The Manchurian Liberals

Australia's not ready to trust China. Why are we?
By Jonathan Manthorpe 

Xi Jinping shakes hands with Justin Trudeau in Beijing, Wedensday, Aug. 31, 2016. 

Australians have been warned by two of their most senior security officials that their country is the target of Chinese espionage and influence-buying “on an unprecedented scale.”
“This has the potential to cause serious harm to the nation’s sovereignty, the integrity of our political system, our national security capabilities and other interests,” Duncan Lewis, the director general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), said last month.
This view was echoed by the most senior official in the Defence Department — the equivalent of the deputy minister in Canada — Dennis Richardson. 

He said in a speech in Canberra that the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign of subversion in Australia has gone well beyond stealing classified technology. 

It extends into buying political influence, the control of Chinese language media and the ability to monitor and harass Chinese dissidents in Australia.
All the charges levelled against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by the two officials and others in Australia can be made in Canada, too. 

Indeed, Canada has been an active CCP target for espionage and the embedding of agents of influence for considerably longer than Australia. 

Canada was marked out by the CCP even before it came to power in China in 1949, while Australia has only figured as a serious espionage target in the last 30 years.
Even so, Australia’s relationship with China is more fraught than Canada’s. 

China is Australia’s largest trade partner and the main customer for the country’s natural resource exports.
So it’s a measure of how seriously the Canberra government takes the CCP threat to its national sovereignty that it recently appointed David Irvine, the former director of its overseas spy agency — the Australian Secret Intelligence Service — as chairman of its foreign investment advisory committee.
In recent years, Australia has blocked many Chinese investments, mostly from state-controlled or state-linked companies, in sensitive infrastructure projects and technology companies.
It is highly unlikely, for example, that Canberra would have followed the example of the Justin Trudeau government in allowing the takeover of the British Columbia satellite communications company, Norsat, by the Chinese radio-systems manufacturer Hytera. 

The Chinese government is a Hytera shareholder.
Norsat’s customers include NATO, the United States Department of Defense, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, the Taiwanese Army and the Irish Department of Defence. 

That’s a list of institutions whose communications should not be controlled by a dangerous enemy like the CCP.
The Conservative government of Stephen Harper was more robust in blocking the sale to China of companies owning sensitive technology. 

The Liberals, in contrast, have always had a blithe attitude towards Beijing — because the CCP has put much effort into forging friendships with senior Liberals and associates for well over 50 years.
The warnings of CCP infiltration by the two Australian security officials coincide with a major series of exposes by Australia’s largest news organization, Fairfax Media, which owns such well-known newspapers as the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Melbourne, in partnership with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation television program ‘4 Corners’.
The series of stories has set out a welter information about CCP efforts to suborn Australian political parties with large donations, usually made through proxies, and politicians themselves, often through offers of lucrative post-retirement posts in Chinese companies or institutions.
Canada has tighter rules than Australia on foreign donations to political parties, but that is easily circumvented through the use of Canadian listed companies controlled at arms’ length by the CCP.
Following the money, the Australian media series also tracked how the CCP has acquired influence and access to technologies with military applications by arranging large donations to Australian universities and other research institutes.
One of the most compelling segments in the Fairfax-4 Corners series deals with efforts by Beijing’s diplomats and agents of influence to control Chinese immigrants and temporary residents, such as students.
The series charts incidents of Beijing’s diplomats threatening immigrant dissidents in Australia with reprisals against their families in China unless they curb their activism.
The CCP also has paid special attention to Australian universities and colleges as the country has attracted — as Canada has — a large number of Chinese students. 

The CCP, through diplomats in its embassy and consulates, has recruited informants and cadres among Chinese student populations. 

These spies are there to smother any anti-Beijing activities by the Chinese students and to arrange counter-demonstrations against protests by groups like Falun Gong, Hong Kong democracy advocates, Taiwan independentists and the Free Tibet movement.
However, there’s a serious academic consequence from these spies-in-the-classrooms, according to Australian professors and tutors: Chinese students are now unwilling to express themselves or voice ideas that might get them into trouble with the CCP. 

The Fairfax-4 Corners series reports several professors saying Chinese students had come to them asking to be put in groups without any other Chinese students in them, so they could feel free to fully take part in their courses.
Canadian immigrants from China, and Chinese students here, are subject to exactly the same pressures as their Australian counterparts. 

A detailed report on the harassment of Chinese Canadians and members of groups opposed to Beijing by the CCP’s diplomats and other agents was presented recently to the Ottawa government.
It’s no accident that Beijing keeps twice as many “diplomats” in its embassy and four consulates in Canada than does the U.S., our immediate neighbour, closest ally and largest trading partner. 

As a result, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, according to a former director, James Judd, uses half its time and resources trying to monitor the extracarricular activities of these Chinese “diplomats.”

Australian sovereignty under threat from China's Fifth Column

• A joint Four Corners-Fairfax investigation reveals Beijing is active in Australia across an array of fronts
• The former Defence secretary and ASIO's chief have both voiced concerns about Chinese interference in Australia
• The interference campaign is especially active on university campuses and in the Chinese-language media in Australia

By Nick McKenzie, Chris Uhlmann, Richard Baker and Sashka Koloff

A five-month investigation reveals the extent of Beijing's influence in Australian politics and Chinese communities. 

The defence and intelligence community believes that attempts by the Chinese Communist Party to exert its influence in Australia pose a direct threat to our nation's liberties and its sovereignty.
That fear has been confirmed by a five-month-long Four Corners-Fairfax investigation which shows Beijing is active across a vast array of fronts — from directing Chinese student associations, threatening Australian-based Chinese dissidents, seeking to influence academic inquiry, co-opting community groups and controlling most Chinese-language media.
And Monday night's Four Corners program will track the millions in opaque Chinese-linked donations to show how it buys access and influence in Australian politics.

China's Communist Party is monitoring the activities of university academics and students engaged in anti-communist activism in Australia.

The depth of the concern at the highest levels of the defence and intelligence establishment can be measured in recent public statements by the departing Defence secretary and the director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).
Australia's domestic spy chief Duncan Lewis warned Parliament that espionage and Chinese interference in Australia were occurring on "an unprecedented scale".
"This has the potential to cause serious harm to the nation's sovereignty, the integrity of our political system, our national security capabilities, our economy and other interests," Mr Lewis said.
The outgoing Defence Department secretary, Dennis Richardson, named China as being "very active" in espionage and pointed to an equally troubling campaign of monitoring and coercion here.
"The Chinese government keeps a watchful eye inside Australian Chinese communities and effectively controls Chinese language media in Australia," Mr Richardson said.

Student's parents threatened and an academic detained
The Four Corners-Fairfax team has interviewed Queensland university student, Tony Chang, whose anti-Communist activities in Australia saw his China-based parents threatened by Ministry of State Security (MSS) agents.

QUT student Tony Chang's parents were threatened by Chinese agents.

Academic Dr Feng Chongyi made headlines in March when he was detained in China and questioned for 10 days by MSS agents.
When he was finally allowed to leave, the agents demanded Dr Feng sign a document that forbade him from publicly discussing his ordeal.
He has broken his silence to say his treatment in China was designed to send a message to anti-Communist elements in the Chinese-Australian community: "Stay away from sensitive issues or sensitive topics".

Dr Feng Chongyi was detained in China for 10 days by MSS agents.

The Communist Party keeps watch over the 150,000-strong Chinese students studying in Australian universities by controlling the Chinese Students' and Scholars' Associations.
The Four Corners-Fairfax investigation will show how the Chinese Embassy in Canberra orchestrated a mass student rally to welcome Li Keqiang in March and stressed the importance of blocking out anti-Communist protesters.
And it will detail how a "spontaneous" demonstration pushing China's sovereignty over the South China Sea in Melbourne last year was coordinated by one of the many Australian-based Chinese-language media companies that acts as a propaganda arm for Beijing.
Those few media companies that don't toe the party line face the threat of being driven out of business.
Don Ma, who owns the independent Vision China Times, told the Four Corner-Fairfax team that 10 of his advertisers pulled their cash after being threatened by Chinese officials.
Owner of Vision China Times, Don Ma.

The Beijing office of one migration and travel company was visited by the Ministry of State Security every day for two weeks until it cut ties with his paper.
Mr Ma has not only endured economic sabotage from the Communist Party but a campaign of vilification from pro-Beijing members of the local Chinese community.
Yet he keeps publishing, not only because he embraces freedom of the press, but because many members of the disparate Chinese community urge him to keep doing so.
"I felt that the media here, all the Chinese media, was being controlled by China," Mr Ma said.
"This is harmful to the Australian society. It is also harmful to the next generation of Chinese. Therefore, I felt I wanted to invest in a truly independent media that fits in with Australian values."

Watch 'Power And Influence: How China's Communist Party Is Infiltrating Australia' on Four Corners, ABC TV, Monday 8:30pm.

Chinese Aggressions

Australia should carry out naval challenge to China's artificial islands: retired defence boss

By David Wroe 

The recently retired Defence head Dennis Richardson has said Australia should carry out its own "freedom-of-navigation" naval operation to challenge China's claim over waters surrounding artificial islands in the South China Sea.
Such a move would provoke an angry response from Beijing, but Mr Richardson, who has been a central figure in Australia's security and foreign affairs establishment for the past two decades, said Australia should not accept the legitimacy of China's man-made territory in the strategically vital waterways.

The USS Dewey conducted a "man overboard" exercise near Mischief Reef on Thursday. 

 
Asked whether Australia should carry out a naval freedom-of-navigation operation, Mr Richardson said: "I think at some point, we should ... What that point is, being a good old public servant, I'd leave it to the government."
The remarks are highly significant in that they come from such a senior and recently retired national security figure. 

Mr Richardson also led ASIO and the Department of Foreign Affairs and served as ambassador to Washington. 

He retired just over a week ago after a 48-year career.
Dennis Richardson, the former secretary of defence, supports an Australian "freedom-of-navigation" naval operation. 

He also issued a warning to China that North Korea's nuclear program, if left unchecked, could spark a regional arms race with countries such as Japan and South Korea feeling they too have little choice but to go nuclear – a warning that has since also been expressed by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.
The US carried out its first freedom-of-navigation operation in the South China Sea under the administration of Donald Trump on Thursday morning, sending the USS Dewey destroyer within the crucial 12-nautical mile territorial zone of Mischief Reef, where China has built an artificial island.
Such operations are designed to signal that a country does not accept the legitimacy of Beijing's claim to the waters around man-made islands built on submerged reefs that are subject to territorial disputes with China's neighbours.
Thursday's operation was the most defiant so far by the US in that the USS Dewey manouevred and carried out an exercise rather than just sailing quickly through the 12-mile zone as the US navy had done twice before under the Obama administration.

One of the islands China has built up in the South China Sea. 

Mr Richardson stressed that Australia should neither telegraph its intentions nor carry out the operations recklessly but should nonetheless send the clear signal that it did not regard China's claims as lawful.
"You don't say anything in advance. You just do it. And you don't have to do it all the time. If you picked your time and did it in the right way, I think that is a sensible thing to do."
A Chinese Navy frigate and a Russian Navy ship take part in a joint naval drill in the South China Sea. 
The law of sea was "very clear", he said. 

Such man-made features did not generate a 12-nautical mile claim to waters around them.
"And for China to create artificial features more than 1000 kilometres from their own coastline and then want to claim territorial sea around them is not something that we should by implication accept," he said.

Up to two-thirds of of Australia's exports travel through the South China Sea. 

Strategic analysts and regional governments including Australia's have become increasingly concerned by China's steady militarisation of these artificial islands and its claims over surrounding waters. 

Those claims have been contradicted by a ruling by an international tribunal in the Hague.
On North Korea, Mr Richardson said China needed to realise it had as much interest as the US in reining in North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
"How will Japan, how will [South] Korea, how will other countries in the region respond to a nuclear-armed North Korea with accurate missiles?" he said.
"What happens if other countries or some other country decides the only way we can safeguard ourselves is to be nuclear armed ourselves? Is that what any of us want?"

Australia's New Masters

China is spying in Australia
By PRIMROSE RIORDAN
Secretary of the Department of Defence Dennis Richardson at the National Press Club in Canberra. 

Outgoing Defence Secretary Dennis Richardson has accused China of spying in Australia, particularly on Chinese diaspora communities and of controlling the Chinese language press.
He said while Australia should build relations with China, Australia and China were not allies.
“I think Australia’s relationship with China and the United States will continue to be able to be summarised simply — friends with both, allies with one,” he told The National Press Club in Canberra today.
The Australian has recently reported on the increased activity of the Chinese communist party’s United Front Work Department and the Overseas Affairs Office in Australia.
Last year, China reacted angrily to former US ambassador John Berry’s warning that Beijing was using financial donations to influence Australian politicians, accusing the American diplomat of “troublemaking” and acting like a “preacher”.
Mr Richardson said that the Chinese government is actively involved in spying activity directed at Australia and Chinese communities, and controls the Mandarin language press.
“It is no secret that China is very active in intelligence activities directed against us. It is more than cyber.”
“Likewise, the Chinese Government keeps a watchful eye inside Australian Chinese communities and effectively controls Chinese language media in Australia.”
He said this interference was unreasonable.
“They engage in activities in their communities which I think would be considered unreasonable by most Australians.”