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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne-Marie Brady.

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

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

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

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

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

Signs of things to come?

John Fitzgerald.

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

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

China Watch.

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

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

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

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

Chinese Fifth Column

A Sino-Kiwi Lawmaker’s Spy-Linked Past Raises Alarms on China’s Reach
By CHARLOTTE GRAHAM

Chinese mole: Jian Yang, a New Zealand lawmaker born in China, at a news conference in Auckland, New Zealand, last month. A recent investigation revealed that he had taught spies in China in the 1980s and ’90s.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Revelations that a New Zealand lawmaker had been a member of the Communist Party in China and taught English to spies there have raised alarms about Beijing’s influence in New Zealand — and how well the political parties there vet their candidates.
Jian Yang, a lawmaker with the center-right National Party, did not declare his past Communist Party affiliation or his work teaching spies in China on his New Zealand citizenship application. 

He was returned to Parliament for a third term in the country’s Sept. 23 elections.
Days before the election, as some New Zealanders were casting advance ballots, Mr. Yang’s background was exposed in a joint investigation by The Financial Times and the New Zealand online media outlet Newsroom.
While New Zealand is a small country, it is a member of the “Five Eyes” intelligence sharing partnership along with the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia. 

And so vulnerabilities in New Zealand’s government could have wider import.
Yang admitted that in the 1980s and early ’90s, before emigrating to Australia and then moving to New Zealand to teach at a university, he studied and taught at two Chinese educational institutions run by the People’s Liberation Army, China’s armed forces.

He said he had not named the Chinese military institutions on his application for New Zealand citizenship, and had instead listed “partner institutions” as his employers, because that was what the Chinese “system” had told him to do.
Yang conceded that he had taught English to spies, but said he had never been a spy himself, was no longer a member of the Communist Party, and had been contracted and paid only as a so-called civilian officer.
Yang has not been officially investigated in New Zealand or charged with espionage.
But Nicholas Eftimiades, a former officer with the Central Intelligence Agency with extensive experience on China matters, said the title of civilian officer was a fluid one in China.
Mr. Eftimiades, now a lecturer at Penn State Harrisburg in Pennsylvania, said officers moved seamlessly between military and civilian assignments to include Chinese army units and work in the defense industry, think tanks and universities.

New Zealand’s prime minister, Bill English, and his wife, Mary, during an election-night event in Auckland last month. English said the National Party had been aware of Yang’s background, and Yang had made no attempt to hide it. 

“Whether in uniform or not, these personnel are still actively engaged in espionage,” said Mr. Eftimiades, who also worked with the Defense Intelligence Agency in the United States.
Several China experts said in interviews that it was not possible for people to willingly “leave” China’s Communist Party, as Yang said he did, unless they had been expelled from it. 

Yang has not denounced the party.
Rodney Jones, a New Zealand economist who lives in Beijing and who has worked in Asia for 30 years, said that an “unrepentant” former member of the Communist Party should not be eligible to be a New Zealand lawmaker. 

He said that Yang should resign from Parliament.
Mr. Jones said that New Zealand needed better representation of its Chinese population in Parliament, but that Yang’s ascension showed that New Zealand had become a “tributary state” of China.
The leadership of both major political parties in New Zealand said they were not concerned by the revelations. 

Bill English, the incumbent prime minister whose party Yang belongs to, said through a spokesman that he did not “see any obvious signs of anything inappropriate” and would not be interviewed on the matter.
English said the National Party had been aware of Yang’s background, and Yang had made no attempt to hide it.
Mr. Jones criticized the prime minister’s lack of alarm, saying the disclosure warranted an investigation.
The revelation comes as both the National and Labour parties have come under scrutiny in a report on China’s influence on the New Zealand government by Anne-Marie Brady, a political-science professor at New Zealand’s University of Canterbury.
Ms. Brady said that since the ascension of Xi Jinping, China’s government has mounted an aggressive campaign of using soft power to influence New Zealand’s politics, economy and society, including through campaign donations.
In her report, Ms. Brady said that this year “a Chinese diplomat favorably compared New Zealand-China relations to the level of closeness China had with Albania in the early 1960s.”

Parliament House in Wellington, New Zealand. The country’s main political parties have come under scrutiny recently in a report on China’s influence on the New Zealand government. 

She said the Chinese-language media in New Zealand was subject to extreme censorship, and accused both Yang and Raymond Huo, an ethnic Chinese lawmaker from the center-left Labour Party, of being subject to influence by the Chinese Embassy and community organizations it used as front groups to push the country’s agenda.
Huo strongly denied any “insinuations against his character,” saying his connections with Chinese groups and appearances at their events were just part of being an effective lawmaker.
Chinese-language news media outlets in New Zealand reported that Yang had presented awards in April to members of the New Zealand Veterans General Federation, a group made up of former Chinese military or police officers now living in New Zealand. 

The awards were for members’ activities during a visit to New Zealand by Premier Li Keqiang of China, when they blocked the banners of anti-Chinese government protesters and sang military songs.
Yang would not comment on the report, other than to say in a statement that “allegations about my loyalty to New Zealand” were “a racially and politically timed smear.”
Chen Weijian, a member of the pro-democracy group New Zealand Values Alliance and the editor of a Chinese-language magazine, Beijing Spring, said Yang was “very, very active” in New Zealand’s Chinese community.
“When he speaks, he speaks more as a Chinese government representative, instead of a New Zealand lawmaker,” Mr. Chen said.
New Zealand has become increasingly dependent on China as a market for farm products, especially dairy goods, and the two countries have been in talks to expand a free-trade agreement signed in 2008.
Despite the criticism, Yang has continued to appear alongside Wang Lutong, China’s ambassador to New Zealand, at public events, including for China’s National Day celebrations this week, when he posed for photos with the ambassador and a Chinese military attaché.
Mr. Jones, the Beijing-based economist, said China’s level of involvement in New Zealand could threaten the country’s democratic institutions. 

Both he and Ms. Brady, the author of the report on China’s growing influence, have called for New Zealand to ban foreign political donations, as Australia is moving to do.
“New Zealand has become so fearful of the Chinese economic power we’re prepared to throw our values and standards overboard,” Mr. Jones said, adding, “There’s no reason for the fear, except for elites in New Zealand who may lose money personally.”