National Party leader Christopher Luxon has said the party would "absolutely" accept Chinese money to fund its proposed road network and hit back at concerns.
National has costed its plan at $24 billion, including billions in private funding.
Transport Minister David Parker claims the National Party's "Transport for the Future" policy is "literally billions of dollars short" in its cost estimates.
Luxon told Breakfast this morning: "There's a lot of pension funds, there's a lot of sovereign wealth funds that want to invest in infrastructure for long-term investment returns."
"We've got to have a modern and reliable infrastructure and roading network, and part of the way we can do that is actually using private capital and alternative funding mechanisms.
"And that just means we get to do more infrastructure sooner, and we also make sure that we don't give the taxpayer a huge amount of debt to deal with."
Pressed on whether a National government would take money from China to pay for the roads, Luxon said: "Yeah, absolutely."
"New Zealand's the same size as Great Britain and Japan, we have five million people in it, a strong and resilient roading network will be absolutely critical to our future.
"And whether you're on an EV or whether you're on a hydrogen truck, you're gonna need very good and resilient roads."
Asked if a National government would accept Chinese workers coming in to build the road, Luxon said that would be a decision for the proposed National Infrastructure Agency.
"They will really work with partners to develop the right sort of financing and the right sort of partner for the right sort of project," he said.
"So those international companies or international funds that want to actually make investments in infrastructure will interface with that agency of government to be able to put that programme together.
"We need to have some vision and some aspiration and think about what kind of country we want to have, and I want to make sure we've got a leading small advanced economy in the world."
Luxon hit back at suggestions over what China might expect in return, with previous investment in the Pacific seeing Chinese workers migrating and high levels of debt being imposed.
"That's not going to happen," he said. "That's quite a xenophobic sort of response and a pretty simplistic response."
"Canadian pension plans, Australian pension plans are the major investors in infrastructure that we want to be able to tap into."
Luxon said he's spoken with potential investors but wouldn't name who he'd spoken to.
"Let's go to work and actually get some things done in this country," he said.
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