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John Key says China has floated the idea of New Zealand and China teaming up on agricultural joint ventures.
He told TV ONE's Q+A programme Chinese leadership has floated the joint venture idea, which will potentially involve development in a third party country.
"I think the way they're thinking that might work would be New Zealand puts up some technical expertise, say in agriculture, they put up capital, we develop farms, let's say in Latin America, and export food to China."
He also says he expects New Zealand to double its exports to the super power in five years.
"We've agreed with Premier Wen to have a target of doubling New Zealand's exports from $10 billion to $20 billion in five years," Key told TV ONE's Q+A programme.
He says he sees China replacing Australia as our largest export market in the not-too-distant future.
"If you think about the increase in exports from New Zealand to China last year, it was the equivalent of everything we sold to Indonesia ... so it's a huge market."
He said he can't see much benefit for New Zealand in selling farms to China and said our future lies in tourism, food production and the hi-tech sector.
"The bottom-line is: Can we get investment? Can we get value for money?" he said.
But political commentator Fran O' Sullivan says there is not yet any sense of a concrete strategy.
"Where is our China strategy? We've had a whole pile of ministers go up to China but there has been no published strategy about just how we would implement this."
Key is currently in China as part of a ten-day-tour.
