Australia has become China's puppet state, says Clive Hamilton in Silent Invasion

Chinese agents and Australian Quislings are undermining Australia's sovereignty
By Dylan Welch
Subversion: Huang Xiangmo (R) donated $1.8m to build a "research" institute headed by Bob Carr, aka Beijing Bob.

Thousands of agents of the Chinese state have integrated themselves into Australian public life — from the high spheres of politics, academia and business all the way down to suburban churches and local writers' groups — according to a brilliant book to be published on Monday.
The book, Silent Invasion: How China Is Turning Australia into a Puppet State, is written by Clive Hamilton, professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University.
In it, he alleges that a systematic Chinese government campaign of espionage and influence peddling is leading to "he erosion of Australian sovereignty.
That erosion is caused, in part, by a recent wave of Chinese migration to Australia including "billionaires with shady histories and tight links to the [Chinese Communist] party, media owners creating Beijing mouthpieces, 'patriotic' students brainwashed from birth, and professionals marshalled into pro-Beijing associations set up by the Chinese embassy," Professor Hamilton writes.

Professor Clive Hamilton denounces Chinese interference in Australian affairs. 

ABC News has been given a pre-publication copy of the book, which is being published in the middle of widening public debate over China's influence in Australia and concerns Beijing has thousands of unofficial spies in the country.
Those concerns were given some credence by the Government late last year, when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced he planned to enact new foreign interference laws to counter such espionage.
Mr Turnbull used strong language at the time, paraphrasing a famous Chinese communist slogan to say Australia would "stand up" to foreign governments meddling in Australian affairs.
The book will cause particular angst among Australia's political class.

Australia's Quislings
It lists more than 40 former and sitting Australian politicians who are doing the work of China's totalitarian government, if sometimes unwittingly. 

Many are household names.
"Former prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, when their political careers ended they went on to become reliable friends of China, shuttling between the two countries, mixing with the top cadres and tycoons," Professor Hamilton writes.
"While Hawke's China links proved lucrative, Keating was more interested in influence."

Beijing Bob

Bob Carr, aka Beijing Bob, is the most famous Australian Quisling. He is currently running a Beijing-backed propaganda outfit: the Australia-China Research Institute (ACRI) at the University of Technology, Sydney.

An entire chapter, titled Beijing Bob, is dedicated to former Labor foreign minister and NSW premier Bob Carr.
The chapter accuses Carr of pushing an aggressive pro-China stance in Labor caucuses.
Professor Hamilton chronicles Carr's 2015 appointment as the founding director of the Australia-China Research Institute (ACRI) at the University of Technology, Sydney.
ACRI was created with a $1.8m donation from billionaire property developer Huang Xiangmo, who has donated millions to Australian politicians and has been described in the book as being one of Beijing's most powerful agents of influence in Australia.
"Huang sits at the centre of a web of influence that extends throughout politics, business and the media," Professor Hamilton writes.
Huang has been the subject of public speculation ever since the ABC News revealed his millions of dollars in political donations, and his questionable connections to senior federal politicians, in a series of stories in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
"Let's call the Australia-China Research Institute for what it is," Professor Hamilton writes.
"A Beijing-backed propaganda outfit disguised as a legitimate research institute, whose ultimate objective is to advance the CCP's [Chinese Communist Party's] influence in Australian policy and political circles, an organisation hosted by a university whose commitment to academic freedom and proper practice is clouded by money hunger, and directed by an ex-politician suffering from relevance deprivation syndrome who cannot see what a valuable asset he has become for Beijing."

Huang denies his donations and influence within Australian society are connected to the Chinese Government, describing the allegations as innuendo and racism.

Carr, who declined to comment for this article, has previously said ACRI took a "positive and optimistic view" of the Australia-China relationship.

The book also details a list of Chinese-Australian academics who are allowing the transfer of national security-significant research — in sensitive areas such as space, artificial intelligence and computer engineering — from Australian universities to the Chinese military.
Silent Invasion appears to have also divided Australian Parliament, with Labor and Liberal members of a classified parliamentary committee at odds over whether they should provide legal cover for the book.
Plans were hatched recently by members of Parliament's intelligence oversight body, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS), to publish a digital copy of the book.
The release would have been the first time the Australian parliament published a book in its entirety — therefore granting it a limited form of parliamentary privilege — in an effort to protect the information it contains from legal attack.
While Liberal members of the committee broadly supported publication of the book, the majority of Labor committee members did not, arguing it was not appropriate for the Australian Parliament to give the book its imprimatur.
Silent Invasion was provided to the committee in a submission as part of an inquiry into Mr Turnbull's foreign interference laws.
The book's release by the committee would have been seen as an inflammatory act by Beijing, already smarting from Mr Turnbull's announcement.

Co-opting God
In another section of the book, Professor Hamilton describes a curious relationship between Chinese Christian churches in Australia and the atheist Chinese Communist Party, which has a history of suppressing Christianity at home.

The cover of the controversial book, Silent Invasion: How China Is Turning Australia into a Puppet State, authored by Professor Clive Hamilton. 
He refers to classified Chinese Government reports which instruct Chinese officials to infiltrate overseas churches that have Chinese congregations. 

"They instruct cadres to monitor, infiltrate and 'sinify' overseas Chinese churches by actively promoting the CCP's concepts of Chineseness and 'spiritual love'."
In 2014, he notes, the website of the Canberra Chinese Methodist Church included a statement which linked the rise of the CCP to God's will: "The awe-inspiring righteousness of Xi Jinping, the President of the People's Republic of China, and the rise of a great nation that is modern China are part of God's plan, predestination and blessing."
Many Chinese church pastors believe their congregations have been penetrated by Chinese Government cadres, Professor Hamilton writes.
"One pastor told me: 'There are lots of communists in our church community.' He guessed that around a quarter or a third are or have been communists. Some join the church for the companionship, some for the social contacts; others are the [Chinese Government's] assets."
People connected to the Chinese Government have also infiltrated Australia's writing scene. 

A group called the Australian-Chinese Writer's Association was recently taken over by "pro-Beijing forces".
Professor Hamilton describes how well-known Australian writing forums such as the Melbourne Writers Festival and Writers Victoria have unwittingly hosted local Chinese writing groups operating under Beijing's control and "whose aim is to spread into Australian society the CCP worldview, one that is extremely intolerant of artistic license and dissenting views."

A 'landmark win' for China
Silent Invasion is so hated by Beijing it almost didn't make it to publication. 

It was due to be released late last year by Allen & Unwin, but the publisher baulked over concerns it would be targeted by Beijing and its proxies in Australia. 

Melbourne University Press also turned down the book.
That led Professor Hamilton — the author of half-a-dozen books about climate change, politics and economics — to hit out at this attempt by the CCP to muzzle public debate in Australia.
"[This is a] landmark win for the Chinese Communist Party's campaign to suppress critical voices," Professor Hamilton wrote to Allen & Unwin chief executive Robert Gorman at the time.
The book was recently acquired by Hardie Grant, run by Sandy Grant, who in the 1980s published the memoir of former British intelligence officer Peter Wright. 

The publication occurred against the wishes of the British government, which was trying to censor the book.
Mr Grant told the ABC he was aware publishing Silent Invasion may invite the attention of the Chinese government, but he hoped it would not be serious. 

"This is a debate being held at the ABC, the New York Times, the London Times; we are just one voice in that, we are hardly a serious thorn in the Chinese government's side," he said.
Professor Hamilton may also have reason to be concerned about the impact of authoring the book. This week New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ordered intelligence officers to investigate break-ins at the home and office of prominent NZ China academic Anne-Marie Brady.
Professor Brady has spent her career researching China's global influence and her 2017 paper, Magic Weapons, caused global waves when it revealed how deeply China had penetrated NZ's Government.

Australia's Chinese Fifth Column

Australian universities the latest battleground in Chinese soft power offensive
By Hagar Cohen

Beijing collaborator Bob Carr of the Australia China Relations Institute.

In an exclusive interview, Australia's first ambassador to China has raised the alarm about China's influence in the higher education sector.
Stephen Fitzgerald singled out Bob Carr's Australia China Relations Institute for particular criticism, saying universities need clear firewalls between donations and research.
ACRI, part of the University of Technology Sydney, was established with a large donation from the Chinese businessman Huang Xiangmo.
Mr Huang was the donor at the centre of the controversy surrounding Labor senator Sam Dastyari.
"I wouldn't have taken the funding," Mr Fitzgerald told Background Briefing.
"This is one of the really difficult issues about what is happening at the moment, because you don't want to say no to all Chinese money.
"That would be ridiculous, self defeating, but you have to put firewalls between the donation and the way it is spent, and you have to be certain about the origins of that money."

'No place' for Confucius institutes
As well as ACRI, hundreds of other language and culture centres have been established on campuses worldwide through confidential agreements between universities and the Chinese education ministry.
Mr Fitzgerald said he believed these centres, known as Confucius institutes, had no place in Australian higher education institutions.
"I just don't think they should be in universities," he said.
"Have them in Australia by all means; have them all over the country. I'd welcome them, but I don't think they should be in universities."
"There will be people who have been involved with these institutes who will say there has never been one instance of any attempt to influence what we teach and what we say.
"There will be others who might admit that there has been such an attempt."

Controversy over Sydney Uni plan
Background Briefing has revealed that at the University of Sydney, a confidential 2007 plan included a clause that would have seen the university's existing Chinese language program incorporated into a Confucius institute.
This draft agreement ended up in the hands of Professor Jocelyn Chey, the former Australian consul-general in Hong Kong and a visiting professor at the university's Department of Chinese Studies.
"I wasn't sure that the university authorities knew what they were letting themselves in for," she said.
"There's the question of academic freedom and the right of academics not just to teach but to research and publish in areas where they are not under the guidance or direction of anybody."
Professor Chey wrote a strongly worded letter to the vice chancellor outlining her concerns and saying the Confucius institute should be rejected, or the arrangement should be significantly modified to protect the integrity of the university.
"People who accept donations should be aware of the expectations and obligations that they're taking on with the finance," she said.
The university senate voted in favour of the Confucius Institute, but adopted some of the changes to the arrangement that were recommended by Professor Chey.
A University of Sydney spokesperson confirmed a proposal to establish a Confucius Institute at the University of Sydney was circulated to the senate in 2007.
Feedback from staff was considered, and it was confirmed that the university did not intend for existing university programs to be delivered by the Confucius Institute.
The spokesperson said these programs continue to be delivered by the Department of Chinese Studies in the School of Languages and Cultures.