Colleges Should All Stand Up to China

American universities need to show Beijing—again and again—that they reserve the right to unfettered debate.
By Rory Truex
About five times a year, the U.S. military conducts freedom-of-navigation operations, or FONOPs, in the South China Sea to challenge China’s territorial claims in the area.
American Navy vessels traverse through waters claimed by the Chinese government.
This is how the U.S. government registers its view that those waters are international territory, and that China’s assertion of sovereignty over them is inconsistent with international law.
Americans are witnessing a similar encroachment on territory equally central to our national interest: our own social and political discourse. 
Through a combination of market coercion and intimidation, the Chinese Communist Party is trying to constrain how people in the United States and other Western democracies talk about China.

Freedom-of-speech operations (FOSOPs) 
This encroachment needs a measured response—what we might call freedom-of-speech operations, or FOSOPs for short. 
American universities can take the lead.
They should routinely hold events on the fate of Taiwan, the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, the repression of Uighur Muslims in East Turkestan, and other topics known to be sensitive to the Chinese government.
These events can be organized by students, faculty, or research centers.
They need not originate from a university’s administration.
If anything, the message that FOSOPs send—everything in the United States is subject to open debate, especially on college campuses—is even stronger if the pressure comes from the grass roots.
Last month’s NBA-China spat crystallized the basic problem.
After the Houston Rockets executive Daryl Morey tweeted in support of the Hong Kong protesters, Rockets games and gear were effectively banned in China, costing the team an estimated $10 million to $25 million.
It has become common for the Chinese government to force Western firms and institutions to toe the party line.
Gap, Cambridge University Press, the three largest U.S. airlines, Marriott, and Mercedes-Benz have all had China access threatened over freedom-of-speech issues. 
This list will continue to grow.
Recently, the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV canceled the showing of an Arsenal soccer game because the club’s star, Mesut Özil, had criticized the ongoing crackdown in East Turkestan.
The Chinese government regularly uses coercive tactics to affect discourse on American campuses, including putting pressure on universities that invite politically sensitive speakers.
This is precisely what happened at the University of California at San Diego, which hosted the Dalai Lama as a commencement speaker in 2017.
The Chinese government, which considers the Tibetan religious leader a threat, responded by barring Chinese scholars from visiting UCSD using government funding.
There is also disturbing evidence that the Chinese government is mobilizing overseas Chinese students to protest or disrupt events, primarily through campus chapters of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association. 
These groups exist at more than 150 universities and receive financial support from the Chinese embassy in the United States. 
As Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian reported last year in Foreign Policy, the embassy can exert influence over the chapters’ leadership and activities.
The goal of freedom-of-speech operations is safety in numbers.
Other universities remained largely mum after the Chinese government moved to punish UCSD, effectively inviting Beijing to deploy similar tactics against other schools in the future. 
But imagine if instead there had been an outpouring of events on Tibet or invitations for the Dalai Lama. 
Coordination is key.
An affront to one American university should be taken as an affront to all.
At Princeton, where I teach, we held three FOSOPs in recent weeks: the first on East Turkestan, sponsored by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions; the second on Hong Kong, sponsored by a student group that promotes U.S.-China relations; and a third on East Turkestan, also sponsored by students. 
These events were not labeled as FOSOPs, of course; I, not the organizers, am applying the term.
The panels occurred independently, organically, and with no real interference or involvement from university administration, other than to ensure the safety and security of our students.
I played a small role in the Hong Kong event, at which I moderated a panel that featured three Hong Kong citizens discussing the ongoing protest movement.
Our China talks usually get about 30 attendees, most of whom are retirees who live nearby.
The Hong Kong panel last month was the biggest China-related event I have attended on our campus.
Our room was at maximum capacity, as was the overflow room we created for the simulcast.
It was clear that mainland-Chinese students and Hong Kong students—two groups whose views on the protests generally diverge—had both mobilized in some way or another.
The event was emotionally charged at the outset.
One Chinese student, apparently sympathetic to the Chinese government’s position, flipped the panel the middle finger after a panelist made a comment about police brutality against Hong Kong protesters.
Several of the audience members from mainland China pressed the panelists on some of the basic realities of the events on the ground.
One student asked if there was actually any evidence of police brutality.
It felt like Chinese students had come to the event just to push the Communist Party line. 
But it was healthy and helpful to have pro-Beijing views expressed and debated publicly, and juxtaposed with the lived experiences of the Hong Kong protesters.
As the panelist Wilfred Chan noted, it is especially important right now to have dialogue between the Hong Kongers and mainland-Chinese communists.
Western university campuses are among the only spaces where this can occur.
Firms, local governments, civic associations, and individuals can create their own freedom-of-speech operations.
Imagine if every NBA player signed a pledge to mention China’s mass detention of Muslims in East Turkestan at press conferences, just for one day. 
Or if American churches reached out to Chinese pastors to give sermons about the repression of China’s Christian community.
There will be pushback from the Chinese government, and some events might be labeled as an affront to “Chinese sovereignty” or “the feelings of the Chinese people”—standard rhetorical devices of the Chinese Communist Party.
University administrators may receive warnings or veiled threats in the short term.
But if this sort of interference is met with more campus events, at more universities and institutions, China’s coercion will be rendered ineffective, and its government would have no choice but to back down.
It is important that while we push to preserve freedom of speech on China at Western institutions, we also push to preserve the rights and freedoms of our students from mainland China.
Anti-China sentiment in the U.S. is at historic highs.
Freedom-of-speech operations should be constructed to encourage dialogue and foster norms of critical citizenship.
Done right, these events can protect Americans’ intellectual territory, and demonstrate the value of our open society. 

Confucius Institutes: Alarming Chinese meddling at UK universities exposed in report

Chinese embassy is coordinating efforts to curb academic freedom
By Patrick Wintour 

‘China is seeking to shape the research agenda or curricula of UK universities,’ says parliamentary report. 

Universities are not adequately responding to the growing risk of China influencing academic freedom in the UK, the foreign affairs select committee has said.
The report, rushed out before parliament is suspended pending the election, finds “alarming evidence” of Chinese interference on UK campuses, adding the activity seeking to restrict academic freedom is coordinated by the Chinese embassy in London.

The report says: “There is clear evidence that autocracies are seeking to shape the research agenda or curricula of UK universities, as well as limit the activities of researchers on university campuses. Not enough is being done to protect academic freedom from financial, political and diplomatic pressure.”
The committee highlighted the role of China-funded Confucius Institutes officials in confiscating papers that mentioned Taiwan at an academic conference, the use of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association as an instrument of political interference and evidence that dissidents active while studying in the UK, such as Ayeshagul Nur Ibrahim, an Uighur Muslim, were being monitoring and her family in China being harassed.
The committee accuses some academic organisations, such as Million Plus, which represents 20 modern universities, of complacency.

Pro-Beijing Bill Rammell, the chair of Million Plus, told the committee he had “not heard one piece of evidence” that substantiated claims of foreign influence in universities.
The committee said the government’s focus was on protecting universities from intellectual property theft and risks arising from joint research projects. 

“This is not enough to protect academic freedom from other types of interference such as financial, political or diplomatic pressure,” the MPs said.
The Foreign Office’s evidence to the committee highlighted the lack of government advice to universities, the report says, adding ministers have not coordinated approaches to the issue, either within Whitehall or with foreign governments such as Australia and the US.
The report points out that a 2019 international education strategy white paper mentions China more than 20 times in the context of boosting education expertise to the Chinese market, but with no mention of security or interference.

The committee concluded: “The battle for university students or trade deals should not outweigh the international standards which have brought freedom and prosperity to the UK and the wider world. The government should provide any strategic advice to universities and not used its key sanction tools such as ‘Magnitsky powers’ to curb interference on human rights grounds.”
Ministers can curb interference through the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act passed 17 months ago, the report said.
However, ministers previously told the committee they could not use the so-called Magnitsky amendment, contained in the act, until the UK had left the EU. 

In June the FCO finally admitted this interpretation was legally incorrect, and the powers could be used independently of the EU while still an EU member.

Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the foreign affairs select committee, says academic freedoms are under threat in the UK. 

The FCO has still to lay the necessary statutory instrument to introduce the power, 17 months after the act became law. 

The foreign affairs select committee pointed out that the power, touted by the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, in pre-Conservative party conference interviews, will be delayed still further by the general election.
The committee, chaired by the Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, also asked the FCO to explain its failure to use sanctions in response to Chinese repression in Hong Kong and East Turkestan.
On the question of Hong Kong, where violent protests continue and local elections are due to be held later this month, the committee has urged the government to assess the reputational damage to the UK of British judges continuing to sit on the Hong Kong court of final appeal. 

The committee warns there is a danger of the UK appearing to be complicit in supporting and participating in a system that is undermining the rule of law.
In a bid to support the protesters, the UK should grant residency to Hong Kong citizens who are British national (overseas) passport holders, the report said.

Tugendhat said hard-won freedoms were under threat in the UK. 

The FCO had been “found wanting in three policy areas: autocracies’ influence on academic freedom; the use of sanctions against autocratic states and their supporters, and the UK’s cooperation with other democracies in responding to autocracies”.

Exiled in the U.S., a Lawyer Warns of ‘China’s Long Arm’

China’s rising threat to international freedom and democracy has become a hot topic

By Edward Wong
 

Teng Biao, a Chinese human rights lawyer who moved to the United States after being harassed by the Chinese authorities, has criticized China’s coercion of foreigners to bend to its point of view.

From his suburban home in New Jersey, Teng Biao has watched in frustration as what he sees as the apologies to China from Western companies have come fast and furious this year.
First, there was the hotel chain Marriott International, which apologized to the Chinese government in January for having sent out a customer survey listing Tibet, Hong Kong, Macau and the self-governing island of Taiwan as separate territories, a violation of the Communist Party canon that raised the ire of some Chinese citizens.
Then there was Gap Inc., which posted a message to the Chinese apologizing for a T-shirt with a map of China that ignited similar criticism. 

And in May, Air Canada on its website began listing Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, as a part of Communist-ruled China, which the Taiwanese reject.
For Mr. Teng, one of China’s pre-eminent civil rights lawyers, it all amounted to craven behavior from Western companies trying to stay in the good graces of Chinese officials to maintain access to the enormous consumer market in China.
“For the past two or three years, I’ve been paying attention to self-censorship by Western scholars, institutions and companies,” Mr. Teng, 44, said one recent afternoon in a cafe in Midtown Manhattan. 

“It’s urgent. China’s rising threat to international freedom and democracy has become a hot topic.”
Officials and political analysts in Western nations have indeed spoken up in the past year about what they call China’s “influence operations” or “sharp power,” how it coerces foreigners to bend to its point of view, or to self-censor in return for favors or access to the Chinese market.
Since 2013, Mr. Teng has spoken about these concerns four times to groups in the United States Congress and he has given lectures on university campuses on the same topic. 

He said he plans to write a book on it.
“I felt it’s high time to change the West’s policy toward China,” he said.
Mr. Teng has embraced this new role partly out of necessity. 

Under increasing harassment by the Chinese authorities, he left China in 2012 to spend time in Hong Kong and the United States. 

He does not dare return because of an official crackdown in recent years on rights lawyers that has landed many of his friends in prison. 

He now lives with his wife, Lynn Wang, and two daughters, ages 10 and 12, in West Windsor, N.J.
Mr. Teng’s interest in putting the spotlight on what he calls “China’s long arm” comes from personal experience. 

In 2016, he clashed publicly with the American Bar Association over its decision to rescind an offer to publish a book by Mr. Teng on the history of the lawyer-led rights movement in China. 

Mr. Teng said the group did this because it did not want to jeopardize its operations in Beijing. 

The Bar Association denied his accusation, saying the offer was withdrawn for economic reasons.
“The cross-border repression of which Teng Biao himself has become a victim has become this whole new complex set of issues,” said Eva Pils, a scholar at King’s College London, who once directed a center at the Chinese University of Hong Kong that hosted Mr. Teng. 

“I’m wary of how repression crosses borders, and I’m wary of how China is changing norms.”
Mr. Teng and his family also ran into financial difficulties in the United States after his wife was dismissed from her job as an international representative for a Chinese technology parts company — a move that he said had been forced by Chinese officials. 

His wife had worked for the company for 17 years.
“The Chinese government put pressure on that company,” Mr. Teng said. 

“The company said that because of me, they couldn’t sell their products to Chinese agencies and the military.”
Mr. Teng grew up in a village in the northeastern province of Jilin. 

His father was a painter and held a low-level official post related to education and culture, while his mother worked as a farmer. 

He received a slot at prestigious Peking University and decided to study law, eventually earning a doctorate in law in 2002.
While teaching at the China University of Political Science and Law, he became involved in the case of Sun Zhigang, a migrant worker killed by the police while in detention in the south. 

This started Mr. Teng and other lawyers on the road to activism, leading to their harassment by officials.
Mr. Teng and his wife watched with growing anxiety as Xi Jinping tightened control over civil society after taking power in 2012. 

Mr. Teng already had been detained repeatedly and beaten by police officers, with his family illegally kept in the dark as to his whereabouts for weeks at a stretch.
He went to the Chinese University of Hong Kong as a visiting scholar in 2012, then flew to the United States with his younger daughter two years later after getting an invitation from Harvard. 

By then, his wife and elder daughter had been barred from leaving the mainland, but they fled through Southeast Asia in 2015 with the help of smugglers, at one point riding on the backs of motorbikes through the hills of Thailand.
After Harvard, Mr. Teng was able to establish affiliations with New York University and Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study.
At Princeton in 2017, he collaborated with two other liberal Chinese to found a nonprofit group that aims to promote democracy in China by holding local gatherings, publishing books in Chinese and running online courses. 

Mr. Teng said the site for those courses is largely blocked in China.
Mr. Teng helped organize a march in Washington last July to call attention to China’s crackdown on rights lawyers, which officials began in earnest on July 9, 2015. 

About 50 people took part in the march, and Mr. Teng plans to hold another one next month.
This April, Mr. Teng wrote an essay for ChinaFile, a website run by the Asia Society in New York, arguing that “Xi Jinping’s new totalitarianism and Mao’s old style of totalitarianism don’t differ by all that much.”
“I think there must be some leaders, even top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, who have ideas of liberal democracy,” he said in the interview. 

“But they don’t promote democracy. The first thing is they’re too scared. The second thing is they don’t want to lose the benefits they get from the system.”
One afternoon in March 2017, at a student-organized gathering at Princeton, Mr. Teng debated China’s future with Sida Liu, a professor from the University of Toronto who was also a visiting scholar at Princeton that academic year. 

Mr. Teng took a harsh view of the party, saying it would never change, while Mr. Liu was more circumspect.
In an interview this week, Mr. Liu said exiles like Mr. Teng have had to take a new approach to activism because of the crackdowns under Xi and the constant detentions.
“When I was in Princeton, Teng Biao was busy helping victims and families of the crackdown get out of China — to flee rather than to put in resources into China or support the next waves of activists,” Mr. Liu said.
Mr. Teng has warned that Chinese nationals in the United States try to monitor the dissenters in exile and report back to Chinese officials. 

He pointed to the 150 or so campus chapters of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, where members maintain contact with Chinese diplomats and try to quash talks at universities that clash with the official Chinese view.

China's Fifth Column: the Chinese Students and Scholars Associations

Chinese Government Gave Money to Georgetown Chinese Student Group
Growing Chinese influence on campuses nationwide has cast a pall over academic freedom.
BY BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN 

A statue of John Carroll, founder of Georgetown University, sits before Healy Hall on the school's campus August 15, 2006 in Washington, DC. Georgetown University was founded in 1789 and it is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university in the U.S. 

Chinese students or Chinese spies?

Founded in the early 2000s, the Georgetown University Chinese Students and Scholars Association hosts an annual Chinese New Year gala, organizes occasional academic forums, and helps Chinese students on campus meet and support each other. 

The group has also accepted funding from the Chinese government amounting to roughly half its total annual budget, according to documents and emails obtained by Foreign Policy.
The total sum may not be large, but the documents confirm a link between the Chinese government and Chinese student organizations on American campuses that is often suspected but difficult to verify.
A budget request submitted by the Georgetown University CSSA to the school’s graduate student government in September 2011 disclosed that the group received $800 each semester that school year from the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. 

The group requested an additional $750 each semester from the university on top of the money it received from the embassy.
The disclosure of Chinese government funding came after a question on the budget request form asking if the club received any outside sources of funding. 

The group said that the government funding was used to host events, such as the annual Chinese New Year party.
The funding has not been previously made public; copies of the documents were provided to FP by a source concerned about Chinese Communist Party influence on university campuses.
The FBI shares that concern. 

Yesterday, at an annual open hearing at the Senate intelligence committee, in response to a question about the national security risk posted by Chinese international students, FBI Director Chris Wray said, “The use of nontraditional collectors, especially in the academic setting — whether it’s professors, scientists, students — we see in almost every field office that the FBI has around the country.”
Chinese Students and Scholars Associations first appeared in the United States in the 1980s, as international students from China began attending American universities. 

Now Chinese students, numbering close to 330,000, comprise the largest group of international students in the United States. 

There are now around 150 CSSA branches in the United States, and many more around the world; the organizations share a name but no central organization or headquarters. 

Other Chinese student organizations do exist — the Chinese Student Association at the University of California, Berkeley, for example, was founded in 1951 and is independent — but most have been overshadowed by the proliferation of CSSAs.
The primary function of CSSAs is to help Chinese students adjust to life in a foreign country, to bring Chinese students together on campus, and to showcase Chinese culture. 

The groups typically host events such as annual galas, holiday celebrations, and academic forums.
But they also serve as a way for the Chinese government to maintain a close eye on Chinese students abroad.
“It’s a deliberate strategy to make sure that the Chinese students and scholars living abroad don’t become a problem,” said Anne-Marie Brady, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, which published Brady’s report last year detailing Chinese Communist Party influence in New Zealand, including the CSSAs at major universities there.
A former Chinese Ministry of State Security official, Li Fengzhi, who later defected to the United States, said that the Chinese government views CSSAs as a means to conduct information collection and propaganda.
“CSSAs are non-profit associations, whose members are students volunteered to provide help to their fellow Chinese students and scholars at the host university,” a Chinese Embassy spokesperson wrote in an email, when asked if the Chinese Embassy continues to provide the CSSAs at Georgetown or other area colleges with funds. 

“In order to organize such activities, they need to raise funds from the public, such as their host universities, companies, organizations and the Chinese embassy.”
The spokesperson did not provide an answer when asked if the Chinese Embassy ever gives CSSAs political directives.
Georgetown University did not respond to a request for comment.
No other Georgetown University graduate student group included in the 2011-2012 funding request report received money from a foreign government, according to the documents reviewed by FP.
Under Xi Jinping, the Communist Party has vastly expanded its campaign to surveil and control overseas Chinese, including international students. 

In 2016, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued a directive to Chinese students abroad, urging them to follow the party. 

The directive also provided instructions to “build a multidimensional contact network linking home and abroad — the motherland, embassies and consulates, overseas student groups, and the broad number of students abroad — so that they fully feel that the motherland cares.”
Amid this campaign, it has become increasingly risky for Chinese students abroad to criticize Chinese government policies, even within the privacy of the classroom. 

One Australian professor told Inside Higher Ed in January that on two separate occasions, Chinese students have told him that comments they made during his class were reported to authorities back in China — indicating that another student in the class had relayed that information.
Wang Dan, a professor of contemporary Chinese history and a participant in the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, has noted that Chinese students rarely speak up in discussion salons he holds in the United States — but that party sympathizers will show up to take photos and recordings of who attends and what is said at such events. 

In a 2017 New York Times op-ed, Wang called it a “campaign of fear and intimidation.”
Chinese students have also challenged academic freedom at American universities with growing frequency. 

Chinese student organizations are often directly involved in these efforts, mobilizing their members to express anger at speech that goes the against Chinese Communist Party line.
For example, in February 2017, the University of California, San Diego, announced that the commencement speaker that June would be the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader whom the Chinese Communist Party considers a dangerous separatist. 

The UC San Diego CSSA soon posted a response on Facebook expressing strong opposition to the invitation — and saying that they had consulted with the Chinese Consulate on the matter. 

The CSSA asked to meet with university administration and demanded that the Dalai Lama’s speech exclude any political content.
The UC San Diego administration allowed the Tibetan leader’s speech to proceed uninhibited.
In May 2017, Yang Shuping, an undergraduate at the University of Maryland, praised American democracy in a commencement address, saying that she enjoyed America’s “fresh air of free speech” compared to the repressive environment back in China. 

Her remarks went viral on the Chinese internet, and she faced a massive online backlash, including the posting of her family’s home address in China.
The University of Maryland CSSA created a video directly criticizing Yang’s remarks and calling them “rumor.” 

Zhu Lihan, a former president of the association, told a Chinese newspaper, “Insulting the motherland to grab attention is intolerable. The university’s support for such slandering speech is not only ill-considered, but also raises suspicion about other motives.”

Yang later apologized for her remarks.

Rogue Nation

Beijing Is Silencing Chinese-Australians
By ALEX JOSKE

Credit Sébastien Thibault
CANBERRA, Australia — On a September night in 2016, I took my seat at a theater in the heart of Canberra for a Chinese national day celebration organized by the pro-Beijing Chinese Students and Scholars Association. 

There was a commotion and all of the seats around me were suddenly filled by men in black suits communicating with walkie-talkies. 

They followed me into the bathroom and tried to have the theater’s security staff kick me out.
Earlier, I had reported for a student newspaper on Chinese government ties to the group and its efforts to censor anti-Communist Party material at my university. 

I later identified the men at the theater as members of the Chinese student association, and it was clear that the attempt to intimidate me was a result of my articles.
Beijing’s reach into Australia goes far beyond groups like the student association. 

Its interference in Australian society is becoming increasingly bolder. 

And as Australians debate how to respond, the voices of the Chinese-Australians alarmed by Beijing’s encroachment are being drowned out by an aggressive Chinese government campaign to silence critics here.
With so many Chinese-Australians left unheard, misunderstandings surrounding the Chinese-Australian community are rife. 

More than one million Australians claim Chinese ancestry, out of a total population of about 24 million.
The Chinese Communist Party is actively fostering in the Chinese-Australian community what the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, who died while in custody in China last year, called an “enemy mentality”: the idea that the liberal West is China’s enemy and that supporters of freedom are enemies, too. 

Those objecting to the Communist Party’s oppression, like pro-democracy activists, are widely referred to as “poison” or “hostile forces.”
Fear is among Beijing’s most potent weapons in silencing Chinese-Australians. 

Like me, other Chinese-Australian critics of Beijing are targets of threats and intimidation. 

Last year, a Sydney-based university professor, Feng Chongyi, was detained in China for a week. The Chinese-Australian artist Guo Jian was briefly detained in 2014 after creating a diorama of Tiananmen Square to commemorate the 1989 massacre.
China also monitors the social media accounts of dissidents in Australia, and many fear that their private messages and social networks might make them targets of the Chinese government. 

Badiucao, a Chinese-Australian cartoonist and street artist, has never revealed his face or real name out of fear.

Even those who avoid actively criticizing Beijing are affected. 

Last month, word spread of a Taiwanese waitress in Sydney who claimed that she had been asked by her boss at a Chinese hot-pot restaurant if she thought Taiwan belonged to China. 

“Definitely not,” she replied, and a few minutes later found herself without a job.
As part of Beijing’s campaign, Chinese-language media here, relied on by the many Chinese-Australians for whom English is a second language, are pressured into self-censoring. 

These news outlets avoid any criticism of the Communist Party. 

Beijing has also been quietly expanding its state-owned media across the globe, including into Australia, by buying stakes in local Chinese media. 

Posts on WeChat, a social media app owned by the Chinese conglomerate Tencent that is widely used among Australia’s Chinese, can be deleted at Beijing’s whim.
Beijing’s control of the Chinese-language news media helps to elevate the pro-Beijing voices here, while critics of Beijing find themselves with few public platforms. 

Prominent supporters of Beijing are rewarded by Beijing with trips to China.
Few Chinese organizations publicly opposing the Chinese Communist Party are left, their rallying power having been stunted by the lack of coverage by Chinese-language news outlets. 

And independent organizations have been taken over by pro-Beijing members, who then change the club’s mission.
Beijing’s domination of the conversation in the Chinese community gives the wider public a skewed view of Chinese-Australians. 

The rest of the country is left with the impression that Chinese-Australians are a unified bloc that supports Beijing. 

One right-wing commentator even wrote an article titled, “A Million Chinese Here May Not All Be on Our Side.” 

This mind-set affects Australia’s policymaking process.
Beijing’s agents here are also keen to remind Australians of this country’s history of racism against Chinese. 

The result is that when a Chinese-Australian is accused of having ties to Beijing, he may cry racism, saying that he’s being tarnished by connections to Beijing only because he’s ethnic Chinese. 

In the absence of balanced reporting in the Chinese-language media, many Australians are inclined to believe these claims.
A series of new bills in Parliament on foreign interference, including the introduction of a foreign-agents register and a ban on foreign political donations, would weaken Beijing’s levers of control among Chinese-Australians. 

It may also inspire new confidence among Chinese-Australians that our struggles are being recognized, that we are no longer being left to fend for ourselves in this fight against coercion.
Still, many Chinese-Australians feel frustrated by the way we are viewed and represented. 

All Chinese-Australians should have the right to voice their opinions without fearing reprisals by Beijing.
So-called Chinese community leaders who do not in fact represent most Chinese-Australians should be forthcoming about their ties to the Communist Party. 

And those who do not reveal their ties should be called out not just in English-language media but also in the Chinese-language press. 

Independent Chinese-Australian community groups should be supported.
The Australian government must do its part to put an end to Beijing’s coercive influence on the local Chinese-language news media and the broader Chinese community. 

Our government should use diplomatic and security channels to push back against pressure on the media and Beijing’s takeover of Chinese community groups. 

The independence and reach of publicly funded Mandarin and Cantonese news outlets should be ensured and expanded.
Chinese-Australians are not powerless. We need to speak up. 

But it’s also time for all Australians, regardless of ethnic background, to unite to protect the country’s sovereignty and dignity. 

If we are truly a nation of tolerance and freedom, all Australians should support Chinese-Australians’ freedom of expression.

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.

The Enemy Within: Chinese Fifth Column

On Campuses Far From China, Still Under Beijing’s Watchful Eye
By STEPHANIE SAUL

Students at the University of California, San Diego, where an organization of Chinese students is protesting the invitation of the Dalai Lama as a commencement speaker. 

SAN DIEGO — In the competition for marquee commencement speakers, the University of California, San Diego thought it had scored a coup this year — a Nobel Peace Prize winner, best-selling author and spiritual North Star to millions of people.
“We are honored to host His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama,” gushed Pradeep Khosla, the university’s chancellor, “and thankful that he will share messages of global compassion.”
Within hours of Mr. Khosla’s announcement, though, the university was blindsided by nasty remarks on Facebook and other social media sites: “Imagine how Americans would feel if someone invited Bin Laden,” said one.
At the center of the opposition was the U.C. San Diego chapter of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, which threatened “tough measures to resolutely resist the school’s unreasonable behavior.” 

The Chinese government accuses the Dalai Lama of promoting Tibetan independence from China, and if the student group’s message sounded a bit like the Beijing party line, that may have been no coincidence: The group said it had consulted with the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles on the matter.
China’s booming economy has increasingly allowed more of its young men and women to seek a college education in the West; 329,000 now study in the United States, more than five times the number recorded a decade ago. 

By far the largest contingent of foreign students, they can be an economic lifeline for colleges, since they usually pay full tuition, and they can provide a healthy dose of international diversity.
But Chinese students always bring to campus something else from home: the watchful eyes and heavy hand of the Chinese government, manifested through its ties to many of the 150-odd chapters of the Chinese Students and Scholars Associations.
The groups have worked in tandem with Beijing to promote a pro-Chinese agenda and tamp down anti-Chinese speech on Western campuses. 

At Columbia a decade ago, the club mobilized students to protest a presentation about human rights violations in China, urging them to “resolutely defend the honor and dignity of the Motherland.” 

At Duke, the group was accused of inciting a harassment campaign in 2008 against a Chinese student who tried to mediate between sides in a Tibet protest. 

More recently in Durham, England, the group acted at the behest of the Chinese government to censor comments at a forum on China-Hong Kong relations.
In many instances, members of the student group have been accused of spying.
The organization’s influence troubles scholars and human rights activists, who say it wields outsize sway over American campuses because of the sizable tuition paid by Chinese students abroad, a group recently exhorted by China’s government to increase their patriotism and devotion to the Communist Party.
“I basically don’t think that any student organizations that are controlled by their government — which clearly the C.S.S.A. is — should have a presence on foreign university campuses,” said Jeffrey Henderson, a professor of international development at the University of Bristol in England.
A Hong Kong expert, Dr. Henderson was invited to speak at a 2014 workshop at Durham University in England organized by the Chinese Students and Scholars and two other groups to discuss the Umbrella Movement — in which protesters had shut down streets in Hong Kong demonstrating against the Chinese government’s failure to hold democratic elections there.
Two days before the workshop, Dr. Henderson said, he received an email on behalf of the president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association stating that the Chinese Embassy in London was “very concerned that nothing should go on in the workshop that disturbs the harmonious relationship between Hong Kong and China.”
Dr. Henderson arrived with plans to ignore the embassy guidance. 

Yet he found the seminar’s Q. and A. session tightly controlled, permitting only written questions that had been vetted.

Meetings in Motels
For the most part, the clubs function as run-of-the-mill campus groups, providing transportation for new arrivals, sponsoring Lunar New Year celebrations and organizing bilingual job fairs. 

Joining the Chinese Students and Scholars Association on some campuses is competitive. 

Students are required to apply for spots on club committees, and being accepted confers a certain measure of prestige; members often trumpet it on their LinkedIn pages.
Neither the Chinese embassies in Washington and London nor the consulate in Los Angeles responded to questions about their ties to the student organizations.
Leo Yao, departing president of the student association’s chapter at U.C. San Diego, said the group’s only regular interaction with the government was an annual meeting at the consulate, during which student safety and campus events are discussed.
“So it’s true that we have connections with the consulate, but it’s not the kind of relations that many people say we have,” said Mr. Yao, a probability and statistics major from Zhuhai, China. 

“They think we represent the Chinese government, that we do things the Chinese government tells us to do, things like that, but that’s not true.”
Chinese Students and Scholars Association groups started to spread in the 1980s as the number of Chinese students studying abroad began to grow. 

“I came to the U.S. and thought, ‘Wow, great, I’m in a free country, now I hope that everything is cool and happy,’” said Frank Tian Xie, who arrived in the late 1980s to study chemistry at Purdue University. 

“But I found out that the government extended their control to even Chinese students in America.”
Dr. Xie, now a professor at the University of South Carolina, Aiken, said the Chinese Consulate in Chicago tried to handpick officers of the organization and periodically sent a representative to meet with students in a motel room.
Li Fengzhi, a longtime employee of the Chinese Ministry of State Security who came to the United States in 2003 as a graduate student at the University of Denver, said that the Chinese government did not see the group so much as a spying operation, but rather as a propaganda and “information collection organization.” 

Mr. Li eventually defected and was debriefed by F.B.I. counterintelligence agents about the group’s activities.
The ties between the Chinese government and the student groups are not exactly secret. 

At some colleges, like the University of Connecticut and the University of North Texas, the groups’ websites mention that they are supported by or affiliated with Chinese consulates.
Michigan Technological University’s group acknowledges a relationship with the Chinese Embassy, then adds, “However, C.S.S.A. will not participate in any political revolutions, unless in special conditions.”
But their relationship can also be covert. 

In the 1990s, Canadian immigration officials accused a leader of the group’s chapter at Concordia University in Montreal of using funds from the Chinese government and supplying Chinese diplomats with information regarding pro-democracy Chinese students.
In 2005, authorities in Belgium said they had identified another Chinese spy — a member of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at Leuven University — coordinating industrial espionage agents throughout Europe, according to an unclassified 2011 F.B.I. report.
Perry Link, a China expert and co-editor of the English version of “The Tiananmen Papers,” a compilation of secret Chinese documents relating to the Tiananmen Square protests, characterized the student organization as “a tool of the government’s foreign ministry” that, among other activities, keeps tabs on unpatriotic speech among Chinese students.
“The effect of that surveillance is less that certain people are caught and punished and more that virtually all Chinese students know they could be reported and, therefore, watch what they say in public fora,” said Dr. Link, now a professor at the University of California, Riverside.

Off-Limits Topics
At Columbia in 2007, a Canadian human rights lawyer, David Matas, arrived to find heavy security and a protest by the Chinese Students and Scholars Association against his presentation on China’s mistreatment of adherents of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that combines portions of Buddhism, meditation and exercise and is banned by the government.
Later, a threatening email — apparently directed at Mr. Matas — was sent to the Columbia group’s website, stating, “Anyone who offends China will be executed no matter how far away they are,” Mr. Matas said recently.
Last month the Columbia chapter held its annual China Prospects Conference at the Low Memorial Library at Columbia, focusing on economic policy and sustainable development. 

Several dozen government, academic and business leaders spoke to an audience of mostly Chinese students, and the agenda avoided third-rail topics such as human rights, Taiwan and the Dalai Lama.
A conference program said it had “full support from the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China.”
Several colleges where the Chinese Students and Scholars Association openly acknowledges ties to the Chinese government, including Columbia, said such ties did not violate any college rules. 

But colleges have found themselves caught up in Chinese politics just the same.
After the University of Calgary conferred an honorary degree on the Dalai Lama in 2009, the Chinese government withdrew Calgary from its list of accredited international universities for a year. 

Enrollment from China dipped slightly, then grew again after accreditation was restored and is now a quarter of the university’s total international students.
At U.C. San Diego, about 3,500 undergraduates hail from China, or more than 10 percent of the student body. 

They pay more than twice what California students pay, providing critical revenue at a time when the University of California system is financially pressured.
Last year, Mr. Khosla, the chancellor, laid the groundwork for the Dalai Lama’s speech, meeting with him in Dharamsala, India, where the Dalai Lama has lived since fleeing Tibet after a 1959 uprising. Through his office, Mr. Khosla declined to be interviewed.

Chancellor Pradeep Khosla of the University of California, San Diego met with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, in October 2016.

Other than Mr. Yao, the exiting club president, members of the group declined requests for interviews. 

But some other Chinese students said they also were offended by the Dalai Lama’s invitation. 

At the Price Center, a campus student center and food court, several who were eating lunch one recent afternoon predicted protests on June 17, commencement day. 

One said his parents were going to miss his graduation because they refused to be present for the Dalai Lama’s speech.
Shiwei Terry Zhou, a junior from Wuhan, China, said the students felt targeted by the university’s decision. 

“We make good grades. We don’t make trouble. We pay a lot,” Mr. Zhou said. “What is the motivation?”
Despite the pressure, the university has not backed down. 

At a meeting with Mr. Khosla, members of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association asked that the university at least refrain from referring to the Dalai Lama as a “spiritual leader” and that he be prevented from discussing politics.
“Rebranding is very important so we won’t take this personally, maybe,” Mr. Yao said.
The university has not said if it will comply with those demands. 

In a statement, it said it has always “served as a forum for discussion and interaction on important public policy issues and respects the rights of individuals to agree or disagree as we consider issues of our complex world.”

Australia's Chinese Fifth Column

The 'patriotic education' of Chinese students at Australian universities
Alexander Joske and Philip Wen

The day before a gala celebration marking China's National Day was held in Canberra last week, organisers found dozens of posters they had put up at the Australian National University to promote the event defaced with fluorescent green paint.
In large Chinese characters, vandals had smeared the words "Tiananmen Students" along with the numbers "six" and "four", a reference to the Communist Party's darkest of stains: peaceful, student-led pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square suppressed in a hail of gunfire and bloodshed on June 4, 1989.
As a crowd of bemused onlookers gathered, the event's incensed organisers, from the university's Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA), hastily tore down the defaced posters.
A Chinese student at ANU, Erica Zhao, said, "It's quite cowardly to vandalise the posters behind people's backs," adding, "Australia is a place for free speech. If they felt bad about the posters they could have just spoken out rather than play tricks.
"It [the Tiananmen Square massacre] was not ANU Chinese students' fault."
The act of vandalism may appear innocuous in isolation, but campus spats of a political nature among Chinese students in Australia are exactly the type of incidents Beijing increasingly seeks to monitor.
As larger numbers of Chinese students study abroad, and are exposed to unrestricted and frequently critical media coverage of the Chinese government, greater efforts are being made to ensure they do not return with new-found opposition to the Communist Party.
A directive handed down in January by the Ministry of Education emphasised the importance of "patriotic education" in ensuring all university students – even those studying overseas – "always follow the party".

The defaced China National Day posters at Australian National University.

"Assemble the broad numbers of students abroad as a positive patriotic energy," the document says. "Build a multidimensional contact network linking home and abroad — the motherland, embassies and consulates, overseas student groups, and the broad number of students abroad — so that they fully feel that the motherland cares."
Official CSSA chapters which maintain close links with Chinese embassies and consulates proliferate on university campuses worldwide, and are increasingly vocal in countries with large Chinese student populations such as Australia.Cheng Jingye, China's new ambassador to Australia,with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in August. 

The Chinese embassy and consulates in Australia routinely help fund and provide venues for major CSSA student events. 

The CSSA at Sydney University, for example, says on its website that one of its key aims is to help the "Education Office of the Chinese embassy to organise all forms of activities relating to Chinese students".
One former CSSA executive at an Australian university told Fairfax Media that executives from universities all around the country are flown, at the embassy's cost, for regular conferences with Chinese officials on collaborating with the embassy and on the latest party doctrines.
The association's executives are prolific in their output of pro-government statements, with former president Zhu Runbang recently penning an article for state-owned media company China Radio International entitled, "Overseas Chinese and Chinese Students in Australia Support the Chinese Government's Legal Rights in the South China Sea."
Last year, the president of the ANU CSSA intimidated and yelled at staff in ANU's pharmacy for stocking the Epoch Times, a dissident newspaper with ties to the Falun Gong, until they let him throw the papers out.
Mention of the Tiananmen massacre is strictly censored online and in school textbooks in mainland China, and for many young Chinese students they only learn of the full extent of the events of 1989 when they move overseas for study.
The defaced posters incident at ANU appeared to result in a heightened security presence at the "I Love China 2.0" Chinese National Day gala, held at the Canberra Theatre on Thursday night with Chinese ambassador Cheng Jingye the keynote speaker.
A group of men in black suits, communicating via walkie talkies, appeared to be operating independently to uniformed security guards at the venue.
Focusing their attention on attendees they considered unwelcome, they repeatedly followed and harassed a student journalist for ANU's campus newspaper Woroni, even tailing him when he went to the toilet.
Both the CSSA and Canberra Theatre declined to comment on the security situation at the event.
The night's programme featured schoolchildren waving Chinese flags as they chorused "this is your birthday, my Motherland". 

Another patriotic song belted out the line "the black-eyed, black-haired, and yellow-skinned are forever the descendants of the dragon".
And in a video package aired that evening, an interview with a young ANU student was shown as a shining example for all those watching. 

Having immigrated at age five and holding Australian citizenship, she was asked whether she considered herself more Chinese or Australian.
"More Chinese," came her quick reply.