Chinese political donations pose a threat to Australian democracy

Concerns are being raised over political parties accepting substantial payments from sources linked to the Communist Party of China
By DANIEL FAZIO 

On June 5, the ABC television show Four Corners shed light on substantial donations to the Liberal-National coalition (LNP) and Labor (ALP) parties from Chinese sources linked to the Communist Party of China (CPC). 

These revelations raise serious concerns that require immediate action to prevent the further corrosion of Australian politics and the undermining of the country’s national sovereignty.
Current Australian electoral laws allow political parties to seek and accept foreign donations, so there is no suggestion that the parties have done anything illegal.
However, being beholden to foreign donors risks corrupting and compromising Australian national sovereignty. 

Indeed, Four Corners revealed this is why ASIO, the country’s chief intelligence agency, warned senior Liberal-National and Labor officials that China is exercising undue influence in Australian politics.
ASIO is also concerned about CPC influence in Australian universities, its monitoring of Chinese students and Chinese media in Australia to ensure they don’t engage in activities contrary to Beijing’s views.
One thing is certain: the Chinese are not donating hefty sums of money to the LNP and ALP because they have an altruistic desire to aid Australian democracy. 

Beijing is seeking to exploit Australia’s economic reliance on China because it serves its geo-strategic interests.
China’s increasing assertiveness in the Asia-Pacific region and growing presence in Africa indicates a calculated strategic move beyond Deng Xiaoping’s axiom: “hide your strength, bide your time.”
By deploying its soft power to increase its hard power, China is no longer hiding its strength or biding its time.
Should Australian political parties continue accepting Chinese donations, they risk facilitating growing Chinese influence in Australian politics which will undermine national sovereignty and compromise future Australian governments into acting contrary to Australian interests.
Chinese influence in Australian politics is already evident. 

In 2016, it emerged Labor Senator Sam Dastyari had received gifts and payments for legal and travel bills from Chinese contacts.
During last year’s federal election, a Chinese donor threatened to withdraw a promised A$400,000 (US$303,700) donation to the ALP after its shadow defence minister, Stephen Conroy, expressed support for freedom of navigation laws in the South China Sea, which were contrary to Beijing’s claims in the area.
It has also transpired that Australia’s former trade minister, Andrew Robb, accepted an A$880,000 a year consultancy with a Chinese firm before he left parliament after having negotiated the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement.
Australia needs to immediately ban foreign donations for all political parties and mandate full disclosure of all donations from all organisations and individuals.
Current Australian electoral law means donations below A$13,000 don’t have to be disclosed. 

Total transparency is the only way to minimize corruption and subversiveness of the political process.
The issue of the Chinese donations are symptomatic of the closed operational culture of the LNP and ALP. 

This lack of transparency plays into Chinese hands. 

Secrecy serves the designs of the political parties and those who seek to influence them.
Australian political parties are very opaque. 

They operate in a democracy but their internal culture and workings are not open or democratic. 

Within the party structures, power and decision-making is concentrated in the hands of a very small number of individuals.
Dissenting views are not tolerated and it is almost impossible for those aspiring for internal party positions and a parliamentary career to make headway without currying favor with the power brokers. A political operative once told me “election day” is the only day democracy operates in Australian politics.
The current state of Australian politics offers little hope for genuine and transparent reform. 

Voters are becoming increasingly apathetic, cynical and disillusioned. 

The political parties are content to perpetuate this vicious cycle because a disengaged electorate allows them to avoid proper scrutiny.
Party officials, determined to keep power concentrated in their hands, vehemently resist calls to democratize. 

This singular focus on the pursuit and maintenance of power leaves parties open to be compromised by vested interests. 

This will further corrode the political process and weaken national sovereignty.
Political parties in comparable nations such as Britain, Canada and the US are much more democratic than those in Australia. 

The revelations about the Chinese donations are a warning to the Australian electorate to emerge from our apathetic stupor and deploy our collective power at the ballot box and demand openness and accountability from our elected representatives and their parties.
Lord Acton said, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” 

Transparency and accountability are the only real safeguards against undue Chinese influence upon the political process and national sovereignty.

Is Bergoglio a fellow traveller of the Communist Party of China?

The Vatican’s illusions about Chinese communism: Cardinal Joseph Zen says that Francis misunderstands how repressive China is.

By DAVID FEITH

Cardinal Zen in St Peter's Square, March 6, 2013.

Hong Kong -- Cardinal Joseph Zen, the most senior Chinese cleric in the Catholic Church, believes the Vatican is fast approaching a tragic mistake in China.
Within days church leaders could conclude a landmark agreement with the Chinese government after 65 years of acrimony and persecution. Pope Francis isn’t known to have signed off, and before he does Cardinal Zen prays to be heard.
The former bishop of Hong Kong speaks with passion that belies his age (84) and recent hospitalization for a lung virus. 

As we meet at the church complex where he has lived since 2009—and where he first moved as a novice from Shanghai in 1948—he warns of “surrender”: that Chinese leaders are demanding it and Vatican officials appear willing to give it “in the hopes of achieving an agreement.”
Proponents say the deal would help millions of “underground” Catholics and open the world’s most populous country for evangelization. 

Cardinal Zen says it would sacrifice church principles, abandon the faithful, undermine evangelization and invite further repression.
The deal concerns who gets to select Catholic bishops in China—as vital a power as there is. 

Beijing has claimed it since the 1950s, when Mao Zedong banished Vatican officials and established the state-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association in their place. 

That organ now oversees the “official church” of some 70 bishops and five million adherents who answer to Beijing and toe its line. 

The underground church, by contrast, follows the pope, for which its 30 bishops and estimated seven million adherents face harassment, imprisonment and worse.
To promote unity the Vatican has lately accepted most Beijing-backed bishops. 

But it has always held that the state-run Patriotic Association is “incompatible with Catholic doctrine,” as Pope Benedict XVI wrote in 2007, adding: “The authority of the Pope to appoint bishops is given to the church by its founder Jesus Christ. It is not the property of the Pope, neither can the Pope give it to others.”
Yet now the Vatican seems willing to give it to Beijing, which is what Cardinal Zen calls “absolutely unacceptable.” 

Rome would commit to recognize as bishops only those clerics who first win nomination from the Patriotic Association’s bishops conference. 

This would make the church “totally subservient to an atheist government,” says Cardinal Zen, and may require the Vatican to cut ties to the true church underground.
Though he says state-backed bishops are generally “wonderful men” and “very faithful to the church,” Cardinal Zen laments that all are nonetheless “slaves” and “puppets.” 

Only someone ignorant of communism, he says, could think the nominations the government sends to Rome wouldn’t be coerced. 

Having taught in Chinese seminaries from 1989 to 1996, he recalls that state bishops couldn’t meet or even place international calls without government bosses present.
Cardinal Zen slams Vatican diplomats who say that embracing the Patriotic Association is needed to preserve the church’s hierarchy and sacraments. 

“I would prefer no bishops,” he says. 

“With fake bishops you are destroying the church.”
That’s what nearly happened in Hungary and other Soviet satellites in the 1970s after Rome embraced an Ostpolitik (“Eastern Policy”) of cooperation with Communist authorities. 

“The Churches in those countries have not been saved through the Vatican diplomacy,” he wrote recently, “but thanks to the unswerving faith of the simple faithful!”
He believes the same would happen in China if the Vatican refused to bow to Beijing. 

“The underground church is evangelizing very well,” he notes, even as authorities have destroyed 1,000 church crosses since 2013 and kept underground bishop James Su Zhimin in secret detention for two decades. 

“Also in the official church there are so many good people. . . . They are not afraid. Why should you surrender?”
“Pope Francis has no real knowledge of communism,” the cardinal laments. 

He blames Francis’ experience in Argentina, where military dictators and rich elites did evil while accused communists suffered trying to help the downtrodden. 

“So the Holy Father knew the persecuted communists, not the communist persecutors. He knew the communists killed by the government, not the communist governments who killed thousands and hundreds of thousands of people.” (In China it was tens of millions.)
“I’m sorry to say that in his goodwill he has done many things which are simply ridiculous,” the cardinal says of the pope. 

These include his approaches to both China and Cuba, the other communist state he has courted at the apparent expense of human rights. 

But still he’s the pope, so even if he signs a bad deal Cardinal Zen says he won’t protest once it’s done.
His message to the faithful in that case: You’re never obligated to act against conscience. 

“You are not bound to join the Patriotic Association. You can pray at home if you lose your churches.” 

An underground priest who loses his flock can go home and till the soil. 

“You’re still a priest anyway,” he says. 

“So wait for better times. But don’t rebel against the pope.”