Chinese Peril

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

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

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


Nilsson Jones@nilssonjones_

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

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

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

Criminal Negligence

The United States Is Not Doing Enough to Fight Chinese Influence
Beijing’s authoritarian political warfare demands a strong response.
BY THOMAS G. MAHNKEN 

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence addresses the Hudson Institute in Washington on Oct. 4. 

Earlier this month, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence delivered a speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington that drew needed attention to China’s efforts to influence the United States. 

“Beijing has mobilized covert actors, front groups, and propaganda outlets to shift Americans’ perception of Chinese policy,” he noted. 

The remarks came on the heels of President Donald Trump’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly, where he called out Beijing for interfering in U.S. domestic politics.
Although new to many Americans, none of this came as a surprise to those who study Chinese influence operations abroad. 

Extensive research by enterprising and courageous scholars such as Anne-Marie Brady, Clive Hamilton, and John Garnaut has documented a pattern of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) activity in New Zealand and Australia, and, more recently, reports by U.S. scholars and journalists have begun to document the influence of Chinese government-affiliated Confucius Institutes on American college campuses, Chinese funding of universities and think tanks, the distribution of CCP propaganda through U.S. news sources, and lobbying efforts by former U.S. elected officials on behalf of the Chinese government. 

These efforts have sought to shape academic, political, and public discourse in ways that favor the CCP and muzzle debate over topics such as Taiwan, Tibet, and China’s continental and maritime claims, along with the CCP’s treatment of the Chinese people and Chinese economic practices.
It has become apparent that the CCP has been active not only in the continental United States, but also in the United States’ island territories of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa, along with the Western Pacific states that have compacts of free association with the United States—Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. 

There, the CCP has used economic power to buy political influence, to the detriment of the United States.
Exposure of this Chinese activity is welcome but by itself insufficient. 

These tactics are part of a broader strategy to strengthen the rule of the CCP at home and influence attitudes toward it abroad in ways that suit Beijing’s interests. 

As my colleagues Ross Babbage and Toshi Yoshihara and I argued earlier this year, the CCP’s tactics are part of a broader authoritarian political warfare strategy that Beijing is waging against the United States, its allies, and others. 

Its features include:

• A clear vision, ideology, and strategy.
• The use of overt and covert means to influence, coerce, intimidate, divide, and subvert rival countries in order to force their compliance.
• Strong centralized command of political warfare operations by the CCP through organizations such as the United Front Work Department.
• Capable bureaucratic instruments and implementation mechanisms.
• Tight control over the domestic population.
• Detailed understanding of targeted countries.
• Employment of a comprehensive range of instruments in coordinated actions.
• Willingness to accept a high level of political risk from the exposure of its activities.

Such campaigns are particularly difficult to counter because they exploit conceptual and bureaucratic seams in the United States and other democratic states. 

Whereas Americans tend to see a big distinction between peace and war, with peace as the norm, China’s leaders view struggle as the normal state of affairs. 

Whereas U.S. law draws boundaries between government and nongovernment actions, and between overt and covert ones, the Chinese leadership frequently ignores such distinctions. 

Identifying and responding to authoritarian political warfare is thus challenging.
More needs to be done to expose Chinese influence operations in the United States and abroad to build additional independent, nonpartisan sources of information on Chinese influence activities. 

Bringing to light such operations is a vital predicate to discussion and action.
The discussion of Chinese influence activities needs to be taken beyond elites in Washington to business leaders and to the American people. 

The public needs to understand the CCP’s efforts for what they are: an attempt by a foreign government to infringe on the sovereignty of the United States. 

Such activities ultimately pose a threat to U.S. values and institutions, whether through limiting free speech in the classroom or currying favor with business or political elites in ways that are harmful to U.S. interests.
Finally, the United States and its allies need to formulate counterstrategies to respond to Chinese influence operations. 

Any such efforts must have both defensive and offensive elements. 

On the defensive side of the coin, perhaps the most important way to reduce vulnerability is through increased transparency. 

Absent the ability to identify and expose the perpetrators, enablers, and mechanisms of manipulation, targets of political warfare may not realize they are being influenced—or, if they do, may not be able to engage in effective denial or credibly threaten serious punishment.
Defense alone is unlikely to be enough, however, and should be complemented by measures to raise the price of manipulating Western public and political opinion. 

Although authoritarian regimes might be difficult to influence and better equipped to address political warfare threats in comparison to their more open and less centralized democratic counterparts, they are arguably more fearful of those threats because of their tenuous legitimacy as well as their extreme concentration of wealth and power. 

Consequently, efforts to introduce new information into relatively closed societies—from sharing alternative perspectives on current events that differ from government-approved narratives to exposing political and economic acts of corruption—can be a method of competition that imposes significant costs on regimes that constantly worry about maintaining domestic control. 

The CCP has, for example, shown considerable sensitivity to the exposure of corruption among its leaders. 

It has also sought to exert a growing measure of control over Chinese civil society, including churches and other groups. 

Efforts, particularly by nongovernmental organizations, to provide the Chinese public with accurate sources of information may go a long way to counter the CCP’s efforts.
As the United States responds to this challenge, it needs to be careful as much as possible to achieve and maintain a political consensus in favor of action. 

Unlike the issue of Russian meddling, which has become dangerously polarized, to the extent possible Chinese political interference should remain outside the realm of partisan politics. 

It is a threat that demands a nonpartisan diagnosis and bipartisan response.

Australia And New Zealand Are Ground Zero For Chinese Influence

Australia's Quislings: More than 40 former and current Australian politicians are doing the bidding of China's government.

By ROB SCHMITZ

From a hill overlooking Canberra, Australia's landlocked capital, Clive Hamilton points to the National Carillon, a bell tower that happens to be striking noon, then to a massive glass and concrete monolith.
"That's where ASIO lives," he says, using the common shorthand for Australia's intelligence agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization.
He then points out Australia's federal police building and to a compound in the middle, where China built its embassy.
"They picked that spot, and they have a lot of clout, they have a vast compound, and they kind of get what they want around here," he says.
When Hamilton, a professor at Charles Sturt University, first tried to publish his new book, Silent Invasion: China's Influence in Australia, the fear of China's Communist Party crept in, he says. Hamilton's original publisher, Allen and Unwin, informed him last November that it was canceling the book's publication because it feared legal action from what it called "Beijing's agents of influence."
"I was shocked," remembers Hamilton. 

"I felt betrayed. We knew this was a difficult subject. We knew that Beijing has some powerful friends in Australia. We knew that the Chinese government would be highly critical of the book and of me. Of course, it was great comfort to have a really good, solid publisher behind me, and all of a sudden I was left out there on the battlefield, looking over my shoulder, saying, 'Where is my support?' "

The original publisher of Clive Hamilton's book detailing Chinese influence in Australia canceled publication for fear of legal threats.

The episode was a vindication of the central thesis of Hamilton's book — that China's Communist Party has infiltrated Australia — but not one he expected to have to deal with personally.
"It's a massive red flag," says Hamilton. 

"And if Australia capitulates on this question, in other words, no book seriously critical of [the] Chinese Communist Party will be published in Australia. I mean, this essentially means we've sacrificed our democratic freedoms."

Australia fights back
China's rise under the Communist Party has had a profound impact on Australia. 

The country is Australia's biggest trading partner by a long shot, accounting for nearly a quarter of Australia's trade. 

China's demand for commodities like iron ore in the early 2000s fueled a mining boom in Australia that created jobs and steadily pushed up wages. 

Later, as China's urban consumer class grew, young professionals from Shanghai and Beijing turned to Australian steak, milk and wine. 

Nearly a third of Australian exports now head to China.
Wealthy visitors from China frequently travel to Australia as tourists or to buy property, leading to a historic rise in home values along the country's coasts.
But public intellectuals like Hamilton, and politicians, are beginning to question whether these economic benefits have come at too steep a price. 

Another Australian publisher eventually released Hamilton's book. 

But the impact a powerful foreign autocracy had on his work, inside his own supposedly free and democratic home country, left him shaken. 

It was a reminder of how deeply China's Communist Party has infiltrated Australian society.
Silent Invasion identifies more than 40 former and current Australian politicians who are doing the bidding of China's government.

China's Communist Party has infiltrated Chinese-Australian associations devoted to students and scholars, writers and religious activities. 

"From taking over Chinese associations, buying political influence, promoting Beijing-loyal people into elected political positions, buying influence in universities by sponsoring think tanks, cyber-intrusion operations, you name it, they're doing it," he says.
But Australia is beginning to fight back. 

Last December, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced Australia's biggest overhaul in espionage and intelligence laws in decades, after a senator accepted illegal donations from a Chinese businessman with close ties to China's Communist Party.

Australia's former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced his country's biggest overhaul in espionage and intelligence laws in decades last December, after a senator accepted illegal donations from a Chinese businessman with close ties to China's Communist Party.

"Foreign powers are making unprecedented and increasingly sophisticated attempts to influence the political process both here and abroad," said Turnbull, announcing the bill. 

New laws, he said, "will protect our way of life, they will protect and strengthen our democracy and they will ensure that Australians make decisions based on the wishes of Australians."
The new package of laws, which Australia's Parliament passed in June, will require anyone in Australia working on behalf of a foreign power to declare that connection to the government. 

But in the case of Chinese citizens, state connections can be tricky to gauge.
"China's different in scale and it's different also in that it can integrate the private sector, education, civil society — all arms, if you like — of the state and the community with the objectives of the Chinese Communist Party," says Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at Australian National University. 

"We're not really dealing with a normal country here. We're dealing with an authoritarian party state, where in fact Chinese citizens owe a higher loyalty to the party than to the state itself. So what we're dealing with here is the largest secret organization in human history."

"We're not really dealing with a normal country here. We're dealing with an authoritarian party state, where in fact Chinese citizens owe a higher loyalty to the party than to the state itself. So what we're dealing with here is the largest secret organization in human history," says Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at Australian National University in Canberra.

Medcalf says the problem is not China's people, but its Communist Party. 

Some of the most vulnerable victims of the party, he says, are Chinese people who left their country to live in democracies like Australia and New Zealand.

China's inroads in New Zealand
More than 1,000 miles across the Tasman Sea, Chen Weijian rests on his balcony, listening to the cicadas in a leafy suburb of Auckland, New Zealand.
He moved from China in 1991, escaping imprisonment for working on a pro-democracy newspaper. He restarted the newspaper in New Zealand, but even there, Beijing caught up with him: A pro-Chinese Communist Party newspaper in Auckland sued him for defamation after he criticized it for being too pro-Beijing. 

Ongoing legal fees forced his paper into bankruptcy in 2012.
"Their paper was funded by businesses supported by China's government," Chen says. 

"So an overseas Communist Party's propaganda wing crushed our democratic newspaper here in New Zealand."

Chen Weijian fled Hangzhou, China, for New Zealand in 1991, escaping imprisonment in China for working on a pro-democracy newspaper. Beijing caught up with him even thousands of miles away and sued his New Zealand newspaper out of existence.

Ever since, Chen says, he has watched as China's Communist Party makes deeper inroads into New Zealand's society and government, becoming a major trade partner and expanding beyond trade to finance, telecommunications, military cooperation and cooperation on the Antarctic. 

Last year, local media reported that a prominent, Chinese-born member of New Zealand's Parliament, Jian Yang, had lied to authorities about his education background on his citizenship application for New Zealand.
Yang, a member of the National Party, which led the government from 2008 to 2017, had worked for 15 years in China's military intelligence sector. 

He studied English at the People's Liberation Army Air Force Engineering University, taught at the college for five years after graduating and then obtained a master's degree at the People's Liberation Army University of Foreign Languages in Luoyang, one of China's best-known military intelligence schools.
Later, at the same institute, Yang taught English to students who were studying to intercept and decipher English-language communications on behalf of Chinese military intelligence.

China's most famous mole: Last year, New Zealand media reported that a prominent Chinese-born member of Parliament, Jian Yang, had lied to authorities about his education background on his citizenship application for New Zealand. He had taught and been a student at a Chinese military intelligence school.

Yang declined an interview request from NPR. 

He admitted to journalists last year that he was a member of China's Communist Party, though he insisted he has not been an active member since he left China in 1994. 

He has steered clear of the media spotlight since the scandal hit.
"Jian Yang is not just connected to China's Communist Party," says Chen Weijian. 

"He was sent here by them to spy on New Zealand. But people in Yang's party — the National Party — all think he's good for New Zealand-China relations. A lot of his party's donations come through him, and he often leads government trips to China to make lucrative deals there."
Yang, who has served in Parliament since 2011 and remains in office, played a prominent role during official visits to China in 2013 and 2016, sitting alongside then-Prime Minister John Key opposite Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and serving at times as interpreter during bilateral meetings.
As Yang's political influence grew, so did New Zealand's economic dependence on China. 

In 2008, New Zealand became the first developed country to sign a free trade agreement with China. 

As a result, trade between the two economies has tripled in the past decade, largely because of China's thirst for imported New Zealand milk: A quarter of all imported milk in China comes from the tiny island nation.
"A lot of countries ask: 'Why did China negotiate a free trade agreement with New Zealand? They're so small,' " says Charles Finny, a consultant with the Saunders Unsworth lobbying firm in Wellington who served as the lead negotiator for New Zealand in its free trade agreement with China. "The reason, I think, was that by negotiating an FTA with New Zealand, you learn how to do the negotiation. That's pretty good practice for when you actually get to negotiate with bigger players, and if you make a mistake, it's not going to be fatal for your economy."

Charles Finny served as the lead negotiator in New Zealand's free trade agreement with China. He believes China is using his country as a testing ground for diplomatic relations with other developed nations. "We're small, nonthreatening," he explains. "China, I think, wants to learn from us about how to deal with other, larger players."

Finny believes the same to be true in politics. 

He says China has most likely been using New Zealand as a testing ground for diplomatic relations with other developed nations.
"We're small, nonthreatening," he explains. 

"We're not as close to the United States. China, I think, wants to learn from us about how to deal with other, larger players. It's very common for Chinese leaders when they're just about to be appointed to a big position to come to New Zealand to learn about democracy, to learn about how to deal with the media, to learn there are going to be some protests — all these things that are going to be a much bigger factor in bigger relationships, they get to learn how to deal with it here."

The weakest link in the "Five Eyes"
After New Zealand's intelligence agency began looking into Yang's background in 2016, he was removed from parliamentary select committees on foreign affairs, defense and trade. 

But he hung on to his seat in Parliament, leaving some wondering why.
"The answer to that is not something that can be given today, but it is an answer that will soon have to come from our country and our system as to what our response is," Winston Peters, New Zealand's deputy prime minister and foreign minister, tells NPR. 

"At that level of growing public interest — and I would think intelligence interest as well — plus the shared intelligence from our closer allies, one would be naive in thinking that our response would not be forthcoming."

Some wonder why Jian Yang still serves in New Zealand's Parliament after questions arose over his connections to China's military intelligence. "The answer to that is not something that can be given today," Winston Peters (above), New Zealand's deputy prime minister and foreign minister, tells NPR.

Analysts in the U.S. and Australia have suggested the Yang case is evidence that China is exploiting New Zealand as a weak link in what's known as the "Five Eyes," the intelligence alliance including the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. 

This angers Peters. 

He is the longest-serving parliamentarian in New Zealand's history and has long been vocal about his country's dependence on China, but he draws the line when his country is criticized for being used as a political tool for the Chinese.
"This country turned up to two world wars, two years before the United States on both occasions," he points out. 

"So we don't like that sort of talk down here."

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping "is running China in crisis mode," says New Zealand academic Anne-Marie Brady, "and China under Xi is following a very ambitious, a very assertive foreign policy."

"Magic weapons"
The work of a fellow New Zealander has shone the brightest spotlight on how cozier relationships with the Chinese government may be threatening New Zealand's democratic system.
In a report released last year, Anne-Marie Brady, a University of Canterbury professor in Christchurch, New Zealand, takes a deep dive into the activities of the Chinese Communist Party's United Front Work Department — an agency Chinese dictator Xi has revived, directing it to guide, buy and coerce political influence abroad.
The report, "Magic Weapons: China's Political Influence Activities Under Xi Jinping," includes a comprehensive analysis of China's foreign influence operations under the Communist Party.
"Xi is running China in crisis mode," says Brady, "and China under Xi is following a very ambitious, a very assertive foreign policy. The United Front Work, when aimed at the outside world, is meant to support that."
In her report, Brady, a global fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., examines how the United Front operates abroad, helping influence media, politicians and members of the Chinese diaspora. 

Her detailed investigation of China's influence operations in New Zealand includes discussion of Yang and other Chinese-born members of Parliament and the fundraising efforts they're involved in for their respective political parties.
As she began researching United Front activities since Xi Jinping came to power five years ago, she says, she felt an obligation to write her report so other countries would understand the nature of the threat.
Brady's report has attracted the attention of governments and policy experts throughout the developed world. 

Earlier this year, Australia's Parliament invited her to speak, and she gave three talks in one day during a visit to Washington, D.C.
Her work has also attracted the attention of Chinese authorities. 

When she spoke at Australia's Parliament, Brady announced her office and home had both been burgled and that before one of the break-ins, she received a letter warning that she would be attacked.
"Items related to my work were taken, while valuables were not. It was a pretty unusual kind of burglary," Brady tells NPR.
Brady's laptops, phones and flash drives were stolen — everything, she says, that was directly related to her research into Chinese Communist Party influence operations in New Zealand. 

But Brady is continuing to investigate China's influence operations.
"If a country like New Zealand — a fiercely independent, democratic country like New Zealand — if we can't protect sovereignty and uphold the integrity of our political system at the same time as maintaining a positive relationship with China, then we've entered a very dangerous era in global politics," she says. 

"It should be possible for a small state or a medium-sized state or a large state to say to another state: 'It's not OK for you interfere in my politics' and continue to maintain a positive relationship with that nation."
In the summary of her report, Brady writes that democracies have magic weapons, too: the right to choose governments; checks on power; freedom of speech and association and a free press. 

Now, she writes, is the time to use them.

China's State Terrorism

Fingers Point to China After Break-Ins Target New Zealand Professor

By Charlotte Graham-McLay

Prof. Anne-Marie Brady’s focus on the Chinese Communist Party’s growing influence overseas has prompted the February burglary of her home in Christchurch, New Zealand.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A burglary targeting a New Zealand professor who has examined the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in Western countries has drawn the interest of Interpol and other police agencies.
Prof. Anne-Marie Brady, a China specialist at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, said her home was burglarized in February while she and her family were out. 

The thief or thieves ignored a glass jar of cash and other valuables, she said, in favor of an “old, broken” laptop, on which she had conducted her most recent research, and a “cheap” cellphone the professor had used on travels to China.
There was strong circumstantial evidence that agents of Beijing were responsible.
Peter Mattis, a former C.I.A. analyst and now a China Program fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, said the burglary, along with previous break-ins at her office, meant there was “only one likely culprit for this,” referring to China.
Ms. Brady’s high profile on matters of China’s influence worldwide meant “intimidating her into silence would in a sense be a major win” for the country.
Ms. Brady’s recent paper, “Magic Weapons,” was published last September. 

It identified categories of political-influence activities by China in Western democracies, laid out what Ms. Brady said was the Chinese Communist Party’s blueprint for conducting such activities worldwide, and examined New Zealand as a case study of Chinese influence across most spheres of public life.
When Ms. Brady returned home on the day of the burglary, bed covers were rumpled and papers strewn about, but her husband’s laptop was left untouched. 

She said that it appeared to be a “psychological operation” and the latest in a series of incidents targeting her over her work. 

She said her computer’s hard drive had been tampered with when she was previously in China, and that Communist Party officials questioned people she spoke with there.
Before the February burglary, she said, she received a letter warning her she would be attacked.
Clive Hamilton, a professor at Charles Sturt University in Canberra and author of a book on China’s influence in Australia, said that if evidence emerged that Chinese agents were involved in the burglary and office break-ins, it should act as “a cattle prod to the New Zealand body politic” about its relationship with Beijing.
That relationship has come under scrutiny over the past year among the “Five Eyes” intelligence sharing partnership, of which New Zealand is a member, along with the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia.
Ms. Brady’s paper was published around the time that a New Zealand lawmaker, Jian Yang, was forced to deny he had been a Chinese spy. 

Yang, who said he had merely taught English to spies in China, remains in Parliament.
At the time Ms. Brady’s paper was published, New Zealand’s political leaders played down its findings, but those findings struck a chord globally. 

Her paper was cited in government committee hearings in the United States and Australia — which in June introduced national security legislation banning foreign interference in politics. 

Ms. Brady said she had received “more requests to speak around the world than I could fulfill in a lifetime.”
After the report’s release, Ms. Brady’s office at the university was broken into. 

After her house was burglarized in February, the police began investigating two previous break-ins at her workplace.
The New Zealand police said in a statement that Interpol was aiding in their investigation. 

The New Zealand Herald reported that the country’s Security Intelligence Service, which has a counterespionage mandate, was also involved in the inquiry and had swept Ms. Brady’s office for listening devices. 

But the agency itself declined to comment.
Paul Buchanan, a former Pentagon analyst who is the director of 36th Parallel Assessments, a security consultancy in Auckland, New Zealand, said the involvement of Interpol and the local security service meant that the perpetrators of the burglary and break-ins “are abroad at this moment, or are agents of a foreign entity.”
“Everything in the New Zealand government’s response points to a state, a state-sponsored entity, or a foreign criminal organization being involved with this,” he said.
Members of the China research community in the United States and Australia said they were rattled by the case and had beefed up their own security because of it.
“People advising me on my security have been quite alarmed,” Mr. Hamilton, the Australian academic, said of the burglary of Ms. Brady’s home. 

“If China is targeting her, there’s a good chance they’re targeting me.”
While Ms. Brady said she was not frightened and would not back down from her research, Mr. Hamilton said a harassment campaign against her could have a broader target.
“We have to think about the ripple effects of the intimidation, and part of the intention is to send a message to other people who might be critical of the Communist Party,” he said.
Han Lianchao, a former pro-democracy activist in China, who has since worked as a Senate aide and China commentator in the United States, called Ms. Brady’s case unusual, but added if China’s involvement was proved, it would reflect “a pattern of intimidation that is being expanded from the domestic to the international,” and included kidnappings of dissident Chinese citizens abroad.
He said the Chinese state news media had in the past two or three years started to openly advocate “a hooligan spirit” in protecting its national interests in foreign countries.
New Zealand has become increasingly dependent on China as a market for its farm products, especially dairy goods, and the two countries have been in talks to expand a free-trade agreement signed in 2008.
New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, would not comment on the case this week, citing the police investigation; she had earlier told The Herald that she would take action if evidence showed a foreign power was behind the break-ins.
The Chinese Embassy in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, declined to comment on the case.
Ms. Brady said the government’s silence was “starting to look like procrastination.”
She said New Zealand’s government needed to reach a “level of respect” in its relationship with China “where we can point out things we don’t like.”

Hillary Clinton says China's foreign power grab a new global battle

Experts are sounding the alarm in Australia and New Zealand about Chinese efforts to gain political power and influence policy decisions
By Ben Doherty and Eleanor Ainge Roy

Former US secretary of state and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks in Auckland, New Zealand on Monday night.

China’s attempt to gain political power and influence in foreign countries is “a new global battle”, Hillary Clinton has warned.
Speaking to an audience in New Zealand on Monday night, the former US secretary of state and presidential candidate said Chinese interference in domestic policy was apparent in Australia and New Zealand as well as the US.
“In Australia and here in New Zealand experts are sounding the alarm about Chinese efforts to gain political power and influence policy decisions,” Clinton said.
“[Academic] Anne-Marie Brady of the University of Canterbury has rightly called this a new global battle, and it’s just getting started. We need to take it seriously.”
New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, told reporters Clinton’s statements about China were not new.
Clinton’s comments follow testimony from the Australian academic Clive Hamilton to the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China that Beijing was waging a “campaign of psychological warfare” against Australia, as America’s most significant ally in the region, undermining democracy and cowing free speech.
Hamilton said Australia was being subjected to Chinese Communist party-sponsored operations of “subversion, cyber intrusions and harassment on the high seas”.
“Beijing knows that it cannot bully the United States – in the current environment the consequences would be unpredictable and probably counterproductive – so it is instead pressuring its allies,” Hamilton said.

New Zealand’s foreign minister, Winston Peters, was due to outline the government’s budget plans for foreign affairs on Tuesday, with some tipping greater spending on the Pacific following his announcement of an increased focus on the region earlier this year.
On Tuesday Australia’s Lowy Institute released its Power Index, confirming China’s rising power and influence across the Asia-Pacific.
America remains the Asia-Pacific’s dominant power, but money, influence and might were shifting from west to east, the index found.
And Donald’s Trump’s political power is a liability for the world’s superpower. 

The US ranks 13th on Lowy’s list of political leadership, equal with Cambodia’s authoritarian and controversial prime minister Hun Sen. 

China heads that category: Xi Jinping has recently been been successful in removing term limits for his position, paving the way for him to be dictator for life.
The Asia-Pacific would emerge as the globe’s dominant region in coming years, the Lowy report said. 

Within a decade, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in Asia, just over 10% will live in the West.
“Much of the world’s future economic growth will come from Asia – but so will the world’s future challenges,” the report argued. 

“Asia is already the location of America’s only true peer competitor, China, as well as the world’s most dangerous country, North Korea.”
Lowy’s new analytical tool – the product of two years’ work – measures power across 25 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, stretching west as far as Pakistan, north to Russia, and across the Pacific to the United States. 

Power is assessed across 114 indicators: including military, economic, and natural resources; diplomatic and cultural influence; trading relationships; capacity to deter real or potential threats; and defence networks.
The index produced using the tool found that the US remained the pre-eminent regional power. 

But China was rising rapidly and closing in on American dominance. 

China ranked higher for diplomatic influence and economic relationships in the region, but the US was dominant in defence networks, military capability and cultural influence.
The US and China are currently locked in tense trade talks that -- despite the positive spin being promoted by both countries -- appear locked in several fundamental impasses, especially over tariffs, strategic industry subsidies, and technology exports.
The index ranked Japan and India as major powers in the region, but found they were moving in opposite directions: India’s young, growing workforce contrasted with Japan’s wealthy but ageing population.
Russia, Australia, South Korea and Singapore were the leading “middle powers”.

Chinese Peril

Interview: ‘Australia is a Very Valuable Prize For The CCP’
By Kurban Niyaz

Author Clive Hamilton in an undated photo.

Australian author and professor of public ethics Clive Hamilton’s new book, Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia, was initially turned down by three publishers citing fears of reprisals from Beijing. 

Finally published in February 2018, Silent Invasion investigates the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence and interference operations in Australia, the structure of the party’s overseas influence network, and the techniques it uses. 

In the book, Hamilton asserts that Australia’s elites, and parts of the country’s large Chinese-Australian diaspora, have been mobilized by Beijing to gain access to politicians, limit academic freedom, intimidate critics, gather information for Chinese intelligence agencies, and organize protests against Australian government policy. 

He recently spoke with RFA’s Uyghur Service about what he believes are China’s sharp power goals in Australia.

RFA: Why did you choose the word “invasion” for your title?
Clive Hamilton: I'm really talking about an invasion of the influence of the CCP into Australia and throughout Australia's political and social institutions. 

And it's a silent invasion because it has been done secretly, covertly, underneath the radar. 

And that's why it's so insidious ... the influence of the Chinese Communist Party has been secretive and subtle.

RFA: China’s emergence as a new economic power comes amid the expansion of its influence as a “sharp power.” How does sharp power help China to silence overseas dissidents and criticism of the CCP?
Clive Hamilton: Beijing's objective is to ... pacify criticism of Beijing's actions and Beijing's policies. 

If it succeeds in doing that through this campaign of influence in Australia, it will essentially make Australia not so much a client state, but a country which is unwilling to resist whatever Beijing does—for example, in the South China Sea—and essentially succumbs to Beijing's demands. 

And we've already seen some of that happening in the business community and in the political arena. 

Beijing already exerts a great deal of influence in our major political parties, especially the Labor Party. 

So that is what I was drawing attention to in the book.
I think for many years the first objective of the Chinese Communist Party in Australia was to silence dissenting and critical voices in the Chinese-Australian community and from groups like those calling for Tibetan and Uyghur autonomy, and of course Falun Gong, and they have been extremely successful over the last 15 or 20 years in silencing those groups and marginalizing them from the mainstream of political discussion in Australia. 

But then I realized that was only part of the story or the first phase, that the CCP ... wanted to not only silence those critical voices—whether it be Uyghurs or Tibetans or pro-democracy activists in Australia—it wanted to build on that, especially making use of the Chinese-Australian community to build its political influence in the mainstream of Australian society, and that is why it targeted the main political parties and intellectuals and the media in Australia and has made some considerable inroads. 

Although in recent months, many people in Australia are starting to wake up to what is happening and there are significant moves to push back against Beijing's intrusions into this country.

RFA: In 2009, a documentary telling the life story of Uyghur exile leader Rebiya Kadeer was screened at the Melbourne Film Festival, despite strong objections from the Chinese government. People are worried about these kinds of objections leading to self-censorship in Australia. How do you link this kind of behavior with the ongoing Chinese “invasion” of Australia?
Clive Hamilton: I think sometimes successful attempts by the Chinese government to restrict what Australians see at the movies, or read in books or newspapers is outrageous. 

It fundamentally goes against the democratic principles which Australia is built on. 

And it distresses me enormously that sometimes Beijing succeeds in its attempts in Australia and it distresses me even more when governments in Australia go along with that. 

I think that there is a growing awareness among the population in Australia that this is really intolerable. 

And I think that it will become increasingly difficult for governments to turn a blind eye to Beijing's attempts to influence what we in Australia see at the movies or read in newspapers or in books.

RFA: Some scholars argue that you mischaracterize a culture clash as an “invasion” in Australia. How do you respond to this assertion?
Clive Hamilton: My book has been welcomed very strongly and enthusiastically by many Chinese-Australians in this country, because they ... are the biggest victims of Beijing's influence and intrusion in this country. 

So I think that any Chinese scholars who say that Beijing's influence is really a spread of Chinese culture, that's something we can welcome ... 

But not if it's Chinese Communist Party culture and not if it's the political power of the Communist Party that's being veiled behind so-called "Chinese culture" as a way of manipulating this country and the way that Beijing tries to manipulate other countries. 

Many China scholars in Australia have come out and endorsed, in an open letter, exactly the kinds of claims that I am making in my book.

RFA: What might be China’s final goal or motivation in Australia?
Clive Hamilton: I think the Communist Party and especially now under Xi Jinping sees China as a hegemonic power that wants to dominate Asia and that includes Australia. 

Australia is a very valuable prize for the CCP because we are an advanced Western nation allied to the United States at the end of the Southeast Asian region. 

So if Beijing can control Australia, they've won an enormous strategic advantage against the United States. 

That's why they've put so much effort into trying to influence Australia.

RFA: China’s government is increasing its investments in Australia. What role do you see trade and the economy playing in an expansion of China’s “invasion” of the country?
Clive Hamilton: The Chinese Communist Party is a master at using economic blackmail to gain political and security goals in other countries. 

And, of course, we've seen that kind of blackmail exerted particularly strongly on South Korea and Taiwan and Japan. 

In Australia, it's been the threat of it, rather than actual attempts at blackmail, so far, but Australian politicians and businesspeople are very, very afraid of what Beijing might do if we take any measure that displeases it. 

Because people know that Beijing is capable of causing a great deal of economic pain to other countries when they are acting ways it doesn't like, Australian decision-makers are very wary and constrain their own actions in ways that satisfy Beijing because they see what Beijing might do. 

It's a very effective way of exerting influence.

China is waging psychological warfare against Australia

Australia is subjected to Communist party campaign to undermine democracy
By Ben Doherty

Australian academic Clive Hamilton has accused the Chinese Communist party of undertaking a campaign of subversion, cyber intrusions, and harassment on the high seas. 

The Australian academic Clive Hamilton has told a US congressional committee China is waging a “campaign of psychological warfare” against Australia, as America’s most significant ally in the region, undermining democracy and cowing free speech.
Hamilton, vice-chancellor’s chair in public ethics at Charles Sturt University, is the author of Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia, a book which was dumped by Allen & Unwin last year over fears of legal action by Beijing, before being published by Hardie Grant.
Hamilton appeared before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, chaired by US senator for Florida Marco Rubio overnight Australia time, in Washington DC.
He said Australia was currently being subjected to a Chinese Communist party-sponsored campaign of “subversion, cyber intrusions, and harassment on the high seas”.

Chinese government exerts influence across Australian society, MPs told
“Beijing knows that it cannot bully the United States – in the current environment the consequences would be unpredictable and probably counterproductive – so it is instead pressuring its allies,” Hamilton said.
“Last week the PLA Navy challenged three Australian warships sailing through the South China Sea, simply for being there. It has scaled up its threats of economic harm unless Australia changes its ‘anti-China’ path. This psychological warfare is only stage one, with real punishment to follow if needed.”
Hamilton told the committee that, since the publication of his book in February, he has had to go to “extensive measures” to secure his personal safety: suspected Chinese operatives, carrying a suspected “sniffer” phone to intercept communications, have been caught loitering outside and trying to get into his office; Chinese students have been confronted going through his unmarked pigeon hole; and his computers have been infected with malware. 

Now, when he speaks at public event Hamilton is provided security guards.
Author and academic Clive Hamilton.

Silent Invasion was about to be sent for typesetting by Allen & Unwin when it withdrew from publication in November last year citing “potential threats to the book and the company from possible action by Beijing”. 

In the wake of its dumping, other major publishers steered clear.
“Allen & Unwin’s decision to drop Silent Invasion citing fear of reprisals from Beijing was a spectacular vindication of the argument of the book,” Hamilton said. 

“No actual threats were made to the publisher, which in a way is more disturbing. The shadow cast by Beijing over Australia is now dark enough to frighten a respected publisher out of published a book critical of the Chinese Communist party.”
Hamilton said the withdrawal of the book had had a chilling effect on free discussion of China and its geopolitical influence, and that he had been told by China scholars they censored themselves in order not to jeopardise their visas to China for research, and so protect their careers.
Upon publication, China’s ministry of foreign affairs condemned the book as “slander” and “good for nothing”. 

The Chinese embassy in Canberra called the book “disinformation and racist bigotry” carrying a “malicious anti-China mentality”.
The book also divided China scholars. 

An open letter signed by more than 50 academics said there was no evidence China was seeking to export its style of government.

A counter-letter, signed by more than 40 academics, argued that: “Some of the CCP’s activities constitute unacceptable interference in Australian society and politics”.
“We strongly believe that an open debate on the activities of the Chinese Communist party in this country is essential to intellectual freedom, democratic rights and national security.”
After Allen & Unwin pulled out, Hamilton’s cause won wide support in the media and in public debate. 

Several parliamentarians suggested publishing the book in Hansard, as a demonstration of Australia’s commitment to free speech, while offering Hamilton the protection of parliamentary privilege.
But Hamilton said in the furore over his stalled work, Australia’s universities were silent, which he claims was as a result of concern that a show of support could jeopardise their lucrative flow of Chinese students.

“It is no exaggeration to say that Australian universities now tiptoe over eggshells to avoid any action that may offend party bosses in China,” he told the committee.
“Australian universities are now so closely tied into monetary flows and links with China that they have forgotten the founding principles of the western university.”
After Allen & Unwin pulled out, two independent publishers expressed an interest in picking up the book, before also pulling out. 

One of those was Melbourne University Press, whose board overruled the chief executive on publishing the book.
“Sources close to MUP have told me that a factor in the board’s decision was the anxiety of senior university executives about the potential impact of publication on the university’s lucrative revenue flows from Chinese students.”
Hamilton commended the “courage and commitment to free speech of Sandy Grant, the principal of Hardie Grant” for taking the book on.
In 1986, Grant was a publisher at Heinemann, which defied the UK government in publishing Peter Wright’s expose of MI5 and MI6, Spycatcher. 

In a high-profile court case over the book’s publication in Australia, Wright was represented by Malcolm Turnbull, now Australian prime minister.
Had Silent Invasion never been published, Hamilton said, it would have represented a comprehensive victory for the CCP.
Hamilton told the committee many people in Australia were concerned about China’s growing – and undisclosed – influence in the country.
“Many Australians have had an intimation that something is wrong … the scale and nature of the threat is one lay people need to understand.”
The Congressional-Executive Commission on China is an independent agency of the US government, established by Congress in 2000 to monitor human rights and rule of law developments in China.

Silent Invasion: the question of race

The real racial double standard is the suggestion that the government should allow some Australians, on account of their ethnicity, to be less protected than others from Chinese interference and intimidation.
By Rory Medcalf

Clive Hamilton’s new book Silent Invasion: Chinese Influence in Australia is coming in for considerable criticism. 

But I doubt anyone will question the author’s courage to say things as he sees them. 

His publisher, Hardie Grant, of Spycatcher fame, likewise deserves acknowledgement for its commitment to open debate.
As a morally charged voice from the civil libertarian left, Hamilton punctures the lazy myth that concern about China is limited to conservatives or national security types on a “China threat roll”, who for some reason feel the need to conjure up new trouble.
Broadly speaking, Hamilton has done Australia a long-term service. 

The book’s forthrightness is resounding internationally. 

Many countries have looked to Australia to understand how to uncover and curb covert, corrupt, and coercive forms of Chinese influence and interference. 

From the United States to Germany, France to Singapore, Japan to India, Canada and New Zealand, many eyes have focused on the Australian experience to understand how China exploits the upsides of economic, societal, and political bonds to advance its interests at others’ expense.
The Australian story has included startling media revelations about political donations and more, extraordinary warnings from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, political controversies, and tough proposed legislation. 

And now scrutiny is turning to Hamilton’s book.
Silent Invasion will be essential reading for those in many countries concerned for their national security and the integrity of their institutions. 

Worth attention is the way the book illuminates the motives and secretive methods of the United Front Work Department. 

This organ of the Chinese Communist Party is now a familiar name in Australian public debate, so all this sunlight is getting us somewhere.
There is plenty to debate about the balance of Hamilton’s unsettling assessments on issues such as politics, espionage, Chinese community dynamics, and academic links. 

On politics, despite efforts at influence, parliamentary democracy is demonstrating resistance to Chinese expectations; for example, the rejection of the extradition treaty.
Much is made in Hamilton’s work, and elsewhere, of the risks of scientific research collaboration leaking new dual-use technologies to China’s military and security apparatus. 

But does primary responsibility lie with universities or with thinly resourced government policy frameworks designed for a time when the boundary between peaceful and strategic technology was simpler?
The starkest critique of the book, however, is about race.
The accusation of racism has been deployed by representatives and mouthpieces of the People’s Republic of China to discredit legitimate concerns about Chinese political interference.
Still, any suggestion that xenophobia is entering the Australian policy discourse must be taken seriously. 

One prominent warning has come from the pro-China Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane. 

He warns against anything that stirs echoes of Australia’s old history of discrimination.
To this end, Soutphommasane selectively cites certain lines of the book, along with the sensational title, Silent Invasion. 

He says it is “doubly dangerous to invite anxiety about the Chinese party-state that may shift into animosity towards people with Chinese heritage”.
Soutphommasane is saying here that Australians have no right to feel or express “anxiety about the Chinese party-state”; in other words, that they must censor their honest concerns about a foreign state’s interference simply because that state is China.
It would be morally offensive to cast a blanket of suspicion across a particular ethnic community. 

Yet if you read Hamilton’s book in full and in context of the gathering national debate, it takes quite some filtering and imagination to conclude that this is what he has set out to do.
Throughout much of the (mostly) well-footnoted text, Hamilton goes to great lengths to reiterate the distinction between the Chinese party-state and the Chinese people.
But it is not enough to say that Hamilton has chosen the wrong words to make his case, and leave it at that. 

His critics also need to give a clear sense of whether and how concerns can be expressed acceptably – of how genuine debate can proceed without censorship.
There must be a way for Australia to reconcile its proper sensitivities about race with the need to provide transparency and early warnings around a risk to national security, democratic institutions, and multicultural integrity. 

That risk is not posed by Chinese Australians but by a foreign power -- China -- and those individuals, whatever their ethnicity or citizenship, who choose to place its interests above Australia’s.

The fifth column: Beijing Bob and Chinese agents in Australia

Criticism of influence by the Chinese Communist Party is not about ethnicity. 

This is borne out by the fact that voices in Australia’s diverse Chinese communities are taking the boldest stand in the pushback against such influence, and demonstrated this by being in the majority at the Sydney launch of Hamilton’s book.
The issue of Chinese interference needs to be addressed in a context of respect for the rights of Chinese-Australians. 

Racially charged partisanship needs to be avoided, otherwise a window will be opened for new modes of influence by Beijing, especially at election times. 

The whole issue must be owned and addressed by the bipartisan centre, or we will only hear voices at the extremes.
If there is racism in this debate, it is not in the suggestion that Australia should protect itself from Chinese interference.

The real racial double standard is the suggestion that by being silent on this issue the government should allow some Australians, on account of their ethnicity, to be less protected than others from Chinese interference and intimidation.

Red Alert

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

By Frances Mao

A brilliant new book asserts that the Chinese government is undermining Australia's sovereignty through a network of local agents.
Silent Invasion: How China is Turning Australia into a Puppet State by distinguished Australian academic Clive Hamilton, argues that Beijing's reach has extended into Australian politics, business, education and religious groups. 

The book enraged China even before it was published.
Last year, publisher Allen & Unwin withdrew plans to release the book by fear of retaliation by Beijing, and later two other publishers had similar concerns.

The book is the latest addition to a wide-ranging discussion. 

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull noted "disturbing reports about Chinese influence" when he unveiled a crackdown on Chinese interference last year.
In October, Australia's chief foreign affairs bureaucrat, Frances Adamson, warned Australian universities to be vigilant about massive efforts by China to exercise influence on campuses.
According to Fairfax Media, Australian lawmakers gave serious consideration to publishing the book under parliamentary privilege -- an unprecedented move that would have given it legal protection. 

Ultimately, though, Prof Hamilton found a commercial publisher.

Prof Clive Hamilton's book exposes China's web of influence.
Since its release, Chinese-Australians have accused the book of "fear-mongering".
Prominent observers and experts, however, have strongly defended it.

What does the book expose?
Prof Hamilton asserts that China is a totalitarian regime bent on dominating Australia, and likens the relationship to "boy scouts up against Don Corleone" -- a reference to The Godfather.
"China plans to dominate the world, and has been using Australia and New Zealand as a testing ground for its tactics to assert its ascendancy in the West," writes Prof Hamilton, a lecturer in public ethics at Charles Sturt University.
He says such a suggestion would have been "fantastic" in the past, but now "so much evidence has accumulated that the conclusion seems irresistible".
Beijing has deliberately targeted its diaspora in Australia to recruit "informers, plants and spies" in business, academic, and other circles. 

Aspects of society covered by the book include:

• Politics: Australia's two major parties are "severely compromised" by links to Chinese benefactors, and those "whose loyalties lie in Beijing".
• Community groups: Pro-Chinese government advocates have made an "almost complete takeover" of Chinese community groups in Australia, such as social organisations, student groups, professional bodies, as well as Chinese-language media. These groups are supported by China's embassy and promote subtle Beijing propaganda to Australia's politicians.
• Research: Chinese-Australian scientists and academics are allowing advanced research to be shared with Chinese universities, either unintentionally through joint projects, or because of duress.

Prof Hamilton had based his assertions on very credible sources and numerous materials that were publicly available, which he had referenced in his book. 

They confirmed "what intelligence agencies have been telling government in secret for the last few years".
Last year, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation warned in a report that Chinese communities in Australia were "the subject of covert influence operations" aimed at shutting down criticism.
Pro-Chinese government advocates have made an complete takeover of Chinese community groups in Australia, such as social organisations, student groups, professional bodies, as well as Chinese-language media.

In December, a senator, Sam Dastyari, was forced to resign over scrutiny about his dealings with Huang Xiangmo, a Chinese businessman who was described by Mr Turnbull as having "close links to a foreign government". 

Dastyari denied ever violating his "parliamentary oath".
Mr Turnbull's new crackdown will ban all foreign political donations, and force lobbyists to publicly register any overseas links.

What has been the response to the book?
China's embassy in Australia said Prof Hamilton had been "playing up the 'China threat' for quite some time".

Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane, who has Chinese ancestry, said some language used in the book "smacks of The Yellow Peril revisited".
But others defended Prof Hamilton, arguing criticism of the book was almost inevitable because of the topics it covered.
China-Australia expert Prof John Fitzgerald, whose work is quoted in the book, said criticism focused on perceptions of the text, rather than what it said.
"None of the reviews have challenged any of the points made. Rather they're concerned it will generate a controversy that gets out of hand," said Prof Fitzgerald, from Swinburne University.

He defended the text as "a very important book" that had brought "government knowledge to public attention".

Skip Twitter post by @chen_yonglin

chen yonglin@chen_yonglin

Replying to @SuLin_Tan and 6 others

Those who haven’t read Prof. Clive Hamilton’s book and label him a racist are vicious slanderers. Those cowards dare not to speak against the Communist infiltration but dare enough to blame the government. People should ask why.

3:41 PM - Feb 27, 2018

• 8
• See chen yonglin's other Tweets

Twitter Ads info and privacy

End of Twitter post by @chen_yonglin

The book has international resonance, according to Prof Rory Medcalf, Head of the National Security College at the Australian National University.
"It is a book about how a multicultural democracy struggles when a foreign power exploits the open nature of its system," said Prof Medcalf, whose work is also quoted in the book.
He said Prof Hamilton's language was "darker than what government agencies would use", but it raised important concerns.