Chinese Dream 中国梦

39 people found dead in Essex lorry were all Chinese

https://www.aljazeera.com
Thirty-nine people were found dead inside the truck container on Wednesday.

The 39 people found dead in a trailer shipped from Belgium to Britain are all believed to be Chinese nationals, British police said.
"We have since confirmed that eight of the deceased are women and 31 are men and all are believed to be Chinese nationals," police said in a statement on Thursday.
The Chinese foreign ministry said it was trying to confirm the report, according to the Global Times.
The paper, published by the official People's Daily newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party, said the foreign ministry said "nothing more could be released as of now".
Paramedics and police found the bodies early on Wednesday in a truck container on an industrial estate at Grays, about 20 miles (32 km) east of the British capital, London.
Belgian prosecutors confirmed the container was shipped from the port of Zeebrugge on Tuesday.
The tragedy recalls the deaths of 58 migrants in 2000 in a truck in Dover, England who had undertaken a perilous, months-long journey from China's southern Fujian province. 

They were discovered stowed away with a cargo of tomatoes after a ferry ride from Zeebrugge.
Essex Police were questioning a 25-year-old man from Northern Ireland over the latest tragedy.
He was arrested on suspicion of murder, the police said, adding that raids had been carried out at three properties in Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland police searched the properties in the Northern Irish village of Laurelvale, County Armagh late on Wednesday, where the driver and his family lived, according to the Belfast Telegraph.
The vehicle has been moved to a secure site at nearby Tilbury Docks where the bodies can be recovered and further forensic work undertaken to begin what police said would be the lengthy process of identifying the victims.
The National Crime Agency said it was assisting the investigation and working to "urgently identify and take action against any organised crime groups who have played a role in causing these deaths".
Shaun Sawyer, the national spokesman for British police on human trafficking, said many thousands of people were seeking to come to the United Kingdom. 

While they were able to rescue many of those smuggled into the country, Britain was perceived by organised crime as a potentially easy target for traffickers.
"You can't turn the United Kingdom into a fortress. We have to accept that we have permeable borders," he told BBC radio.

The Chinese Ogre

Australian Furor Over Chinese Influence Follows Book’s Delay

By JACQUELINE WILLIAMS

An uproar followed an Australian publisher’s decision to postpone the release of a book by Clive Hamilton, who says Beijing is actively working to silence China’s critics.

SYDNEY, Australia — The book was already being promoted as an explosive exposé of Chinese influence infiltrating the highest levels of Australian politics and media. 

But then, months before it was set to hit bookstore shelves, its publisher postponed the release, saying it was worried about lawsuits.
The decision this month to delay the book, “Silent Invasion: How China Is Turning Australia into a Puppet State,” has set off a national uproar, highlighting the tensions between Australia’s growing economic dependence on China and its fears of falling under the political control of the rising Asian superpower.
Critics have drawn parallels to decisions this year by high-profile academic publishers in Europe to withhold articles from readers in China that might anger the Communist Party.
But the case has struck a particularly sensitive nerve in Australia, where the book’s delay is the latest in a series of incidents that have raised concerns about what many here see as the threat from China to freedom of expression.

“The decision by Allen & Unwin to stall publication of this book almost proves the point that there’s an undue level of Chinese influence in Australia,” said Prof. Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at Australian National University. Allen & Unwin is one of Australia’s largest publishers.
In the yet-unpublished book, the author, Clive Hamilton, a well-known intellectual and professor at Charles Sturt University in Australia, describes what he calls an orchestrated campaign by Beijing to influence Australia and silence China’s critics.
In one chapter, according to Mr. Hamilton, the book asserts that senior Australian journalists were taken on junkets to China in order to “shift their opinions” so they would present China in a more positive light.

Mr. Hamilton says the company that was set to publish his book expressed concerns about possible lawsuits by Beijing.

In another chapter, he said the book details what he calls links between Australian scientists and researchers at Chinese military universities, which he said had led to a transfer of scientific know-how to the People’s Liberation Army.
The book had been scheduled to be published in April, and Mr. Hamilton had already turned in a manuscript. 

But Allen & Unwin, based in Sydney, suddenly informed him on Nov. 2 that it wanted to postpone publishing because of legal concerns.
Mr. Hamilton responded by demanding the return of the publication rights, effectively canceling the book’s publication by Allen & Unwin. 

Mr. Hamilton says he will seek another publisher.
Mr. Hamilton said the decision had been made for fear of angering Beijing, and shows China’s ability to limit what information Australians can see — exactly the sort of influence that he said he warned about in his book.
“This is the first case, I believe, where a major Western publisher has decided to censor material critical of China in its home country,” Mr. Hamilton said in an interview. 

“Many people are deeply offended by this attack on free speech, and people see a basic value that defines Australia being undermined.”
In a statement, the publisher said it decided to hold off publishing the book, which would have been Mr. Hamilton’s ninth with the company, until “certain matters currently before the courts have been decided.”
It did not specify what those matters were.
“Clive was unwilling to delay publication and requested the return of his rights,” the statement said.
However, Mr. Hamilton has disclosed an email that he said was sent to him on Nov. 8 by Allen & Unwin’s chief executive, Robert Gorman. 

The email explained the decision to delay the book’s release: “April 2018 was too soon to publish the book and allow us to adequately guard against potential threats to the book and the company from possible action by Beijing.”
“Our lawyer pointed to recent legal attacks by Beijing’s agents of influence against mainstream Australian media organizations,” the email said.
The contents of the email have been widely reported by the local news media. 

When asked for comment, Allen & Unwin declined to confirm or deny its authenticity. 

Mr. Gorman has not gone public to deny the email’s authenticity.
Mr. Hamilton said the publisher was probably referring to two defamation cases that are currently in the courts aimed at two Australian media companies: the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, a major television company, and Fairfax Media, a newspaper publisher.
One of the suits was filed by Chau Chak Wing, a Chinese-Australian businessman who has been a major donor in Australian politics. 

Chinese fifth column: Chinese agent Chau Chak Wing.

Chau is seeking damages from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for a TV news report that the suit says damaged his personal and professional reputation.

That report, which was shown on a popular current affairs program, said the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, the domestic spy agency, had warned political parties against accepting contributions from two ethnic Chinese, of whom one was Chau, because of ties to the Chinese government.
Chau has long said his campaign contributions are entirely "legal" and "unrelated" to the Chinese government.
The news report prompted a heated debate in Australia over how vulnerable its democratic political system is to foreign influence, especially from China.
The question of Chinese interference is a delicate one for Australia, an American ally that has embraced Beijing as its largest trade partner and welcomed Chinese investors, immigrants and students in large numbers.
“The book shows in great detail the problem of Chinese influence in Australia is much deeper than we thought,” said Mr. Hamilton, a prolific author who in 2009 received the Order of Australia, one of the country’s highest honors, for “service to public debate and policy development.” 

“I think some of the material I’ve uncovered have been a shock even to our intelligence agencies,” he said.
James Leibold, a professor of politics and Asian studies at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, said the decision to withhold such a book, especially one written by a noted author like Mr. Hamilton, underscored China’s growing ability to pressure publishers and other media companies.
Last month, Springer Nature, one of the world’s largest academic publishers, came under criticism for self-censorship after it bowed to Chinese government requests to block hundreds of articles on its Chinese website that touched on delicate topics like Taiwan, Tibet and Chinese politics.
In August, another publisher, Cambridge University Press, admitted to removing some 300 articles from the Chinese website of China Quarterly, an academic journal, that mentioned issues like the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.
Experts say Allen & Unwin, the Australian publisher, has gone a step further by delaying access to a book to readers outside of China.
“Australia is a bellwether,” said Professor Medcalf of National Security College. 

“If dissent can be stifled here, then it can be stifled anywhere.”

Author vows book exposing Chinese fifth column will go ahead after publisher pulls out

Allen & Unwin had cancelled plans to print Clive Hamilton’s Silent Invasion over fear of legal action by the Chinese government
By Melissa Davey

Clive Hamilton’s book is an analysis of Chinese methods of asserting influence in Australia. 

Prominent Charles Sturt University author and ethicist Professor Clive Hamilton says his book exposing the Chinese Communist party’s activities in Australia will still be published, despite Allen & Unwin cancelling plans to print it at the 11th hour.
On Monday, Hamilton revealed legal advice that the Chinese government may sue for defamation had spooked Allen & Unwin. 

The book, called Silent Invasion, is a comprehensive analysis of the Chinese government’s methods of asserting influence in Australia – not only in media and politics, as had been previously reported, but in a range of others areas.
“Last week Allen & Unwin did express some legal concerns but despite that I thought they were resolved to publish it, so it was a complete shock,” Hamilton told Guardian Australia.
“The Chinese government’s campaign is far more extensive than ever previously understood. 

If you’re going to analyse how Beijing is influencing Australian society and politics you have to analyse that activity of individuals and name names, and that’s what I’ve done. It’s a factual book with 1,100 footnotes and it has been meticulously researched, but short of redacting 100 names from the book there’s always the possibility someone might launch a vexatious legal act against the publisher, in this case Allen & Unwin.”

Hamilton did not agree to heavy edits to the book to mitigate the potential for legal repercussion, which ultimately lead to the breakdown of the publishing deal. 

But he emphasised Allen & Unwin were not to blame and he held no ill-will towards the publishing giant.
An email from the publisher to Hamilton read that the most serious of the legal threats “was the very high chance of a vexatious defamation action against Allen & Unwin, and possibly against you personally as well”.
Hamilton said when Allen & Unwin signed the contract “even I didn’t understand the frightening extent of communist influence in Australia until I was well into researching and writing it”.
“I sat in my office many times throughout the process and said to myself, ‘oh my goodness – not there as well’. So the publisher was made very nervous when it read the manuscript and understood just how extensive and sinister this program of influence actually is. It’s way beyond what I expected and Allen & Unwin are not the bad guys here. The Communist party and its agents in Australia are.”
However, Hamilton was adamant the book would be published in its full form, although he did not say when or how. 

He described the ordeal as another example of censorship, and free speech being stifled at the hands of the Chinese government.
In recent months politicians have warned about Chinese influence. 

In October the foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, told international students from China and affiliated with the Communist party that Australia “prides itself on its values of openness and upholding freedom of speech”.
And in the same month, the Labor foreign affairs spokesperson, Penny Wong, told a meeting at the Australian Institute of International Affairs in Canberra that Australia must “understand China, its motives and its mindsets” because “we don’t yet know how its pursuit of a more ambitious agenda will play out globally” nor “how China intends to condition its use of power”.
The Asio chief, Duncan Lewis, said in June following the airing of a Four Corners investigation into Chinese donations that he had become so worried about the influence of foreign donations that he organised meetings with the Coalition and Labor to warn them that some donors could compromise the major parties.