Country of New Zealand

New Zealand, also called Aotearoa, is a beautiful, mountainous island country located in the South Pacific Ocean. It is also a newly independent country, which has been a colony of Great Britain since 1840 and got fully independent in 1947. So many factors perhaps including its isolated geographical location, New Zealand is one of the youngest immigrant countries in the world. And in the meantime, it is a very socially "liberal" nation, and also the first country in the world to have an environmentalist Green Party. Given the beauty of natural, New Zealand had a distinctive biodiversity of both animal and plant life. Later, its' main industries and agriculture products are based on those natural resources. The paper is going to research the country and its business environment from the aspects of demographics, political environment, and economic environment.

As mentioned above, New Zealand is located in the South Pacific Ocean, surrounded with Tasman Sea, and with no close neighbor countries around. Even the closest Australia is more than 1200 miles away, so it is quite isolated in terms of geographic location. The coastline is about 15,134 kilometers, and people from anywhere in the country can get to the ocean within 80 miles. New Zealand is composed with two main islands - North and South island, separated by Cook Strait, as well as many small islands. Most of Maoris lived on the North Island and the biggest city in the country, Auckland, also located in there. The area in square miles is 103,363, about the size of Colorado.

The geographic location had really played a significant role in things such as forming New Zealand's immigrant policy, development of agriculture, and international trade. It is the very first base for New Zealand today's outlook. And also resulted from its numerous natural resources and advanced agriculture, it has been very active in international trade.

The total population is about 4.42 million comprised by 57% European, 8% Asian, 7% Maori, 5% Pacific Islander, 10% Mixed, and 13% other, with an annual growth rate of 0.88%. New Zealand is also highly urbanized with an 86% urban population and a 0.9% annual rate of urbanization. Christian is composed the most of the religion with the percentage of 63. Ethnicity is an important reason for New Zealand's proud cleanliness.

There are 122 usable airfields, 93,911 kilometers roadways and 4,128 kilometers railroads in the country. The advanced transportation also provided the possibility for its international business. 5.02 million Mobile phones exceeded the total population, and 84% Internet penetration has made the country no problem in communication. Highly developed infrastructures had always been important for the country's development.

Current government type of New Zealand is parliamentary democracy. The Head of State is Queen Elizabeth II and the Prime Minister is John Key. ACT New Zealand, Green Party, Maori Party, National Party, New Zealand First Party, New Zealand Labor Party, Progressive Party, and United Future comprised the political parties in New Zealand.

Maoris were largely under control of the National Party and suffered unscrupulous practices of whites until the year of 2004. In this year, Maori purchased a large land using land-loss fund provided by government and became the largest landowner on the South Island. They also started their own Television station, and what's more important, they created their own political party - Maori party, at the very first time. This has also enabled a separate Maori roll for election, and seven of the 120 seats in House of Representative are reserved for Maori. This remarkable change was hugely because of the increasing of Maori population, as well as their incorporated skills for the white world. In fact, large numbers of Maoris are now well educated while still kept their traditional culture.

During the time when the Labour Party was in power, the nuclear issue was in a big concern. The issue including nuclear testing, nuclear-weapons testing, and the later current nerve-gas disposal. New Zealand has a very strong standpoint towards the issue, and withdrew from ANZUS (a three-way regional security agreement among Australia, New Zealand, and United States) in 1986 because it refused to open the docks to U.S nuclear ships for the U.S side refused to say whether or not the ship carried nuclear weapons. However, the National Party argued that New Zealand was obligated to open the docks as a signatory to ANZUS. The opposite position between the Labour Party and the National Party could be seen in this issue. Dr. Collinwood wrote in the book that The Labour Party was intended to "create a foreign policy based on moral rather than legal rationales." (Collinwood, D.W., 2011) In