NZ must develop awareness in China relationship: expert

New Zealand must become more aware and understanding of China to achieve its ambition of a deeper bilateral relationship, the head of the Asia New Zealand Foundation said Friday at the close of Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit.[Special coverage]

Xi had made "some very generous remarks" about the state of the relationship during his visit, foundation chairman Philip Burdon told Xinhua in a phone interview.

"He could not have been more forthcoming, more sympathetic and indeed more ambitious about the relationship," said Burdon.

"We can take a great deal of comfort and pleasure in the ambition to broaden and deepen the relationship, which really of course is enormously important to New Zealand."

Although the relationship had consolidated dramatically over the last 20 years, it had been historically "pretty superficial," he said.

"The importance of contacts, of understanding and of appreciation of the enormously different societies from where we derive becomes a very important part of an informed understanding and a respect for a relationship which is clearly very ambitious, but is still frankly very innocent in its comprehension of China," said Burdon.

"It's a case really of New Zealand in educational terms becoming more Asia aware, becoming more sympathetic to a very different cultural heritage to our own."

New Zealanders had to be more sophisticated as they increasingly integrated into "the Asian sphere of strategic and economic influence."

"It's a case of learning to understand, relate and engage with a society that derives from an entirely different historical experience," said Burdon.