Australia's Chinese fifth column

Australia's wake-up call isn't just hysterical
By Peter Hartcher

Former foreign affairs minister Bob Carr has said that Australia went through an "anti-China panic" and anti-China "hysteria" recently.
This was a reference to the reporting of events such as Labor senator Sam Dastyari's decision to ask a Chinese company to pay his personal bills. 

Dastyari, admitting an error of judgment, resigned his frontbench position. 

And events such as Treasurer Scott Morrison's decision to veto Chinese bids to buy control of Ausgrid, NSW's main power distributor, on national security grounds.
And events such as the decision of a pro-Beijing group of Chinese Australians to hold concerts in Sydney and Melbourne to glorify the life of Mao Zedong, only to be pressured into cancelling.
Was Australia gripped by an anti-China hysteria?
Dastyari, a close factional ally of Bob Carr's, is still a senator. 

A Chinese company has since been allowed to buy the equivalent of 20 per cent ownership of the Port of Melbourne, among other things.
The group that opposed the Mao concerts is a rival association of Chinese Australians who say they want to "protect Australian values" against the encroachments of the Chinese Communist Party, according to spokesman John Hugh.
And Bob Carr's former top diplomatic adviser, Peter Varghese, says it wasn't an anti-China paroxysm at all. 

"I wouldn't describe [the recent phase of Australia's China debate] as an anti-China hysteria," says the former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
So what was it? 

In part, it was what the former chief secretary of Hong Kong, Anson Chan, calls "a wake-up call for Australia", as she put it to me. 

"By the time China's infiltration of Australia is readily apparent, it will be too late," said the dual Chinese and British national.

Varghese, who retired from the public service in July and is now chancellor of Queensland University, is anything but hysterical about China's activities in Australia.
"There's nothing unusual about one country trying to influence the thinking of another country – we all do it," he tells me. 

"The issue is transparency about the means of this and Australia needs to decide the acceptability of those means. As a community, Australia needs to make a decision about whether we are comfortable with this.
"Transparency needs to apply to any institutional funding that goes back to foreign governments or organisations with close ties to foreign governments – in politics, in the media, in universities, in schools, in cultural institutions, in politics."
Including Bob Carr's Australia China Relations Institute, which is hosted by the University of Technology, Sydney. 

The new scrutiny of Chinese Communist Party influence in Australia provoked UTS into shaking up the governance of Carr's outfit. 

Its founder, Huang Xiangmo, resigned as chairman.
"We just have to be clear eyed about what's at stake and be prepared to make tough calls," says Varghese.
Galvanised by the Dastyari affair, a parliamentary committee is now debating whether Australia needs to ban foreign donations to political parties. 

And, says Varghese: "What we see in the China debate now is the fact that some issues are getting harder for Australia in how we navigate between China and the US."
Beijing is applying broad pressure to enforce its claim to ownership of 90 per cent of the South China Sea. This claim clashes with the claims of four other claimants: Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.
And it has created wider tensions. 

The US, Japan and Australia have repeatedly called on China to settle its claims through diplomacy, not through destabilising acts.
Such as using coast guard ships to bully fishermen from other countries. 

Or declaring an air defence identification zone that intrudes on other countries' airspace. 

Or imposing an oil drilling rig in contested seas. 

Or building islands. 

Beijing has used precisely these tactics against its neighbours in recent years.
This isn't a pointless tussle over rocks and reefs, as you might hear. 

Says Varghese: "We need to recognise that what's at stake here is what kind of strategic culture we want entrenched in the Indo-Pacific.
"Does it rest on strategic norms and international law or might is right, the law of the jungle, basically? We all have an interest in a rules-based system, though China doesn't see it. There wouldn't be a China story if not for the stability the US has provided."
Under pressure from China, some countries are cracking. 

Rodrigo Duterte has declared the Philippines' "separation" from the US, its treaty ally. 

He has demanded US forces leave within two years, and pledged to side with China and Russia.
Other countries are going the opposite way, hardening their stances to resist Chinese pressure. Indonesia does not have a conflicting claim to the South China Sea. 

But China has asserted "historic" fishing rights to waters off Indonesia's Natuna Islands, and has jostled Indonesian fishing boats to make its point.
This has provoked a decisive response from Indonesia's President Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi. The Natunas are undisputed Indonesian territory, and Jokowi says the fishing grounds are, too. 

He has started an urgent building program on the islands, increased the size of the defence budget, and pointedly chaired a cabinet meeting on a destroyer in the waters off the Natunas.
And in a striking development in the past few days, Indonesia has announced that it's in discussions with Australia about operating joint naval patrols in the eastern area of the South China Sea.
"We are sure that we will soon create a plan on how to realise it," said Defence Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu. 

His Australian counterpart, Marise Payne, confirms the idea is under consideration. 

Indonesia is discussing similar joint patrols with Vietnam and Cambodia.
"It's an important step in the Australian-Indonesian relationship," says Varghese, "and to the extent that it's reinforcing international norms and rules it's an important signal to send to countries including China."
Hysteria is one thing. 

Well founded concern is quite another.