new target of $30 billion by 2020. Now we have a new target and I am very confident that we will be able to meet the target. Just today theNew Zealand Heraldpublished an article entitled “China vital to export growth plan”. So it is very clear that China is particularly important.We used to have a trade deficit with China. Now our imports from and exports to China are largely balanced. Looking ahead it is very clear that we will have a surplus and it will continue to grow. However we should not take our strong economic trade relations with our trading partners for granted. We need to continue to work hard and invest more. For that reason New Zealand Trade and Enterprise will have $69 million extra funding. With that extra funding New Zealand Trade and Enterprise will be able to grow New Zealand’s—