Denise Ho: Hong Kong has reached 'a point of no turning back'

Cantopop star says city has become a police state as young people fight for their lives

By Stephanie Convery

 Hong Kong singer and activist Denise Ho at the Sydney Opera House for the Antidote festival. 

“We are officially in a police state,” the Hong Kong Cantopop star and activist Denise Ho told a sold-out audience in Sydney on Sunday night.
Speaking at the Sydney Opera House’s Antidote festival, Ho told an audience of mostly self-identifying Hongkongers that the political upheaval in their home had reached “a point of no turning back”.
“We are in a state of humanitarian crisis where police have full authority to do whatever they want with the people, and the government is hiding behind the police force,” she said.
As protests in Hong Kong headed towards their 14th week, Ho reflected on the resilience and tenacity of the protesters, who have turned out in hundreds of thousands since the first demonstrations in June.
“Where does this courage come from? Hong Kong has never been known to be a politically conscious society,” she said. 

“Nothing like this has ever been seen before and now people have been pushed to this edge – these young people are fighting for their lives and for their future.”
She rejected allegations by Beijing that the movement was being provoked by the US or other international players. 

“This is a leaderless, centralised movement,” she said. 

“They are still claiming there are foreign forces coming into the movement … it’s just not the truth.”
Before she was an activist, Ho was a singer. 

She launched her music career in the 1990s when she won a singing competition run by a Hong Kong TV station, but it wasn’t until the early 2000s that she broke through into the mainstream. 

She began to identify publicly as a lesbian in 2012 – the first person in Cantopop to come out – and became an advocate for LGBT+ rights.
In 2014 she was arrested for taking part in the “umbrella movement” for universal suffrage in Hong Kong. 

As a result she was blacklisted in mainland China, where she had a growing audience, and was dropped from major sponsorship deals and by her record label. 

She responded by starting her own label, and by intensifying her political activism.

Despite being billed as a talk about pop and politics, Ho’s session at the annual ideas festival focused firmly on the latter. 

In conversation with the journalist Zing Tsjeng, Ho touched on her singing career only insofar as it related to her activism.
Art and creative practice, she said, was a space in which “the fight can go on”. 

“They can lock you up, they can ban you from going into the country, and they can censor your name on Chinese social media, but they cannot really control your mind.”
She said she believed most celebrities had been “silencing themselves” on the political situation in Hong Kong “for fear of being blacklisted, as I have been, on the China market”.
The audience gave no indication that they minded the singular focus of the event. 

Crowd members chanted pro-freedom slogans. 

Questions from the floor were focused mainly on protest strategy. 

They wanted to know what they could do from Australia to help their families at home. 

They called out in encouragement and support when the event took an emotional turn.
Ho was brought to tears as the audience was shown a short video summarising the months of protests, which were triggered in June by the introduction of a bill that would have allowed people to be extradited to mainland China to face court. 

The bill is an attempt by Beijing to undermine democracy in the relatively liberal territory, governed by China under the “one country, two systems” framework.

News had emerged in the past 48 hours that police had fired dye-filled water cannons at people in the street. 

They had disguised their identities and violently arrested protesters, as well as attacking them in a train carriage at a metro station, pepper spraying them and beating them with batons.
“The police have really been completely out of hand, and so Hong Kong people are furious,” Ho said.
Ho said she expected the crisis to escalate in the lead-up to celebrations on 1 October to mark the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
“What will happen during this month, nobody will really answer this question,” she said. 

“What we can really do in this moment is become more united in this fight and become really strategic in the face of this huge machine that is the [Chinese] communist government.”
She said six young people had killed themselves “because of despair” during the protest period.
“I really want the world to know that although we are seeing a lot of violence from all sides at this moment, this really started out as a largely peaceful protest in June,” she said.
“We tried all sorts of ways to get our voices heard, to get to the government. But they only responded with teargas, more teargas, rubber bullets, sponge bullets, police brutality.”

‘We must protect and stand up for our youth’: Thousands in Australia protest against Hong Kong extradition law

Thousands of people across Australia took to the streets last Sunday to protest against Hong Kong’s controversial extradition law.

By Tim Lam

Hundreds gather outside the State Library of Victoria to call for the withdrawal of the Extradition Law. 

Rallies were held in all six Australian states, with protests in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart, Perth and Adelaide. 

A demonstration was also held at the national capital in Canberra.
In Melbourne, home to one of Australia’s largest Hong Kong communities, hundreds gathered outside the State Library of Victoria to express solidarity with Hong Kong protesters.
The demonstrators included a large contingent of Hong Kong and Taiwanese students, along with members of the Australian Tibetan community and former Umbrella Movement protesters.

Hundreds gather outside the State Library of Victoria to call for the withdrawal of the Extradition Law. 

The rally began with a minute’s silence for an extradition law protester who died on Saturday evening after falling from a mall in Admiralty.
Flowers and candles were also placed at a memorial on the steps of the State Library of Victoria.
Chanting “Say No to China Extradition”, the protesters called on Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam to withdraw the extradition law, condemn and investigate police violence and retract the classification of the June 12 protests as a “riot”.

Hundreds gather outside the State Library of Victoria to call for the withdrawal of the Extradition Law. 

Jane Poon, from Australia-Hong Kong Link, was one of the event organisers who addressed the crowd.
“How can Carrie Lam, as a mother, use tear gas, rubber bullets and bean bag rounds to ‘reprimand’ her children?” Poon said.
“How can Stephen Lo send his police to use their batons to strike our youth?

Jane Poon addresses the crowd outside the State Library of Victoria. 

“We must protect and stand up for our youth. Carrie Lam and Stephen Lo still June 12 a riot – so the young people can still be arrested and jailed.”
Hannah, originally from Hong Kong, asked people who care about human rights to pray for Hong Kong.
“I am a Hong Kong person and I’m also a Christian. Seeing so many Christians peacefully singing Sing Hallelujah to the Lord in front of the police made me very emotional,” she said.
“God is watching what’s happening in Hong Kong right now.”

Protesters hold up signs showing their opposition to the Extradition Law.
A number of people from mainland China also attended the Melbourne protest.
A man who identified himself as Ming said he joined the rally to show his support for the Hong Kong protests.
“A lot of people in China don’t know what’s going on as they just follow the mainstream media report from the government’s side,” he said.
“I feel very sad about what’s happening to the Hong Kongers. Their freedom becomes more and more limited.”

Protesters hold up signs showing their opposition to the Extradition Law. 
“But the younger generation of Hong Kongers haven’t been brainwashed. So many people have come out and I think that’s the future of Hong Kong.”
Earlier in the day, Hong Kong international students from Melbourne universities organised a silent protest in the heart of Melbourne’s central business district.
“Many of the young people protesting in Hong Kong right now are our friends,” one of the protesters said.
“We are in the exam period here in Australia, and we feel so powerless.”

Protesters hold up signs showing their opposition to the Extradition Law. 

“But even though we are in Melbourne and not Hong Kong, we can still do something.”
Protesters also expressed disappointment at the response of Hong Kong born-Australian MP (a member of Parliament) Gladys Liu to the extradition law.
Last month, Liu became the first Chinese woman elected to the Australian parliament.
In an interview with Australian news channel SBS, Liu said she “hasn’t really looked into the details of the legislation”.

Candles and flowers are placed on the steps of the State Library of Victoria in memory of an anti-extradition law protester who died last Saturday. 

This was the second time in two weeks that public demonstrations against the extradition law were held in Australia.
Previously, protests in five Australian cities attracted an estimated 5,000 people.

Australia Cancels Residency for Wealthy Chinese Donor Huang Xiangmo Linked to Communist Party

By Damien Cave

Huang Xiangmo in Sydney, Australia, last year. His donations to Australian politicians were linked to Beijing.

SYDNEY, Australia — Australia has canceled the residency of a wealthy political donor tied to the Chinese government, officials confirmed Wednesday, denying his citizenship application and stranding him overseas in a widening conflict with Beijing over its efforts to influence Australian politics.
The donor, Huang Xiangmo, is a successful developer who has lived in Sydney since 2011 and who has donated millions of dollars across the Australian political spectrum in recent years. 

He has done so while leading organizations tied to the United Front Work Department, an arm of the Chinese Communist Party that promotes Chinese foreign policy abroad and works with various groups inside China.
Huang’s office did not respond to requests for comment, and his whereabouts were unknown.

Experts said that keeping him out of Australia reflected deepening global skepticism about China — and a tougher stance toward its proxies.
“It’s a very punitive measure,” said Euan Graham, executive director of La Trobe Asia, a regional research and engagement arm of La Trobe University in Melbourne. 

“It’s a signal of the pushback against Chinese interference — the government remains committed to that despite whatever softer line there may have been in the official diplomatic relationship.”
Some experts cautioned that it was still not clear exactly why Huang was turned down for citizenship; his permanent residency was canceled for a range of reasons, including character grounds, according to The Sydney Morning Herald, which first reported the citizenship rejection.
What is clear is that Huang, a billionaire property developer who founded Yuhu Group Australia in 2012, has become the most visible target of concern and debate about Chinese influence in Australian politics.
His political gifts totaling at least 2.7 million Australian dollars, or about $1.95 million, have gone to both major parties. 

And while the contributions were perfectly legal (Australia lacks a ban on foreign donations), his efforts have been increasingly viewed with suspicion.
Records shows that between 2014 and 2016, Huang made more than a dozen large donations, including $50,000 to the Liberal Party of Victoria and $55,000 paid to the opposition Labor Party for a seat at a boardroom lunch with the party’s leader, Bill Shorten.

Sam Dastyari, a former senator, resigned in 2017 after remarks defending China’s aggressive military posture in the South China Sea, comments at odds with his party’s position.

He was also at the center of a political scandal involving a young Labor Party senator, Sam Dastyari, an aggressive fund-raiser who resigned in 2017 after he made comments at a news conference defending China’s aggressive military posture in the South China Sea — comments that contradicted his own party’s opposition to China’s actions there.
He was invited to the event by Huang, who stood by him as he spoke.
Huang also financed a "think tank", the Australia-China Relations Institute, that was run by Bob Carr, alias Beijing Bob, a reliably pro-China voice who was Australia’s foreign minister from 2012 to 2013.
And Huang’s ties to organizations affiliated with Beijing are well documented. 

He has led several organizations that work closely with the Chinese Consulate, including the Australian Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China, which experts describe as a United Front group aiming to influence foreign policy abroad and the ethnic Chinese diaspora.
“Australia has woken up to the threat posed by authoritarian states and their attempts to influence and undermine our democratic institutions,” said Andrew Hastie, a Liberal Party lawmaker who is chairman of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. 

“We are pivoting to protect our sovereignty,” he said.
The process, however, is far from over. 

Huang has the right to appeal the decision by Australia’s Home Affairs Department, and there will be challenging questions ahead about whether his family can stay in Australia, and about his assets.
His companies own and manage several properties across Australia worth tens of millions of dollars.
The rejection also comes at an uncertain time in Australian-Chinese relations. 

Last month, the Chinese authorities detained a well-known writer and former Chinese official with Australian citizenship, Yang Hengjun, after he flew to China from New York.
He is still being held on charges of “endangering national security,” making him the third foreigner to have been detained on that ominous charge since December.
In a few weeks, on March 1, Australia’s new espionage and foreign interference laws will also take effect, suggesting to some that this will be the first of several actions to disclose and resist Beijing’s more covert attempts to shape politics.
“There may be a sense of trying to get things in a row,” said Mr. Graham. 

“This is obviously a big signal that underlines the commitment to doing that.”

Nation of thieves: Chinese contractor for Australia’s AMP pleads guilty to stealing data

• The Chinese man was arrested as he tried to board a flight to China
• Financial planning company had noticed suspicious activity on its network

Reuters

A Chinese contractor for Australian financial planner AMP has been charged with stealing the confidential data of 20 of its customers, police and the company said on Thursday.
The man, named by authorities as Yi Zheng, 28, pleaded guilty to the offence in a Sydney court on Thursday, the Australian Associated Press reported.
New South Wales state police said they began investigating the breach after AMP’s cybersecurity staff noticed suspicious activity on the company network in December.
The investigation led them to Yi, who had downloaded 23 identity-related documents belonging to 20 customers and sent them to his personal email account, police said.
Yi was arrested as he tried to board a flight to China on January 17, police said, adding that they seized mobile phones, SIM cards, a laptop and other electronic storage devices from his luggage.
He was charged “with possessing identity info to commit an indictable offence”, police said, without saying what the man planned to do with the customer information.
“Identity information is an extremely valuable commodity on the black market and dark web, and anyone – whether an individual or business – who stores this data needs to ensure it is protected,” New South Wales’ cybercrime unit commander, Detective Superintendent Matt Craft, said in a statement.
An AMP spokeswoman said the data breach involved a small amount of customer information and there was no evidence the data was further compromised.
The company had contacted all affected customers, put extra security controls in place for them and notified the relevant regulators.
Yi’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Chinese Aggressions

Australia to stress international law in South China Sea dispute
By Colin Packham

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop talks during a news conference with Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto (not pictured) in Budapest, Hungary, February 22, 2018. 

SYDNEY -- Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop will on Tuesday hail the role of international law in settling regional conflicts, comments apparently aimed at bolstering Australian efforts to build a coalition against Chinese assertiveness.
Bishop, in a speech ahead of a special meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Sydney, will not name China but will argue that international law will stabilize a region strained by rival claims in the South China Sea.
“The rules-based order is designed to regulate behavior and rivalries of and between states, and ensure countries compete fairly and in a way that does not threaten others or destabilizes their region or the world,” Bishop will say in Sydney, according to a leaked draft of the speech seen by the Australian Financial Review.
“It places limitations on the extent to which countries use their economic or military power to impose unfair agreements on less powerful nations.”
China claims most of the South China Sea, an important trade route which is believed to contain large quantities of oil and natural gas, and has been building artificial islands on reefs, some with ports and air strips.
Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, all of which are members of ASEAN, also have claims in the sea.
Australia, a staunch U.S. ally with no claim to the South China Sea, has long maintained its neutrality on the dispute to protect economic relationship with China.
But with Australia’s relations with China souring in recent months, Bishop’s comment underscore a new Australian tactic.
“Australia is trying to get ASEAN on side with the notion that China is a rule-breaker that everyone would be better served by abiding by,” said Nick Bisley, professor of international relations at Melbourne’s La Trobe University.
“If it can get ASEAN to use that language, it will strengthen Australia’s position considerably.”
ASEAN and China in August begun talks to develop a code of conduct for the South China Sea, though a deal is unlikely before 2019, Singapore’s Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said in February.
The issue of the South China Sea is set to dominate the unofficial agenda of a special three-day meeting of ASEAN countries and Australia beginning on Friday.
Officially, the summit will focus on fostering closer economic ties among the 10 members ASEAN and Australia, and countering the threat of Islamist militants returning to the region from the Middle East.
Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi is expected to travel to Sydney where she will hold bilateral talks with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who is under pressure to publicly condemn the deaths and expulsion of thousands of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar’s Rakhine State over recent months.

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.