Seminars yesterday were scheduled to cover trade, the work of co-host New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, financing, merger and acquisitions and local case studies of trading in China, under the recently signed Free Trade Agreement (FTA).
However, Mfat and NZTE had stipulated that media could not directly report on day-one seminars and were barred all entry to the final day-two seminars yesterday, on the grounds speakers may be inhibited from frank discussion.
Alliance Party national spokesman Victor Billot said the free trade seminars were paid for by New Zealanders.
He criticised the exclusion of the media, considering New Zealand manufacturing jobs were "going to evaporate under free trade agreements".
"This is a disgrace and shows how there [is] an anti-democratic agenda in free trade deals.
What gives the right for unelected, unaccountable state servants to shut off the public from being told what free trade has got in store for them," he said in a statement yesterday.
"Information is being restricted and controlled, and the public will be kept in the dark and fed public relations spin," Mr Billot said.
Before yesterday's seminars, Minister of Economic Development Pete Hodgson hosted a breakfast for the registered participants outlining the importance of the FTA for New ZealandMr Hodgson said in his speech that in addition to the larger NZTE offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, four more satellite offices would be opened in China during the next four years.
Aside from establishing a New Zealand Concept Centre for businesses to use in Shanghai, he estimated that during the Shanghai Expo in 2010 up to 17 million people would visit the New Zealand pavilion.
