Look on the back of any Māori and you might find a ‘Made in China’ label. According to DNA analysis undertaken by Victoria University of Wellington zoologist Dr Geoff Chambers and Dr Adele Whyte (Ngāti Kahungunu), Māori migrated from mainland China to Taiwan, the Pacific Islands and eventually to Aotearoa.
It should come as no surprise then that when Māori and Chinese get together to Hui they find a lot in common, including the fact they are calling the meeting a Hui, a term common to both cultures.
That’s not where the similarities stop; when Māori do business the first order of business is not business, it is building relationships through actively finding and forging connections, the act of whakawhanaungatanga. Chinese do the same, and call it Guangxi. Chinese also honour and worship their ancestors and have ‘ci-tang’ houses built for this purpose – much like Māori whare tipuna.
So the Māori experience of doing business in China is quite different from others, it feels more familiar, it feels like doing business with your distant cousins – and in some cases they even look a bit like your cousins, especially older Chinese kaumatua and kuia who carry themselves with a sort of mana and quiet dignity often seen on Marae. They don’t mind sharing a couple of drinks, a laugh and family photos over a meal either – investing in getting to know each other beyond business.
Faced with ‘westerners’ knocking on their doors every day to buy or sell something, the Chinese find these points of commonality, and the Māori approach to doing business, refreshingly familiar and different from others.
There have been numerous ‘Māori relationship missions’ into China (commonly referred to as ‘trade missions’), before, during, and since, the 2010 Shanghai Expo. Missions led by the Hon. Pita Sharples, as then Minister of Māori Development, in 2010 and 2012 with Māori leaders, paved cultural roads to commerce that continue to be travelled today.
Relationships started in 2010 between New Zealand Māori Tourism and China Southern Airlines were influential in China Southern’s decision to start direct flights to New Zealand from Guangzhou, which has seen a rise in Chinese Tourists visiting NZ and new opportunities emerge, such as Whale Watch Kaikoura gaining status as a preferred provider to frequent flyers on China Southern. Whale Watch Chief Operating Officer, Kauahi Ngapora took part in the 2012 Māori trade mission to China.
China is also one of the biggest markets for the $1.2bn Ngāi Tahu Group business with exports in Fisheries and a rapidly growing Chinese Market for their Tourism businesses, including the Dart River Jet which recently won gold in the Product Innovation category at the ‘Chinese Tourist Welcome’ Awards in Beijing, recognising their efforts to serve the Chinese market including development of new GPS triggered translation services. Ngāi Tahu Tourism Chief Executive Quinton Hall states ,
"The Chinese market is extremely important to Ngāi Tahu Tourism. Nearly 300,000 Chinese customers visited our attractions between February 2015 and February 2016, which is around 70% of all Chinese arrivals into New Zealand”. Quinton goes on to say “The Dart River team has always prided itself on the manaaki extended towards our guests, so the team is humbled that our service has been recognized as the world’s best!”
The rapid growth in the number of Chinese visitors to Dart River Jet demonstrates the commercial value of making cultural connections and being responsive to visitor needs.
With over $200m in Māori exports to China in 2015*, Māori recognise the value of continuing to build and travel these cultural roads to commerce, not just for now, but for future generations.
If Māori have learned anything in China it is about being yourself before being your business, it is about the value of Māori ways of relating and doing that strike a chord with Chinese, it is about finding and building points of common cultural connection as a foundation for commercial connection.