WELLINGTON  The Leader of New Zealand's Parliamentary Opposition will be looking to clear the air around recent issues regarding Chinese investment during high-level talks with Chinese leaders in Beijing this month.

Chinese investors had been suffering from the New Zealand government's failure to be frank, said Andrew Little.

Little, leader of the Labour Party which agreed the New Zealand-China Free Trade Agreement (FTA) when it was last in power in 2008, said on Tuesday that he wanted to explain the long-running and often heated debate in New Zealand over the foreign ownership of houses and productive land.

The Labour Party policy was to restrict large sales, particularly of productive land, and it was important to have a respectful discussion with China, Little told Xinhua in an interview.

"The role of land and productive land is very important to us because a large chunk of our economy and our national income are based on what we produce off the land," said Little.

"I think the problem with the present (New Zealand) government is that they don't front up and say to countries like China 'New Zealanders are getting very sensitive about this and this is the reason why there is this demand for some restrictions'," he said.

"If you have that discussion with the Chinese, I'm confident they will respect it and understand it."

He cited the New Zealand government's decision last month to reject a Chinese bid to buy the 13,800-hectare Lochinver Station in the central North Island, which came after a series of other large farm sales were approved.(Xinhua)