The Virus That Saves Mankind From Communism

Bass says U.S. should let the Chinese virus rampage through the ranks of the Global Times and the rest of the communist party
By Hannah Levitt

Kyle Bass

Kyle Bass took his long-time battle with communist China up another notch by getting into a heated spat with the editor-in-chief of a Communist Party-backed newspaper.
The hedge fund manager suggested on Twitter that the U.S. abandon efforts to help contain the coronavirus and let it spread through China’s leadership.
“We should take our supplies and go back home. Let the chinese virus rampage through the ranks of the Global Times and the rest of the communist party,” the founder and chief investment officer of Dallas-based Hayman Capital Management wrote.
He was responding to a tweet from Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Global Times, a daily run by the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily, in which he complained about “belated” U.S. aid.


Hu Xijin 胡锡进
✔@HuXijin_GT
.@Jkylebass As an investor with 129K twitter followers, you uttered such a malicious curse. You should apologize.

566
1:47 PM - Feb 9, 2020

Bass later deleted the tweet but doubled down when Hu suggested he apologize.
“I will not,” Bass replied. 

“You arrested, censured, and ‘punished’ (only God knows what you did to Li Wenliang and the other 7 doctors) the heroes of Wuhan. You are disgrace to humanity.”
In an emailed statement to Bloomberg News addressing his spat with Hu, he said he deleted the tweet because he “felt that it was too harsh for the rank and file” of the Global Times, but that he will “never apologize to a self-righteous, attempted manipulator of public opinion,” referring to Hu.
Bass has long been a vocal critic of China’s predatory policies -- he forecast last month that Hong Kong will suffer a “full-fledged banking crisis” this year and said it’s unlikely that Beijing will adhere to a trade deal with the U.S.
The coronavirus disease surfaced in late December in Wuhan, China. 

The ensuing global outbreak has infected tens of thousands of people and killed more than 900.

Australia's Chinese Fifth Column

Labor targets Sino-Australian Liberal MP Gladys Liu's links to Chinese Communist party
Scott Morrison pressed on whether Liu is a ‘fit and proper’ person to be sitting in federal parliament
By Sarah Martin

Gladys Liu in parliament on Wednesday. Liu did not answer directly about Chinese activities in the South China Sea.

Labor has targeted Scott Morrison over the credentials of Chinese-born MP Gladys Liu, asking what steps he had taken to ensure she was a “fit and proper” person to sit in parliament.
In question time on Wednesday, the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, led the attack on the government over Liu’s links to the Chinese communist party, but most of the opposition’s questions on the MP’s background were ruled out of order.
Morrison defended remarks made by Liu in a widely condemned interview with Andrew Bolt on Tuesday night, saying her position on the South China Sea could not be compared to remarks made by the former Labor senator Sam Dastyari.
“Not only was he a … shadow minister … in the executive of the opposition at that time, he seems to forget the fact that money changed hands between the then senator Sam Dastyari – money changed hands, and his position was bought by that,” Morrison said.
“He was caught in his own web of corruption, Mr Speaker. He should have resigned, and he did.”
Asked several times on Tuesday night if she believed China’s actions in the South China Sea amounted to theft and were unlawful, Liu said it was “a matter for the foreign minister”.
“I definitely put – I would put Australia’s interests first, and that’s exactly what I have been doing,” she said.
“My understanding is a lot of countries is trying to claim ownership sovereignty of the South China Sea because of various reasons, and my position is with the Australian government."

The foreign minister, Marise Payne, was also asked in the Senate if she was satisfied that Liu was “fit and proper” for the seat.
“Any suggestion that that is not the case is offensive,” Payne said.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, Liu said she “should have chosen her words better” in the interview that canvassed her views on China and in which she repeatedly refused to criticise the regime of Xi Jinping.

Liu, the first Chinese-born Australian MP, said she had cut ties with various Chinese institutions with links to the Communist party, and was conducting an audit to make sure no organisations had made her an honorary member without her knowledge.

A political storm has erupted over Liu’s links to the Chinese Communist party after the ABC reported that a Chinese government online record listed her name as a council member of the Guangdong provincial chapter of the China Overseas Exchange Association between 2003 and 2015.
The association was an arm of the Chinese government’s central political and administrative body, and has since been merged with the Communist party’s propaganda arm, the United Front Work Department.
In a Sky News interview with Andrew Bolt on Tuesday night aimed at hosing down the allegations, Liu said she could not recall if she was a member of the group and struggled to answer a series of questions about China’s activities in the South China Sea.
Defending the interview on Wednesday, Liu said she was a new member of parliament and would be “learning from this experience”.
“Australia’s longstanding position on the South China Sea is consistent and clear,” Liu said. 

“We do not take sides on competing territorial claims but we call on all claimants to resolve disputes peacefully and in accordance with international law.
“Our relationship with China is one of mutual benefit and underpinned by our Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. China is not a democracy and is run under an authoritarian system. We have always been and will continue to be clear-eyed about our political differences, but do so based on mutual respect, as two sovereign nations.”
In an attempt to clarify her membership of various Chinese organisations, Liu said she had been honorary president of the United Chinese Commerce Association of Australia, honorary president of the Australian Jiangmen General Commercial Association in 2016, and an honorary member of the Guangdong Overseas Exchange Association in 2011.
She said she no longer had links with the organisation, and pointed to similar links held by Jennifer Yang, the candidate preselected by Labor to run against her in Chisholm.
“I have resigned from many organisations and I am in the process of auditing any organisations who may have added me as a member without my knowledge or consent,” Liu said.
“Unfortunately some Chinese associations appoint people to honorary positions without their knowledge or permission. I do not wish my name to be used in any of these associations and I ask them to stop using my name.”

Labor was expected to target the government over Liu’s interview in parliament, comparing her remarks on the South China Sea to those made by the Labor senator Sam Dastyari, which ultimately led to his resignation from parliament.
Penny Wong, the party’s shadow foreign minister, said Liu’s suitability as an MP was now a “test for Scott Morrison”.
“There have been questions raised for some time about whether Liu is a fit and proper person to be in the Australian parliament,” Wong said.
“This is a test for Scott Morrison. He needs to come to the parliament, make a statement and assure the Australian parliament and through them the Australian people that Gladys Liu is a fit and proper person to be in the Australian parliament.
“I can recall the Liberal party making Sam Dastyari a test of Bill Shorten’s leadership; well, this is Scott Morrison’s test.”
Dastyari also weighed into the controversy, saying it was clear Liu needed to answer “some serious questions”.
“Her statement is shocking,” the former NSW senator said on Twitter. 

“She should be held to the same standard that I was – a standard the PM set. I resigned. I took responsibility. That was the right decision in my circumstances.”

Australia's Chinese Moles: The Manchurian Labor

Labor MP Pierre Yang "forgets" to disclose China memberships

• Yang says he knows nothing about the affiliation between the groups he joined and the Chinese Communist Party
• He says he only gave legal advice to group members, not the organisations

By Eliza Borrello and Eliza Laschon

Yang and his protector, WA Labor Premier Mark McGowan

WA Labor MP Pierre Yang has given a lengthy radio interview defending his character and apologising for not disclosing his memberships of two Chinese organisations.
Yang, a Chinese-born member of the Upper House, has been at the centre of intense media scrutiny after News Corp reported on Tuesday that he had not disclosed memberships of two groups affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party.
The 35-year-old lawyer cancelled his memberships of both the Northeast China Federation Inc and the Association of Great China after the story was posted.
Curtin University's former head of Chinese Studies Catherine Yeung told the ABC the Northeast China Federation Inc was affiliated with the United Front Work Department — a Communist Party agency promoting China's political interests overseas.
She also said the Association of Great China signed a letter supporting China's claim of sovereignty in the South China Sea.
Yang spoke at length to ABC Perth on Wednesday afternoon and said he was "not aware" of either groups' affiliations with the Communist Party.
"I'll admit I overlooked my disclosure. I rectified that and I admit that it was my mistake," he said.
He also conceded not knowing about the organisations' affiliations was naive.
"And that's why I have taken action to rectify my oversight and I apologise for that," he said.

Yang yesterday confirmed he was a voluntary legal adviser to both groups for several months after he commenced his parliamentary term, but said he had not done work for them.
Today he said he had done legal work, but for "individual" members of the organisations, not the entities themselves.
Yang remains adamant he is not yet a member of the Australian Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China, despite his name appearing online as an executive of the group.
"I don't know why my name is there and I had instructed my lawyer to write to the organisation to remove my name," he said today.
The Australian Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China's former head was Huang Xiangmo, a prominent political donor embroiled in the scandal that forced the resignation of ex Labor Senator Sam Dastyari.

From China with love: Yang, pictured with his protector, says he "loves" Australia.

The interview ended with Yang declaring his "love" for Australia and saying he hoped to be a good example for other foreign-born Australians aspiring to enter Parliament.
"I'm an Australian, I have been an Australian citizen for 13 years ... this is my country, Australia has given me so much.
"My wife, my children were born here and you know I "love" this country."
WA Premier Mark McGowan is continuing to stand by Yang.
"It's discretionary on your parliamentary disclosures as to what memberships you put on there and you'll find very few members of parliament put any disclosures of organisations we're members of because generally we're members of scores," he said.
McGowan also said it did not concern him that the two organisations in question were affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party.
"No, it doesn't, look, China is our biggest trading partner, they're the country that we rely on most for jobs and opportunities in Australia."
Pierre Yang's parliamentary interests register did not include the memberships of two organisations  affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party. 

Friendship of the Willing

Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui Target a Common Enemy: China
By David Barboza

Stephen K. Bannon, the former strategist to President Trump, and Guo Wengui, who is wanted in China, have teamed up.

   
Just months after being pushed out of the White House, Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, met with a Chinese billionaire at a suite in the luxurious Hays-Adams Hotel in Washington.
The billionaire, Guo Wengui, who is also known as Miles Kwok, was living in New York City and had landed on China’s most-wanted list, accused of bribery, fraud and money laundering. 

He was also a dissident and fierce critic of Beijing, seeking political asylum in the United States. And Mr. Bannon — increasingly obsessed with the China threat — was eager to talk about the Communist Party, corruption and American naval operations in the South China Sea.
Since their first discussion in October 2017, they have met dozens of times — in Dallas, on Mr. Guo’s yacht and, more often, at the billionaire’s $67.5 million apartment in the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, overlooking New York’s Central Park. 

The two shared a stage two weeks ago in Manhattan, at a news conference they organized to announce plans to set up a $100 million fund to investigate corruption and aid victims of Chinese government persecution.
“We both naturally despise the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. Guo said in an interview last week, referring to Mr. Bannon. 

“That’s why we’ve become partners.”
It’s an unusual partnership between two political gadflies with a common, if overly grand, objective: bringing about the demise of the Chinese Communist Party.
One is an exiled businessman who has evidence of corruption at the highest levels of government in China. 

The other is a former Goldman Sachs banker who delights in lobbing political grenades at the “party of Davos,” a band of global "elites" that has undermined America’s interests at home and abroad.
As tensions between the United States and China grow, the two men are hoping to stoke them even further, by effectively calling for the overthrow of Beijing’s leadership. 

Mr. Guo is dipping into his fortune, while Mr. Bannon provides a strategy.
Mr. Bannon is, in effect, reprising the role of political provocateur he played before joining the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016. 

Back then, he was running the news site Breitbart, and helping promote books like “Clinton Cash,” which aimed to destroy Hillary Clinton’s White House bid.
In an interview in his hotel room two weeks ago, Mr. Bannon, 65, said the new China-related fund he will head, without pay, will gather evidence, share it with authorities — in the United States and elsewhere — and publish it in the media. 

The fund also targets Wall Street banks and law firms, which are complicit in China’s misdeeds.
The project, he says, is consistent with his populist and nationalist agenda. 

China’s reckless behavior is endangering the global economy, and sapping America’s strength.
“As a populist, this is outrageous,” Mr. Bannon said, noting that American financial institutions have helped back the worrisome global buying sprees of Chinese companies, with cash raised from ordinary people, including government pension funds. 

“The elites in this country have to be held accountable. We have to get the facts on the table.”
Mr. Guo, 50, insists that the fund offers a way to strike back at Beijing. 

China has pressed the Trump administration to extradite him so that he can face a raft of charges in China — allegations he strongly denies. 

Billions of dollars in assets he controlled have been frozen by Beijing. 

And Interpol, the pro-China police organization, has issued a warrant seeking his arrest. 

He now travels with a phalanx of security guards, saying he fears for his life.
The Chinese Embassy could not be reached for comment. 

But the Guo-Bannon alliance has alarmed Chinese "analysts", who view the two men as purveyors of conspiracy theories fueling anti-China sentiment.
For Mr. Bannon, the new effort plays to a longstanding and complicated interest in China. 

As a young naval officer in the 1970s, he patrolled the South China Sea. 

He also lived for a time in Shanghai, where he ran a small online gaming company. 

In recent years, he has come to view China as a military threat to the United States, and a fierce economic rival that refuses to play by the rules.
In helping elect Donald J. Trump, Mr. Bannon counseled him to take a tough line on China and step up trade pressure on Beijing. 

Mr. Trump obliged by tapping the Harvard-trained economist Peter Navarro, a longtime China critic known for his book “Death by China,” and Michael Pillsbury, a China expert at the Hudson Institute, as top trade advisers.

The effort has bristled Beijing’s stooges like Milos Zeman of the Czech Republic, right, who met with Xi Jinping in Prague in 2016.

It was during his time at the White House, Mr. Bannon says, that he first heard about Mr. Guo. 

The Chinese billionaire was living in New York, broadcasting accusations of high-level government corruption in China on Twitter and YouTube. 

By then, he had also applied for political asylum.
Alarmed by his social media campaign and his public denunciations of the Communist Party, Beijing began pressing the Trump administration to extradite Mr. Guo. 

Chinese investigators said he has ties to Ma Jian, a former spy chief now imprisoned in China on charges of bribery and abuse of power.
Inside the White House, there were disagreements over how to deal with Mr. Guo. 

Western businessmen, eager to cozy up to Beijing, lobbied President Trump to accede to China’s demands.
Mr. Bannon said he sided with those in the administration who opposed any handover, viewing Mr. Guo as a potentially valuable “intelligence asset.”
They met only after Mr. Bannon was forced out of the White House. 

Mr. Bannon says he received a call from Bill Gertz, a Washington journalist who has long been critical of China. 

Mr. Gertz told him that Mr. Guo was scheduled to give a talk in Washington at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. 

The talk was canceled at the last minute.
Over lunch, Mr. Guo and Mr. Bannon discussed China’s military capabilities, as well as the financial implications of Beijing’s rule, including what impact the country’s mounting corporate debt might have on its economy. 

A friendship emerged.
“It was fantastic. He really impressed me,” Mr. Bannon said of his first meeting with Mr. Guo. 

“We talked about President Trump’s approach to China, and he went into corruption in the Chinese Communist Party.”
Mr. Bannon later introduced Mr. Guo to people in the hedge fund community, including J. Kyle Bass, who has soured on China and sought to profit by short-selling the Chinese currency.
As Mr. Bannon sharpened his critique of China’s rise, he also began meeting privately with some of America’s leading experts on China, to seek their counsel and outline his agenda. 

Few welcomed his remarks, according to people who attended some of the sessions. 

But more recently, his positions have gotten a warmer reception.
“The tectonic plates are shifting,” says Orville H. Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society. 

“Many analysts would have totally rejected him two years ago. But people are more sympathetic now that engagement with China has been defrocked.”

Mr. Schell adds, “On the China question, he’s no longer the skunk at the party.”
But Mr. Bannon is getting blowback from many Beijing’s stooges. 

On a trip abroad this year to drum up support for nationalist and populist leaders in Eastern and Central Europe, Mr. Bannon says, he was scolded for his positions on China by Milos Zeman, president of the Czech Republic and one of Beijing’s most zealous stooges in the region.
“He threw down on me hard,” Mr. Bannon says. 

“He said: ‘Tell Trump you didn’t learn from Hitler. You can’t fight on two fronts. You can’t take on radical Islam and China. You will end up in the bunker, like Hitler.”
A spokesman for Zeman said that he had challenged Mr. Bannon on American tariffs against China, and that the two men had parted ways in a very “cold atmosphere.”
Mr. Bannon is unbowed. 

He has agreed to serve as chairman of the Rule of Law Fund, the $100 million effort that Mr. Guo is financing. 

The fund plans to publicize its findings and offer financial support to businessmen, government officials and others who run afoul of the Chinese authorities — including those who flee overseas, like Mr. Guo himself.
Mr. Bannon has also joined Mr. Guo in targeting the HNA Group, the huge Chinese conglomerate that borrowed heavily and spent billions around the world, before debt and regulatory pressures forced the company to curb its global ambitions.
Until Twitter suspended his account late last year, Mr. Guo was waging an online war against HNA and its top executives. 

He claimed that the company was engaged in bribing top officials and their relatives, and has even spun theories about the death of the company’s co-chairman Wang Jian in an "accident" in France last summer. 

At their joint news conference last week, Mr. Bannon took the stage at the Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to say, “Literally thousands of the best and brightest” in China have disappeared, been imprisoned or committed suicide under unusual circumstances and without due process.
“Today is about recklessness and accountability,” he added, noting that American financial institutions have close ties to political elites in Beijing. 

“Who profited off this? Who looked the other way?”

Communist Mole

Jack Ma, China’s Richest Man, Belongs to the Communist Party. Of Course.
By Li Yuan

Jack Ma, China’s richest man and co-founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba, in Shanghai this month. He was identified as a member of the Chinese Communist Party by its official newspaper.
HONG KONG — Jack Ma, China’s richest man and the guiding force behind its biggest e-commerce company, belongs to an elite club of power brokers, 89 million strong: the Chinese Communist Party.
The party’s official People’s Daily newspaper included Ma, executive chairman of the Alibaba Group and the country’s most prominent capitalist, in a list it published on Monday of 100 Chinese people who had made extraordinary contributions to the country’s development over the last 40 years. 

The entry for Ma identified him as a party member.
It may sound contradictory that the wealthy Ma belongs to an organization that got its start calling for the empowerment of the proletariat. 

But Ma’s political affiliation came as no surprise to many Chinese and China watchers. 

Though it still publicly extols the principles of Karl Marx, the Chinese Communist Party largely abandoned collectivist doctrine in the post-Mao era, freeing private entrepreneurs to help build the world’s second-largest economy after the United States.
In fact, the disclosure reveals a party that is eager to prove its legitimacy by affiliating itself with capitalist success stories. 

Ma is a tech rock star in China, and his membership in the party could prod others to follow his lead.
“Even Jack Ma is a party member,” said Kellee Tsai, dean of humanities and social science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, referring to the party’s pitch. 

“Doesn’t it make you want to join the party, too?”
Alibaba declined to comment on the matter. 

The Hurun Report, a research organization in Shanghai that tracks the wealthy in China, estimates Ma and his family’s net worth at 270 billion renminbi, or $39 billion.

Today’s party isn’t exactly exclusive. 

Its members represent nearly 7 percent of China’s population. 

Its ranks include government officials, businesspeople and even dissidents. 

Being a member often suggests a desire to network and get ahead rather than express one’s political views.
For businesspeople in particular, membership is more often a matter of expediency. 

Party membership provides a layer of protection in a country where private ownership protections are often haphazardly enforced or ignored entirely.
Though its constitution still describes members as “vanguard fighters of the Chinese working class imbued with communist consciousness,” the party has veered away from its communist roots and welcomed private entrepreneurs since 2001. 

Some of the richest men in China are party members, including Wang Jianlin of the Dalian Wanda Group, a property and entertainment conglomerate, and Xu Jiayin of the Evergrande Group, a property developer.
It is unclear when Ma joined the party or how much he pays in dues. 

The party sets dues at 2 percent of monthly salary for higher-income members.
The star power of the Chinese entrepreneur class has dimmed since Xi Jinping became the country’s top leader in 2012. 

Under Xi, the Communist Party plays a bigger role in not only Chinese politics but also the economy and everyday life. 

Any entity with more than three party members is required to set up a party cell. 

Some three-quarters of private enterprises, or 1.9 million, had done so in 2017, according to official data.
Companies say they face much greater pressure to set up the cells than in the past. 

Even some of the coolest start-ups in tech-savvy Beijing have designated party-building spaces.
The disclosure of Ma’s membership reflects the thinking that the party controls the economy and society, said Guo Yuhua, a sociology professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing and a critic of the party.
“It’s going backward from the Deng Xiaoping era, when the party advocated the separation of the party and the government,” she said, referring to the party leader who ultimately governed China during its early years of reform in the 1970s and ’80s.
The disclosure also drew attention because Ma had in the past tried to keep his distance from the government. 

But as Xi tightens ideological controls and the power of the state grows, many successful entrepreneurs have made a point of showing their party loyalty.
Ma visited Yan’an, the city often considered the birthplace of the Chinese Communist Revolution, in 2015, according to the Chinese news media. 

Pony Ma, who is chief executive of the internet giant Tencent Holdings, showed up in Yan’an as well this year, wearing a Red Army uniform. 

Yan’an is also where Xi spent much of his teenage years.
In recent weeks, amid signs of a slowing economy and an intensifying trade war with the United States, China’s leaders have taken a softer tone toward private enterprise, making supportive remarks and promising tax cuts.
Making it clear that Ma, the most successful businessman in China, is a member could strengthen the party’s legitimacy.
“Above all,” said Tsai of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, “the party is quite open about the fact that it wants to survive.”

How China tried to shut down Australian media coverage of its debt-trap diplomacy in the Pacific

• A Chinese Embassy official yelled and made demands of an Australian producer to try and censor an episode of "60 Minutes" that would be critical of China.
• The Chinese Communist Party regularly interferes with foreign Chinese-language media, but targeting English-language media is rare.
• The "60 Minutes" report covered China's debt-trap diplomacy in the Pacific, including a loan to Vanuatu for a wharf which could be used by the Chinese military.
• Vanuatu's foreign minister said China expects support at the UN in return for financing.

By Tara Francis Chan

Five days before Australia's "60 Minutes" program aired a report on China's dept-trap diplomacy in the Pacific region, the show received an unusually aggressive phone call.
"Take this down and take it to your leaders!" the voice on the other end of the line shouted.
It was the voice of Saixian Cao, the head of media affairs at China's embassy in Canberra.
According to a report from "60 Minutes" journalist Charles Wooley, she was yelling at the show's executive producer, Kirsty Thomson, after failing to gain any traction with higher-ups at the network.
"You will listen," Cao reportedly shouted into the phone.
"There must be no more misconduct in the future."
Thomson and colleagues had been working on a story about China's growing influence over Pacific nations, by using exorbitant loans for infrastructure projects that leave countries indebted to Beijing, both politically and financially.
The story largely focused on China's projects in the island nation of Vanuatu — where the show's team had also recorded footage of the Chinese embassy — and the official was trying everything to kill the story.
"You will not use that footage," Cao demanded.
The incident highlights how China is used to dealing with — and controlling — the Australian media.
Chen Yonglin, a former diplomat at the Chinese Consulate in Sydney who defected in 2005, told Business Insider that this happens frequently with local Chinese language media in Australia and that, ultimately, the incident in Australia would have originated in Beijing.
"The instruction to pressure Channel 9 is from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Ministry obviously believed it is necessary. The representation is to warn Channel 9 and other people not to act like that again," Chen said.
Chen also described how monitoring, and attempting to censor media coverage, is a regular occurrence.
"If it's a local Chinese-language media, the Chinese Embassy/Consulate official should call the Editor-in-Chief directly with serious warning and certain sanctions against this media may follow. For less serious cases, China may request to publish a statement from its Embassy."
Business Insider previously reported how diplomats at a Chinese consulate in Australia invited an advertiser in for an hours-long "tea chat" to convince them to stop funding independent Chinese-language journalism.
Another advertiser had Chinese intelligence and security agents physically camp out in his Beijing office to strip funds from critical media.
And last year, two South Korean journalists who followed President Moon Jae-in's trip to Beijing were physically beaten and severely injured by more than a dozen security guards.
Despite the lengths China often goes to influence and outright interfere with foreign media, Chen believes Cao could face repurcussions for crossing a line.
"All Chinese language media are very obedient. Shouting at local Chinese media is not a surprise, but [shouting] at one of the mainstream English media is rare. Saixian Cao could be punished for her behaviour such as being given an internal warning," Chen said.

China gave Vanuatu a loan 360% more expensive than other options

Part of the "60 Minutes" episode highlighted a Chinese-built wharf in Vanuatu that has gained international attention.
Earlier this year reports emerged that China discussed setting up a military presence in Vanuatu, a claim both countries denied but which Australian defense officials confirmed.
And the country's newly built Luganville wharf, which was funded by China and seems more suited to navy vessels than cruise ships, would be crucial to this.
The fear is that Vanuatu, like many countries before it, accepted a loan with exorbitant interest rates and may need to hand over the wharf to China if it defaults, a practice called debt-trap diplomacy.
The country can't even afford the cleaning or electricity bill for a $19 million, Chinese-built convention center.
Yet Vanuatu took an $85 million loan from the Export-Import Bank of China for the Luganville wharf, which is topped with a 2% interest rate, that needs to be repaid within 20 years. 
But a similar wharf project in Port Vila, which was funded with a Japanese loan only required a 0.55% interest rate and gave the country twice as long to repay it.
Business Insider contacted Foreign Minister Ralph Regenvanu with questions about these loans last week but has not yet received a response.
When Sri Lanka defaulted on its loan for a Chinese-built port, it gave state-owned China Merchants Group a 99-year lease which experts believe was a strategic acquisition in the region.
China expects supporting votes at the UN in return.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi speaks at a Security Council meeting during the 72nd United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly at U.N. headquarters on September 20, 2017 in New York City.

Not only are there concerns that China is trying buy access to facilities and sea routes throughout the Pacific, Vanuatu's foreign minister confirmed Beijing's influx of cash has very, and immediate, global consequences.
Asked by "60 Minutes" whether he thinks China is trying to buy votes at the UN, Regenvanu answered in the affirmative.
"What so you think if they can pump money in here, they'll get support at the UN?" the reporter asked.
"Yes," Regenvanu answered.
"I'm sorry, that's bribery."
"Uh, maybe, that's diplomacy," Regenvanu said.
Australia has been trying to counter China's attempts at foreign interference both locally and in the Pacific, with new and expanded laws currently before parliament.
Last month, an Australian MP and chair of parliament's intelligence and security committee publicly identified Chau Chak Wing, a Chinese-born, Australian billionaire and political donor as having funded a $200,000 bribe to a former UN General Assembly president in order to advance Chinese interests.





Beijing henchman Chau Chak Wing

Chinese Peril: China holds sway over New Zealand's media

New Zealand's Chinese media has gone from being independent to being merged with the servile domestic media in China
By Colin Peacock

Law changes to limit Chinese influence on business and politics in Australia prompted calls for similar moves here this week. 

One of those sounding the alarm tells Mediawatch our government now needs to look at links between China and our media. 

What’s the problem? ​
Australia’s government this week unveiled sweeping reforms to national security laws designed to stamp out foreign influence over local politics. 

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull insisted the moves were not made with any one country in mind, but the media there weren’t shy about pointing the finger at China.
China wasn’t happy. 

Diplomatic protests followed and the Canberra bureau chief of China's state-run news agency Xinhua accused Australian media of "bombing the public with fabricated news about the so-called Chinese influence and infiltration in Australia."
It wasn’t the first time anxiety over this had been in the headlines there this year.
Back in June, the ABC’s investigative TV show Four Corners teamed up with Fairfax Media for a major media investigation which also highlighted the media. 

Four Corners said Australian Chinese-language media outlets have forgone editorial independence in exchange for deals offered by China as part of the strategy of the Chinese Communist Party.

Anne-Marie Brady.

On Morning Report this week, Prof Anne-Marie Brady from University of Canterbury was urging New Zealand to take the issue seriously.
“We can't pretend it's not happening here. All our allies are dealing with this problem and we should partner with them,” she said.
"New Zealand's Chinese media has gone from being independent to being merged with the domestic media in China," she said. 

"When you pick up one of our local Chinese papers or go to Chinese language sites they look a lot like you would find in mainland China," she said.
"I've been reading our Chinese language media since the late 1980s and listening to the radio stations. It was a real delight hearing an authentic New Zealand Chinese voice. We're really not getting that now," Prof Brady told Mediawatch.
All  Chinese media outlets in China are strictly controlled by the state, which is in turn dominated by the Chinese Communist Party.
How does China influence what Chinese New Zealanders are getting from their media?
“Under Xi Jinping's leadership, the CCP is really keen to influence international perceptions and debates about China globally,” she told Mediawatch
Much of this she also covered in a paper called “Magic Weapons: China's political influence activities under Xi Jinping."
"Initially it was through Xinhua. Since the 1990s it's been offering New Zealand's Chinese media free content. More recently the policy has been to 'harmonise' overseas Chinese language media with mainland Chinese media. The links are much closer now," she said.
"That means closer interactions ... and instructions being given to our Chinese language media," she said.
New Zealand Chinese media get instructions relayed by Chinese officials at meetings.
Her Magic Weapons paper says an event at the Langham Hotel in Auckland in June -- attended by CCP media officials and representatives of the Chinese media in New Zealand -- was one such occasion.
Media were given "oral instructions on content and working relationships" at the event, which was also attended by Labour MP Raymond Huo.

New Zealand's Chinese fifth column: Beijing stooge Raymond Huo

Raymond Huo's Labour Party biography says he is a is a regular Chinese media commentator on current affairs and a former Asian affairs journalist at the New Zealand Herald. 

He still calls himself "journalist" on Twitter.
Mediawatch asked him if he saw any discussions about in editorial policy or instructions passed on by Chinese officials at the Langham Hotel event.
"Not at all. I have no idea where that allegation is coming from," he told Mediawatch.
"The presentations I attended were purely on the influence of Chinese language social media," said Raymond Huo.
He said he attended the event because he had returned to Parliament in March and wanted to update himself on matters that were relevant to the Chinese constituency.
He told Mediawatch it was "difficult to say" if Chinese-language media were free to do what they wanted in New Zealand. 

Signs of things to come?

John Fitzgerald.

Chinese state-owned media companies signed six agreements in Sydney last year with Australian outlets including Fairfax Media, the biggest owner of newspapers in New Zealand. 

State-run Chinese news outlet People’s Daily reported it signed a news and video sharing deal with Australia’s Sky News which would create ”a high-end talk show on the Chinese economy.”
China Radio International reached a deal to share news with Australia’s Chinese-language radio station 3CW.
"Individually, the deals offer compelling commercial opportunities. But viewed collectively, they underline the coordinated nature in which China's propaganda arms are seeking to influence how the Communist Party is portrayed overseas", the Sydney Morning Herald's Beijing correspondent Philip Wen wrote at the time.

China Watch.

As if to illustrate the government's influence over Chinese media, a supplement prepared by state-run China Daily newspaper appeared in the Dominion Post the following week. 

It featured the New Zealand visit of the head of China's central publicity department -- Liu Qibao -- and his meeting with the-then Prime Minister John Key just after overseeing those media deals in Sydney.
At the time, Australian expert on China Dr John Fitzgerald told Mediawatch those media deals were "a victory for Chinese propaganda".
Anne Marie-Brady said some of those companies were operating here.
She said China Radio International had a subsidiary called Global CMAG which took over Auckland's 24-hour Chinese-language radio station FM 90.6 in 2011. 

She said it now sourced all its news from CRI and its Australian subsidiary. 

Global CAMG also runs Panda TV, Channel 37 on Freeview, and the Chinese Times newspaper.
Prof. Brady said the Commerce Commission should investigate whether offshore intervention in New Zealand's Chinese-language media breached competition laws and requirements for a free and independent media.

Silent Invasion: How China Is Turning Australia into a Puppet State

Free speech fears after book critical of China is pulled from publication
By Nick McKenzie and Richard Baker

Australian publisher Allen & Unwin has ditched a book on Chinese Communist Party influence in Australian politics and academia, citing fear of legal action from the Chinese government or its proxies.
The publisher's chief executive, Robert Gorman, said last week that it would abandon publication of a completed manuscript by Clive Hamilton, a professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University, called Silent Invasion: How China Is Turning Australia into a Puppet State.

Clive Hamilton's latest book pulled from publication: Australian publisher Allen & Unwin has ditched a Clive Hamilton book on Chinese Communist Party's influence in Australian politics and academia.

"We have no doubt that Silent Invasion is an extremely significant book," Mr Gorman wrote in a confidential email to Dr Hamilton on November 8.
But Mr Gorman said in the email, which has been obtained by Fairfax Media, that he was concerned about "potential threats to the book and the company from possible action by Beijing".
Author Clive Hamilton: ''The reason they've decided not to publish this book is the very reason the book needs to be published.'' 

He said the "most serious of these threats was the very high chance of a vexatious defamation action against Allen & Unwin, and possibly against you personally as well".
Allen & Unwin was "an obvious target" for "Beijing's agents of influence", Mr Gorman wrote.
While Australian publishers routinely deal with legal threats or court action from individuals named in books, it is exceptionally rare that a threat from a foreign power prevents or delays publication.
It raises serious questions about academic freedom and free speech in Australia.

The cover of the ditched book.

"I'm not aware of any other instance in Australian history where a foreign power has stopped publication of a book that criticises it," Dr Hamilton said.
"The reason they've decided not to publish this book is the very reason the book needs to be published."

Dr Hamilton has published eight previous books with Allen & Unwin. 

He was concerned that a perceived and vexatious threat, rather than an actual or justified legal action, had prompted the decision to ditch the book.
Allen & Unwin said on Sunday: "Allen & Unwin has published a number of books with Clive Hamilton, and has enormous respect for him and his work. After extensive legal advice we decided to delay publication of Clive's book Silent Invasion until certain matters currently before the courts have been decided. Clive was unwilling to delay publication and requested the return of his rights, as he is entitled to do. We continue to wish him the best of luck with the book."
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. 

China's Australian embassy did not respond to efforts to seek comment.
The book by Dr Hamilton, who has published eight previous books with Allen & Unwin and has received an Order of Australia for his contribution to public debate, examines evidence that suggests various Chinese Communist Party agencies are seeking to extend Beijing's influence in Australia for strategic and political gains.Australia's Quisling: Former foreign minister Bob Carr
While such activity is carried out by other states, elements of Beijing's influence campaign are clandestine or highly opaque. 

According to media investigations and warnings from spy agency ASIO, these efforts are targeted at Australian politicians and academics.
In response, the Turnbull government has plans to legislate to counter Beijing-linked influence operations by introducing new offences prohibiting foreign interference.
Chinese agent Chau Chak Wing.

Mr Gorman said in his email to Dr Hamilton that the publisher's position "would be stronger once proposed legislation targeting Chinese influence in Australia passes through Parliament".
However, "it sounds as though this is now unlikely to happen until next year", he wrote.
Mr Gorman also wrote that the publisher believed the Chinese government is co-ordinating attacks on Australian media reports it believes critique or undermine its authoritarian regime.
"It seems that Beijing is currently focusing on larger targets. If pursued with malice, this kind of vexatious legal action from a 'whale' or a small Beijing agent mentioned in the book could result in the book being withdrawn from sale, and both you and Allen & Unwin being tied up in expensive legal action for months on end or longer," Mr Gorman warned Dr Hamilton.

A former senior national security official told Fairfax Media that the Chinese government sought to use Western legal systems to advance its interests.
Australia's defamation laws are notoriously weighted towards litigants, unlike the legal system in the US or Britain, which have greater free speech or public interest protections.
"The Chinese government seeks to use the West's legal systems against the West," the former official said.
Dr Hamilton said he rewrote the book to minimise legal risks, "but I can't stop an authoritarian foreign power exploiting our defamation laws to suppress criticism of it".
Chinese-born businessmen named in media reports and ASIO briefings, including millionaire Sydney property developer and political donor Huang Xiangmo, have dismissed allegations of undue influence as unfounded and unjust.
Chau Chak Wing, a big Chinese-Australian political donor, is suing Fairfax Media over two stories that included allegations that ASIO had warned political parties against dealing with him.
The Herald Sun recently printed a report based on a leaked federal parliamentary library paper that examines Huang's political donations and describes how he heads a Sydney-based lobbying organisation aligned with the Chinese Communist Party's United Front Work Department.

Xi Jinping has described the United Front Work Department as Beijing's "magic weapon" to entrench and extend the Chinese Communist Party's influence in China and abroad. 

Dr Hamilton's book details its activities in Australia.

Huang, who has repeatedly dismissed claims of impropriety, has also helped set up and provide seed funding to a China research institute at the University of Technology Sydney, the Australian China Research Institute, which is directed by former foreign minister Bob Carr and economist James Laurenceson. 

The institute is also examined in Dr Hamilton's book.

Mr Laurenceson and Mr Carr have been dismissive of concerns around political donations linked to Chinese government-aligned businessmen such as Huang. 

Concerns about donations have been raised repeatedly by ASIO, and acknowledged by senior Labor and Coalition figures and former chief diplomat Peter Varghese.
Dr Hamilton's book includes a detailed examination of Bob Carr's advocacy for Australia to increase efforts to build relations with Beijing. 

It also examines concerns that Australian universities have failed to appreciate the risks of co-operating with researchers from the Beijing-controlled military and industrial research complex.

In August, Cambridge University Press was subject to intense criticism after it decided to censor the website of its China Quarterly journal to comply with Chinese demands. 

The articles to be censored detailed the Tiananmen Square massacre as well as Xi Jinping's leadership, but the British publisher backflipped after an international outcry.
"Cambridge University Press censored their publications for sale in China. It wouldn't dare censor criticism of the Chinese Communist Party in publications for sale in Britain. But that is precisely what has now happened in Australia," Dr Hamilton said.

Australia's New Master

Beijing pressured Australian publisher into canceling book release

Fox News

Clive Hamilton

One of Australia's major publishers has backtracked on releasing a book detailing Chinese influence in the country -- amid threats of retaliation from Beijing, the book's author says.
Clive Hamilton, a prominent Charles Sturt University professor, said Monday that publisher Allen & Unwin dropped his book “Silent Invasion” last week over fears of “retaliation from Beijing through a number of possible avenues including legal threats, orchestrated by Beijing,” Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported.

“After extensive legal advice we decided to delay publication of Clive’s book ‘Silent Invasion’ until certain matters currently before the courts have been decided,” the publisher said in a statement.
Hamilton slammed the decision to stop the book from publishing just when it was about to hit the bookstores. 

“What we’re seeing … is the first instance where a major Western publisher has decided to censor material of the Chinese Communist Party in its home country,” Hamilton told the public broadcaster.
“This really is a watershed in the debate over China’s suppression of free speech,” he said, adding that “I think if we succumb to this in Australia then we have lost a big battle in trying to defend what we take to be fundamental rights and privileges and freedoms in this country.”
The book’s focus was the Chinese Communist Party’s activities in Australia and the claims made in the book have been vetted by the lawyers, according to the professor.
“The Chinese government’s campaign is far more extensive than ever previously understood. If you’re going to analyze how Beijing is influencing Australian society and politics you have to analyze that activity of individuals and name names, and that’s what I’ve done,” he told the Guardian Australia.
“It’s a factual book with 1,100 footnotes and it has been meticulously researched, but short of redacting 100 names from the book there’s always the possibility someone might launch a vexatious legal act against the publisher, in this case Allen & Unwin.”
The author remains convinced the book in its full form will still be released, but it remains unclear when or if another publisher will risk the possible legal threat from the communist regime.

Chinese Fifth Column

China’s secret magic weapon for worldwide influence
By James Kynge, Lucy Hornby & Jamil Anderlini

Chinese fifth column: An Australian Security Intelligence Organisation investigation sparks fears the Chinese Communist Party is influencing the Australian political system as questions are raised over foreign political donations.
Sun Chunlan, head of the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee in Beijing on March 15, 2015.

On the Google map of Beijing there is an empty quarter, an urban block next to the Communist party's leadership compound in which few of the buildings are named.

At street level, the aura of anonymity is confirmed. 

Uniformed guards stand by grand entrances checking official cars as they come and go. 

But there are no identifying signs; the sole information divulged is on brass plaques that bear the street name and building numbers.
The largest of these nameless compounds is 135 Fuyou Street, the offices of the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist party, known as United Front for short. 

This is the headquarters of China's push for global "soft power", a multi-faceted but largely confidential mission that Xi Jinping, China's president who on Wednesday was confirmed in place until at least 2022, has elevated into one of the paramount objectives of his administration.
The building, which stretches for some 200m at street level, signifies the scale of China's ambition. Winning "hearts and minds" at home and abroad through United Front work is crucial to realising the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese people", Xi has said. 

Yet the type of power exercised by the cadres who work behind the neoclassical façade of 135 Fuyou Street is often anything but soft.
A Financial Times investigation into United Front operations in several countries shows a movement directed from the pinnacle of Chinese power to charm, co-opt or attack well-defined groups and individuals. 

Its broad aims are to win support for China's political agenda, accumulate influence overseas and gather key information.
United Front declined interview requests for this article and its website yields only sparse insights. However, a teaching manual for its cadres, obtained by the Financial Times, sets out at length and in detail the organisation's global mission in language that is intended both to beguile and intimidate.
It exhorts cadres to be gracious and inclusive as they try to "unite all forces that can be united" around the world. 

But it also instructs them to be ruthless by building an "iron Great Wall" against "enemy forces abroad" who are intent on splitting China's territory or hobbling its development.
"Enemy forces abroad do not want to see China rise and many of them see our country as a threat and rival, so they use a thousand ploys and a hundred strategies to frustrate and repress us," according to the book, titled the "China United Front Course Book".
"The United Front . . . is a big magic weapon which can rid us of 10,000 problems in order to seize victory," adds another passage in the book, which identifies its authors and editorial board as top-level United Front officials.
In a rare news conference this month, Zhang Yijiong, the executive vice-minister of United Front, said: "If the Chinese people want to be powerful and realise the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, then under the leadership of the Communist Party we need to fully and better understand the use of this 'magic weapon'." 

Sun Chunlan, the head of United Front, this week retained her position in the newly selected politburo.
The organisation's structure exhibits the extraordinary breadth of its remit. 

Its nine bureaux cover almost all of the areas in which the Communist party perceives threats to its power. 

The third bureau, for instance, is responsible for work in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and among about 60m overseas Chinese in more than 180 countries. 

The second bureau handles religion. 

The seventh and ninth are responsible respectively for Tibet and Xinjiang — two restive frontier areas that are home to Tibetan and Uighur minority nationalities.
Merriden Varrall, director at the Lowy Institute, an Australian think-tank, says that under Xi there has been a distinct toughening in China's soft power focus. 

The former emphasis on reassuring others that China's rise will be peaceful is giving way to a more forceful line. 

"There has been a definite shift in emphasis since Xi Jinping took over," says Ms Varrall. 

"There is still a sense that reassuring others is important, but there is also a sense that China must dictate how it's perceived and that the world is biased against China."
The hard edge of United Front is evident in its current struggle over the future reincarnation of the 14th Dalai Lama, the 82-year-old exiled Tibetan spiritual leader who Beijing castigates as a separatist bent on prising Tibet from Chinese control.
Tradition dictates that after a Dalai Lama dies, the high priesthood of Tibetan Lamaism searches for his reincarnation using a series of portents that lead them to his reborn soul in a child. 

The leaders of Tibetan Buddhism live in exile with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, northern India, raising the prospect that a reincarnation may be found somewhere beyond China's borders.
Beijing is alarmed. 

The last thing it wants is for the man it has called a "splittist" and a "wolf in monk's clothing" to be reincarnated in territory it does not control. 

United Front is charged with crafting a solution. 

The plan so far, officials said, is for the Communist party — which is officially atheist — to oversee a reincarnation search themselves within Chinese territory. 

Partly to this end, it has helped create a database of more than 1,300 officially approved "living Buddhas" inside Tibet who will be called on when the time comes to endorse Beijing's choice.
"The reincarnation of all living Buddhas has to be approved by the Chinese central government," says Renqingluobu, an ethnic Tibetan official and a leader of the Association for International Culture Exchange of Tibet, a United Front affiliate.
"If [the Dalai Lama] decides to find the reincarnation in a certain place outside of Tibet, then Tibetans will wonder what sort of reincarnation is this and the masses will think that religion must be false, empty and imaginary after all," said Mr Renqingluobu on a recent visit to London.

The hard edge of United Front is evident in its current struggle over the future reincarnation of the 14th Dalai Lama.

The Tibetan government-in-exile criticises the "preposterous" plan, adding in a statement from Dharamsala: "If the Chinese truly believe that the 14th Dalai Lama [the current one] is a 'leading separatist who is bent on destroying the unity of the motherland', what is the point of looking for another one?"
Venturing into the realm of the metaphysical may appear counter-intuitive for atheist United Front operatives, but all of China's religious organisations come under the auspices of United Front work. 

These include the Buddhist Association of China, the Chinese Taoist Association, the Islamic Association of China, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and the Three-Self (Protestant) Patriotic Movement.
This portfolio means that United Front also leads China's delicate talks to repair fractious relations with the Vatican.

The main sticking point is Beijing's insistence that all religions in China must regard the Communist party as their highest authority — a position which in Catholicism is occupied by the Pope.
The two sides have been manoeuvring, mostly in secret, for more than a decade to find common ground. 

There have been signs of progress in recent years, with both sides agreeing to recognise the appointment of five new Chinese bishops in 2015 and 2016.
Nevertheless, officially at least, United Front remains resistant. 

"We must absolutely not allow any foreign religious group or individual to interfere in our country's religions," the United Front book says.
For Beijing, growing social diversity after nearly four decades of economic reform has emphasised United Front's value in maintaining loyalty and support beyond the mainstream Communist faithful. Successive leaders have lauded United Front but none more so than Xi, who made several moves in 2014 and 2015 to upgrade the status and power of the organisation.
Xi has expanded the scope of United Front work, adding the ninth bureau for work in Xinjiang, meaning that the organisation now oversees China's fierce struggle against separatism in the region. He also decreed the establishment of a Leading Small Group dedicated to United Front activity, signifying a direct line of command from the politburo to United Front.
But perhaps Xi's most important step to date has been to designate United Front as a movement for the "whole party". 

This has meant a sharp increase since 2015 in the number of United Front assignees to posts at the top levels of party and state. 

Another consequence has been that all Chinese embassies now include staff formally tasked with United Front work.
This has given a boost to United Front efforts to woo overseas Chinese. 

Chinese Fifth Column

Even though more than 80 per cent of around 60m overseas Chinese have taken on the citizenship of more than 180 host countries, they are still regarded as fertile ground by Beijing. 

"The unity of Chinese at home requires the unity of the sons and daughters of Chinese abroad," says the teaching manual.
It recommends a number of ways in which United Front operatives should win support from overseas Chinese. 

Some are emotional, stressing "flesh and blood" ties to the motherland. 

Others are ideological, focusing on a common participation in the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese people". 

But mainly they are material, providing funding or other resources to overseas Chinese groups and individuals deemed valuable to Beijing's cause.
One UK-based Chinese academic who has attended several United Front events describes how the experience begins with an invitation to a banquet or reception, usually from one of a host of "friendship associations" that work under the United Front banner, to celebrate dates in the Chinese calendar. 

Patriotic speeches set the mood as outstanding students — particularly scientists — are wooed to return to China with "sweeteners" in the form of scholarships and stipends, she adds. 

These stipends are funded by a number of United Front subsidiary organisations such as the China Overseas-Educated Scholars Development Foundation, according to foundation documents.
The largesse, however, may come with obligations. 

In Australia, the Chinese Students and Scholars Association acts to serve the political ends of the local Chinese embassy, according to Alex Joske and Wu Lebao, students at Australian National University. 

In one example, when Li Keqiang visited Canberra this year, the CSSA fielded hundreds of Chinese students to drown out anti-China protesters on the street, Mr Joske and Mr Wu wrote in a blog.
To be clear, by no means do all Chinese students in Australia or elsewhere in the west see themselves as agents for soft power. 

However, Chinese and Australian academics have noted that pro-Beijing militancy is on the rise.
Feng Chongyi, professor at the University of Technology Sydney, says the influence exerted by Beijing over Chinese associations in Australia has grown appreciably since the late 1990s. 

"My assessment is that they control almost all the community associations and the majority of the Chinese-language media, and now they are entering the university sector," says Prof Feng.
Away from such grassroots operations, a bigger prize is political influence in the west. 

The teaching manual notes approvingly the success of overseas Chinese candidates in elections in Toronto, Canada. 

In 2003, six were elected from 25 candidates but by 2006 the number jumped to 10 elected from among 44 candidates, it says.
"We should aim to work with those individuals and groups that are at a relatively high level, operate within the mainstream of society and have prospects for advancement," it says.
At times, however, the quest for political influence can go awry. 

New Zealand's national intelligence agency has investigated a China-born member of parliament, Jian Yang, in connection with a decade and a half he spent at leading Chinese military colleges.

Jian Yang, the most famous Chinese mole in New Zealand

A United Front operative since 1994, Mr Yang spent more than 10 years training and teaching at elite facilities including China's top linguistics academy for military intelligence officers, the Financial Times learnt. 

Between 2014 and 2016 he served on the New Zealand government's select committee for foreign affairs, defence and trade.
Anne-Marie Brady, a professor at New Zealand's University of Canterbury, has said China's growing political influence should be taken seriously. 

Noting that Canberra is planning to introduce a law against foreign interference activities, she also called for Wellington to launch a commission to investigate Chinese political lobbying.
In 2010 the director of Canada's national intelligence agency warned that several Canadian provincial cabinet ministers and government employees were "agents of influence" for China. 

In recent months, Australia has said it is concerned about Chinese intelligence operations and covert campaigns influencing the country's politics.
But over time, such setbacks may prove temporary hiccups in the projection of China's brand of hard-boiled soft power around the world.
"In the beginning the Chinese government talked about culture — Peking opera, acrobatics — as soft power," says Li Xiguang, a head of Tsinghua University's International Center for Communication Studies. 

"When Xi Jinping came to power, he was totally different from previous leaders. He said China should have full self-confidence in our culture, development road, political system and theory."
Xi's elevation of United Front's importance and power suggests that Beijing may be unwilling to tone down its efforts.

CHINA’S OPERATION AUSTRALIA

The party line: The Chinese Communist Party is waging a covert campaign of influence in Australia and while loyalists are rewarded, dissidents live in fear.
By Nick McKenzie, Richard Baker, Sashka Koloff and Chris Uhlmann


University student Tony Chang had suspected for months that he was being secretly monitored, but it was a panicked phone call from a family member in China that confirmed his fears.
It was June 2015 and Chang’s parents had just been approached by state security agents in Shenyang in north-eastern China and invited to a meeting at a tea house.
It would not be a cordial catch-up.
As Chang later detailed in a sworn statement to Australian immigration authorities, three agents warned his parents about their son’s involvement in the Chinese democracy movement in Australia. The agents “pressed the point that my parents must ask me to stop what I am taking part in and keep a low profile,” the statement said.

From a Brisbane share house littered with books and unwashed plates, the Queensland University of Technology student told a Fairfax Media-Four Corners investigation that the agents had intelligence about his plans to participate in a protest in Brisbane on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and also during the Dalai Lama’s visit to Australia.
Chang’s activities in Brisbane meant that his terrified father in China feared that he too was being “watched and tracked”.
His father, a cautious, apolitical man, had already spent years worrying about his unruly son.
In 2008, when Chang was 14, he was arrested for hanging Taiwan independence banners on street poles in Shenyang.
His family was forced to call on Communist Party contacts to ensure Chang was released after several hours of questioning.

Tony Chang awaits questioning in a police station in China in 2008.

After Chang was questioned again in 2014 for dissident activities, he decided it was no longer safe to remain in China.
He applied for an Australian student visa.
The June 2015 approach to his parents back in China was the second time in two months that security agents had warned Chang’s family to rein in his anti-communist activism in Australia.
These threats helped convince the Australian government to grant Chang a protection visa.
Chang’s treatment as a teen is typical of the way the party-state deals with dissidents inside China. But the monitoring of the student in Brisbane and his decision to speak out about the threats to his parents in Shenyang, despite the risk it poses to them, provides a rare insight into something much less well known: the opaque campaign of control and influence being waged by the Chinese Communist Party inside Australia.

Tony Chang in Brisbane in 2017.

Part of this campaign involves attempts to influence Australian politicians via political donors closely aligned with the Communist Party – something that causes serious concern to Australia’s security agency, ASIO.
But the one million ethnic Chinese living in Australia are also targets of the Communist Party’s influence operations.
On university campuses, in the Chinese-language media and in some community groups, the party is mounting an influence-and-control operation among its diaspora that is far greater in scale and, at its worst, much nastier, than any other nation deploys.
In China, it’s known as qiaowu.
The recent chief of Australia’s diplomatic service, Peter Varghese, who is now chancellor at the Queensland University, told Fairfax Media and Four Corners that China’s approach to influence building is deeply concerning, not least because it is being run by an authoritarian one-party state with geopolitical ambitions that may not be in Australia’s interest.
“The more transparent that process [of China’s influencing building in Australia] is, the better placed we are to make a judgment as to whether it is acceptable or not acceptable and whether it is covert or overt,” Varghese says.
“This is an issue ASIO would need to keep a very close eye on, in terms of any efforts to infiltrate or subvert our system which go beyond accepted laws and accepted norms.”
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 Force Chief and the director general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.
Australia’s domestic spy chief Duncan Lewis warned Parliament that Chinese interference in Australia was occurring on “an unprecedented scale”.
“And 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,” Lewis said.
A China expert, Swinburne professor John Fitzgerald, agrees.
“Members of the Chinese community in Australia deserve the same rights and privileges as all other Australians, not to be hectored, lectured at, monitored, policed, reported on and told what they may and may not think.”

The coercion category
The definitive text on Beijing’s overseas influence operations is Qiaowu: Extra-Territorial Policies for the Overseas Chinese by China expert James To.
Citing primary documents, To concludes the policies are designed to “legitimise and protect the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power” and maintain influence over critical “social, economic and political resources”.
Those already amenable to Beijing, such as many student group members, are “guided” – often by Chinese embassy officials – and given various benefits as a means of “behavioural control and manipulation,” To says.
Those regarded as hostile, such as Tony Chang, are subjected to “techniques of inclusion or coercion.”
Australian academic Dr Feng Chongyi is another who falls into the “coercion” category.
In March, Feng travelled to China to engage in what he calls the “sensitive work” of interviewing human rights lawyers and scholars across China.
Feng expected to be closely watched and harassed when he arrived in Beijing but accepted it simply as an irritating feature of his job.
“It’s an open secret that our telephone is tapped, we are followed everywhere.”
“But that is a little thing that we have to accept if we want to work in China,” the University of Technology Sydney China scholar and democracy activist tells Fairfax Media and Four Corners.
Feng is a small, energetic man who has retained his Communist Party membership in the hope that he will live long enough to see some results from what has become his life’s mission: democratising China.
But he is also a realist, which meant he was initially unconcerned when, on March 20 and after he’d arrived in the city of Kunming, he was approached by agents from the Ministry of State Security. Feng was driven to a hotel three hours away to be questioned.
He expected the matter to end there but, a day later, he realised he was being followed by security agents to the sprawling port city of Guangzhou.
There he was told his interrogation would continue.
“That’s the time when I really realised something serious is happening,” he recalls.

Dr Feng Chongyi in 2017.

Big trouble
In a Guangzhou hotel room, the security agents subjected Dr Feng to daily six-hour questioning sessions, all of it video-taped.
Many of the questions were about his activities in Sydney, including the content of his lectures at UTS, the people in his Australian network of Communist Party critics, and his successful efforts to stop a concert glorifying the Communist Party founder Chairman Mao Zedong.
Then the agents turned their attention to Feng’s family, asking him specific questions to show him that his wife and daughter were also being closely watched. 
He describes this change in tactics as a means of getting him to fully submit to his inquisitors’ demands.
It is the only part of his story that the wily academic hesitates to recall, as if emotion might overtake him.
“I can suffer this or that but I’ll not allow my wife and my daughter and my other family members [to] suffer from my activities,” he says.
“That is the thing that’s quite fearful in my mind.”
When his inquisitors demanded Feng take a lie detector test on March 23, he called his wife who told him to make a run for it.
A few hours later, after midnight, Feng crept out of his hotel, hoping to board a 4am flight.
But as he sought to check in, an airport official told him he could not leave China because he was suspected of endangering state security.
“At that point, my wife told my daughter that I was in deep trouble,” says Feng.
Feng’s daughter immediately called a foreign affairs specialist in the Australian government and asked for help.
Feng’s questioning continued for six more days until his daughter was contacted by an Australian government official and told Feng would be permitted to board a flight back to Australia.
In his final interrogation session, the MSS agents presented Feng with a document to sign that forbade him from publicly discussing his ordeal. 
But by then, his detention had already been covered by several Australian media outlets.
When Feng landed at Sydney airport on April 1, a small group of supporters was waiting for him with banners.
Feng believes his treatment in China was designed to send other academics, along with his supporters in the Chinese Australian community, a message to “stay away from sensitive issues or sensitive topics”.
“Otherwise they can get you into big trouble, detention or other punishment.”

Campus patriots
Mostly though, the Communist Party’s influence on Australian university campuses takes a subtler form, and works through the Chinese Students and Scholars Associations.
The Communist Party targeted these patriotic associations after the Tiananmen Square student uprising as a way of maintaining control over overseas students.
In Australia, which has 100,000 Chinese students, the associations are “sponsored” by Chinese embassy and consular officials.
Lupin Lu, an amiable 23-year-old communications student who is president of the Canberra University Students and Scholars Association, explains to Fairfax Media and Four Corners how Chinese embassy officials played an active role in organising a large student rally to welcome Li Keqiang when he visited Australia in March.
On the day, the rally had two shifts, the first starting at 5am.
Lu insists it was students rather than the embassy calling the shots.
“I wouldn’t really call it helping,” she insists of the embassy’s role, while confirming it provided flags, transport, food, a lawyer and certificates for students that would help them find jobs back in China.
“It’s more sponsoring,” Lu explains.

Li Keqiang and Malcolm Turnbull in 2017.

Lu says her fellow students are willing to assemble at 5am to welcome Li because of their pride at China’s economic rise.
Other factors are an early education system that extols the virtues of the Communist Party and the reality that positive connections with the government can help a person land a job in China.
Federal police officers still describe with awe events in 2008 at the Olympic torch rally, when hundreds of chartered buses entered Canberra from NSW and Victoria, delivering 10,000 Chinese university students “to protect the torch”.
“If the Aussie embassy in London issued a similar call to arms to Australian students in London, there would be two students and a dog,” an officer says.
Lu had another way of motivating her fellow students to assemble before dawn: she stressed the importance of blocking out anti-communist protesters.
Would she go so far as to alert the embassy if a human rights protest was being organised by dissident Chinese students?
“I would, definitely, just to keep all the students safe,” she says. “And to do it for China as well.”

Going viral
The extent to which this student nationalism is directed and monitored from Beijing, and what this means for academic freedoms, is uncertain.
Last year, ANU Emeritus Professor and the founding director of the Australian centre on China in the World, Geremie Barme, was so concerned he wrote a lengthy letter to Chancellor Gareth Evans.

Barme’s fears were sparked by a series of viral nationalistic videos created and posted by a Chinese ANU student, Lei Xiying.
One of Lei’s videos, “If you want to change China, you’ll have to get through me first”, attracted more than 15 million hits.
“I would opine that Mr Lei is an agent for government opinion carving out a career in China’s repressive media environment for political gain,” wrote Barme.
The ANU defended the student’s activities on free speech grounds, but Barme said the university was ignoring Lei’s sponsorship by an authoritarian government that routinely threatens scholars and journalists.
“Make no mistake, it is officially sanctioned propaganda,” Barme said.
He urged the university to confront the issue by debating it openly.
His supporters say that request was ignored.
Real media
A gracious host, Sam Feng is in a gregarious mood when he invites us to the headquarters of Pacific Times, the once proudly independent community Chinese-language newspaper he founded in the 1980s.
Over Chinese tea, Feng scoffs at suggestions that his paper is involved in financial dealings with an arm of the Chinese Communist Party that shapes its coverage.
“It is false. It is fake … They don’t need to do that,” says Feng, while insisting that questions of bias should be directed to Western media outlets whose coverage supports the US version of the world. “We are real media,” Feng explains of his small team of staff.
But corporate records suggest his paper is less independent than he claims.
Subsidiaries of the Communist Party’s overseas propaganda outlet, the Chinese News Service, own a 60 per cent stake to Feng’s 40 per cent in a Melbourne company, the Australian Chinese Culture Group Pty Ltd.
The results of this joint-venture deal appear evident in the newspaper’s content, vast chunks of which are supplied direct from Beijing where propaganda authorities control the media.
Academic Feng Chongyi describes Pacific Times as one of several Australian Chinese-language media outlets that have forgone any semblance of editorial independence in exchange for deals offered by the Communist Party’s propaganda apparatus.
“It used to be quite independent or autonomous,” he says, “but ... you can see the newspaper now is almost identical [to] other newspapers that exclusively focus on the positive side of China.”
In a backroom in Sam Feng’s West Melbourne headquarters is evidence suggesting his Beijing dealings extend beyond what is placed in his newspaper.
A well-placed source leaked to Fairfax Media photos of dozens of placards resting against a wall of the room.
“We Against Vain Excuse for Interfering in South China Sea,” reads one of the placards.
To a casual observer, the placards would barely warrant a glance.
But along with other information provided by the source, they point towards what Australian security officials suspect: that the Chinese Communist Party has had a hand in encouraging protests in Australia.
“The Chinese would find it unacceptable if Australia was to organise protests in China against any particular issue,” says former DFAT chief Peter Varghese.
“Likewise, we should consider it unacceptable for a foreign government to be [encouraging], organising, orchestrating or bankrolling protests on issues that are ultimately matters for the Australian community or the Australian government.”
The placards stored at Pacific Times were handed out to hundreds of protesters who marched in Melbourne on July 23, 2016, to oppose an international tribunal ruling – supported by Australia – that rejected Beijing's claim over much of the South China Sea.
Of Pacific Times owner Sam Feng, the source says the newspaper owner seeks to keep the Chinese Communist Party onside for commercial reasons: “He is a nationalist. But he just cares about business.”
A review of the corporate records of other large Chinese Australian media players reveals the involvement of Communist Party-controlled companies. 
Those who turn down offers to become the party’s publishing partners and seek to print independent news face the prospect of threats, intimidation and economic sabotage.

Overseas forces
Don Ma, who owns the independent Vision China Times in Sydney and Melbourne, tells Fairfax Media and Four Corners that 10 of his advertisers have been threatened by Chinese officials to pull their advertising.
All acquiesced, including a migration and travel company whose Beijing office was visited by the Ministry of State Security every day for two weeks until they cut ties with the paper.
Ma is happy to speak publicly because he has already been blocked from travelling to China.
His journalists, though, request their names and images not be used when we visit Ma’s Sydney and Melbourne offices.
They are fearful of retribution.
Ex-DFAT chief Peter Varghese and Swinburne Professor Fitzgerald says Australia should require more accountability and transparency around the way the Communist Party and its proxies are operating in the media and on university campuses.
Fitzgerald warns Communist Party influence operations in Australia not only risk dividing the Chinese community, but sparking hostility between it and other Australians.
“The Chinese community is the greatest asset we have in this country for managing what are going to be complex relations with China over the next decades – in fact for centuries to come – and we need them to help us in managing this relationship.
“If suspicion is sown about where their loyalties lie then we lose one of our greatest assets in this country now.”
The Vision China Times’ Don 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.
“The media here, almost all the Chinese media, was being controlled by overseas forces,” says Ma.
“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.”