Chinese Peril

China’s influence on campus chills free speech in Australia, New Zealand
By A. Odysseus Patrick and Emanuel Stoakes

Students hold placards during a protest at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, on July 31. 

SYDNEY — Chinese students poured into Australia and New Zealand in their hundreds of thousands over the past 20 years, paying sticker prices for university degrees that made higher education among both countries’ top export earners.
Now, as a more-authoritarian China projects its influence deeper into the South Pacific, attempts by Chinese students and diplomats to interfere with anti-Beijing dissidents and stifle free speech on campus pose an uncomfortable challenge for both U.S. allies.
The immediate trigger for the flare-ups was mass protests in Hong Kong, which authorities in the semiautonomous Chinese territory are struggling to contain.
Protesters there have assailed what they say is the steady erosion in Hong Kong’s rule of law, aided and abetted by the city’s pro-Beijing leaders.
Students, academics and officials in Australia and New Zealand, two of the modern world’s older democracies, now find their natural sympathy for the Hong Kong protesters colliding with their nations’ economic dependency on Beijing — a weakness the Chinese Communist Party isn’t hesitating to exploit.
The most visible flash point is on campus.
Students who support and oppose the Chinese Community Party have spent recent days erecting, ripping down, and restoring walls covered with cards and Post-it notes calling for freedom in Hong Kong at universities in the Australian cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Hobart, and in New Zealand.
“Beijing’s influence on campuses is responsible for widespread self-censorship by universities and academics in Australia and New Zealand,” said Clive Hamilton, a professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra and author of “Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia.”
“The events of the last couple of weeks on Australian campuses have proved to be a serious escalation of Beijing’s interference,” he said.
Every pro-democracy protest is countered by Beijing’s well-drilled student supporters.
When some University of Sydney students proposed a protest on Friday, which did not proceed, opponents shared notes on the Chinese WeChat platform about how to respond.
“The pro-Hong Kong independence demonstration on August 9 is planned by some forces of Sydney University,” one person wrote, according to an image taken by a student.
“We will not use force, but will absolutely not sit idly by and do nothing. [We] will fight the separatist forces to the end using legal means. Never make a concession!!”
The person, who could not be reached for comment, added in the message that they had “reported this to the education section” of the Chinese Consulate.
After years of feeling fortunate about their economic relationship with China, Australians are starting to worry about the cost.
On Thursday, a ruling-party lawmaker, Andrew Hastie, compared China’s expansion to the rise of Hitler's Nazi Germany before World War II and suggested it posed a direct military threat.
“Like the French, Australia has failed to see how mobile our authoritarian neighbor has become,” Hastie wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Hastie’s comments ricocheted between Beijing and Canberra, where the Chinese Embassy condemned the former officer in Australia’s Special Air Service Regiment, an elite army special forces unit.
As the smallest members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance that includes the United States, Britain and Canada, Australia and New Zealand are attractive targets for Chinese influence and espionage operations, analysts say.
Paul Buchanan, a strategic analyst based in Auckland, said that New Zealand is an “ideal liberal democratic lab rat” for China to experiment with ways to use “the very freedoms and transparency of democratic systems against them.”
Chinese diplomats in both Australia and New Zealand appear to be encouraging confrontations by praising counterprotesters.
On July 29, a student at New Zealand’s Auckland University was confronted by a group of men who objected to her involvement in adorning a protest site, known as a “Lennon Wall,” with messages of support for Hong Kong demonstrators.
Cellphone footage uploaded to social media showed one of the men moving aggressively toward the student, who fell to the ground.
Three days later, the Chinese Consulate in Auckland published a statement that supported the actions of the assailant and his companions, conveying its “appreciation to the students for their spontaneous patriotism,” while condemning unnamed individuals for “inciting anti-China sentiment.”
Protests and counterprotests have taken place since; participants say they have received threatening messages from unknown senders.
Defenders of free speech say the episodes are a wake-up call.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said this week that officials have reminded their Chinese counterparts that New Zealand “will uphold and maintain our freedom of expression.”
Standing up for such values comes at the cost of worsening relations with Beijing, the top trade partner of both countries and a lucrative source of funds for universities, which lack the big endowments of American colleges.
China’s purchases of iron ore, coal and dairy products have helped power Australia and New Zealand’s prosperity.
The University of Queensland, where punches were thrown at a Hong Kong sympathy protest two weeks ago, is so close to Chinese authorities that it appointed the Chinese consul general in Brisbane a visiting professor of language and culture last month.
The consulate then praised the “patriotic behavior” of 300 pro-Beijing students after the violent incident, prompting Australia’s defense minister to warn foreign diplomats against interfering in free speech.


Nilsson Jones@nilssonjones_

Chinese students clash with pro-Hong Kong protesters at UQ after peaceful sit in #uq #hongkong #china

1,632
5:27 AM - Jul 24, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
1,462 people are talking about this

Among themselves, mainland Chinese students share advice on how attract sympathetic coverage in confrontations with the left-wing activists they call the “baizuo,” a pejorative term for Western liberals that translates as “white left.”
“UQ students please be calm, don’t resort to violence,” said a recent post on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service.
“Try to learn from the tricks of those pro-Hong Kong independence activists. If you push me I will fall over. Fake tumble, cry and wail, call campus police. We are too strong, which won’t work in the world of baizuo.”
“It’s very tense,” said Drew Pavlou, one of the student organizers of the University of Queensland protest, in an interview.
“It doesn’t feel safe. I have had to have security walk me to some classes.”
In New Zealand, an event commemorating China’s 1989 suppression of pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square scheduled for June 3 was moved away from Auckland University of Technology following pressure from Chinese officials.
Emails obtained through freedom-of-information requests by online outlet Newsroom revealed that China’s vice consul met with the university’s president on May 31 to request that the event be scuttled. 
The university received emails from the consulate on the matter, too.
In Australia, officials are so concerned about Chinese influence that the attorney general has asked his department to examine why 14 Confucius Institutes — Chinese-funded education units within Australian universities — have not been registered as agents of foreign influence under a new law directed at Chinese espionage, influence and propaganda.
At the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, a Confucius Institute shares a building with the office of Anne-Marie Brady, a professor who has researched Chinese government influence.
Brady has complained of threats, break-ins at her home and attempted sabotage of her car. 
Police investigated but were unable to identify a culprit.
Reflecting a growing unease that Australia’s economic future depends on an unpredictable adversary, former prime minister John Howard said this week that unrest in Hong Kong “perhaps represents a glimpse of the future for Chinese society.”
“If you’ve been born into relative affluence and comfort you take that for granted and you resent being told how to run your life,” he said.
“Perhaps over the next 50 years we’re going to see just how all of that works out.”

China’s growing influence in Latin America is a threat to our way of life

• In countries just a few hundred miles away China is taking every opportunity it can to gain influence and exert control.
• Latin America is the new battleground in the greatest geopolitical conflict of our time.

By Rick Scott

Chinese Cosco Shipping Rose container ship sails the newly inaugurated Cocoli locks, during the visit of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, in the Panama Canal, on December 3, 2018.

Last month I traveled to Panama, Colombia and Argentina. 

The purpose of my trip was to get an update on the fight for freedom and liberty in Venezuela, to highlight the important economic relationships between Latin America and my state of Florida and to continue building on the progress made to stop narco-trafficking.
On all of those fronts we made important progress and had great conversations about the future.
I came away with another impression that I, quite honestly, hadn’t expected. 

But it’s one that is stark and unmistakable. 

All across Latin America, we’re seeing the creeping influence of China in our hemisphere.
We know that China is a bad actor. 

China is not our friend. 

China sees the United States as its global adversary and is taking the steps necessary to win the great power conflict of the 21st Century.
We know they’ve been stealing our technology and our intellectual property. 

We know they manipulate their currency. 

We know they’ve been developing bases in the South China Sea. 

We know they’ve flooded the United States with dangerous fentanyl. 

We know their state sponsored technology companies like ZTE and Huawei have been accused of fraud, violating the Iran sanctions and stealing intellectual property. 

We know China consistently violates human rights. 

We know that China suppresses freedom of speech.
We know what China is. 

And yet, how many Americans realize that in countries just a few thousand miles (and in some cases a few hundred miles) away, China is taking every opportunity it can to gain influence and exert control. 

Latin America is the new battleground in the greatest geopolitical conflict of our time.
In Panama, the Chinese government is building its own port in Colon to exert more control over international trade between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres and drive out competition. 

Street restaurants in Panama have menus in English, Spanish and – you guessed it – Chinese.
Meanwhile, Colombia is experiencing a mass-influx of refugees from Venezuela. 

Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro’s policies are not only causing the deaths of thousands of his own people, he’s also created a refugee crisis with millions of Venezuelans fleeing his brutal regime. Most have gone to Colombia, which is struggling to keep up with the migration.
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping knows what Maduro is doing to his own people. 

He knows that he’s intentionally starving them, that he’s using Cuban security forces to harass dissidents and beat children in the streets. 

Xi doesn’t care. 

China is a willing participant in Maduro’s genocide.
China continues to prop up the Maduro regime, along with Cuba, Russia and Iran. 

Why? 

It’s pretty simple. 

Venezuela, before the tyranny of Hugo Chavez and Maduro, was an economic hub with huge reserves of oil and other natural resources. 

It can become that again and China wants in on the ground floor.
Even after the revelations of their dubious dealings, Maduro announced that Venezuela would make major investments in Huawei and ZTE despite not being able to even feed his own people. 

China’s support for Maduro is already paying off for them.
Almost 3,000 miles due south of Bogota, in Argentina, China is set to build a nuclear facility after signing an agreement with President Mauricio Macri. 

The deal includes a $10 billion loan from China.
Make no mistake. 

This is not by accident. 

Everything China does is on purpose. 

And right now, under our very noses, its purpose is to gain a foothold in Latin America by any means necessary, even if it means propping up ruthless dictators.
Politicians too rarely look at anything besides what’s directly in front of them. 

It’s hard for them to look beyond next week, let alone beyond the next election. 

So, I’ll say something that very few people are willing to say. 

The so-called trade war with China is causing some pain in our country right now.
I believe some short-term pain is worth it if we’re taking real steps to combat the greatest geopolitical foe we have. 

If we take a stand against China now, American businesses and American consumers will come out on top. 

Our manufacturing sector will be stronger. 

America will export more products. 

Our trade secrets will be protected. 

The average American consumer will benefit.
If we don’t face this threat head-on right now, we will still face it eventually. 

But if we wait, we’ll be in a much weaker position than we are now. 

China will just continue to walk all over us.
I think President Donald Trump is doing the right thing by standing up to China now. 

But there’s another step that we can all take to stem the tide of China’s growing influence in Latin America and around the world – support American businesses.
American taxpayers are funding China’s aggression every day. 

Every time we buy a product “made in China” we are putting another dollar into the pocket of the people stealing our technology, denying their people basic human rights and supporting genocide in Venezuela. 

It’s time to take a stand.
In my state, we take immense pride in products “Made in Florida.” 

It’s a driving force that led to our incredible economic turnaround. 

A return to this pride in home-grown businesses and products ensures America remains strong as the undisputed leader of the global economy.
I’m committed to supporting American businesses over Chinese products. 

I hope you’ll join me.
Washington politicians have let this happen. 

They’re too concerned with short-term political success and have ignored the long-term threats to our way of life. 

It needs to end, and it needs to end now.

Chinese Peril

U.S. Recalls Top Diplomats From Latin America as Worries Rise Over China’s Influence

By Edward Wong

Jean Manes, ambassador to El Salvador, is one of three diplomats in Latin America who have been recalled to Washington.

WASHINGTON — The United States has recalled three chiefs of mission from Latin American nations that cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favor of recognizing China.
The move comes as American officials have expressed growing unease over China’s rising influence in the region.
The diplomats, who represent the United States in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Panama, will meet with leaders in Washington “to discuss ways in which the United States can support strong, independent, democratic institutions throughout Central America and the Caribbean,” a spokeswoman for the State Department, Heather Nauert, said in a written statement on Friday.
For decades, Taiwan and China have competed for recognition. 

In 1979, the United States switched its support and officially established sovereign relations with China, and many other countries followed. 

But Washington has supported any decisions by nations to continue recognizing Taiwan, a self-governing island that China wants to bring under Communist Party rule.
In recent years, China has had success in courting Taiwan’s diplomatic partners. 

Only 17 nations recognize Taiwan; outside the Vatican and Swaziland, they are all islands in the Pacific and the Caribbean or countries in Latin America.
American officials have expressed growing concern over the shift. 

The United States sells arms to Taiwan and maintains a diplomatic presence there, called the American Institute in Taiwan, now housed in a new $250 million compound. 

American officials see Taiwan’s de facto independence as an important hedge against Chinese dominance in the Asia-Pacific region — what the United States now calls the Indo-Pacific as it tries to strengthen ties with South Asian nations to balance against China.
Last month, El Salvador severed ties with Taiwan, prompting the White House to accuse China of “apparent interference” in El Salvador’s domestic politics. 

American officials fear that the four nations in Central America that still recognize Taiwan — Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua — could soon follow. 

Last May, Burkina Faso switched recognition to China, leaving Swaziland as the lone holdout in Africa.
In June 2017, Panama cut ties with Taiwan, which surprised the United States government. 

The American ambassador to Panama at the time, John Feeley, said he learned about the switch from the president, Juan Carlos Varela, only an hour or so before Varela announced it, and only because he had called Varela to discuss an unrelated matter.
Mr. Feeley, who left his post in March and is now a consultant for Univision, said in an interview on Saturday that the recall of top American diplomats was significant.
The diplomats returning to Washington are Robin Bernstein, ambassador to the Dominican Republic; Jean Manes, ambassador to El Salvador; and Roxanne Cabral, the chargé d’affaires in Panama. 

A State Department official said they would return to their posts by Sept. 14.

Wang Yi, center, China’s foreign minister, and Hugo Martinez, right, El Salvador’s foreign minister, at a conference in Santiago, Chile. Last month, El Salvador severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favor of recognizing China.

The move “is an appropriate and serious signal by the U.S. government to those three countries and to the Chinese government that it is now reviewing the implications of the diplomatic switch and is worried that U.S. interests could be jeopardized,” Mr. Feeley said.
“My sense is that they will be most focused on the issue of industrial and commercial espionage and the possibility of Beijing using its embassies to expand that activity in those countries and the Caribbean Basin,” he added.
China is now the world’s second-largest economy and is expected to overtake the United States as the largest one in 10 to 15 years.
It is difficult for any nation, especially a small one, to decide not to recognize the sovereignty of China.
China and Taiwan have long engaged in what some observers call “checkbook diplomacy” to woo countries by offering aid or other incentives. 

China’s financial packages have increased in recent years, especially as it has promoted infrastructure projects abroad and related loans and contracts as part of what it calls its Belt and Road Initiative.
Jorge Guajardo, a former Mexican ambassador to China, said on Saturday that the recall was “heavy handed.” 

The United States should not be surprised as Latin American governments push back against American requests, he added, when President Trump has continued to alienate the people of Latin America.
“Trump has openly and systematically offended Latin American countries and their people,” Mr. Guajardo wrote in an email. 

“He labels us as rapists and criminals, has never traveled to the region as president, has deported and separated families, and threatened to cut all sort of aid. China comes with an offer of friendship and economic development (albeit one that I don’t think will pan out). Why the surprise?”
The United States has yet to fill some ambassador posts in the region, including those in Mexico and Panama, Mr. Guajardo noted, whereas China has assigned ambassadors in all Latin American nations with which it has diplomatic relations.
“Save a few countries in Latin America, the region as a whole has a historical preference for the U.S. as the main ally,” he said.

“This changed when Trump assumed the presidency. It was his call, his choice, to turn away from the region.”
China has grown more strident over the issue of Taiwan since Tsai Ing-wen, a strong critic of Beijing, became president of Taiwan in May 2016. 

Chinese officials have worked to erase any recognition by corporations of Taiwan’s sovereignty. 

For example, they successfully pressured international airlines this summer, including those in the United States, to list just “Taipei,” a city designation, in their booking systems rather than phrases that included “Taiwan,” as was the case for decades.
Last month, Ms. Tsai made state visits to Belize and Paraguay to try to strengthen ties with those nations.

Chinese Peril

A look at China's pervasive attempts to exert its influence around the world

By Jessica Meyers

Beijing stooge Sam Dastyari 

A foreign government accused of infiltrating schools, the legislature and the media, using its agents to monitor students and influence politicians.
It looked like a campaign of espionage and interference that a top intelligence official warned could “cause serious harm to the nation’s sovereignty, the integrity of our political system, our national security capabilities, our economy and other interests.”
Forget, for a moment anyway, Russia meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. 

This was China meddling in Australia.
The reports last year suggested that the Communist Party was taking extreme measures to extend influence beyond its borders. 

The strains between the two countries illustrate a tension many Western powers now face: how to engage with an increasingly powerful, one-party state without sacrificing their democratic interests.
The conflict threatens to blow up relations between China and Australia.
Here’s a primer on the situation:

What happened?
In June, Fairfax Media and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, two of the country’s most influential news organizations, published a five-month investigation detailing China’s campaign.
The stories described threats against parents in China for their sons’ involvement in democracy protests in Australia, the detention of a Chinese-born academic during a visit there, donations from pro-Beijing businesses to the campaigns of Australian senators, and the party’s grip over Chinese-language media on the island.
The country’s domestic spy chief, Duncan Lewis, told lawmakers in June that espionage and Chinese interference were occurring at “an unprecedented scale” and were a threat to the country’s institutions, politics and economy.
In the fallout, anti-China sentiments have blossomed.

In December, Australian Sen. Sam Dastyari resigned after reports that he’d warned a political donor with Communist Party ties that his phone was likely tapped by government agencies. 

Dastyari also lauded China’s efforts to build islands in the South China Sea, countering his party’s position.

Are China’s influence operations different from those of other countries?
Countries regularly try to project positive images of themselves abroad, from international broadcasts to funding for educational institutions. 

But under Xi Jinping, an emboldened China appears to be setting new standards.
Beijing has spent more than $6 billion to modernize and expand its sprawling propaganda apparatus, which includes a global television channel and state-run news bureaus throughout the world.
Perhaps more importantly, the party agency known as the United Front Work Department embeds partners into community associations, universities and other institutions to promote China’s interests, according to John Fitzgerald, a professor at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne who studies Chinese civil society.
“The most important feature of China’s propaganda operations is not content production or information dissemination but efforts at content control and suppression,” he said.
“China’s party leadership is quite explicit that one of its enemies is liberal democracy, another, the universal values that underpin democracy,” he said. 

“It will strike down enemies when and where it can.”
Researchers at the National Endowment for Democracy — a Washington nonprofit funded partly by Congress to promote democracy abroad — label China’s methods “sharp power.” 

Such behavior seeks to influence through manipulation or distortion rather than soft power attempts to win “hearts and minds.”

How did China respond to the accusations?
State media called the allegations an attack on Chinese people, a standard response that immediately transforms the issue into a racial one. 

Nearly 60% of Chinese polled by the Global Times, a Communist Party tabloid, now consider Australia the least-friendly country to China.

How does this affect international relations?
Australia relies on China as its largest trading partner. China is the destination for more than a third of Australia’s exports, and its hunger for iron ore and coal helped spare Australia from the withering effects of the 2008 global financial crisis.
The scandal comes amid uncertainty over what role the United States — Australia’s most important military ally — will play in the region with a Trump administration heavy on protectionist rhetoric.
“This is the first time in our history that our dominant trading partner is not also a dominant security partner,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in November.
That concern rang out clearly when he recently announced vast foreign interference legislation that the Parliament is expected to vote on later this year. 

The new laws would ban foreign political donations in Australia.
In his announcement, Turnbull mentioned no specific country, but he alternated between Mandarin and English and played off a phrase used by Mao Tse-tung when he founded modern China.
“The Australian people,” he said, “have stood up.”
Concerns about Chinese influence also cross into New Zealand. 

A University of Canterbury professor recently detailed how the party seeks to install pro-Beijing associates in community associations and steer political donations.
The Financial Times and New Zealand’s Newsroom revealed that Jian Yang, a top Parliament member, failed to disclose his Chinese military intelligence background when he immigrated to New Zealand. 

China’s Influence Game Down Under

China’s massive infiltration of Australian politics is a troubling example of how authoritarian states can subvert open societies. The United States should heed the lesson.
By CHARLES EDEL

Australia's Chinese fifth column: An ASIO investigation sparks fears the Chinese Communist Party is influencing the Australian political system as questions are raised over foreign political donations.

Chinese mole Jian Yang

Tragedy hovered over the birth of the American Republic. 

But that tragedy was not defined mainly by the carnage of the American Revolution, which resulted in the death of more than one percent of the population. 

Rather, for the American statesmen who came together to draft the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and met a dozen years later to design the Constitution, the life and death of the republics of antiquity preoccupied their thoughts. 

Steeped in the history of Greece and Rome, the Founders realized that the odds of creating and maintaining a self-governing republic in the face of hostile autocratic states were stacked against them. 

Nowhere was this danger greater than in the threat foreign interference posed to political independence.
America’s founding generation obsessed over this danger. 

During the debates at the Constitutional Convention, John Jay made the case in The Federalist (No. 2) that the “dangers from foreign force and influence” could exacerbate the country’s internal divisions and leave it distracted, weakened, and vulnerable. 

These fears materialized in the 1793 Genêt Affair, when France’s Ambassador to the United States sought to interfere in American politics on behalf of France. 

Thomas Jefferson, Washington’s Secretary of State, charged that such blatant interference in America’s democracy was “hazardous to us” and its implications were “humiliating and pernicious.” He demanded that the French immediately recall their ambassador. 

John Quincy Adams warned his fellow citizens that “of all the dangers which encompass the liberties of a republican State, the intrusion of a foreign influence into the administration of their affairs, is the most alarming, and requires the opposition of the severest caution.”
In the aftermath of U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments of several Trump campaign officials on charges of conspiracy, the problem of foreign interference in our democracy now hangs over the White House. 

But Putin’s Russia is not the only country seeking to shape the choices of democratic societies.

A different and long-ranging effort is being waged by Xi Jinping’s China.
Because Washington is riveted by the unfolding Russian drama, because most of Beijing’s efforts fly under the radar, and because Beijing has repeatedly claimed that its state-directed activities are solely the exercise of soft power, many Americans have missed China’s attempts to influence, shape, and suborn democratic decision-making.

But a look at the debates currently roiling the Australian political, educational, and business communities offers some notable insights into Beijing’s influence efforts. 

It also previews likely challenges ahead for American policymakers.
Over the past several months, the Australian media and government have sought to analyze Chinese influence across Australian society. 

The resulting reports, which began appearing in print and on television in early June, revealed that Beijing was monitoring and directing Chinese student groups in Australia, had threatened Australian-based Chinese dissidents and their families, was attempting to silence academic discourse in Australia deemed offensive to China, and was seeking control of all Chinese-language media in Australia. 

This came on the heels of revelations that individuals in Australia with links to the Chinese Communist Party had made major political donations to Australian politicians. 

The sum of these actions has prompted an intensifying debate among Australia’s national security community and politicians.
The Australian intelligence services have long known about the risks posed by Chinese influence, but the matter is now attracting significant public scrutiny. 

In late May, Duncan Lewis, the head of ASIO (the Australian equivalent of the FBI), warned Parliament that Chinese influence efforts in Australia were occurring at an “unprecedented scale.” 

The implications to Australian democracy, he noted, were potentially extreme, as Chinese interference “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.” 

And while Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull did not cite China by name in early June, he amplified this concern by noting that Australian “interests are also directly threatened by attempts by foreign states to compromise the integrity of our democratic institutions and processes.” 

Discussing Russian influence operations and cyber disinformation campaigns in the American election, and noting that similar threats could compromise the integrity of Australia’s “democratic institutions and processes,” Turnbull called for a revamping of the legal framework governing political donations and disclosures.
Unlike America, which requires individuals acting on behalf of foreign governments to register their activities, and which theoretically bans political campaign contributions from foreign sources, Australian law has no such provisions. 

As revealed in an Australian television investigative special this summer, this loophole allowed for several prominent Australian-Chinese businessmen with ties to the Chinese government to make substantial contributions to Australian politicians. 

In some instances, these appeared tied to a quid pro quo of support for Chinese government positions. 

Prompted by growing concerns of Chinese influence in its electoral system, the Australian government is now drafting legislation in an effort to address these gaps. 

Expected in early 2018, the new laws are likely to tighten campaign finance rules, require the registration of foreign agents, further define espionage, and provide a more effective legal framework to combat foreign interference.
On Australian campuses, too, a vigorous debate has been occurring over the nature of Chinese influence. 

Journalists have reported instances of Chinese agents monitoring Chinese students in Australia and threatening their families in China when they voice opinions contrary to Beijing’s. 

In Sydney and elsewhere, an uptick in protesters disrupting lecturers deemed offensive to Chinese sensibilities is a sign of the times; and concern is growing that universities, eager for donations, investments, and fees generated from foreign students paying significantly higher tuition, might not defend their institutional values as forcefully as they otherwise might. 

Australian politicians now acknowledge that this type of activity poses a threat to free and open societies, since free speech serves as the basis of liberal education, and is more broadly the cornerstone of democratic debate.
In early October, the Secretary of Australia’s Foreign Ministry spoke bluntly of “untoward influence and interference” at Australian universities. 

Speaking at the University of Adelaide’s Confucius Institute, a Chinese-government-funded academic institution, Frances Adamson, who formerly served as Australia’s Ambassador to China, warned, “The silencing of anyone in our society — from students to lecturers to politicians — is an affront to our values.” Julie Bishop, Australia’s Foreign Minister, echoed this point recently, stating that Australia will not tolerate “freedom of speech curbed in any way involving foreign students or foreign academics.” 

Penny Wong, the Labor shadow Foreign Minister, made a similar point declaring that “we would not want any group to seek to silence another in the contest of … ideas.”
Along similar lines, Australia’s Chinese-language media now largely speaks with one voice. 

A major report in 2016 documented that the Chinese Communist Party exerts significant influence over Chinese-language media in Australia. 

Leading Australian Sinologist John Fitzgerald has noted that the “extensive reach of the Chinese party-state silences and intimidates alternative voices and commentaries” in Australia. 

Attempting to govern the debate in Australia among the Chinese-speaking community, Beijing also appears to be trying to control the flow of advertising dollars to independent Chinese-language newspapers.
Although some of these issues resonate in the Australian business community, the debate there has been quieter. 

China may be a near-peer economic competitor of the United States, but it looms much larger for the smaller, export- and capital-dependent Australian economy. 

The relative size of U.S. and Australian trade flows with China bears the point out. 

About 31 percent of Australian exports go to China, which is by far Australia’s largest export market, whereas China is the United States’ third largest export market, and the destination for 8 percent of U.S. exports. 

The common narrative in Australia is that it got through the financial crisis of 2008 without a recession because of Australia’s close trade relationship with China. 

This narrative is only partially correct, since Australia’s massive exports to China rest in no small part on the industrial and technical capacity built up by decades of foreign investment, especially from the United States, whose investments in the country are more than five times greater than China’s. 

But even with this important qualification, the different sizes of the U.S. and Australian economies and the relative share of each country’s exports to China shape very different mindsets among the business communities in the two countries.
In the United States, there has long been discussion of unfair Chinese trade practices, state-sponsored cyber attacks on American companies, and the theft of intellectual property. 

In Australia, the broad contours of the debate are different, primarily because most of the country’s trade commodities—iron ore, coal, and tourism—are less hackable. 

While the debate has intensified around access to and vulnerabilities of Australia’s critical infrastructure, and there is considerable public opposition to foreign ownership in the agricultural sector, the business community has not yet been convinced that the risks outweigh the opportunities.
But even here, the debate is slowly changing as a growing number of business leaders in Australia acknowledge the challenges of dealing with a command economy practicing mercantile policies. James Packer, the Australian casino magnate who has expanded his businesses into Macau and Hong Kong, previously advocated for Australia to start offering its Chinese friends a better return on investment. 

But after his employees were jailed by Chinese authorities in 2016, and he took a considerable financial hit, Packer became acutely aware of the risks of doing business in China.
Absent rule of law, secure property rights, and any guarantees of procedural fairness in China, the Australian business community increasingly recognizes that little will safeguard their investments. 

Multinational companies have learned the hazards accompanying demands for access to proprietary commercial information, with large-scale thefts of intellectual property that negate investments in research and development. 

Australian businesses are now learning similar lessons, but the China debate in the Australian business sector is probably five years behind the same debate in the United States.
While Australia has lately begun paying more attention to Chinese actions in the political, academic, media, and business spheres, the breadth of these activities is only starting to become clear. 

Behind most of these activities is a Chinese state-directed campaign to build support for Beijing’s larger political agenda. 

Referred to as “influence operations” and “political warfare” in an earlier era, such efforts combine overt and covert methods to create an environment in foreign capitals that is politically and socially conducive to Chinese interests. 

Professor Anne-Marie Brady, of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, has documented these efforts in an extraordinarily thorough report tracking China’s political influence activities under Xi Jinping. 

Brady examines the attempts of the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party to “guide, buy, or coerce political influence abroad.” 

While most of her research focuses on activities in New Zealand, it is broadly applicable to liberal democracies around the world.
Coincidentally, the Austrian political philosopher Karl Popper published The Open Society and Its Enemies at the very same university in New Zealand some seventy years ago. 

Having fled the Nazis for New Zealand, Popper argued that history could be understood as a drawn-out battle between proponents of open, dynamic societies and authoritarians preferring closed societies, with citizens “who obey, who believe, and who respond to [their] influence.” 

According to Popper, it would always be in the interest of the authoritarians to try to influence the affairs of open societies to further their own agenda. 

Popper cautioned that the enemies of open society were powerful and numerous, while liberal democracies were rare, fragile, and required extreme vigilance to maintain.
In this instance, it is necessary to emphasize that criticism of the Chinese Communist Party’s activities is not, and never should be, equated with criticism of people of Chinese ethnicity. 

As Rory Medcalf, Head of the National Security College at the Australian National University observed in September, failing to address this issue relegates Australian citizens of Chinese descent to a second-class status, and dismisses the protection of their rights as less important than stable relations with the Communist Party that runs China. 

An open society welcomes, and indeed encourages, the integration of talented individuals from all backgrounds.
An open and free society will always be vulnerable to external influences. 

America’s Founders recognized this reality, and sought to build protections against foreign interference. 

When Citizen Genêt attempted to meddle in America’s sovereign democratic processes, it was Alexander Hamilton who suggested sunshine as the best disinfectant. 

In a cabinet meeting of the President’s advisors, Hamilton strongly urged that the government lay “the whole proceedings” with “proper explanations” before the American people in order to prevent Genêt and his American sympathizers from undermining the country’s confidence in Washington’s administration.
Hamilton understood that transparency and open debate were critical to preserving the sovereignty of the American Republic in the face of foreign interference. 

More than two hundred years later, confronted by Russian and Chinese influence efforts, Australia and the United State are re-learning the lesson that open societies demand vigilance and require defenders. 

The first step is recognizing the threat posed by authoritarian states seeking to influence free societies. 

Governments must also inoculate the public to these threats by conducting public education campaigns to ensure broader understanding. 

Fundamentally, without a more robust defense of liberal values, open societies could find their core national interests of sovereignty, freedom of expression, and the free flow of ideas, goods, and people irreparably damaged. 

As the American Founders understood, the preservation of national interests requires the unceasing defense of liberal values.

Chinese Peril

What the World’s Emptiest International Airport Says About China’s Influence
By BROOK LARMER 

Illustration by Andrew Rae

The four-lane highway leading out of the Sri Lankan town of Hambantota gets so little traffic that it sometimes attracts more wild elephants than automobiles. 

The pachyderms are intelligent — they seem to use the road as a jungle shortcut — but not intelligent enough, alas, to appreciate the pun their course embodies: It links together a series of white elephants, i.e. boondoggles, built and financed by the Chinese. 

Beyond the lonely highway itself, there is a 35,000-seat cricket stadium, an almost vacant $1.5 billion deepwater port and, 16 miles inland, a $209 million jewel known as “the world’s emptiest international airport.”
Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, the second-largest in Sri Lanka, is designed to handle a million passengers per year. 

It currently receives about a dozen passengers per day. 

Business is so slow that the airport has made more money from renting out the unused cargo terminals for rice storage than from flight-related activities. 

In one burst of activity last year, 350 security personnel armed with firecrackers were deployed to scare off wild animals, the airport’s most common visitors.
Projects like Mattala are not driven by local economic needs but by remote stratagems. 

When Sri Lanka’s 27-year civil war ended in 2009, the president at the time, Mahinda Rajapaksa, fixated on the idea of turning his poor home district into a world-class business and tourism hub to help its moribund economy. 

China, with a dream of its own, was happy to oblige. 

Hambantota sits in a very strategic location, just a few miles north of the vital Indian Ocean shipping lane over which more than 80 percent of China’s imported oil travels. 

A port added luster to the “string of pearls” that China was starting to assemble all along the so-called Maritime Silk Road.
Sadly, no travelers came, only the bills. 

The Mattala airport has annual revenues of roughly $300,000, but now it must repay China $23.6 million a year for the next eight years, according to Sri Lanka’s Transport and Civil Aviation Ministry. 

Over all, around 90 percent of the country’s revenues goes to servicing debt. 

Even a new president who took office in 2015 on a promise to curb Chinese influence succumbed to financial reality.
To relieve its debt crisis, Sri Lanka has put its white elephants up for sale. 

In late July, the government agreed to give China control of the deepwater port — a 70 percent equity stake over 99 years — in exchange for writing off $1.1 billion of the island’s debt. (China has promised to invest another $600 million to make the port commercially viable.) 

When the preliminary deal was first floated in January, protests erupted in response to the sell-off of national sovereignty, a reminder of Sri Lanka’s colonial past under British rule. 

“We always thought China’s investments would help our economy,” says Amantha Perera, a Sri Lankan journalist and university researcher. 

“But now there’s a sense that we’ve been maneuvered into selling some of the family jewels.”
As the United States beats a haphazard retreat from the world — nixing trade agreements, eschewing diplomacy, antagonizing allies — China marches on with its unabashedly ambitious global-expansion program known as One Belt, One Road. 

The branding is awkward: “Belt” refers to the land-bound trading route through Central Asia and Europe, while “Road,” confusingly, stands for the maritime route stretching from Southeast Asia across the Indian Ocean to the Middle East, Africa and Europe. 

Still, the intentions are clear: With a lending and acquisitions blitz extending to 68 countries (and counting), OBOR seeks to create the ports, roads and rail and telecommunications links for a modern-day Silk Road — with all paths leading to China.

Illustration by Andrew Rae

This is China’s long game. 

It’s not about immediate profits; infrastructure projects are a bad way to make money. 

So why is Xi Jinping fast-tracking OBOR projects amid an economic slowdown at home and a crackdown on other overseas acquisitions? 

Economics is a big part: China wants to secure access to key resources, export its idle industrial capacity, even tilt the world order in its favor. 

But there is also a far greater political ambition. 

For centuries, Western liberalism has ruled the world. The Chinese believe their time has come. 

“China sees itself as a "great" civilization that needs to regain its status as leader of the world,” says Kadira Pethiyagoda, a fellow at the Brookings Institution Doha Center. 

“And America’s retreat gives China the space to do that.”
It’s tempting to see OBOR as a muscled-up Marshall Plan, the American-led program that helped rebuild Western Europe after World War II. 

OBOR, too, is designed to build vital infrastructure, spread prosperity and drive global development. Yet little of what China offers is aid or even low-interest lending. 

Much OBOR financing comes in the form of market-rate loans that weaker countries are eager to receive — but struggle to repay. 

Even when the projects are well suited for the local economy, the result can look a bit like a shell game: Things are built, money goes to Chinese companies and the country is saddled with more debt. 

What happens when, as is often the case, infrastructure projects are driven more by geopolitical ambition or the need to give China’s state-owned companies something to do? 

Well, Sri Lanka has an empty airport for sale.
Sri Lanka is a harbinger for debt crises to come. 

Many other OBOR countries have taken on huge Chinese loans that could prove difficult to repay. 

For example, Chinese banks, according to The Financial Times, recently lent Pakistan $1.2 billion to stave off a currency crisis — even as they pledged $57 billion more to develop the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. 

“The projects China proposes are so big and appealing and revolutionary that many small countries can’t resist,” says Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at New Delhi’s Center for Policy Research. 

“They take on loans like it’s a drug addiction and then get trapped in debt servitude. It’s clearly part of China’s geostrategic vision.”
This charge conjures the specter of colonialism, when the British and Dutch weaponized debt to take control of nations’ strategic assets. 

Unlike Western countries and institutions that try to influence how developing countries govern themselves, China says it espouses the principle of noninterference. 

If local partners benefit from a new road or port, the Chinese suggest, shouldn’t they be able to “win,” too — by securing its main trade routes, building loyal partnerships and enhancing its global prestige?

The last time China was a global power, back in the early 1400s, it also sought to amplify its glory and might along the Maritime Silk Road, through the epic voyages of Zheng He. 

A towering Ming dynasty eunuch — in some accounts he stands seven feet tall — Zheng He commanded seven expeditions from Asia to the Middle East and Africa. 

When he came ashore on Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) around 1406, his fleet commanded shock and awe: It was a floating city of more than 300 ships and some 30,000 sailors. 

Besides seeking tributes and trade — the ships were laden with silk, gold and porcelain — his mission was to enhance China’s status as the greatest civilization on earth.
After Zheng He’s death at sea in 1433, China turned inward for the next six centuries. 

Now, as the country has become a global power once again, Communist Party leaders have revived the legend of Zheng He to show China’s "peaceful" intentions and its historical connections to the region. 

His goal, they say, was not to conquer but to establish friendly trade and diplomatic relations. 

In Sri Lanka today, Chinese tour groups often traipse through a Colombo museum to see the trilingual stone tablet the admiral brought here — proof, it seems, that China respected all peoples and religions. 

No mention is made of a less savory aspect of Zheng He’s dealings in Ceylon. 

On a later expedition, around 1411, his troops became embroiled in a war. Zheng He prevailed and took the local king back to China as a prisoner.

The unsanitized version of Zheng He’s story may contain a lesson for present-day China about unintended consequences. 

Pushing countries deeper into debt, even inadvertently, may give China leverage in the short run, but it risks losing the good will essential to OBOR’s long-term success. 

For all the big projects China is engaged in around the world — high-speed rail in Laos, a military base in Djibouti, highways in Kenya — arguably its most perilous step so far may be taking control of the foundering Hambantota port. 

“It’s folly to take equity stakes,” says Joshua Eisenman, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. 

“China will have to become further entwined in local politics. And what happens if the country decides to deny a permit or throw them out. Do they retreat? Do they protest?” 

China promotes itself as a new, gentler kind of power, but it’s worth remembering that dredging deepwater ports and laying down railroad ties to secure new trade routes — and then having to defend them from angry locals — was precisely how Britain started down the slippery slope to empire.