Full text of "Silent Invasion" Ch 9 - 13. pp 177-281

Full text of "Silent Invasion"

9 

‘Malicious insiders’ and 

scientific organisations 

‘Mobilising Ten Thousand Overseas Chinese’ 

At the highest level in China, directives for influence programs are 

formulated by the Politburo and passed down to the CCPs Central 

Committee. Responsibilities are there divided between the Overseas 

Chinese Affairs Office and the United Front Work Department.' They 

have different roles and functions but in Australia as elsewhere they 

are channelled and coordinated through the embassy and consulates. 

Through this structure the PRC reaches deeply into the Chinese 

diaspora in Australia, using it for the purposes of influence, control 

and espionage, including spying on the community itself. The essential 

feet to keep in mind is that the CCP uses the diaspora for recruiting 

informers, plants and spies as well as winning over or paying unwitting 

agents of influence. The whole structure serves as an effective tool of 

foreign policy. 

Although it didn’t name the country, ASIO’s 2016-17 annual 

report was clear about the Chinese threat. ‘We identified foreign 

powers clandestinely seeking to shape the opinions of members of the 

Australian public, media organisations and government officials in 

order to advance their countr)'’s own political objectives.’" It wrote that 

ethnic communities in Australia were the subject of covert influence 

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operations aimed at shutting down criticism. In its previous 

ASIO had warned of foreign interference in ‘community groupi,^^ 

ness and social associations’, not least the ‘monitoring, coercion 

intimidation of diaspora communities’.^ ASIO could be referring to 

only one country. 

However, counter-terrorism work absorbs the lion’s share of ASIOi 

resources, leaving little for counter-espionage, and for this new, third 

component of security protection that might be called ‘counter¬ 

subversion’. While there has been extensive media attention on United 

Front work in Chinese social and business organisations, PRC control of 

Chinese professional organisations has gone unnoticed.** Yet they have 

become a vital conduit for PRC intelligence gathering and technology 

theft in Australia. 

As we saw, the PRC openly declares that it regards all overseas 

Chinese, including those with foreign citizenship and even those born 

in other countries, as owing allegiance to the motherland. If you ave 

Chinese heritage the CCP assumes it owns you. The essentia purpose 

of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (OCAO) is to establish con¬ 

tact and develop relationships with overseas Chinese’ (itse a oa e 

term) and align them with party objectives, both politica on 

Taiwanese unification and commercial ones like technology t pn^ 

In March 2017, coinciding with the visit to Australia ^ 

Premier Li Keqiang, the director of the OCAO, Qiu Yuanping, 

Sydney. She met with the most prominent and trusted com 

leaders, notably the wealthy political donors Chau Chak Wing, 

Minshen and Huang Xiangmo. Speaking to an audience inc u 

representatives of the Australian Council for the Promotion of Pcac ^ ^ 

Reunification of China (ACPPRC), Qiu said that Premier Li’s visit 

'will powerfully promote the development of comprehensive strateg 

partner relations’ between the two countries.^ She told her audience that 

Chairman Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang 'hold a special affection 

for overseas Chinese’. She then outlined the OCAO s planned devel 

opment work for this year, 'hoping that everyone would energetically 

participate, invoking ‘the overseas Chinese heart and the overseas 

Chinese strength, and exhorting them to support Xi’s China Dream 

d the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’. 

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'MALICIOUS INSIDERS' AND SCIENTIFIC ORGANISATIONS 

Qiu was formally thanked by Huang Xiangmo for bringing to 

Australia the ancestral nations ‘warmth and regards . Despite his public 

battering in the Dastyari affair of 2016, Huang remained Beijing s chief 

operative for controlling the Chinese community in Australia. The 

event was a blunt reminder of the presumption in Beijing that overseas 

Chinese, no matter what kind of passport they hold, will naturally serve 

the motherland first. Those who attend these events voluntarily should 

be presumed to share that view. 

In this light, a more interesting meeting (reported only in C inese) 

took place the next day. on 24 March. Qiu Yuanping arrived at the 

University of Technology Sydney (UTS) for a 'leisurely chad with over 

twenty senior Chinese scholars and researchers from the Sydney region. 

Qiu talked about the implementation of the OCAO’s newest policy, 

the ‘Mobilising Ten Thousand Overseas Chinese for Innovation, which 

is explicitly about bringing ‘overseas countrymen’ back to China to 

advance innovation and technology. But it is also aimed at ra ying 

those who serve the country from overse.is.^ The four million Chinese 

who have stayed abroad after their studies are ‘one of the most valuable 

resources in implementing China’s strategy for innovation development 

and drive’. Her organisation in Beijing, she said, is escorting you like 

an emperor’. 

Among those reportedly soaking up the patriotic message were the 

executive director of UTS data science and deputy vice-chancellor, 

Professor Zhang Chengqi (who is also a member of the board of Bob 

Carr’s ACRI), UTS professor of electrical engineering Zhu Jianguo (a 

member of the United Front organisation FOCSA, discussed later), 

professor of photonics at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) 

Peng Gang-Ding, UNSW professor of manufacturing engineering Wang 

Jun, Wollongong Universit)' engineering professor Jiang Zhengyi and 

Sydney University medical school associate professor Bao ‘Bob’ Shisan. 

HUMINT (human intelligence) 

Although the ‘unseen enemy’ of cypher hacking has received the most 

publicity, it is not the only, or necessarily the most effective, means 

of stealing information. In the United States the volume of China’s 

cybet hacking reportedly declined in 2016 after an agreement betw'een 

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presidents Obama and Xi to refrain from cyber attacks for commercial 

purposes. Obama had threatened to retaliate with sanctions, so China 

has shifted to greater use of human rather than electronic infiltration.’ 

The PRC has for some years pressured ethnic Chinese employees to 

steal confidential information and sensitive technology.’ According 

to a Congressional report, in the United States it has been known for 

some time that scientists with access to valuable research data have been 

working for China.'” 

The PLA, which is responsible for the theft of a great deal of civilian 

data as well as for targetting military secrets, has a unit known as the 

Third Department that is responsible for a massive program of cyber 

attacks, hacking and exfiltration of data." The Second Department is 

responsible for more conventional kinds of human intelligence gather¬ 

ing. In their Chinas Espionage Dynasty, James Scott and Drew Spaniel 

estimate that the Second Department has 30,000 to 50,000 human 

spies planted in organisations around the world whose aim is to collect 

information, confidential and otherwise, to be sent back to China. (Its 

believed that cyber attacks will at times be launched to cover the tracks 

of a human agent inside an organisation.'^) 

While cyber theft can be conducted from anywhere in the world, 

HUMINT requires experts in positions of trust placed in Australian 

organisations. In its 2016-17 annual report ASIO made particular 

comment on ‘malicious insiders’, mainly government employees and 

contractors with privileged access to information including sensitive 

technology, who have been co-opted by a foreign intelligence service.'^ 

In the United States, many stories of spies recruited by China have 

come to light, mostly through prosecutions.''' One was the case of an 

American company, AMSC, that sold sophisticated ‘electronic brains 

for wind turbines to a Chinese company, Sinovel.'^ Having built its 

business supplying the specialised equipment, AMSC was suddenly 

cut off by Sinovel, with a truckload of parts turned away. It soon 

discovered that its technology had been stolen by Sinovel, which had 

bed a Serbian software engineer who worked at AMSC s facility 

^ ermany. (He was convicted and jailed.) Sinovel was founded by 

Indu t made his reputation working for the Dalian Heavy 

y Group, a giant state-owned enterprise. One of the investors 

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MALICIOUS INSIDERS’ AND SCIENTIFIC ORGANISATIONS 

in l\is company was princeling Wen Yunsong, son of Chinas Premier 

^"^cn Jiabao. Han was also close to the boss of the National Energy 

Administration, a relationship he used to turn Sinovel into the worlds 

second largest wind turbine maker. 

Another case is that of American Glenn Shriver, who, while studying 

Mandarin in China, was befriended by two men and a woman who 

turned out to be Ministry of State Security (MSS) officers.'^ They 

persuaded him to return to the US and make his way into sensitive 

areas of government service. Among a number of cash payments was 

one of $40,000 when he applied (unsuccessfully) for a job with the 

CIA. Shriver was caught and imprisoned for four years. His story shows 

that while espionage on behalf of the PRC is carried out predominantly 

by those of Chinese heritage, others are not immune to recruitment. 

In Canada, the security agencies have for some years viewed China as 

the nations most serious intelligence threat, operating mainly through 

the recruitment of Chinese-Canadians.Visitors too can be suspect. 

The head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service observed: 

‘It’s surprising, sometimes, the number of hyperactive tourists we get 

here and where they come from.’ A CSIS report noted as far back as 

2004 that ‘foreign students and scientists, business delegations and 

immigrants were among those recruited as informants In 2013 a 

Chinese-Canadian engineer, Qing Quentin Huang, was arrested and 

charged with passing classified information about Canadas navy ship 

procurement strategy to China. 

Nanotechnology is seen by the Chinese government as the path to 

a ‘great leap forward’.'® In 2016 five Chinese nationals were charged 

with intellectual property theft from a Taiwanese nanotechnology com¬ 

pany.’* They planned to use the specialised technology to set up their 

own factory on the mainland. A case of suspected espionage at a CSIRO 

facility in 2013 (discussed later) also involved nanotechnology. 

Although there have been no prosecutions of people of Chinese 

heritage engaged in commercial or government espionage in Australia, 

it would be naive to believe that it is not happening. There can be little 

doubt that the Chinese government has built in Australia extensive 

networks for the theft of classified information and intellectual prop¬ 

erty to serve the development plans of China. Project 111, for example. 

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SILENT INVASION 

offers generous inducements to overseas Chinese scientists to r 

home. According to Daniel Golden, who has written extensively 2T 

theft of IP from US universities, those recruited are encouraged nouo 

come home empty-handed.^^ ^ 

The large and growing number of highly qualified Chinese- 

Australians now working in science and technology labs around the 

country provide fertile recruiting grounds. These Chinese-Australians 

are perfect targets for the PRC s finely tuned techniques of influence 

and coercion. Some have moved into senior management positions in 

companies, universities and government organisations with technical 

functions or at the heart of the nations decision-making. Scientists, 

engineers, IT specialists and other professionals are drawn or pressured 

into a net of patriotic commitment to the motherland. Everyone born 

in China is regarded as a legitimate target by the Chinese party-state, 

expected to be ultimately loyal to the ancestral homeland. 

Like so much else, this mirrors the pattern in the United States. 

In their book Chinese Industrial Espionage, William Hannas, James 

Mulvenon and Anna Puglisi detail an astonishingly dense network of 

associations of Chinese science and technology professionals operating 

within the United States, all with deep links to the Chinese state and 

with the goal of transferring sophisticated technology to China in 

order to support its goal of surpassing the United States.There is a 

concentration of these organisations in Silicon Valley, where around one 

in ten high-tech workers is from mainland China. 

Professional associations 

A parallel network of PRC-linked professional associations operates in 

Australia, often with names and objectives virtually identical to those 

in the United States. While these associations provide a venue for 

social networking and assistance with professional advancement, their 

members may be recruited to work for the PRC. The organisations are 

in some cases created at the suggestion of the Chinese state. Patriotic 

overtures are made but so are promises of ‘extremely high’ salaries on 

top of their legitimate salaries.-^ 

James To whose meticulously sourced work has not been ques- 

tioned-discovered that the PLA and the Ministry of State Security 

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‘MALICIOUS INSIDERS’ AND SCIENTIFIC ORGANISATIONS 

identify candidates for intelligence gathering before they leave China: 

'they are not necessarily asked to spy Illegally, but simply invited to 

share information.’^^ Their handlers abroad cultivate warm relation¬ 

ships through dinners and events organised by cultural and professional 

associations. Carrots and sticks are deployed. The carrots are promises 

of good jobs and houses when they return to China. The sticks include 

refusing visas and threats to harm their families. Graduate students may 

become ‘sleeper’ agents, only activated if they find themselves in jobs 

with access to desirable information. According to James To, clandestine 

and aggressive methods are used mainly on those overseas Chinese who 

can provide information of scientific, technological and military value. 

The Chinese Association for International Exchange of Personnel 

(CAIEP) keeps a very low profile and few people outside China have 

heard of it, even though its branches are active around the world.^^ 

Here it is known as the Australia-China Association for International 

Exchange of Personnel (ACAIEP). Its office is in Collins Street, 

Melbourne, and it maintains a permanent office in Beijing.^® Its main 

task is to vacuum up high-tech information by forging links with 

Chinese-origin scientists working in research labs. 

ACAIEP is one of a number of front organisations for the State 

Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs (SAFEA), which reports 

directly to the PRC State Council. Hannas, Mulvenon and Puglisi 

single out SAFEA as the foremost PRC-based technology transfer 

organisation.’’ In practice ‘there is no distinction to be made between 

cooperating with’ CAIEP and SAFEA.^’ In the United States, SAFEA 

(sometimes referred to as the Foreign Experts Bureau) was caught red- 

handed recruiting an engineer to supply to the PRC highly classified 

equipment designs for US stealth missiles.^' The engineer was sentenced 

to thirty-two years in prison. 

SAFEA’s objective of recruiting spies to supply valuable informa¬ 

tion to the PRC is hinted at on its website, where its mission is to use 

‘many types of recruitment channels’ and to do so by making ‘full use 

of contacts with governments, exchanges with sister cities, international 

economic and trade negotiations, international conferences, and like 

opportunities’ to recruit foreign experts.^^ SAFEA itself and its front 

organisations are active in Australia. In December 2016, SAFEA’s 

183 

SILENT INVASION 

director, Zhang Jianguo, toured Australia and New Zealand 

met with officials from the Department of Immigration and Bord ^ 

Protection, presumably to remove obstacles to exchange visits.^^ 

Developing institutional and personal relationships is a prelude 

to recruiting spies. ACAIEP acts as a facilitator, sometimes brokering 

cooperation agreements between Australian and Chinese universities, 

such as the one between Victoria University in Melbourne and the 

Chongqing Energy College, and the one between Victoria University, 

Liaoning University and the China Scholarship Council. The advan¬ 

tage of a front organisation like ACAIEP is that it conceals SAFEA’s 

PRC links and ‘insulates’ universities in Australia from ‘the stigma 

of supporting a foreign state whose goals are often mimical’ to 

Australia’s interests.^ 

Mirroring the United States, in Australia there are a number of 

science and technology professional associations for Chinese-Australis 

scientists, each with links to the PRC. These associations provide 

social contact and career advancement, but they also bring together 

scientists, engineers and others in ways that can be ^ 

directed by the embassy. Espionage experts Hannas. u v 

Puglisi write that Beijing ‘courts these associations an ste 

activities using a mix of psychological pressure, po itica 

financial incentives’.-’^ 

The peak body of these professional associations is t e 

of Chinese Scientists in Australia (FOCSA). It brings toget er t ^ ^ 

associations and aims to ‘represent Chinese scholars noting 

October 2004 the Peoples Daily celebrated the launch of F > 

that it began ‘with the energetic support and aid of the Chinese m 

in Australia’s education office’.-’^ Chinas ambassador in Aus c 

Ying, was reported (in Chinese) as saying she hoped that the sp 

and scholars would be able to transfer advanced technologica a 

ments back to China.’ The federation has held its meetings 

ednrnrinn nfFire in rhe Canberra suburb of O Malley. 

Looking back on its first five years, the Ministry of Education 

Beijing noted with satisfaction that FOCSA had contributed towards 

the ancestral nation’s scientific education. It had ‘frequently through 

various methods encouraged members to participate in national 

184 

‘MALICIOUS INSIDERS’ AND SCIENTIFIC ORGANISATIONS 

service projects and events, actively organised and participated in the 

education offices “Spring Sunshine Plan”, and constantly expanded 

opportunities (for Chinese scholars in Australia) to collaborate and 

exchange with Chinese colleagues. Many of the groups members main¬ 

tain long-term stable cooperation with domestic research and higher 

education institutions.’^® 

One of FOeSA’s vice-presidents is Professor Xinghuo Yu. He 

manages RMIT’s scientific research programs and has been a member 

of Australian government bodies overseeing photonics and advanced 

manufacturing research.^’ The current president of FOCSA is Professor 

Lin Ye, a professor at the University of Sydney’s Centre for Advanced 

Materials Technology where he works on nanotechnology, among other 

things. Ye graduated from the secretive Harbin Engineering University 

and the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, respec¬ 

tively ranked second and fourth in China for military research.'*® He 

retains links with bodi. In 2014 he spoke at the Beijing University of 

Aeronautics and Astronautics. In 2016 he spoke at the Harbin Institute 

of Teclinolog}^ which is ranked first for military research in China. 

The Western Australia Chinese Scientists Association (WACSA) is 

ver)' active. (Also active in the west are the Western Australia Chinese 

Engineers Association and the Western Australia Chinese Petroleum 

Association.) Founded in 2003, WACSA is open to professionals of 

Chinese ethnic background and with postgraduate qualifications’.'*' Its 

members are among the best scientists in their fields. Some work at 

senior levels in government. The president of WACSA is Guowei Ma, 

a professor of engineering at the University of Western Australia. Like 

other scientists of Chinese origin in Australia, Ma seems to carry out 

research solely with Chinese scientists, with almost no Western names 

among his scores of co-authors. WACSA’s website links to the PRC’s 

Perth consulate and the PRC embassy-sponsored FOCSA. In 2015 it 

welcomed the Perth consul general, who spoke about China’s OBOR 

strateg)'. The consulate reported that the audience was ‘full of confi¬ 

dence about the future of China’s development and full of expectation 

about China-Australia cooperation’.'*^ In February 2017 it held a major 

conference in Perth, opened by Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, 

Julie Bishop, and China’s consul general. 

185 

SILENT INVASION 

Another prominent organisation is the Queensland Chinese Assoc' 

tion of Scientists and Engineers (QCASE), which seems to have a cl^' 

relationship with the PRC’s Brisbane consulate and with institutions in 

China.'*^ Brisbane consul general Sun Dali’s address to a QCASE general 

meeting was reported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing in 

the following way: ‘In this enthusiastic atmosphere, Consul General 

Sun used the Beijing spirit of “patriotism, innovation, inclusiviry and 

virtue” to exhort everyone, and moreover wished the scientists a happy 

Chinese New Year.’'^ 

The honorary chairman of QCASE since its foundation has been 

Max Lu (Chinese name Lu Gaoqing), a leading nanotechnology 

expert who worked his way into senior academic and administrative 

positions at the University of Queensland over two decades after 

completing his PhD there. His area of expertise, nanotechnology, is of 

great relevance to military, pharmaceutical and electronics applications, 

among others. 

In 2004 Max Lu was the founding president of FOCSA. In 2011 he 

won a prize from the Ministry of Science and Technology in Beijing. He 

had been the ‘core member’ of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) 

Overseas Innovators Team—Shenyang Interface Materials Research 

Centre. CAS credits him with advancing its work in solar energy 

catalysis, energy storage and hydrogen storage.''^ 

In 2017 Professor Lu was made an Officer of the Order of Australia 

for ‘distinguished service to education, to national and international 

research in the fields of materials chemistry and nanotechnology, to 

engineering, and to Australia-China relations . The citation lists his 

close connections with the Chinese state, including his membership 

of an Expert Consultative Committee of the ruling State Council. 

According to a 2015 article by the All-China Federation of Returned 

Overseas Chinese, ‘[Max] Lu Gaoqing after so many years has never 

stopped being interested in China and his native land. Having worked 

for 28 years in loreign nations, Lu Gaoqing said that his feelings towards 

the ancestral nation and his native land have “never changed . Lu has 

been quoted by Xinhua News Agency speaking strongly in support of 

Chinas foreign policy.'^® At the same time he was serving on a number 

of influential Australian government advisory bodies. 

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'MALICIOUS INSIDERS’ AND SCIENTIFIC ORGANISATIONS 

In April 2016 Professor Lu took up a new position as president and 

vice-chancellor of the University of Surrey, ‘the first Chinese to become 

the President of a top-ranking university in the western world’.'*’ 

Among the many professional associations for Chinese-Australians 

and Chinese in Australia, the Canberra Society of Chinese Scholars 

(CSCS) is of particular interest. The society has very close ties to the 

Chinese embassy, with its 2016 council and executive committee 

meeting held at the embassy’s education office.^’ The meeting’s agenda 

included a speech by education attache Xu Xiao. The members of 

CSCS are drawn from the ANU, the CSIRO, the Australian Defence 

Force Academy and a number of federal government departments, 

including one who works in a federal intelligence organisation.^* In 

early 2017 CSCS held a workshop entitled ‘Overseas Chinese scholars 

returning home to serve’. Of the twenty-one on the attendance list, six 

were from the CSIRO.^^ 

China’s appetite for other countries’ technology—obtained legally 

or othenvise—is satisfied by a number of means. One is to form com¬ 

panies in the West whose mission is to receive requests from Chinese 

companies needing a particular technology and then to search for 

possible suppliers among scientists or engineers of Chinese (or other) 

heritage in competitor companies.” Provinces and major cities also 

have their own recruitment programs linked directly to the United 

Front Work Department. In November 2016, the PRC-loyal Shenzhen 

Australia Community Association sponsored a Shenzhen (Australia) 

Overseas High-Level Talent Forum in Sydney to hold ‘deep exchanges’ 

with scholars from Sydney universities.” The meeting was addressed 

by two senior cadres from the United Front Work Department and the 

cit}"’s Overseas Chinese Federation, as well as the Sydney consulate’s 

science and technology counsellor and SAFEA’s chief representative in 

Australia. Huang Xiangmo spoke, as president of the Shenzhen Australia 

Community Association. 

The Chinese-language People's Daily report of the event noted the 

presence of Western Sydney University (WSU) deputy vice-chancellor 

Professor Lan Yizhen.^’ Fan’s title is actually Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor 

(International) at WSU. He is closely tied to various United Front 

bodies, including serving as honorar)^ adviser to the ACPPRC, run by 

187 

SILENT INVASION 

Huang Xiangmo, and the Australia China Economics, Trade and Cultu 

Association (ACETCA).’'* Also present was Leo Mian Liu, described 

‘the Executive Director of the UTS Australia-China Relations Institute’ 

(see Chapter 5). Leo Mian Liu also serves as an honorary advisor to the 

United Front body ACPPRC.^^ Keeping Liu company from UTS wis 

its deputy vice-chancellor. Professor Bill Purcell. 

CSIRO 

‘I’m more worried about CSIRO than universities.’ This comment 

was made to me by a public servant whose job is to manage classified 

research.^® Universities in Australia, my interlocutor said, are driven by 

money, but the CSIRO is even more obsessed by it. When I asked how 

the organisation responds to the kinds of information about Chinas 

infiltration uncovered in this book, my interlocutor admitted: ‘I try not 

to think about it, to be honest.’ 

In December 2013, CSIRO management called the Australian 

Federal Police (AFP) to report a suspected spy in its ranks. A Chinese 

scientist working at the Materials Science and Engineering labs in 

Melbourne had not turned up for work and was thought to have 

absconded with sensitive information.^^ Officers from the AFPs High 

Tech Crime Operations group called at his home but found only a 

CSIRO laptop. Eventually the AFP would seek the assistance of th^ 

French government because, it was reported, the fugitive had fled there. 

However, when the AFP tracked him down he refused to cooperate. 

Those who had worked with him reported they’d been concerned about 

his ‘poor performance’; he had somehow obtained the job without suit 

able expertise.Analysis of the computers hed shared did not reve 

evidence of espionage and the police dropped the case, although a senior 

manager emailed die police saying that the incident had been a wakeup 

call for the whole organisation’. When 1 phoned CSIRO headquarters to 

ask about the affair and its effect on the organisation I met a blank wall. 

It’s fair to assume that the results of every piece of scientific research 

carried out by the CSIRO become available free of charge in China. 

Logic suggests that the CSIRO is a prime target for Chinese espionage. 

Australias premier scientific research organisation is engaged in a great 

deal of research of high commercial and strategic value to China, yet 

188 

‘MALICIOUS INSIDERS’ AND SCIENTIFIC ORGANISATIONS 

all of the indications are that the CSIRO has no understanding of the 

problem and does not care. 

In 2015, 484 CSIRO staff members, close to ten per cent of its 

experts, were born in China.'’^ For the Chinese embassy these men and 

women are an excellent recruiting ground for high-value informants 

channelling quality information to the PRC. 

The CSIRO s director of China engagement and chief scientist for 

manuhicturing and mining resources. Professor Wei Gang, is associated 

widi the United Front group FOCSA, from which we learn of his work 

promoting the CSIRO s collaboration with China, particularly in nano¬ 

technology. He concurrently holds various positions in China, including 

as overseas review expert for the Ministry of Educations Cheung Kong 

Scholars Programme, funded by ‘patriotic businessman Li Ka Shing in 

support of the ‘best of the best’ among Chinese researchers.*^^ He is also 

director of the Yunnan Normal University board and a member of the 

expert advisory panel at the Shanghai Nanotechnology and Promotion 

Center, not to mention chair professor at the East China University 

of Science and Technology and a senior adviser to the government of 

Shenzhen. It is unclear whether these positions receive a salary, but Wei 

is clearly seen by Beijing as a loyal son of the motherland. (Professor 

Wei did not reply to an email requesting an interview.) 

In the United States there is mounting concern that Chinese 

companies, with the encouragement of Beijing, are actively looking 

for investment opportunities in innovative American firms working 

on critical technologies like artificial Intelligence, some with military 

applications.^ A confidential Pentagon white paper covering the rush of 

Chinese money into Silicon Valley is ringing alarm bells in Washington. 

In August 2017 President Trump ordered an investigation of ways to 

stop the transfer of intellectual property to China through acquisition 

and outright theft. 

In Australia, China has a more direct route to accessing sensitive 

technolog)'—^joint research programs with the CSIRO and universities. 

Its hard to know whether our research institutions have any awareness 

of the risks of technolog)' theft, not least because for academics and 

researchers theft may seem to be no more than traditional sharing 

of knowledge. But given the naivet)' of these institutions, it’s unlikely 

189 

SILENT INVASION 

they undertake any kind of serious due diligence to winnow out those 

collaborations that are innocent and mutually beneficial. 

DataGI 

China has set about becoming the world leader in artificial intelligence 

(Al) by 2030. Artificial intelligence has many benign applications but 

is also central to the PRCs plans for enhanced domestic (and global) 

surveillance and internet censorship. One use in development is the 

capacity to identify ‘criminals’ before they have committed any crime.*^' 

It also has extensive military applications. 

AI is attracting a great deal of attention in Australia too. Data6l is 

the CSIRO’s high-profile research centre for data science, including AI. 

Claiming to be ‘world leaders in data science research and engineer¬ 

ing’, it has a huge staff complement of 1100, plus over 400 resident 

PhD students. It’s the hub of Australia’s most advanced work on AI 

and a broad range of applications. For example, in collaboration with 

universities and other research centres it plays a crucial role in support¬ 

ing Australia’s cyber security. Among Data61 s many collaborations is 

a $9.3 million partnership with the Defence Science and Technology 

Group (DST, formerly known as DSTO) ‘to establish collabora¬ 

tive research projects with nine Australian universities around cy 

security’.^’^’ It is also focusing on the data storage and transfer method 

known as blockchain, 

A number of scienrists at Dara6l have co-authored papers wit 

researchers at military institutions in China. 

Chen Wang is a senior research scientist at Data6l. He received his 

PhD from Nanjing University and researches cloud computing systems 

and energy services for the smart grid.^’^ While at the CSIRO Chen 

Wing has collaborated with a number of researchers at the National 

University of Defense Technology (NUDT) in China, or, to give it its 

full title, the People’s Liberation Army National University of Defense 

Science and Technology. NUDT is the top-ranked military academy 

in China and is led by the Central Military Commission, chaired by 

Xi Jinping. It is at the centre of China’s ambitious push to modernise its 

armed forces with the most sophisticated weapons. 

190 

'MALICIOUS INSIDERS’ AND SCIENTIFIC ORGANISATIONS 

Among Chen Wangs recent co-authors are the following NUDT 

researchers: 

• Liu Xiaocheng from the System Simulation Lab of NUDT s College 

of Mechatronics and Automation. He received his PhD on cloud 

simulation in 2015 from NUDT under the supervision of Professor 

Huang Kedi, the ‘father’ of Chinas Yinhe supercomputer.*^® Huang 

Kedi is a PLA major general**^ who has written on the use of simu¬ 

lation technology for warfare and joined military conferences on 

simulation technology.^” Liu Xiaocheng’s work includes collabora¬ 

tion with researchers from the PLA Unit 9294 U' and the PLA Navy 

Armaments Academy. 

• Chen Bin is also from the System Simulation Lab of NUDT’s 

College of Mechatronics and Automation. He has collaborated 

with researchers from the PLA Unit 63892, the PLA Unit 95949, 

the PLA Air Force 1st Aeronautics Institute and the PLA Navy 

Armaments Academy.Chen Bin has worked at NUDT’s Research 

Center of Military Computational Experiments and Parallel Systems 

Technology and his research includes work on combat simulation.^’^ 

• Qiu Xiaogang works at NUDT’s System Simulation Lab and has 

worked at NUDT’s Research Center of Military Computational 

Experiments and Parallel Systems Technology.^^ A 2016 paper 

describes him as a researcher from both NUDT and the PLA Unit 

31002.^” He collaborated with a NUDT researcher who was at the 

same time also working for PLA Unit 77569, based in Lhasa.^^ 

Given their secretive nature, there is almost no reliable information on 

any of the PLA units mentioned above. Based on their publications, 

however, the researchers’ work has direct military applications. 

There is no suggestion that Chen Wang has provided trade secrets or 

CSIRO intellectual property to his co-authors. 

The revolving door and close-knit relationship between these three 

NUDT researchers and PLA research units indicates that the NUDT 

College of Mechatronics Engineering and Automation should be treated 

as a PLA research institute. The three NUDT researchers are involved 

191 

SILENT INVASION 

in combat simulations and likely seek to use Chen Wangs knowicd 

of parallel systems and cloud computing, developed through his 

at the CSIRO, to improve their combat simulations and thereby aid 

Chinas military. 

Shiping Chen is a principal research scientist at Data6l and has 

worked at the CSIRO since 1999. He earned his bachelors degree in 

1985 from Harbin University of Science and Technology. He completed 

a masters degree at the Shenyang Institute of Automation in 1990, a 

state-run institution known for its work on robots and drones.^® He 

stayed on at that institute to work there as a system engineer until 1995. 

In June 2017 the institute was named in an industrial espionage case in 

the United States in which a Chinese engineer, Yu Long, pleaded guilty 

to stealing highly sensitive documents containing military technology 

and passing them to the director of the Shenyang Institute.Yu Long 

worked at an American military contractor supplying jet engines for 

F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning fighter aircraft. Australia has ordered a 

fleet of seventy-two F-35 fighters.”® 

Shiping Chen was awarded a PhD in computer science by UNSW 

in 2001.”' There is no evidence that he has maintained ties with the 

Shenyang Institute of Automation.”* However, since 2015 Chen has 

written three papers on networks and data science with a team at 

the State Key Lab of Nerv'orking and Switching Technology, Beijing 

Universit)' of Posts and Felecommunications.”^ The lab appears to be 

deeply involved in military research. A member of its academic com 

mittee is Major General Chen Zhijie of the Air Force Armaments 

Research Institute.”'' The head of the committee is Yu Quan from the 

PLA General Staff Headquarters 61st Research Institute. Yu Quan is a 

communications expert who is also connected to Yang Xiang, head of 

Deakin University’s Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation. 

Yu heads the academic committee of Xidian’s State Key Laboratory of 

Integrated Services Networks where Xiang holds a visiting professorship. 

One of Shiping Chen’s co-authors on the three papers is Chen 

Junliang, who has been involved in China’s space program and com¬ 

munications networks research, including with and for the PLA.®^ He 

is credited with research that ‘stopped the invasion of foreign intelligent 

network products used in communications systems.®*^ 

192 

MALICIOUS INSIDERS’ AND SCIENTIFIC ORGANISATIONS 

There is no suggestion that Shiping Chen or Liming Zhu (see below) 

have provided trade secrets or CSIRO intellectual property to their 

co-authors or fellow researchers in China. 

Liming Zhu is the research director for Data6Ts software and 

computational systems program, which includes research on big data, 

blockchain and cyber security. Among other projects, he leads Data6Ts 

team working with the Australian Treasury on the application of 

blockchain technology to financial transactions.®^ He’s also a professor 

at UNSW, from where he obtained his PhD. Zhu does not appear to 

have formal links with institutions in China, but he does collaborate 

with PLA-linked researchers, publishing papers on data storage with 

researchers at PLA universities. One of his co-authors, Lu Kai, is a pro¬ 

fessor at the National University of Defense Technology, arguably the 

most important PLA university.®® A leading Chinese computer scientist, 

Lu is intimately tied to China’s military. He holds four national defence 

patents, which are typically classified, and has won three first-place 

‘military technology progress’ prizes.®^ He has said that his work on 

supercomputers contributes to China’s ‘strong army dream’.^° 

193 

10 

‘Engineering souls’ at 

Australia’s universities 

Higher education is a forward battlefield in ideological work, 

and shoulders the important tasks of studying, researching and 

propagating Marxism, fostering and carrying forward the Socialist 

core value system, and providing talent guarantees and intelligent 

support for the realization of the Chinese Dream of the great 

rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. 

State Council guidelines for higher education, 2015 

In his 2016 presidential address to the Australian Academy of the 

Humanities, the eminent Sinologist John Fitzgerald pointed out that 

CCP leaders and university administrators across China see themselves 

as engaged in a war—a war against the free and open inejuiry that we take 

for granted in Australia.' China, he said, ‘is openly hostile to the idea of 

academic freedom’. Yet in case after case we can see Australias university 

leaders sacrificing that freedom for Chinese lucre. As Fitzgerald bluntly 

puts it: ‘Our university executives invite onto our campuses institutions 

and political representatives who profess to be at war with our values, 

including academic freedom.’ 

In a 2016 speech, Xi Jinping emphasised the need to place ‘ideo¬ 

logical work and ‘political work’ at the heart of university education. 

194 

'ENGINEERING SOULS' AT AUSTRALIA’S UNIVERSITIES 

All teachers are obliged to believe in the ‘core values of socialism’ and 

become ‘disseminators of advanced ideology’. They are entrusted with 

‘the sacred mission of engineering human souls’. Schools and universities 

are the primary centres for the party’s ‘thought work’.^ 

There is a tendency in the West to believe all of this is just a rhetorical 

legacy of Maoism. But Xi is deadly serious. An extensive program of 

enforcing ideological purity is underway across China. The Ministry 

of Education’s guidelines, published in 2016, do not mince words: 

‘The illegal spread of harmful ideas and expressions in the classroom 

will be dealt with severely according to regulation and law.’^ What 

are these harmful ideas? The banned thoughts were set out in a party 

communique forwarded in 2013 to university presidents. The ‘Seven 

Prohibitions’ include constitutional democracy, freedom of the press, 

and ‘universal values’, covering human rights and academic freedom. 

‘The few scholars who dare not to obey,’ a 2014 US Congressional 

report warned, ‘have been monitored, threatened, harassed, fined, 

beaten, indicted or imprisoned.”* 

John Fitzgerald tells us that the communique was classified as a 

state secret, perhaps so as not to embarrass universities in countries like 

Australia that enter into partnerships with Chinese universities. The 

document was allegedly leaked to foreign reporters by a seventy-year- 

old Chinese journalist, Gao Yu, who was sentenced to seven years in 

prison for the crime. This is the reality of the system that Australian 

university executives and professors push from their minds as they 

exchange cheerful toasts of Maotai at banquets celebrating their latest 

joint venture with a Chinese university. 

Thought management 

To believe China’s state agencies leave thought work at home when they 

go out into the world is to misunderstand the modern Chinese state at 

the most basic level. China’s Ministry of Education has developed many 

wan of influencing and regulating what happens in Australia’s univer¬ 

sities in a way that advances President Xi’s vision of higher education 

as a battlefield of ideas. It has, in Professor Fitzgerald’s words, ‘begun 

to export the sn'le of interventionist academic policing it routinely 

practices at home’. 

195 

SILENT INVASION 

Nothing is too trivial to evade the purview of thouah 

Australian academic arrived at a Chinese university to deicer 

ing course to find that pages mentioning Taiwan and HonR'L"’"'^' 

been torn out of the textbook.^ The policing goes beyond 

the CCPs ideological apparatus to control the thoughts of 

studying or working abroad. The CCP now aims to shape or siUr 

the work and public statements of academics in Australia (includi 

stopping the publication of what you are now reading). As prominent 

US China scholar Perry Link observes, the key is to persuade academ¬ 

ics to censor themselves willingly. It does so by two main means.^ The 

first is to blacklist ‘unfriendly’ scholars. In 2016 an ANU China scholar 

working on rights issues was barred from entering China to panicipate 

in a DFAT project there.^ In March 2017, the ‘detention’ and question¬ 

ing of UTS academic Feng Chongyi while undertaking fieldwork in 

Guangzhou sent a warning to anyone needing a visa to do academic 

work in China. (Professor Feng is an Australian permanent resident.) 

During my discussions with them, China scholars in Australia 

typically begin to ruminate on how Beijing could punish them if they 

cross the line. And they all know where the line is. They express their 

views cautiously in public because they know they will be refiised a visa, 

as a number of their American colleagues have been. For every scho ar 

denied a visa, dozxMis resolve that it will not happen to them. 

For academics who have invested ten or twenty years in acquiring 

their expertise, a prohibition on travelling to China would be a ^ 

killer. One expert told me that since he is close to retirement he doesnt 

care any more and is free to tell Australians what is really going on ^ 

younger scholars interested in China steer their research into less po 

cally sensitive areas, like cultural history. In researching this book I 

noticed that China studies in Australian universities are pervaded by 

atmosphere of caution, with scholars policing themselves so as to stay o 

the right side of the CCPs legion ol watchers. Scholars from abroad who 

have made stronger criticisms of the CCP regime complain private y 

that they are not invited to speak at Australian universities. One of our 

best China obser\'ers, Rowan Callick, concluded that our universities 

‘have substantially withdrawn their capacity for sustained, genuinely 

independent analysis of contemporary China or of Chinese history 

196 

'ENGINEERING SOULS' AT AUSTRALIA'S UNIVERSITIES 

If academics will not censor themselves, university administra¬ 

tors will do it for them, a baleful trend revealed again in May 2017 

Monash University. Teaching a course in human resources, lecturer 

Aaron Wijeratne gave his students a quiz taken from a widely used text¬ 

book. They were asked to complete the statement ‘There is a common 

saying in China that government officials only speak truth when ...’. 

The correct answer is when ‘they are drunk or careless’. It is a common 

sentiment in China, but a Chinese student in the class, Gao Song, was 

offended and took to WeChat to complain. And Melbourne’s Chinese 

consulate took notice. 

A consular official phoned Monash’s top brass, expressing concern 

and demanding that the university investigate the matter and ‘seriously 

and appropriately manage it’, warning that it would ‘continue to 

monitor the situation’.^ University authorities were aware that Monash 

had 4400 Chinese undergraduate students paying full fees.'® And 

perhaps the consulate reminded them that in 2012 their university was 

granted the first licence in a decade for a foreign university to set up a 

campus in China, and that the Chinese government itself paid for the 

building to house its graduate school and research institute at China’s 

Southeast University." 

Monash Business School deputy dean Robert Brooks moved fast. 

He suspended Wijeratne, had the quiz withdrawn, and said he would 

be reviewing the course. Soon after, he banned the ‘commonly used’ 

textbook from the school’s courses.'" 

In China, news of the quiz set the internet abuzz after the Global 

Times reported on the victory: ‘The change we can see here is that as 

China’s power grows stronger ... thoughtless remarks about China will 

die down.’ In Australian universities, tolerance will no longer be shown 

towards ‘thoughtless remarks’. When popular Chinese website I63.com 

republished the article it attracted almost half a million comments.'^ 

Nearer to home, Sydney Today, one of the largest Chinese-language news 

sources in Australia, stirred the pot. An article titled ‘Rage! Monash 

University quiz publicly humiliates China!’ lashed out at the lecturer: 

these [quiz] topics of yours are a mouthful of poisonous milk!’’'^ 

But not all readers of Sydney Today took the bait. Some criticised the 

Chinese media’s take on the issue. One asked the editors whether they 

197 

SILENT INVASION 

had actually had contact with Chinese officialdom. Others agreed with 

the quiz questions. ‘Its a great truth, there’s no defect here. China really 

is like this,’ one wrote. But back at Monash University there is only one 

Chinese view that counts and the message to all university staff was loud 

and clear: ‘China matters to us so don’t do or say anything that might 

upset the consulate. We dance to its tune.’ 

Another kind of pressure to self-censor operates through financial 

linkages with universities, including Confucius Institutes and various 

kinds of joint projects between Australian and Chinese universities. 

In 2016 Australia’s universities had almost 1100 formal research 

collaboration agreements with universities in China.(The University 

of Sydney tops the list with 107 agreements.) There are hundreds of 

staff and student exchange agreements. They act as inducements to 

university administrators to act in a ‘friendly’ way towards China and 

keep critical scholars under pressure not to rock the boat. 

It’s not only China scholars who come under pressure. The 

‘red-hot patriots’ abroad that President Xi has praised are on a hair- 

trigger looking for any infraction that ‘hurts the feelings of the Chin«e 

people’.“^ At the ANU a lecturer in an IT class, exasperated at t e 

level of cheating, put up a message on the classroom screen: wi 

not tolerate students who cheat.’'^ A large proportion of his swdents 

were from China, and as hed been told they may not be ge g ^ 

message as their English was not very good, he included a tra 

in Chinese. The Chinese students had their feelings hurt. The 

newspapers in Australia inflamed the issue. (The Peoples Daily rep ^ 

the students’ ‘fury’ and equated the lecturers action to a neo-Nazi p 

reading ‘kill Chinese’.'®) Under pressure, the lecturer made a grove g 

apolog\' for his ‘poor decision’, going on to praise the many exce 

students in the class’. 

At the Universit)' of Sydney, a lecturer hurt the feelings of Chinese 

students by using a map of the world that, when zoomed in, s owe 

an Indian version of the disputed India— Bhutan—China borders. 

Some students left in protest. Others took to WeChat. A jingoistic 

Australia-based WeChat group calling themselves ‘Australian Red Scarff 

mounted a campaign, and the lecturer was forced to issue an apology. 

Presumably, all maps covering disputed territory used at the University 

198 

‘ENGINEERING SOULS’ AT AUSTRALIA'S UNIVERSITIES 

of Sydney must in future reflect the PRC’s claims. Other nations’ claims 

do not count. Reporting on the incident in China, the Global Times 

declared: ‘The China-India border dispute broke out in Australia, and 

China won!’ Yes, because the University of Sydney capitulated.^*^ 

The University of Sydney is surely the most supine in Australia. 

When the chief of the Group of Eight (a coalition of leading universities) 

was reported as acknowledging the problem of student intimidation of 

lecturers, albeit in the mildest and most inoffensive way, the university s 

vice chancellor Michael Spence issued a media release criticising her 

and declaring that Chinese officials in Australia respect the University s 

deep commitment to intellectual freedom, an apologia that does not 

pass the laugh test.^' 

At the University of Newcastle, a lecturer put up a chart he’d found 

listing Taiwan and Hong Kong as ‘countries. Sydney Today reported 

that students were ‘seriously offended, very angry They threatened 

that they could ‘not rule out the possibility of implementing further 

measures to protect their rights’. The Sydney consulate complained 

to the university. The incident ‘seriously hurt the feelings of Chinese 

students’.^ (While appearing to share the students’ anger, the Chinese 

authorities are always acting strategically.) To his credit, the lecturer said 

they should ‘Learn to accept the reality of it’. 

After years of having the history of humiliation drilled into them, 

some Chinese students react to the slightest offence as a way of demon¬ 

strating their jingoistic fervour. They are constantly on the lookout for 

evidence of discrimination, and feel aggrieved because they contribute 

so much money to their universities. The Chinese consulates amplify 

these feelings as a way of controlling the students and exerting pressure 

on Australians to see the world as the Communist Party does. 

Here in Australia we walk on eggshells, terrified of doing anything 

to upset China, allowing ourselves to be bullied by the politics of 

denunciation, and sacrificing our self-respect as a result. 

Many university administrators in Australia, and some academics, 

have only a vague understanding of academic freedom, and their haziness 

contributes to their lack of commitment to it. The hue and cry that some 

make about erosion of academic freedom seems to them an indulgence 

that can be sacrificed in the pragmatic interest of the institution. 

199 

SILENT INVASION 

Academic freedom is not only the ‘moral foundation of the 

university’^-* but is at the very heart of free speech in Ausiralian"^^"^^^" 

Unlike lobbyists and journalists, the public pays academics to 

experts and expects them to use their expertise to enrich and inform'"^ 

society. In China, many scholars have been persecuted for taking 

academic freedom seriously—imprisoned or banished into obscur'^ 

because they dared to point to the historical and political distortions 

of CCP ideology. The CCP has become so confident in its power 

that it is brazenly attempting to silence scholars in the West whom it 

deems unfriendly. One might expect that Cambridge University Press 

(CUP) would be one of the fiercest defenders of academic freedom, yet 

in August 2017 it buckled to pressure from Beijing and blocked 300 

online articles from its respected journal China Quarterly, articles red- 

flagged by the Chinese censors for dealing with issues like the Cultural 

Revolution and the Tiananmen Square massacre.^^ CUP wanted to 

maintain its journal’s access to the Chinese market. After a storm of 

angry protests from China scholars, CUP reinstated the articles. Will 

the CCP stop there? No. 

When an Australian university enters into a partnership with 

a Chinese university or state-owned enterprise it also enters into a 

partnership with the Chinese Communist Party. The partys program 

of ‘thought management’ sets the political and ideological rules that 

constrain the relationship, rules that no university in Australia would 

accept for its own staff and students. In these partnerships liberalism 

meets authoritarianism, and liberalism often gives way in order not to 

offend—and to keep the cash flowing. 

Funding PLA upgrade^^ 

In recent years, China’s campaign to accpiire by devious means the most 

proprietary and sensitive knowledge from technologically sophisticated 

countries has entered a new phase. Much of this research is carried out in 

Western universities and research institutes, most of them government- 

funded. As indicated, lured by Chinese money, but also consistent with 

the tradition of collaborative work among scientists, these Western 

research organisations have entered into hundreds of agreements with 

Chinese universities and research outfits. 

200 

.■Viter [he Tiananmen Square massacre on 4 June 1989, Prime Minister 

Bob Hawke announced that Chinese students in Australia would be allowed to 

stavin thecountrt'. It turned out that lew or them were pro-democracy activists, 

although many more pretended to be. 

A 

Graham Tidy/Fairfax Syndication 

Outside Parliament House at the 2008 Olympic Torch relay in Canberra, Tibetan 

autonomy supporters were outnumbered and roughed up by thousands of angry 

Chinese students bussed in from all over Australia by the Chinese Embassy. 

Communist Party silencing all criticism of the Chinese 

practitioners, and supporter f r'-kPro-democracy activists, Falun Gong 

T hese groups are hardiv k autonomy have been in its sights. 

" neard nowadays. 

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03 

Jiison Soulh/r.iiiMs SviulK\«K>i> 

‘Svdnev Opera House was draped in red with Cdiinese characteristics,’ brasc^ed 

the Peoples Daily in 2016, after the NSW Cktvernnieiu approved a plan by a 

front organisation of the CCP to turn the Sydney Opera House red as a Chinese 

New Year stunt. 

James Alcock/Fairfax Syndication 

1 

no 

'ff^j iVft / U-^'^ 

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oot- 

two years before ibe ^ ”"ie-cl:isb line’ drawn by band in 1947. 

occupation of islands ' 1 ^ in f diina. It’s the Ixisis for (Mtinas 

tribunal in I'he I laeue • I • I J^'ly 20 I 6 an international 

defined area has no leeal Ivi • ^ ‘^l•'iln to ‘historic rights’ within the 

build navy bases on reclaimed isl incf ' “ling aiul continued to 

i 

WikiihCjdiiiCoiKinout. 

Prime Minister Malcolm 'I'urnbiill, businessman Huang Xiangmo, 

Liberal MP Craig Launcly anti his ‘consultant’ Yang Dongclong 

at a Chinese New Year celebration in 20 16. Yang Dongdong was 

exposed as having close links to the CX]P. 

4 

Bill Shorten photographed with Huang Xiangmo before the first Dastyaii affair in 

September 2016. According to a Fairfitx-ABC investigation, ASIO advised both 

major parties not to accept donations from Huang Xiangmo or Chau Cbak Wing 

cause t ey are suspected of being conduits for interference in Australian politics 

y the CCP. They have denied that they operate on behalf of the CCR 

In 2017 Labor leader Bill Shorten condemned Julie Bishop in federal parliament 

for associating with Huang Xiangmo after Labor Senator Sam Dascyari was 

criticised by the government for having improper dealings with the wealthy 

donor. Dastyari would later be forced to resign from the Senate when accused of 

giving ‘counter-surveillance advice’ to Huang at a visit to his Mosman home. 

James Brickwood/Fairlax Syndicniion 

Huang Xiangnio with Prime Minister Turnbull and Phillip Ruddock in 2016. 

Craig Laundy is obscured behind Huang. Chinese New Year events have become 

propaganda exercises operated by groups guided by the CCP and with funds 

from Beijing. 

Australian National University Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt flies the flag with 

ANU I hD student and Chinese Communist Youth League propagandist Lei 

Xjying. While studying at ANU, Lei produced a virulently patriotic video, with 

martial music and goose-stepping troops, which went viral in China. On his 

social media account, he wrote about ‘dumb c**t Aussies’. 

Dominic Lorrimer/Fairfax Syndication 

In 2016 the ‘Australian Eighth Cotps of the Peop e s L.berat.on Atnry PU) 

(aka the Australia Chinese Ex-services Assoc,at.on) dressed m PEA un,forms and 

held a variety show in Sydneys Hurstville. The former Chinese soldtets wanted to 

‘revive the life of the barracks’. At its 2017 Congress, the CCP reaffirmed that the 

party ‘shall uphold its absolute leadership' over the PEA. 

\ 

i 

^ Tgjcy 

s22(1)(a)(ii) 

A note from the Department of Defences assessment of the national 

security implications of granting a 99-year lease over the Port of Darwin to 

a company linked to Chinas military. It reads: ‘Chris, I held a telecom with 

the Landbridge CEO (at his request and recommended by Treasury). This is a 

private company, Australian managed, and operated with a significant degree of 

autonomy by Australian based people. You will see that they intend to employ an 

Australian management team also for the Darwin Port.’ Beijing has been running 

rings around us, and Defence is no exception. 

Australian Govoinnronl Dopaitmont ol Pul-' 

ENGINEERING SOULS' AT AUSTRALIA'S UNIVERSITIES 

For several years the Chinese party-state has been pursuing a 

coordinated program to acquire from abroad advanced military and 

industrial technology, and to do so by fair means or foul. As John 

Fitzgerald puts it: 

China, rather than investing in open-ended critical inquiry and 

experimentation of the kind that stimulates Innovation, invests 

strategically in national development and defence and then 

steals what it cannot discover or invent ... The strategy has paid 

huge dividends. 

It now emerges that beneath the radar Australian universities are helping 

to give China the technological leadership it craves. 

The Australian Research Council (ARC) through its Linkage 

Program is funnelling Australian taxpayer funds into research with 

applications to Chinas advanced weapons capacity. The program aims 

to encourage national and international research collaborations between 

university researchers and partners in industry or other research centres, 

in this case with Chinese military scientists. 

In 2016 the ARC awarded a three-year $400,000 grant to the Uni¬ 

versity of Adelaide for a research partnership with the Beijing Institute 

of Aeronautical Materials, part of the Aviation Industry Corporation of 

China (AVIC).^® AVIC is a state-owned enterprise and the main supplier 

of military aircraft to the Peoples Liberation Army Air Force, including 

the J-20 stealth fighter, the fifth-generation FC-31 stealth fighter and 

attack drones.^’ When the PLA unveiled its first aircraft carrier, the 

Liaoning, it was loaded with Shenyang J-15 fighter jets built by AVIC.^^^ 

AVICs Beijing Institute of Aeronautical Materials describes itself 

as an ‘important part of the national defence science and technology 

innovation system’.^’ The institutes president, Dai Shenglong, doubles 

as its Communist Party secretary.^^ 2016 a Chinese consortium 

that included an AVIC subsidiar>' bought half of the UK-based global 

data storage company Global Switch. The Australian Department of 

Defence decided to terminate its contract with the local branch of the 

company, which stores highly sensitive data in its building in Ultimo.^^ 

Global Switch also has a partnership with Huawei. 

201 

SILENT INVASION 

According to the ARC project summary, the linkage project with the 

University of Adelaide is ‘expected to make Australia capable of fabricat^ 

ing superior rubber-based materials and devices that are comfortable 

quiet and energy efficient, for use in aircrafts [sic], automobiles and 

vessels’. It will also enhance the PLA Air Force’s capacity to improve the 

performance of its most sophisticated warplanes. 

The research team that put the linkage grant idea to the AVIC 

company and then lodged the application with the ARC is listed as 

Professor Qiao Shizhang, Dr Ma Tian-yi, Professor Zhengtao Su and 

Dr Wang Peng. Qiao Shizhang holds the chair of nanotechnology at 

the University of Adelaide and, among other appointments in China, 

is a visiting professor at Beijing University of Chemical Technology’s 

College of Chemical Engineering, which hosts a State Key Laboratory 

that has taken up thirty-four national defence military-industrial 

projects.^'* Ma Tian-yi is a research fellow at the University of Adelaide 

and Wang Peng is a postdoctoral fellow there.^^ 

The other senior member of the team. Professor Zhengtao Su, works 

at AVIC’s Beijing Institute of Aeronautical Materials.^*^ The bottom 

line of all this is that PLA-linked researchers, some at the University of 

Adelaide and one in China, are receiving funding from the Australian 

government to help enhance the effectiveness of Chinas military air 

craft. This may not be their intention but it is an inevitable risk when 

funding AVIC research. 

According to close observers, China has embarked on a deliberate, 

state-sponsored project to circumvent the costs of research, overcome 

cultural disadvantages, and “leapfrog” to the forefront by leveraging 

the creativity of other nations’. This is the warning made by William 

Hannas, James Mulvenon and Anna Puglisi in their definitive book 

Chinese Industrial Espionage?^ Another expert, James McGregor, in a 

report for the US Chamber of Commerce, put it even more bluntly. 

China’s high-tech research plan is a ‘blueprint for technology theft on 

a scale the world has never seen before’.^® So why would the Australian 

government be subsidising these ambitions, particularly when the 

technological advances are helping to build China’s military might? 

The AVIC link is not the only Australian government grant likely to 

assist Chinas military ambitions. In 2016 the ARC awarded $466,000 

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'ENGINEERING SOULS’ AT AUSTRALIA’S UNIVERSITIES 

to a joint research project between researchers at the University of 

New South Wales, National Instruments Australia and Huawei, the 

giant Chinese telecommunications company. Australia’s intelligence 

agencies believe Huawei is linked to the Third Department of the 

PLA, the military’s cyber-espionage arm, which led the federal gov¬ 

ernment to ban the use of Huawei equipment in Australia’s National 

Broadband Network. 

As we saw in Chapter 8, ASIO’s assessment was influenced by a US 

Congressional report that judged Huawei to be an espionage risk. It 

concluded that Huawei (along with Chinese telco ZTE) ‘cannot be 

trusted to be free of foreign state influence and thus pose a security 

threat to the United States and to our systems’. After trying and failing 

to get to the bottom of the company’s links with Chinese government 

agencies, the report branded Huawei executives evasive and deceitful. 

The purpose of the ARC project is to research ‘massive connectiv¬ 

ity and low latency machine-to-machine communications’ and so 

contribute to a ‘new type of world-class wireless infrastructure’— 

research with obvious military and espionage uses.^^ 

‘Make the foreign serve China’ 

John Fitzgerald lays down a challenge: Australians would do well to 

consider whether we share Xi Jinping’s dream of the great rejuvenation 

of the Chinese people, and whether we want to help it by ‘aligning the 

country’s national research strategy too closely with China’s’.And yet, 

through hundreds of collaborative agreements with Chinese universities 

and research centres, we are in the middle of a major realignment of 

Australia’s scientific and technological research so that it contributes to 

the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions. 

The China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC) 

is a state-owned military research organisation, ‘one of China’s ten 

oflScial defense industry conglomerate-bureaucracies’, according to one 

expert.'^* Its sacred mission is to help to build a ‘rich country, strong 

army. At the same time it is collaborating closely with the University 

of Technology Sydney and benefiting from Australian government 

funding. (Danielle Cave and Brendan Thomas-Noone have also inves¬ 

tigated these links."^’) 

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Many of the research institutes CETC operates were originally 

founded by and for the PLA and they continue to receive military 

funding and do military research. In 2010 its website described the 

organisation as ‘the national squad for military-industrial electronics 

and the main force in the information industry’."^^ 

The civilian use of some of its technologies means their military 

applications can be obscured.'*'* But one expert, Matthew Luce, notes 

that while Huawei and ZTE deny any direct allegiance to the PLA, 

CETC is open about it, declaring that its purpose is ‘leveraging civilian 

electronics for the gain of the PLA’.'*^ Cave and Thomas-Noone note 

that as warfare ‘becomes more information-oriented and networked, 

technologies that are critical to the civilian, military and security sectors 

continue to blur’, and nowhere more so than within CETC s research.'*^ 

It is likely that the PLA Navy ship that anchored itself off the coast of 

Australia in July 2017 to spy on US-Australian war games was packed 

with electronics supplied by CETC. 

CETC has explored all avenues in its search for military tech¬ 

nology-legal and illegal. In January 2011 a Massachusetts court 

sentenced Wei Yufeng to three years in prison, and her co-defendant 

Wu Zhen Zhou to eight years in prison, for conspiring to smal an 

export military electronics components and sensitive electronics used 

in military phased array radar, electronic warfare and missile systems. 

CETC was one of the organisations to be supplied with the sto en 

material.'^ In October 2010, York Yuan Chang and his wife, Leping 

Huang, were arrested in California on charges of conspiring to expon 

restricted electronics technology to the PRC without a licence a 

making false statements. They had allegedly entered into contracts 

with the 24th Research Institute of CEIC to design and transfer 

technology for the development of two types of high-performance 

analogue-to-digital converters.'*** 

Apparently oblivious to all this, in April 2017 the University ofTech- 

nology Sydney announced a partnership with CETC for a new joint 

centre on advanced research into big data technologies, metamateriaJs, 

advanced electronics and quantum computing and communications. 

All of these have military or security applications. For example, China 

is investigating the use of metamaterials for the ‘PLA’s dream’ of making 

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'ENGINEERING SOULS' AT AUSTRALIA’S UNIVERSITIES 

'invisible’ stealth aircraft.The Chinese state corporation is contributing 

$20 million to the UTS centre. 

The new centre continues the university’s previous work with 

CETC and follows an agreement signed with UTS vice-chancellor 

Attila Brungs to promote cooperation in technology research between 

the two institutions. The new joint research centres work is expected 

to link with the CSIRO, which previously bought antennas from 

CETC’s 54th Research Institute for the Square Kilometre Array. Cave 

and Thomas-Noone raise particular concerns about CSIRO’s ten-year 

working relationship with CETC s 54th Research Institute, which 

is heavily engaged in military research.^* In the United States, any 

proposed research with CETC 54 must obtain official sanction. 

UTS’s collaboration with CETC is not funded by the ARC. When 

I met with deputy vice-chancellors Glenn Wightwick and Bill Purcell 

they told me all of their research proposals, including those with 

CETC, comply with the Defence Trade Controls Act, which polices 

international collaborations on sensitive research topics. This suggests 

to me that the legislation no longer reflects the new technological 

and strategic circumstances. The defence department says it leaves it 

to universities to comply with the law, and the universities do so with 

apparent diligence.” But the uncovering of a deep network of linkages 

with China’s top military researchers tells us the system is broken. 

In 2016 UTS began a collaboration with CETC on research projects 

at the CETC Research Institute on Smart Cities,” whose work includes 

‘public security early warning preventative and supervisory abilities’ 

and ‘cyberspace control abilities’. A Xinhua report on CETC’s work 

on smart cities notes that it ‘integrates and connects civilian-military 

dual-use technologies’.” Looking past its slick public face, CETC 

technology assists the Chinese state to improve upon the world’s most 

comprehensive and oppressive system of surveillance and control of 

its citizens.^’ 

As if all of this were not astonishing enough, UTS’s Global Big Data 

Technologies Centre (GBDTC)—which covers mobile sensing and 

communications, computer vision, cloud computing and data intensive 

systems, computational intelligence and brain computer interfaces— 

collaborates with CETC.” The collaboration includes ‘cutting-edge 

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wireless technologies for future telecommunications networks’,which 

might explain why Huawei has also partnered with the big data centre ^ 

These big data technologies are expected to ‘transform defence 

intelligence analysis’ and are of intense interest to both the US and 

Australian military and intelligence services. And of course the PLA, 

which has recommended ‘leveraging the nation’s big data project and 

the civil-military integration advanced development strategy to hasten 

the development of military big data’.^^ 

UTS’s big data centre claimed on its website that the Defence 

Science and Technology Group was one of its partners. DST is the 

premier Australian government organisation charged with developing 

advanced science and technology for Australia’s armed forces.^ Secrets 

held by DST and the CSIRO are believed to be among the ‘top targets’ 

for Chinas army of citizen spies.^' In fact, DST has not been a partner 

with the big data centre, although researchers affiliated to it have taken 

up DST work. If DST’s association with UTS has been minor in the 

past, DST expects to substantially increase its work with UTS as the 

latter shifts increasingly towards technology research.*"^ A new Defence 

Science Institute, a venture between the New South Wales government 

and DST, is to be based at UTS, making the most compromised campus 

in the country a hub for Australian defence science research. However, 

DST insists that all of its work with universities is ‘very early stage 

in the research and development cycle and it urges publication of all 

results of the projects it supports. Because it does not have contracts 

with universities to do any classified research, DST takes no interest in 

the nationality of university employees. All classified research is carried 

out in DST’s own facilities. 1 he problem with this is stated concisely 

by Daniel Golden in his recent book Spy Schools'. A foreign govern¬ 

ment may be eager to scoop up a fundamental breakthrough before its 

applications become so important that it’s labelled secret 

More PLA collaboration 

Eight scientists at UTS have connections with Xidian University, which 

emerged from the PLA’s Military Electronic Engineering Institute and 

remains intimately linked with China’s armed forces. Some of these 

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'engineering souls' at AUSTRALIA’S UNIVERSITIES 

UTS academics have conducted research and authored papers with 

counterparts at Xjdian University. 

Xidian University’s website boasts of its contributions to national 

defence technology, describing itself as ‘standing out among the whole 

nation’s tertiary institutions, with a superior position in national 

defence technology research’, and claiming to be the alma mater of over 

120 PLA generals.*^ When the university announced a new school of 

cyber engineering in 2015, China watchers interpreted it as beefing up 

China’s defence, espionage and warfare capabilities.'^^ One US expert 

noted that ‘Xidian’s close connection with the People’s Liberation Army 

suggests the civilian-military link on cyber research. Yet several UTS 

researchers collaborate with scientists at Xidian University. 

UTS appears to have become an unofficial outpost of China’s scientific 

research effort, some of v'hich has direct application to advancing the 

PLA’s fighting capability. Moreover, Australia’s foremost scientific and 

technology organisations, including those with defence and intelligence 

responsibilities, are working hand-in-glove with researchers closely 

linked to PLA research centres. By blithely contributing to enhancing 

the sophistication of China’s military and intelligence technology, there 

could be no better evidence of Australia’s extraordinary naivety towards 

China and its methods than the activities of UTS. 

President Xi Jinping declared in 2016 that the ‘powerful engine 

of technological innovation’ will drive the great rejuvenation of the 

Chinese people.'^ The PRC appears to have effectively mobilised some 

of Australia’s most valuable intellectual resources, not to mention public 

funds, to help fuel that engine. Yet here in Australia we don’t want 

to know. 

Beijing is now investing huge sums towards giving the PRC a 

home-grown technological edge.*^^ But the ambition, reaffirmed by 

Xi Jinping at the 19th Communist Party Congress in November 2017, 

to have the world’s most technologically sophisticated military force 

means borrowing from wherever the knowledge is most advanced.^® 

As Reuters reported, ‘China is scouring the globe for know-how that 

can be coupled with domestic innovation to produce strategic weapons 

and equipment’.^^ 

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WeVe seen that Australian researchers are working with Ch' 

companies with links to the PLA. But the PLA is also bcncfiiin 

Australian expertise by sending its scientists here to be trained 

PLAs links appear to be most extensive with the ANU, UTS and the 

University of New South Wales (UNSW). Lieutenant General Yang 

Xuejun is a pivotal figure in this pattern of linkages into Australian 

universities. Xi Jinping recently appointed General Yang to preside over 

the PLA Academy of Military Science, the nations foremost military 

research centre. 

In Australia, one of General Yang’s most prolific collaborators is 

Xue Jingling, Scientia Professor of Computing Science and Engineering 

at UNSW. Xue, among several other UNSW researchers, has exten¬ 

sive links with PLA’s National University of Defense Technology 

(NUDT)—the nation’s number-one military technology university- 

having published over two dozen papers with NUDT supercomputer 

experts. Some of this research has been funded by grants from the ARC 

worth over $2.3 million. 

Close collaboration between Xue Jingling and Lieutenant General 

Yang Xuejun is only one part of a broader phenomenon. Other UNSW 

researchers have undertaken extensive research with NUDT in areas like 

autonomous undersvater vehicles, optical fibres and navigation systems, 

including collaboration with PLA Senior Colonel Wang Feixue an 

Major General Zhang Weihua.7' 

Wang Feixue, a 46-year-old professor at NUDT, is at the fore ront 

of work on China’s competitor to the US-controlled Global Positioning 

System, the Beidou satellite navigation system, which is expec 

achieve global coverage by 20207 ^ The Beidou navigation system would 

be crucial for the Chinese military in the event of a conflict 

United States.- ’ Working with NUDT experts, a number of UN 

scientists have contributed towards the development of the Beido 

system, which has many civilian as well as military uses. Of course, 

the PRC is fully entitled to develop its own global satellite navigation 

system, but should Australian expertise be used to enhance it.^ 

Links between Australian and Chinese military universities run 

deeper than joint work resulting in journal publications. The flow 

of personnel from PLA institutions to Australian universities is also 

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'ENGINEERING SOULS’ AT AUSTRALIA’S UNIVERSITIES 

^ncerning. Two dozen NUDT-linked researchers have passed through 

^NSW as visiting scholars or PhD students in the last decade. A further 

fcurteen have passed through ANU. 

For example, one of Senior Colonel Wang’s doctoral students, 

Li Min, visited UNSW for a practicum at the School of Surveying and 

Spatial Information Systems in 2008.^^ Her thesis lists six classified 

Chinese national defence projects relating to navigation systems that 

she worked on during her time as a doctoral student.^^ Having visited 

and studied at Australian institutions, these PLA researchers return 

to China with deep international networks, advanced training, access to 

research that is yet to be classified and, most importantly, the ideas of 

the future. In many cases, a clear connection can be drawn between 

work PLA personnel were doing in Australia and specific projects they 

undertook for the PLA.^ 

China recognises the valuable training and collaboration our uni¬ 

versities can provide, and so does its military. As Senior Colonel Wang 

proclaimed at the 19th Communist Party Congress, at which he was a 

delegate, ‘Science and technology are the core of fighting strength’.^® The 

risk)'^ collaborations pursued by Australian universities can mostly be 

put down to naivety, and we might anticipate they will look much more 

closely at who they are aligning with now that it has been pointed out. 

Some, however, are defensive. When asked about the collaborations 

between UTS researchers and scientists, companies and research insti¬ 

tutes with close links to China’s military, UTS deputy vice-chancellor 

Glenn Wightwick expressed complete satisfaction with the arrange¬ 

ments. He wrote to me that ‘the alleged links with the PLA are not 

relevant as the work conducted will be dual-use, unclassified, and 

publicly available’.^’ Following an earlier email asking about the univer¬ 

sity’s links with China’s military, the response was to threaten legal action 

against me ‘in the event that UTS or its staff members are unjustifiably 

denigrated’.®® Professor Wightwick wrote that he was concerned that 

UTS academics may be ‘intimidated’ and that ‘your academic freedom 

must be balanced against that of the UTS academics who may feature 

in vour book.’ 

When I asked the universities and the ARC for responses to evidence 

of their links to China’s military they typically wrote back saying they 

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had abided by the legal requirements, pointing especially to their 

pliance with the Defence Trade Controls Act. Some said that if 

is a problem then it is because the Department of Immigration or the 

security services approved visas. 

The ARC and the minister for education Simon Birmingham 

attribute responsibility for any problems to the universities, saying 

that they are autonomous institutions and its up to them to meet their 

legal obligations.®' The laws and regulations governing these kinds 

of collaborations are inadequate and need to be rethought for a new 

environment where so much sophisticated military technology also has 

civilian uses, or grows out of them. And regardless of legislated require¬ 

ments, universities have an obligation to consider whether they should 

be contributing to Chinas military power. 

The commendable culture of open collaboration in the Australian 

science community is being exploited by the PRC, but attachment to it 

is also causing some scientists to ignore warnings to take a closer look 

at who they are working with. One senior scientist, when asked if he 

worried about collaborating with the PLA, said it does bother him. 

But his university insists that he find external funding for his work and 

China is where the money is. ‘So what can I do? he asked.®^ 

Carrying the torch at UNSW 

Beijing has been pouring huge amounts of capital into programs 

aimed at building the nations science and technology infrastructure. 

They include the 973 Program for basic research and the 985 and 211 

Projects aimed at university restructuring. The Torch program seeks to 

create high-tech commercial industries through foreign collaboration. It 

targets Western-trained Chinese scientists by recruiting them to return 

to China to work in the 150 or so national-level science and technology 

parks, or by asking them to ‘serve in place’ by staying abroad.®^ 

The Torch program is embedded in China’s Medium and Long-Term 

Plan lor S&T Development (2006—20), which focuses on appropriat¬ 

ing loreign technolog\’ and research. Rather than treating innovation as 

some sort ot international scientific collaboration, it is more accurately 

described as a ‘blueprint for technology theft’, in the words of Hannes, 

Mulvenon and Puglisi in Chinas Industrial Espionage.^ The National 

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‘ENGINEERING SOULS’ AT AUSTRALIA’S UNIVERSITIES 

Hi-Tccli R&D Program, known as the 863 Program, predates Torch 

^ut is also aimed at enabling China to leapfrog the West, not only by 

pouring resources into domestic universities and research labs but also 

by stealing technology from abroad. In 2011, for example, a Chinese 

scientist in the United States was convicted of stealing industrial secrets 

to pass to the 863 Program in China.®^ The program ‘provides funding 

and guidance for efforts to clandestinely acquire US technology and 

sensitive economic information’, according to a 2011 report from the 

US Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive.®^ 

The first overseas Torch program technology park is to be built at 

the University of New South Wales (UNSW). In April 2016 UNSW 

vice-chancellor Ian Jacobs signed a partnership with the Torch pro¬ 

gram at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. As a sign of its high 

profile, Jacobs was flanked by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and 

Premier Li Keqiang. The partnership came with $30 million in initial 

investments from eight Chinese companies, a sum expected to rise to 

$100 million by 2025 when the university will have built a whole new 

precinct next to its main Kensington campus in Sydney. A university 

media release claims that the Australian Torch Innovation Precinct at 

UNSW will contribute more than $1 billion to Australia’s GDP in 

its first ten years.®^ The university says the number was generated by 

Deloitte Access Economics. It’s the kind of number that ought to be 

treated sceptically; when I asked the university to provide me with a 

copy of the report it could not. 

Ian Jacobs said he was ‘thrilled’ to be in Beijing’s Great Hall of the 

People to sign the agreement. Back in Sydney the university threw a 

gala dinner. Jacobs was ‘so excited’ that his university would be part of 

China’s plans to become ‘the world’s great technological innovator’.®® 

The partnership is ‘a global first and has the potential to reset the 

Australia-China bilateral relationship and boost the nation’s innova¬ 

tion system’.®^ But which nation’s innovation system? As the first 

Torch overseas partnership, the UNSW precinct spearheads China’s 

drive to spur its own technological development by recruiting foreign 

research capacities. In recent years, China has increasingly emphasised 

the importance of ‘indigenous innovation’ but through relying on 

foreign technology and know-how, with the ultimate goal of making 

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SILENT INVASION 

itself less reliant on foreign research. To this end, Chinas Mini. 

Science and Technology has called on the government ‘to enco^'^ 

scientific research institutes, universities and overseas research and 

development institutions to establish joint laboratories or research 

and development centres’.^” 

Xinhuanet lauded the UNSW partnership as coming at an ‘oppor¬ 

tune moment’ and Avent to the predictable ACRl deputy director, James 

Laurenceson, who, repeating a favourite party slogan, said it’s a ‘win-win 

situation for both countries’.^' 

Torch’s technology park at UNSW is a major step forward in the 

commandeering of Australia’s research resources to suit China’s needs. 

UNSW’s research chief Brian Boyle said that the program would allow 

the university to use the Chinese government as a facilitation mecha¬ 

nism. It would be the ‘entry and identification point’ in attracting 

Chinese investors, who would pursue China’s research priorities.^^ He 

responded to a feature story by Anders Furze and Louisa Lim question¬ 

ing the wisdom of the university’s huge investment in its China-fimded 

Torch technology park by dismissing all of the evidence and suggesting 

the criticisms were motivated by xenophobia.^^ 

Jacobs himself gave the game away when he told The Australuzn: e 

didn’t want to keep going back, cap in hand, to Canberra asking or 

more. Instead, we went to China.’ This ‘new approach to bankrolling 

Australian research’ represents UNSW taking its destiny into ^ 

hands’.'^'' This is head-shakingly naive. What the university has one 

is to place its destiny in the hands of the Ministry of Science an 

Technology in Beijing. 

How closely will UNSW conduct due diligence inquiries to weed 

out companies that have histories of corruption or links with military 

and intelligence organisations? Pro Vice-Chancellor (International) 

Laurie Pearcey, who has been heavily involved in the university s China 

engagement, told me that UNSW is ‘very methodical’ in checking out 

‘prospective partners’.^’ My guess is that companies whose corrupt 

practices are easily detectible will be weeded out but military linkages 

will not even be tested, although Pearcey says the company hired by 

the university to conduct due diligence does so.^*’ Pearcey spoke highly 

of Huawei and could not see a problem collaborating with it. ^JVhen I 

212 

ENGINEERING SOULS’ AT AUSTRALIA'S UNIVERSITIES 

Askcxl about collaborating with the Chinese government in the Torch 

pixTgram, Pcarcey said that Australia enters into partnerships with all 

sorts of governments and there is no reason to single out China. Noting 

the US intervention in Iraq, he said: ‘Let he who is without sin cast the 

first stone. 

Ethnic enclaves 

In recent years a trend has emerged in which certain university centres 

or departments have become enclaves of ethnic Chinese scholars. Non- 

Chinese academics are grumbling about ethnic discrimination, noting 

bias in staff recruitment, allocation of PhD scholarships and invitations 

to \dsitors, each of which goes against the spirit of multiculturalism. 

One consequence of the formation of these Chinese ethnic enclaves 

may be a shift in the academic culture to one that is less collegial, 

one where the supervisor speaks while others simply listen. Doctoral 

students may not absorb the Australian academic culture. This mono¬ 

ethnic clustering is readily apparent from the authorship of academic 

papers where it is not unusual to see eight or ten Chinese names of 

researchers from Australian and Chinese universities. A second genera¬ 

tion is now emerging, formed from those who stay on in Australia after 

their PhDs, risking the perpetuation of an ethnic favouritism in hiring 

staff and doctoral student selection. 

The ethnic enclave phenomenon is apparent at several Liniversities, 

mainly in the faculties of engineering and information technology. For 

example, at Curtin University’s Centre for Infrastructural Monitoring 

and Protection, seven of the eight academic staff are of Chinese heritage. 

All seven have worked previously with or for Professor Hao Hong, the 

centre’s director. An expert in earthquake and blast engineering, Hao 

Hong is an adjunct professor at Tianjin University, from which he first 

graduated, and has received Chinese government grants. He has served 

as deputy president of the consulate-linked Western Australia Chinese 

Scientists Association (discussed in Chapter 9). 

In recent years, a growing number of scholars of Chinese ethnicity 

ave been appointed to the Australian Research Council (ARC) College 

ARr'’"ki’ funds to research projects. In 2016 the 

ARC published the names of the 176 members of the College of Experts 

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but does not indicate to which of the four disciplinary grouping, tf, 

belong. Assessment panels are drawn from these groupings A litj^ 

investigation, however, shows that several members of the college with 

expertise in engineering and IT are of Chinese heritage and have linlt, 

with PRC military research. 

To the extent that the growing number of scholars of Chinese 

heritage on the College of Experts reflects the rise in their number 

working in Australian universities, their presence is to be expected 

and welcomed. However, there are two grounds for concern. Firstly, 

if in their appointment practices senior Chinese academics are biased 

towards other Chinese-heritage academics then we can expect them 

to be similarly biased in their decisions over the allocation of research 

funds. I would expect that non-Chinese members of the College of 

Experts who might suspect their colleagues of bias would be extremely 

reluctant to say so because of xenophobia-phobia. The allegation would 

be impossible to prove and the accuser would immediately be accused 

of racism. The ARC ought to take a close look at this potential problem, 

although I suspect it would be too afraid to lift the lid. 

The second, related, concern arises from the relationships between 

certain academics and Chinese military research institutions. The prob¬ 

lem arises mainly in engineering, IT and related areas. We have seen 

already that the ARC has been allocating funds to research projects that 

have a distinct benefit to the Peoples Liberation Army and are con¬ 

ducted in conjunction with researchers associated with military-linked 

universities in China. 

Some members of the ARC College of Experts have close links to 

Chinese military research. For example, Peng Shi is an engineering 

professor at both the University of Adelaide and Victoria University 

specialising in systems and control theory, computational intelligence 

and operational research.He was a member of the ARC College of 

Experts between 2014 and 2016. He has been a member of teams 

receiving ARC grants worth $270,000 and $355,000 respectively. 

Shi holds simultaneous professorships at Chinese universities under¬ 

taking military research. In 2016 he became a ‘specially appointed 

professor at Fujian University of Technology School of Information 

Science and Engineering after being recruited under the Thousand 

214 

'ENGINEERING SOULS’ AT AUSTRALIA'S UNIVERSITIES 

Tlileius Plan, which uses generous funding to draw foreign experts 

into China. 

Since 2014 Peng Shi has been a professor at Harbin Engineering 

University, his alma mater, with whose experts he has collaborated 

for years.'®' He is located at Harbins Marine Equipment and Control 

Technology Research Institute, which has a strong focus on military 

technology, specialising in intelligent dynamic control and driving 

systems for warships, and unmanned underwater vehicle systems and 

autonomous control technology.'®^ For its many contributions to 

military technology, the institute was awarded the title of ‘national 

defence science and technology innovation team’ in 2008.'®^ In 2014 the 

People's Daily praised one of its breakthroughs: ‘In the field of dynamic 

positioning systems, Harbin Engineering University has already become 

an irreplaceably important technological force for our nation’s navy and 

marine engineering fields.’'®^ 

For five years until 2004 Peng Shi was employed as a senior scientist 

at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation where he worked 

on a number of projects related to enhancing defence force capability.’'®^ 

Shis colleague and co-author at Adelaide University, Cheng-Chew Lim, 

has five former doctoral students who now work for DST.'°® Shi doesn’t 

list the students he has supervised but it is likely that some of his former 

students also work for DST. 

‘Academic malware’: Confucius Institutes 

Confucius Institutes are an important part of China’s overseas 

propaganda set-up. So said Chinas propaganda boss Li Changchun.'®^ 

Confucius Institutes are usually established in conjunction with overseas 

universities attracted by the prospect of hundreds of thousands of dollars 

from the Chinese government. Begun in 2004 by the PRC’s Office of 

Chinese Language Council International, known as the Hanban, today 

there are over 500 Confucius Institutes around the world. Publicly, 

their tasks are to teach Chinese language, promote Chinese culture and 

encourage advanced China studies. 

The Communist Part}" banned Confucianism as reactionary during 

the Cultural Revolution, and Red Guards levelled Confucius’ tomb. But 

the sage has now been rehabilitated, not least as a means of promoting 

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obedience to authority and national pride. Whil/> • 

• j j ff r^k- I •• j ‘'^sdtuies dr. 

indeed oiter Chinese language training and promote Chinese c 1 

that is not all they do. As former CCP paramount leader Hu Jintao 

their purpose is ‘to increase our Party’s influence worldwide’, includ* 

ing their leverage over the organisations that host them.'®’ Universities 

are told that the funding they receive for the institutes comes from 

the Chinese Ministry of Education. But the eminent US Sinologist 

David Shambaugh has pointed out that the money is actually provided 

by the CCP’s External Propaganda Department and is ‘laundered’ 

through the Ministry of Education."® 

At the Hanban’s insistence, the contracts signed between Confucius 

Institutes and their Australian host universities are secret. Typically, 

each has a local director and one appointed by the Chinese government. 

The latter makes the important decisions. As they have spread they have 

tended to push out older, rival centres of language teaching and culture, 

centres less sympathetic to the CCP. As James To writes: The CCP s 

ultimate goal is to put Chinese language education under Beijing’s 

complete domination.’"' 

Accordingly, Confucius Institutes have attracted persistent interna¬ 

tional criticism in response to allegations that they curtail academic 

freedom and serve China’s surveillance and propaganda objectives. Some 

Australian university leaders are oblivious, or dont care, welcoming the 

money and the additional links to the economic giant. 

There are fourteen Confucius Institutes at universities across 

Australia, including six of the prestigious Group of Eight. They have 

attracted controversy. An academic at UNSW revealed that staff at the 

Confucius Institute had been instructed not to comment on charges 

of censorship at the institute."^ In 2013, the University of Sydney was 

accused of cancelling a visit by the Dalai Lama to avoid damaging its 

ties with China, including the funding it receives for its Confucius 

Institute."^ When the event was pushed off-campus, and use of the 

university logo banned, vice-chancellor Michael Spence expressed relief, 

saying it was in the best interests of researchers across the university 

It was another instance of a university becoming an institution whose 

interest lies in enforcing the Chinese government’s implicit speech 

codesand so giving Beijing deniability. 

216 

'ENGINEERING SOULS’ AT AUSTRALIA'S UNIVERSITIES 

Jocelyn Chey, a visiting professor at the University of Sydney, 

criticised the university’s 2007 plan to incorporate its Chinese language 

program into a Confucius Institute, ‘There’s the question of academic 

freedom and the right of academics not just to teach but to research and 

publish in areas where they are not under the guidance or direction of 

anybody’, Chey wrote."*' She was told that the university’s agreement 

with the Hanban would protect academic freedom, but the university 

refused to show her the document. In 2014 the Hanban’s commit¬ 

ment to the free flow of information was sullied at a conference of the 

European Association of Chinese Studies in Portugal. Hanban chief Xu 

Lin, a top-ranking CCP official, instructed her staff to obtain all copies 

of the conference program and tear out a page advertising a Taiwanese 

scholarly exchange program."^ 

In a recent report on Confucius Institutes in the United States, the 

conservative National Association of Scholars (NAS) called for them all 

to be closed down."® It was echoing the conclusions of the American 

Association of Professors, which in 2014 characterised the institutes 

as ‘an arm of the Chinese state’, denouncing them as an arrange¬ 

ment that ‘sacrificed the integrity of the university’. The Canadian 

Association of University Teachers agreed, urging colleges and universi¬ 

ties to sever all ties. Several prominent scholars have testified to their 

pernicious influence. 

The NAS report criticised the institutes for their erosion of aca¬ 

demic freedom, the secrecy of their funding and operation, the biased 

presentation of Chinese culture and the pressure on the universities that 

host them ‘to please China’. It reported many professors associated with 

the institutes speaking of ‘immense pressure to stay on the good side 

of Confucius Institute directors and university administrators affiliated 

with the Confucius Institute’."'-' In his preface to the NAS report, 

president Peter Wood wrote that ‘behind the appearance of a friendly 

and inviting form of diplomacy lies a grim authoritarian reality’. 

Faculty members in host universities believe the institutes to be bases 

for surveillance. Researchers have collected a number of off-the-record 

stories suggesting they are centres of ‘threats and intimidation directed 

at Chinese nationals and Chinese Americans, and as cover for covert 

aaivities on the part of the Chinese government’. 

217 

SILENT INVASION 

The former China chief of the Canadian Security Intelligence 

Service has said that Western counter-intelligence agencies ‘have identi 

fied Confucius Institutes as forms of spy agencies’ used by the Chinese 

government.He says it gets them close to important research centres 

in the West. 

Several universities have closed their institutes in response to these 

concerns, including the University of Chicago, Pennsylvania State 

University and a number in Canada. In 2014 education minister 

Christopher Pyne went to Peking University to say Australia welcomed 

the institutes. 

A 2014 report prepared by the Parliamentary Library noticed that 

Australian Confucius Institutes are often connected to individuals 

closely involved with the party and its objectives.'" The vice chair of 

the University of Queensland’s Confucius Institute, Liu Jianping, is the 

head of the Party Committee at Tianjin University. Zhu Minshen, 

who established a pro-CCP newspaper and came to public attention 

for his role in the Dastyari affair, is on the board of the University of 

Svdney’s Confucius Institute.'" William Chiu, for some years president 

Sthe United Front group Australian Council for the Promonon^of 

the Peaceful Reunification of China, was on the boar o 

r'nfi cius Institute.'" Professor Fan Hong, director of the Confucius 

^ imrat the University of Western Australia, spohe in CMna about 

Che toleofConfucius Institutes in advancing Chinas soft power. 

In short, by welcoming a Confucius Institute onto campus, un ^ 

sitv "dministra»rs are abandoning foundational principles of univ rs.ty 

alnomy, both in setting curricula and making 

merit. They allow staff appointed by a foreign 

or prevent use of certain teaching materials and accept 

topics offensive to the CCP will not be broached. As John g 

writes, for Chinas education authorities each one represents the s 

cessftil sidelining of the principles of autonomy and academic 

and so ‘marks a significant breach in the battlefront wit 

liberal values’.'"^ r , 

This ought to be of concern to Peter Hoj, vice-chancellor ^ ^ f 

Universirv'^ of Queensland. In 2015 he was the recipient of the Ha 

Outstanding Individual of the Year Award. He serves as a senio 

218 

'ENGINEERING SOULS’ AT AUSTRALIA’S UNIVERSITIES 

consultant to the Hanban, apparently representing Oceania, and boasts 

of the extensive work done by the Confucius Institute at his own uni¬ 

versity, including taking the program into school classrooms.'^® 

The party in our classrooms 

Confucius Classrooms are also proliferating in Australian primary and 

high schools. There are sixty-seven of them, according to the Hanban. 

In New South Wales the Department of Education was quick to 

warm to the idea. The Hanban (or, in reality, the CCPs Propaganda 

Department) provides Confucius Classrooms with US$10,000 as 

a start-up fund, an approved assistant teacher and other teaching 

resources.To oversee the program the Department of Education 

actually established a Confucius Institute within the department.'^' 

Is there any other government department in Australia that would allow 

one of its units to be directed by a foreign state, let alone one renowned 

for its rigid censorship? 

Sinologist Michael Churchman concluded that Confucius Institutes 

‘exist for the express purpose of letting foreigners understand China 

on terms acceptable to official China.After all, Chinas propaganda 

minister Liu Yunshan wrote in 2010 that China ‘must make the 

requirements of the socialist core values system permeate every aspect 

of cultural undertakings.*'^^ Senior New South W;iles education officials 

conceded that certain topics would be banned in the classrooms. So as 

not to offend the donors it would be ‘best not to engage in’ discussions 

of issues like Tibet, the persecution of Falun Gong or the massacre in 

Tiananmen Square. ‘There are so many other topics to discuss,’ said a 

senior official. The purpose of the classrooms is for children ‘to be learn¬ 

ing Mandarin and to have a good understanding of how contemporary 

China works’, which raises the question of what a ‘good understanding’ 

entails if the events of 1989 are suppressed.' ^’' If, as Louisa Lim argues, 

the CCP has succeeded in reformatting Chinese memory ‘in an act of 

mass amnesia’, then the New South Wales education department is 

happy to join in.'-’^ 

But others could see what was at stake. A petition with over 10,000 

signatures was received by the New South Wales parliament in October 

2011. Confucius Institutes should be closed down, it said: ‘The teaching 

219 

SILENT INVASION 

of Chinese language and culture is welcome in NSW schools but' 

should be available free from the influence of Chinese Communbt 

doctrine and censorship.’The petitioners were aware that Chinese 

diplomats had been pressuring schools with Confucius Classrooms 

to cancel plans to take their children to see a cultural performance 

associated with Falun Gong.'^^ 

As New South Wales Greens’ spokesman David Shoebridge put it: 

These classes might be free to Treasury, but they are paid for by exposing 

children to a foreign government’s propaganda machine.’*^* In 2016 it 

was reported that some parents on Sydney’s north shore were boycotting 

schools with the classes. An online petition called on the New South 

Wales government to join with bodies like the Toronto district school 

board in closing the classrooms and replacing them with courses ‘free 

from foreign censorship and propaganda. 

Patriotic students 

In late 2015 a Chinese student at the Australian National University 

(ANU) walked into the busy campus pharmacy and bepn shouting at 

the pharmacist. ‘Who authorised you to distribute this?’ he demanded, 

pointing to a pile of The Epoch Times, the Falun Gong newspaper. 

The student, described by onlookers as enraged and aggressive, was 

identified as Tao Pinru, president of the Chinese Students and Sc o ar 

Association (CSSA) on campus. The pharmacist said she felt intimi ate , 

and anxious about his threat of a boycott of the shop, and let him remove 

the offending newspapers. Tao threw them into a dumpster, she said. 

The incident, uncovered and reported in the student newspaper 

Woroni by then student journalist Alex Joske, raises some^wo ^ ^ ^ 

questions about what has been happening on our campuses. How 

the head of a Chinese student group acquire such a powerful sense o 

entitlement that he could storm into a university shop and demand t at 

a newspaper be banished from the campus? No student of any other 

organisation could have felt such an entitlement, let alone succeeded in 

exercising it. 

As we will see, Chinese student organisations function as an 

arm of the CCP. Writing about the campus pharmacy incident, 

three experienced China watchers at the Australian Financial Review 

220 

'ENGINEERING SOULS’ AT AUSTRALIA’S UNIVERSITIES 

commented: ‘In the Chinese Communist Party’s global effort to protect 

its grip on China, no battle appears too small. Aggression, threats, 

money and other favours are used by Beijing to influence public opinion 

in Australia, from campuses to the halls [of power]. 

Many will remember their own days at university when the campus 

hosted a wide range of political opinion expressed in newspapers, 

pamphlets and posters. Although they were mostly ignored, their exist¬ 

ence contributed to our worldly education and was proof of the political 

vibrancy and tolerance of our universities. At a minimum they gave 

a voice to people with strong opinions. No one would have dreamed 

of attempting to ban the newspapers of the Socialist Workers Party or 

the Right to Life. Yet today, a fanatical group of students is allowed to 

censor political opinion on campuses. 

What was most disturbing about the pharmacy incident was the 

reaction of ANU authorities. When asked about the incident they said 

they could do nothing as no one had called security, adding a vague 

criticism ofTao’s action along the lines of‘tolerance of difference’. They 

didn’t seem to care. Why did our foremost international university 

not investigate this incident and other instances of intimidation and 

silencing by the CSSA on campus? Wliy did it not at least issue a state¬ 

ment condemning such a blatant suppression of free speech? Why did 

the vice-chancellor not stock a pile of Epoch Times newspapers in the 

chancellery? The truth is that the ANU has a history of kowtowing 

to China. 

In August 2016 the outgoing director of the ANU’s Australian 

Centre on China in the World, Geremie Barme, wrote to the university’s 

vice-chancellor, Brian Schmidt, and chancellor Gareth Evans about 

the activities of a Chinese PhD student. Lei Xiying."*' Lei had been 

accepted to research Australian media misrepresentations of China and 

anti-China activities at our universities. He had also been moonlighting 

as a Beijing propagandist, probably using the university’s resources. In 

August 2016 he made an ultra-nationalist video with martial music and 

goose-stepping soldiers that went viral, attracting ten million viewers 

in twenty-four hours. Noticed by Philip Wen, the video warned of 

hosti e foreign forces fomenting a ‘colour revolution’ in China. Lei, who 

IS me to a number of CCP organisations and was rewarded for being 

221 

SILENT INVASION 

an outstanding youth representative of online ideological construc¬ 

tion’,''*^ believes Australia is a ‘vassal of the United States’. 

Lei has a history of posting scathingly anti-Australia messages on 

Weibo. In one he wrote: ‘When I graduate I’m going to immediately 

leave dumb c*nt unsophisticated Australia. America’s political running 

dog without even an ounce of capacity for independent thought.’*'*^ 

The phrase ‘unsophisticated Australia’ is a translation of‘Tu’ao’ (iiH), 

a mocking expression used by some Chinese students implying that 

Australia is an uncivilised backwater. 

When asked about Lei, the ANU’s response was that he had ‘the 

right to free speech’ and took no action,''*^ Sounds reasonable, but is it? 

Is it free speech, or is it virulently hostile propaganda targeting liberal 

values on behalf of a foreign government? Lei’s video vilifies Chinese 

lawyers defending those whose human rights have been violated. The 

wave of arrests of human rights lawyers in 2015 was a direct assault on 

free speech and the rule of law.*'*'^ Isn’t Australia’s commitment to free 

speech actually being exploited by Lei in support of a totalitarian state? 

Are we so soft as to defend everyone’s right to free speech when their 

objective is to take away our free speech? The ANU is eager to maintain 

a harmonious relationship with China yet hosts state-sanctioned attacks 

on everything noble the West stands for. 

Chinese students at the ANU were at the centre of the Olympic tore 

demonstration in Canberra in April 2008. Earlier in the month Beijing 

had picked out Australia, along with Japan, as dangerous destination 

for the relay because of the activities of Tibetan and Falun Gong pro 

testers.''*^ They were especially worried about being outnumbered in 

Canberra and the embassy was instructed to formulate counter-measures. 

The president of the CSSA on the ANU campus, Zhang Rongan, con 

firmed that financial and organisational support was provided by the 

embassy. When the PRC was accused of using rent-a-crowds, Zhang 

began to deny any embassy support, removing previous admissions on 

websites and saying it was all done spontaneously by the students. 

It might be assumed that the display of patriotic anger by thousands 

of Chinese students at the torch relay would have given authorities in 

Australia pause for thought. But the flow of Chinese students filling 

the lecture halls (and coffers) of our universities has only accelerated. 

222 

ENGINEERING SOULS’ AT AUSTRALIA’S UNIVERSITIES 

The 131 >000 in higher education in July 2017 was more than double 

the number in 2008. Relative to population size> there are five times 

more Chinese students in Australia than in the United States. Around 

sixt)' per cent of ANU s international students are from China, mainly 

in the business, accounting and finance departments, contributing some 

fifteen per cent of its total income.'5° The university’s chancellor, Gareth 

Evans, said that universities are ‘totally dependent on those [Chinese] 

fees for their economic survival’. He seemed to be agonising over 

whether anything could be done. In 2016 it emerged that ANU planned 

to reduce its dependence on Chinese students, but the idea seems to 

have gone nowhere. 

Parents in China closely follow published international rankings 

to select the most prestigious university for their child (although top 

Chinese universities are often preferred). Among the esteemed Group of 

Eight universities, the most dependent on Chinese students are ANU, 

the University of Sydney, the University of New South Wales and the 

University of Melbourne. 

‘Denounce and inform’ 

The trove of secret party documents discovered by James To revealed 

that the Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSAs) were set 

up around the world after 1989 ro manage and redirect the surge of 

hostdity towards the CCI>'« Since then, education attaches at embassies 

have coordinated their activities on campuses.'^"* From the early 1990s 

the powerftti Ministry of State Security, concerned about the spread of 

dissenting views among overseas students, has sent out agents posing 

as students, academics and businesspeople to monitor and report on 

student activities, >« Today, after years of instruction under the protec¬ 

tive umbrella of the Patriotic Education Campaign-described as an 

educanon m small-mindedness-'«_most Chinese students who arrive 

WesZlr PO^^ible infection by 

emCs^ H K ^ shepherded through their studies by the 

embassy and their proxies in the CSSAs ^ 

P ty has closely monitored the behaviour and 

SILENT INVASION 

speech of students.'^’' CSSAs receive funding from the Chinese grr/ern- 

ment and liaise with the local consulate or embassy.'^'' For consulates 

the student associations are a useful recruiting ground for new parr/ 

members.'^*^ Ex-diplomat Chen Yonglin said that meetings of Sydney 

student associations are typically held inside the consulate, adding that 

‘the heads of the student organizations are usually hand picked by the 

Chinese consulate. 

Each year the presidents of the CSSAs across Australia are flown 

at the embassy’s expense to Canberra to a meeting held at its educa¬ 

tion office in the suburb of O’Malley. According to one former CSSA 

office holder, at these gatherings Chinese officials coordinate the 

activities of the various associations and instruct them on the latest 

party doctrines. Student leaders are prolific in their output of pro¬ 

government statements. 

In principle, all student organisations on Australian campuses are 

required to operate according to democratic principles, with free and fair 

elections, open meetings and transparent finances. CSSAs do none of 

these. If a foreign government provides funding and appoints execu¬ 

tives then secrecy is essential. No other student organisation would be 

permitted to operate this way. It was for these reasons that New York’s 

prestigious Columbia University shut down its CSSA in 2015.‘^^ When 

the president of the CSSA at the University of Canberra, Lupin Lu, 

candidly admitted that the embassy provides guidance and financial 

help, the university seemed unconcerned that a foreign government was 

intervening in student affairs.'^"* 

Although at times they try to deny their links (as they did at the 

2008 Olympic torch relay), one CSSA (at the University of Adelaide) 

describes itself on its website as ‘an organisation under the direction of 

the education office of the embassy’. Guided and supported financially 

by the embassy, student leaders are in turn motivated by the promise 

of political connections and a head start to their careers, as well as 

patriotic pride. John Fitzgerald notes that Australian universities do not 

look after Chinese students and they ‘feel they are being hosted by the 

Chinese government in Australia’.'*"^ 

While providing social support for Chinese students, the associations 

also monitor and police the activities of students, trying to ensure they 

224 

'ENGINEERING SOULS’ AT AUSTRALIA’S UNIVERSITIES 

do not get involved in any corrupting activities. They are instructed, 

for instance, not to attend films that criticise the PRC. Their thoughts 

too are policed. If in class or among friends a Chinese student offers 

an opinion that may be construed as politically incorrect then he or 

she is likely to be reported to the embassy. In the ABCs 2017 Four 

Corners program ‘Power and Influence’, the president of the University 

of Canberra CSSA, Lupin Lu, said that ‘for the safety of all ... students’ 

she would report Chinese students organising a human rights protest 

to the embassy.(Lu later took legal action against the ABC and 

Fairfax, claiming the program defamed her.) In some cases, parents back 

in China have been visited by state security to inform them of their 

child’s dangerous activities in Australia and to warn them of the dire 

consequences should they persist. That happened to Anthony Chang’s 

parents after he spoke at a pro-democracy rally in Brisbane.Reading 

The Epoch Times or a book about the massacre at Tiananmen Square 

(which many students arriving in Australia have never heard oQ could 

have long-term costs. One dissident student at the ANU said he keeps 

his views to himself and knows others who ‘keep their opinions a secret’ 

for fear of repercussions.'^® 

In 2015 President Xi identified Chinese students studying over¬ 

seas as ‘a new focal point for the Communist Party’s United Front 

Work’.'^^ A brief prepared by the CIA on the expansion of the student 

informant system used on China’s campuses describes a system of 

student-informants engaging in political spying and denunciation of 

professors and fellow students.'^'' The ‘denounce and inform’ model 

is operating in Australia. A senior lecturer at an Australian university 

reported that he was interrogated four rimes in China after being 

denounced by someone who attended a seminar he gave on democracy 

at the University of New South Wales.The system’s purpose is to 

control debate and discussion on sensitive issues. The CIA warned of 

the spread to the West of a ‘culture of denunciation’. When the Nobel 

committee announced on 8 October 2010 that dissident writer Liu 

Xiaobo would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Peking University 

authorities investigated students whose facial expressions ‘showed 

unusual happiness. Those guilty of ‘face crime’ risked having their 

scholarships cancelled. 

225 

SILENT INVASION 

Through the CSSAs students can be mobilised to welcome Vih 

from China or to drown out and intimidate any protesters. At timci 

the students are organised with military precision. For example 

during training sessions held on the ANU campus for the 2017 visit 

to Canberra of Premier Li Keqiang, embassy staff aided by the CSSA 

divided students into security squads and gave instructions like ‘Male 

comrades must protect female comrades’. 

The Dalai Lama has not been invited onto an Australian campus for 

some years. If he were we could expect Chinese students, emboldened 

by Chinas growing power and their own patriotism, to respond in the 

same way that Chinese students did at the University of California, 

San Diego (UCSD) in early 2017. When it became known that the 

Tibetan spiritual leader had been invited to give the commencement 

address, Chinese students reacted with outrage and campaigned 

to have him disinvited. The UCSD CSSA warned that our asso¬ 

ciation vows to take further measures to firmly resist the university’s 

unreasonable behavior’. 

As in Australia, the Chinese students defended the party line by 

invoking the language of victimhood. They told the university that 

inviting the Dalai Lama to speak ‘contravened the spirit of respect, 

tolerance, equality, and earnestness—the ethos upon which the univer¬ 

sity is built’. Others took to social media to argue that other students 

protested against Donald Trump because he does not respect women, 

Hispanics and LGBT people, yet now they disrespected Chinese 

students by inviting this ‘secessionist and terrorist who masquera 

as a spiritual leader. 

In Australia, an expose of the activities of the CSSA at the ANU was 

met with wounded appeals to ‘inclusive discourse and multicultural 

ism’ so that ‘Chinese students at the ANU can study and live in an 

environment where they feel free to express their views. ^ For a body 

that reports dissenters to the authorities at the embassy, which then 

harasses and punishes family members back in China, the hypocrisy 

is rank. Appeals to tolerance and respect by these Chinese students are 

all the more two-faced when their nationalist comrades back in China 

relish ridiculing what they r ail the ‘white left’ or baizuo, that is, those 

politically correct Westerners, often on campuses, who ‘only care about 

226 

'ENGINEERING SOULS’ AT AUSTRALIA’S UNIVERSITIES 

topics such as immigration, minorities, LGBT and the environment’.'^^ 

These patriotic netizens admire Donald Trump for his demonisation of 

the ‘white left’. 

The UCSD case immediately followed an attempt by the Chinese 

embassy in London to pressure students at Durham University to cancel 

a speech by a former Miss World Canada, Anastasia Lin. A Falun Cong 

practitioner, Lin was born in China but lived in Canada from an early 

age, and had spoken out against human rights abuses in China, includ¬ 

ing forced organ harvesting from Falun Cong prisoners. When she 

attempted to travel to China to compete as Canada’s nominee in the 

Miss World final she was refused a visa. In recent years the Miss World 

competition has been sponsored largely or exclusively by Hainan-based 

interests, where the finals are now held. 

The embassy told the Durham debating society students that the 

event could harm relations between the United Kingdom and China. 

The CSSA at Durham University complained that inviting Lin to speak 

was ‘a violation of the belief and feelings of Chinese students’.As Lin 

herself noted of the Chinese government: ‘It’s not enough for them to 

stifle their own citizens’ voices, they are reaching beyond borders to 

tr)' to silence us here in the West.’ Chinese students on American and 

Australian campuses also say they are ‘offended’ and have their ‘feel¬ 

ings hurt’ when China’s human rights abuses or the Dalai Lama are 

discussed. Perhaps universities could issue trigger warnings and provide 

‘safe spaces’ on campus for Chinese students when there is a danger of 

their feelings being hurt by exposure to such distressing information. It 

would be more palatable than pressuring academics to curb their speech. 

What to do? 

Australian universities ought to be ‘islands of freedom’ where Chinese 

students and visiting Chinese scholars can practise the highest princi¬ 

ples of free and open scholarship that are outlawed by China’s one-party 

state.'^ Instead, by controlling Chinese students, facilitating links with 

Chinese universities and encouraging donations by wealthy Chinese 

businessmen, the CCP is using our campuses to wage its propaganda 

battles against critics like the Dalai Lama, Falun Cong and pro¬ 

democracy activists in exile. Apart from neutralising critics, Beijing’s 

227 

SILENT INVASION 

Other aim is to cultivate friendly forces in Australia to advocate 

behalf, a strategy that’s proved highly successful in Australia, 

This chapter has only scratched the surface of what is happeni 

in our universities. Much more could be said about how links with 

Chinese universities make our university administrators nervous about 

any criticism of Beijing that might emanate from their scholars or 

students. Nor have I examined the way universities compromise their 

principles in pursuit of donations from wealthy Chinese businessmen 

(In June 2017 ASIO warned ANU to refuse a very large donation 

from a Chinese property developer because of his suspected links to 

the Chinese Communist Party.A full inquiry is needed to reveal 

the extent of PRC influence on campuses. Some universities are too 

compromised to conduct such an inquiry; they would need to choose 

between the traditions of free and open inquiry, on the one hand, and 

Chinese money and the kudos of association with the rising Asian 

power, on the other. Their senior executives have lost their ability to 

think independently. Only when a university has proven itself willing 

to sacrifice revenue to defend the principle of academic freedom can we 

feel confident it is not selling out. 

Such an inquiry can only become more necessary as more and 

more scholars of Chinese heritage and dubious loyalties are recruited 

by Australian universities, and are promoted to professorships and 

senior management roles. As this happens, the pressure to close down 

independent scholarly work and frank debate on China, including 

the silencing of independently minded scholars of Chinese heritage, 

will intensify. 

Our universities should be making a point of inviting dissident 

Chinese writers and intellectuals onto their campuses. They should 

invite the Dalai Lama. They should take steps to ensure that Chinese 

students are removed from their ideological ghettos by having them 

attend courses on human rights and democracy and encouraging an 

environment in which they can ask questions and find their own voices. 

All attempts to close down opinions that challenge the CCP should 

be called out and criticised. As undemocratic organisations controlled 

by a foreign government and operating in clandestine ways, CSSAs 

should be disbanded, and new organisations established by universities 

228 

'ENGINEERING SOULS’ AT AUSTRALIA’S UNIVERSITIES 

to support Chinese students. And the federal government should make 

it very clear that any Chinese student who engages in political agita¬ 

tion on behalf of Beijing will never be granted permanent residency in 

this country. 

In these ways, Australia can welcome Chinese and all international 

students to places where, instead of being a mere slogan, intellectual 

freedom provides the environment in which a hundred flowers bloom 

and a hundred schools of thought contend. 

229 

11 

Culture wars 

Harry Wang was puzzled by complaints about his company’s expansion 

plans from his south Gippsland farm neighbours. The boss of Ningbo 

Dairy Group offered them reassurance: ‘It’s strange in some ways 

because really milk is milk, and we will be producing it the same way 

in Australia as we do on our Chinese farms with all the same levels of 

cleanliness, hygiene and animal welfare standards. 

Harry Wang, unlike the Australians who heard those words, 

was nor thinking of the litany of pollution and food contamination 

stories plaguing Chinese agriculture, not least the scandal involving 

adulteration of milk with the industrial chemical melamine that saw 

54,000 babies hospitalised and six die. Two more people later died as a 

result of the episode—a pair of milk company executives were executed 

for their roles in the adulteration. 

Ningbo Dairy was not implicated in the melamine scandal. However 

(and apparently unknown to the authorities in Australia), it has a his¬ 

tory of health and hygiene infractions. In April 2012 the company was 

sprung putting fake production dates on over 2000 bottles of yogurt. 

Ten months later it was discovered that almost seventy per cent of its 

milk samples had high levels of coliform bacteria and beta lactamase 

(which prevents penicillin working). Ningbo contested the finding, but 

then apologised. And in April 2013 over 32,000 bottles of its milk were 

230 

CULTURE WARS 

round with false production dates on them. The fine of around $70,000 

suggests the company has friends in high places. 

But not in Australia. After purchasing five farms in south Gippsland 

in 2015, Harry Wang planned to bring his farming methods to 

Australia. In China, Ningbo Dairy collects milk from cows kept in 

barns, their confinement allowing more milk to be extracted because 

they do not have to walk to and from the milking sheds. Not only could 

Ningbo extract fifty per cent more milk from each Gippsland cow, it 

could slash costs by bringing in 2000 Chinese farm workers, which 

Ningbo would be entitled to do under the China-Australia Free Trade 

Agreement. Moreover, the company would build its own bottling plant 

and fly all of the milk to China. 

Canberra raised no objections to his plans, so what’s the problem? 

wondered Harry Wang. 

As public relations consultants Powell Tate drily remarked, ‘the 

company’s messaging needed work’.^ 

After 400 complaints flooded in—covering everything from 

animal welfare, effects on tourism, farm waste, truck movements and 

exploitation of workers—Bass Coast Shire Council saw fit to reject the 

development plan unanimously. Photographed standing in a windswept 

paddock on one of his farms, Harry Wang said he did not know what 

he was going to do now.'* 

Ningbo Dairy had been refused a social licence to operate. Luckily, 

Australia is not short of business advisers—and ex-prime ministers— 

offering advice to Chinese investors on how to get one. In March 2017 

the boss of the Foreign Investment Review Board, Brian Wilson, advised 

a forum packed with Chinese investors to stay away from Australian 

‘icons’, and to talk up the benefits of jobs and market growth.^ In time, 

the chief regulator reassured them, Australians would get used to more 

Chinese ownership of assets here. Two weeks later former prime min¬ 

ister John Howard urged Chinese entrepreneurs to find an Australian 

partner if they want to avoid resistance.*^ 

Powell Tate provides Chinese investors with a blueprint to obtain a 

social licence to operate in the Australian agricultural sector. The bottom 

line is that Chinese investors must observ'e cultural sensitivities and 

contribute to Australian society in some way rather than just attempting 

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to maximise profits. This helpful advice may mollify a sceptical puhf, 

but its not going to change any links the Chinese partner rnay 

with the party-state apparatus. 

It is true that many Chinese businesspeople do not understand the 

notion of a social licence to operate.^ As they have grown up in a system 

in which the influence of money linked to powerful people prevails, 

why should they? For developers, progress has never depended on the 

permission of local communities to knock down and build, but only on 

the ability to txp\o\i guanxi, and their skill at bribing the right officials. 

Some arrive in Australia expecting (not so unusually) to pay someone 

to get them access to politicians, perhaps by a political donation, pref¬ 

erably the federal treasurer because he ‘owns the FIRB’,^ and Foreign 

Investment Review Board approval clears away every other obstacle. 

When a $371 million bid by Shanghai Pengxin and Shanghai CRED 

for the vast Kidman estate (covering 2.5 per cent of the continents 

agricultural land) was rejected by the federal government after a public 

outcry, Shanghai CRED entered a partnership with Gina Rinehan’s 

Hancock Prospecting, creating a joint venture company called 

Australian Outback Beef The company’s bid of nearly $400 million 

for the Kidman properties was approved by the treasurer in December 

2016.^ The joint venture promised to keep the local management. But 

for how long? This kind of deal may do no more than put an Australian 

veneer over the purchase, without resolving the underlying tension. 

Down the track we can expect to see the Chinese company buy out 

its Australian partner when circumstances shift, such as the Australian 

partner wanting out and no other local firm wanting in, perhaps because 

the Chinese company makes it look unattractive. 

Chinese voices 

In China I met with a famous academic whose pro-government and 

nationalist arguments are well known. Over an hour of conversation, 

he presented a remarkably frank assessment of modern China and 

Australias relationship to it. I was surprised at how much he knew 

about Australia. Because of his candour he asked to remain unnamed, 

but here are the most striking observations he made. 

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Australian anxieties about Chinese political interference are justified. 

1 believe in what Confucius said: Don’t do to others what you do not 

want others to do to you ... 

... [Bjusinesspeople must get money out of China and are 

targeting health, nutrition, food security. Everywhere in China is 

polluted. So Australia is very important, especially for items like 

powdered milk, beef and fish. Iron ore exports are now declining after 

the end of China’s building boom. Healthy food, like unpoisoned 

milk powder, is especially important for the rich (the poor have to 

use local produce). 

Australia has a huge land area but doesn’t make any money out 

of it. 

Australians see many Chinese in their cities and they ask: ‘Is 

this still Australia?’ It’s getting like London. And they read stories 

of Chinese being rude, like peeing on the grass and paying bribes. 

The Chinese will do it legally first but if that does not work then 

some will do it illegally ... 

Five million dollars is too cheap to get permanent residency in 

Australia. 

[CH: ‘Is much of the money used for these visas dirty money?’] 

Of course, but the Australian government doesn’t care ... So why 

does Australia allow so many millions to compete for your hospitals? 

How can you take so many people? Australia is so small. Some 

Chinese in Australia are pursuing their own interests. For instance, 

a daughter does a PhD at ANU and then gets PR [permanent 

residency]. Then she can bring her father. 

I am first a Chinese citizen, then a global citizen. So I stick to the 

Confucius principle: Don’t do to others what you don’t want others 

to do to you. China has very restrictive immigration policies. 

[On investment by state-owned enterprises overseas:] There 

needs to be a balance; it should benefit both. I believe in responsible 

globalisation—don’t use your capital to change other countries’ 

values. In Sydney, a rich Chinese wanted to knock down a heritage 

building. Reportedly he is a son of [a] former president’s confidant. 

The local residents complained. They wanted to protect their 

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culture. He offered to compensate them. For people like him . 

mg IS non-tradable. They don’t believe in the^r ^ f ■ 

TU« • . ^ oeiieve in the Confucius princiDlc 

y just want access to your resources to combine them with their 

resources, wliich is money. 

Tbe Communists have failed to educate people. They just tell 

them to become rich people 

There are legitimate concerns that some wealthy Chinese- 

Austnilians have links to military intelligence. There is always a risk 

that foreign security might penetrate. The question is: How should 

the risk be managed.^This is a big problem ... 

Its a huge risk for Australia to take so many students. [CH: ‘Do 

you think the president of the Chinese students’ association at ANU 

was appointed or approved by the embassy.^’] Without doubt. And 

the embassy would be giving the association money. The association 

needs money from the embassy for banquets, invited speakers and 

so on, and the Chinese government wants to manipulate students. 

So there is a convergence of interests of mutual benefit. But there is 

no contract, no one signed a deal. The leaders of the students’ asso¬ 

ciation understand the deal but other students don’t know about it. 

Columbia University has disallowed the biggest Chinese 

students organisation because it violated the university’s ethical 

code requiring transparency, fairness and democratic elections. 

The Australian FBI [the Australian Federal Police] should inter¬ 

vene, talk to the embassy and caution it about its manipulation of 

students. And it should warn the student leaders, making it clear 

that their prospects for PR will be jeopardised if they engage in 

political activities. Make a law against politicking. Most Chinese 

students are self-interested. Most would not participate in student 

organisations if their PR were jeopardised. 

[I noted that the ANU authorities did nothing in response to 

the incident in which the president of the CSSA demanded that 

copies of The Epoch Times be removed from the campus pharmacy.] 

They are selfish; they want Chinese student money. Who gave that 

Chinese student leader the right to behave as the police in Australia? 

Most Chinese are upset at the Dalai Lama, but who gives us the 

right to demand other countries not to welcome him? ... In China 

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CULTURE WARS 

wc do not have this freedom so why import it into Australia? Why 

import what is bad in China into other countries? What if Chinese 

in Australia began to use their numbers to elect Australia’s leader? 

[CH; ‘There are one million Chinese in Australia.’] We can send 

you nventy million. 

Patriotism is fine. But biased patriotism is worse than no 

patriotism. If Chinese go to Australia we must obey your laws. Who 

gives us the right not to obey your laws? Many in China think: 

^X^en I am patriotic I can do anything, anywhere. No, we can do 

it only on our territory. What is mutual respect? We must accept 

different ways and values. There is a danger of Chinese practising 

political and cultural imperialism on others’ territories. 

I left the meeting a little stunned at his blunt assessment of China— 

Australia relations. 

Sally Zou’s gold 

Sally Zou has come to public attention for her extraordinary generosity. 

The owner of the gold mining company Aus Gold Mining Group, she 

donated $460,000 to the Liberal Party in 2015-16, making her easily 

the dominant donor in South Australia.'" 

X(^en she is in Australia Ms Zou is a fiercely patriotic Australian. To 

prove it she took out a full-page newspaper advertisement to celebrate 

Australia Day. She even had her Rolls Royce painted over with the 

Australian flag. If this says something about the vulgarity of Chinas 

nouveaux riches, Sally Zou is not alone. In August 2017 some rich 

Chinese-Australians in Sydney drove through the city in a convoy of 

luxury cars emblazoned with Chinese flags and patriotic slogans. The 

excuse for this crude display of wealth was to protest against Indian 

incursions in Chinese territory (in fact, the PLA had occupied part of 

Bhutan). Next to a Bentley painted CCP red, a Porsche displayed a 

decal of the disputed Himalayan border region with the slogan ‘China, 

Not An Inch Will Be Given Up’, a slogan popularised by ANU student 

Lei Xiying." 

Aus Gold established an engineering scholarship at the University 

of Adelaide'* and Zou became the largest benefactor of Port Adelaide 

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Football Club. She says she wants to help the club take Australian 

football to the world. In May 2017, with her financial backing, the 

club played the AFL’s first overseas league match in Shanghai watched 

by 10,000 fans, most of whom had flown from Australia.'^ The idea of 

exporting a love of Aussie Rules to China is mere whimsy, so there mast 

be another objective to Zous investment. 

When she is talking to the Chinese press Zous patriotism changes 

hue. A 2011 story in Peoples Daily entitled ‘Sally Zou: Devoting my 

wisdom to the Ancestral Nation from a foreign land’ reported Zou 

saying that ‘despite being a stranger in a strange land, she will continue 

to devote her wisdom and strength to the prosperous development of 

the Ancestral Nation’.’'^ She had certainly done well in the Ancestral 

Nation, after being born into a wealthy steel-making family and setting 

up a Hong Kong company at age twenty-nine with a registered capi 

of HK$200 million.'^ 

Sally Zou declared that she was ‘willing to make her own company 

become a platform for Chinese enterprises to enter Australia, while s 

also wanted to ‘sell iron ore to Chinese enterprises at a lower price a 

Australian mining tycoons, to support the construction of the ees 

Nation’. She ran into criticism when she struck a multibillion do 

deal giving the huge state-owned China Gold Group exclusive rig 

to buy all gold produced by Aus Gold Mining.'^ Aus Gold later ^1^^* 

that any preferential deal had been made, stating that they would pre 

to sell our gold to Australian buyers’. ‘We are very loyal to the Austr 

community and Australian government’, said a spokesperson. We ar 

committed to Australia’s future. We would like to make contributions 

back.’’^ In a March 2017 ceremony overseen by New South Wal^ 

energy and resources minister Don Harwin, China Gold Group signe 

an agreement underwriting Zou’s Aus Gold.'® 

Perhaps Sally Zou’s passion for both China and Australia only proves 

her commitment to bringing the two nations into a closer harmony. 

As evidence we might point to Sally’s daughter, Gloria, whose eighth 

birthday Sally celebrated by spending around $50,000 on a full-p3g^ 

advertisement in The Australians'^ Gloria is known to the Peoples Daily 

as the ‘Little angel of Australia—China friendship’. Gloria may have 

been speaking for her mother when at a precious metals symposium 

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CULTURE WARS 

she predicted that ‘there will be a golden “Maritime Silk Road” between 

China and Australia and the coming “golden age of China-Australia 

relations” will have shining luster and long-term stability like gold 

and last for thousands of years maintaining beauty and firmness 

without changes’.’® 

Julie Bishop, whose West Australian branch of the Liberal Party has 

enjoyed a tsunami of Chinese cash, was so moved by these remarkably 

mature sentiments that she met with Gloria at a garden party where 

she heard another speech from the eight-year-old expressing her dream 

of ‘China and Australia as one family’.^' Sally had spread the love by 

setting up the Julie Bishop Glorious Foundation.’^ Addressing an 

incredulous Opposition in parliament, the foreign minister said she had 

never heard of it. 

Real estate woes 

Real estate has generated more anxiety than any other China-related 

issue. It’s not surprising given its volume and visibility, and at a time of 

raging house price inflation. There’s too much to say so I confine my 

comments to a few of the more salient points. 

It’s important to be clear upfront that Chinese-Australians are as 

entitled as any other Australian citizen to buy a house to live in. We 

should spare a thought for those Chinese-Australians who turn up to an 

auction to face Anglo frowns of disapproval, just as some do when they 

queue at the supermarket to buy infant formula. They are Australians 

being penalised for the sins of others. 

Under federal law, foreigners may not buy established dwellings in 

Australia without approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board 

(FIRB), although it permits them to buy new ones. This law can be cir¬ 

cumvented and for a long time was simply ignored. The FIRB did not 

bother regulating the flow of Chinese purchases of existing dwellings 

until a public outer)' forced the hand of treasurer Joe Hockey in 2015. 

Dancing to another tune, Simon Henry, co-chief executive of Chinese 

real estate site Juwai, branded the law’s enforcement ‘racist’.-^ 

Restrictions on foreign ownership have also been circumvented by 

asking family members to buy houses using funds transferred from 

abroad. As one real estate agent put it to me: The Chinese trust their 

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family.’ Alternatively, rich foreigners can buy Australian residency. 

Although it slowed in 2016, there was a surge in the number of 

Significant Investor visas granted, mostly to wealthy Chinese willing to 

invest $5 million in designated sectors.^'* 

In 2016 overseas buyers, eighty per cent of them Chinese, snapped 

up twenty-five per cent of all new housing in New South Wales, and 

sixteen per cent in Victoria.^^ The percentages would be higher for 

Sydney and Melbourne. Approved foreign investment in Australia in 

2016 reached $248 billion. This enormous flow was ‘predominantly 

driven by increased investment in the real estate sector’, according to the 

FIRB. Much of it was in apartments, which were sold to middle-class 

people in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, sometimes without being 

advertised in Australia at all. Although overall growth in workers on 457 

visas coming to Australia stopped in 2016, the occupation class with the 

fastest growth was real estate agents, mainly coming over from China to 

help flog property to Chinese buyers.^*' 

Just why this is in Australia’s national interest is hard to see, especially 

when cities around the world, led by Hong Kong and Vancouver, have 

taken measures to severely limit real estate investment from the Chinese 

mainland. In doing so they diverted more of the demand to Sydney 

and Melbourne. 

The Property Council, surely the most brazenly self-interested lobby 

group in the country, insists that demand from China has no appreci¬ 

able impact on house prices. It commissioned ACIL Allen Consulting 

(the coal industry’s preferred modellers) to write a report that showed 

that Chinese demand is ‘essential ... [to] Australian economic DNA’.^^ 

Jobs, growth, tax revenue, you name it—without Chinese people buying 

Australian property, everything would suffer. In fact, said the council’s 

chief executive, if foreign investment in commercial buildings fell by 

twenty per cent the loss in GDP ‘would be akin to the loss of Australia’s 

coal-fired electricity industry’ (a bad thing). 

Aspirational Chinese multimillionaires have targeted Sydney and 

Melbourne to buy up property so they can commute from China when 

they feel like it. According to one report, these ‘migrant millionaires’ are 

fuelling the property price bubbles in our two largest cities.^® Real estate 

agents have been making a killing and defend the influx with ridiculous 

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CULTURE WARS 

claims. Attracted by clean air, good schools and laws that are enforced, 

ultra-high-net-worth Chinese businessmen flying in and out ‘want to 

contribute to Australian society’, said one. Another suggested that ‘[i]t’s 

a little bit like the country kids that used to go to boarding school and 

travelled back to far western NSW’.^^ 

In March 2017 a police chief from Jinzhou City was sentenced to 

seventeen years in jail for embezzlement. He used the money to buy 

a large number of properties in Australia, including houses in Sydney 

for his two daughters.-^® Australia is a favoured destination for corrupt 

Chinese money, with a total of $3.36 billion of suspicious financial 

transactions investigated in 2015-16, with a third of it stashed in real 

estate.-^' By early 2017 the federal government’s crackdown had forced 

rich foreigners, mainly Chinese, to sell $ 107 million worth of properties 

bought illegally,^^ but real estate agents on the ground claim that 

loopholes are used to get around the laws and illegal sales are greater 

than ever.^^ 

In February 2017 Beijing’s crackdown on capital flight was 

reported to have caused a sharp fall in Chinese demand for properties 

in Los Angeles, but no such decline seems to have affected Sydney.^ 

The Australian newspapers were reporting Chinese developers ‘roaring 

back into Melbourne’ in the second half of 2016, with three-quarters of 

available development sites sold to mainland Chinese investors.^^ They 

are confident they can sell the apartments because they already have 

the buyers lined up back in China. That’s what happens when a city is 

named the world’s most liveable for six years in a row. 

In an article headed ‘World’s biggest real estate frenzy is coming to a 

city near you’, Bloomberg reports experts saying that what seems like 

a flood of Chinese investment into Australia is a mere ‘triclde’ compared 

with what is to come, if we allow it.'^^’ A 31-year-old owner of wheat 

farms in Jiangsu, for example, plans to buy six apartments in Sydney 

with a view to sending his children to high schools there sometime in 

the future. 

Patriot writers 

The Melbourne Writers Festival and Writers Victoria are respectable 

institutions on the literary scene, committed to helping authors find 

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their voices and promoting a diversity of ideas. It seemed natural for 

them to support Chinese-language authors by entering a partnership 

with the Australian-Chinese Writers Association to organise the Chinese 

Writers Festival in August 2016. The Chinese Poets and Authors Society 

of Victoria and the Melbourne Chinese Writers Friendship Association 

were also involved.’^ 

But what is the Australian-Chinese Writers Association? It’s hard 

to find anything on the public record, but at an event celebrating its 

tenth anniversary in April 2016 the deputy consul general from the 

PRC’s Melbourne consulate, Huang Guobin, praised the association 

as ‘an important platform for spreading Chinese culture and thanked 

the group for having ‘always energetically supported and cooperated 

with the consulate’s work. In fact, the association had not always 

supported the consulate, but in recent years has been taken over by pro- 

Beijing forces.^” From the consulate Huang was accompanied by Zhang 

Xiaohong, consul for Overseas Chinese Affairs, that is, for qiaowu. 

A year earlier at the 2015 Chinese Writers Festival in Melbourne, the 

current president of the Chinese Writers Association (CWA), Tie Ning, 

was a prominent presence. Tie Ning is a well-respected author, but 

she is also a member of the 19th Central Committee of the Chinese 

Communist Parry (and the 18th before that), one of the highest political 

bodies in China.’*' In the words of one astute observer: ‘The relationship 

between the Chinese Writers Association and the Party is somewhat like 

a teenager and a dictator father ... d’he Party doesn’t require you to sing 

praise every day, but it makes sure that you don’t write anything offen¬ 

sive, or worse, subversive.’'’^' As China’s peak literary body, the CWA is 

an important part of the CCP’s overseas propaganda program and is the 

force behind the Melbourne Chinese Writers Festival. Authors arriving 

from China are selected by it. 

The host of the tenth anniversary event of the Australian-Chinese 

Writers Association was the chair of the Australian Chinese Writers 

Festival, Hu Mei (May Hu). She arrived in Australia in 1988 and received 

permanent residency soon after the Tiananmen Square massacre. In 1992 

she began work as the Head of Group Mandarin at SBS. In June 2017 

she was awarded an Order of Australia medal for ‘her service to broadcast 

media, women and the multicultural community of Victoria’.^* Despite 

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CULTURE WARS 

her continuing work at SBS, Hu was also involved with the World 

Indochinese Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification 

of China, a United Front group that held a press conference in March 

2017 attacking Taiwanese independence.'*^ Huang Huiynan, president 

of die Melbourne Chinese Writers Association, also spoke at the press 

conference. Huang is deputy head of the pro-Beijing Chinese newspaper 

Melbourne Daily, in which role he has ‘expressed his willingness to work 

hard to propagandise and promote China and Guangzhou’.'*^ 

The 2016 Chinese Writers Festival in Melbourne was enthusiasti¬ 

cally reported in China, with chinaqw.com, a site affiliated with the 

Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, publishing an article promoting the 

festival and focusing on the events keynote speaker. Lei Tao.'*'* Lei Tao 

is party secretary of the Shaanxi Writers Association and a committee 

member of the party-approved China Writers Association. He previously 

worked as the director of the Shaanxi Provincial Party Committees 

Propaganda Department. A loyal party member, he was editor-in-chief 

of the ‘Shaanxi Propaganda Guide’.'*^ Lei’s profile published by Writers 

Victoria failed to mention any of this. 

Comments by Lei at a press conference he held before departing 

for Australia emphasised the propaganda function of the Australian 

festival: ‘through exchange with local Chinese writers and Australian 

writers, I will definitely expand the influence of Shaanxi’s—and also 

Chinas—culture abroad, to let overseas writers understand the current 

creative situation in China.Of course, no Chinese writers critical of 

the CCP were invited. 

The Peoples Daily published a long and detailed report on the 2016 

festival itself, concluding that ‘Australian-Chinese writers are gradually 

receiving the attention of mainstream society, and this closely reflects 

Chinas power and the increasing numbers of Chinese migrants’.'*^ In 

truth, the consulates work hard to ensure that some Chinese writers 

receive no attention. Party secretary Lei Tao told the Peoples Daily that 

Australian-Chinese writers left a deep impression on him: ‘even though 

their bodies are overseas, they are still firmly rooted in their ethnicity 

and with their cultural motherland, China’.'** 

Some Chinese-heritage writers in Australia left China to escape the 

party s intolerance of creative freedom. But they were not invited to 

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the festival. Deputy consul general Huang told Chinese reporters that 

‘only by deeply understanding their own Ancestral Nation can overseas 

Chinese writers create high-quality works of literature’. In addition to 

partnering with the Chinese Writers Festival, the Melbourne Writers 

Festival features one or two Chinese writers at its annual event. Ail of 

these writers have been, from Beijing’s point of view, safe. No dissident 

writers who would bring a quite different understanding of modern 

China have been given a platform. 

In accord with their commitment to cultural openness, the 

Melbourne Writers Festival and Writers Victoria have been unwittingly 

collaborating with United Front bodies whose aim is to spread into 

Australian society the CCP worldview, one that is extremely intolerant 

of artistic licence and dissenting views. The cruel death of dissident 

writer Liu Xiaobo in a Chinese prison in 2017 reminded us of this. 

These worthy Australian organisations cannot be blamed for their 

naivety, for we are only beginning to understand the pervasiveness of 

the PRC’s influence campaign in this country. But now they know. 

If they are to collaborate again with writers’ associations close to the 

consulate, they should insist that dissident authors be invited and 

given a voice. 

Let me finish with the story of one such writer. At age twenty, 

Qi Jiazhen was sentenced to thirteen years in a Sichuan prison, along 

with her father, for unspecified counter-revolutionary activities. There 

she was subjected to unrelenting propaganda. Eventually, she ^ ^ 

was brainwashed, becoming the ‘poster girl for successful rehabilita- 

tion’. She was allowed to come to Australia to study English in 19 7. 

After the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 she gained permanent 

residency and eventually citizenship. I kept silent for seventeen years 

out of fear,’ she told me. Now in her seventies, she is a fierce critic of 

the Communist Party and began to speak out through her books. She 

helped organise the 2016 Melbourne protest against the visiting R€ 

Detachment of Women ballet performance. 

When I met Qi Jiazhen in Melbourne she told me that in 2014, 

after she’d published a memoir about her tribulations in China, she 

was invited to speak at an event organised by the Chinese Writers 

Association. But between the issuing of the invitation and the day of 

242 

CULTURE WARS 

the event the association had been taken over by pro-Beijing elements, 

probably with the help of the Melbourne consulate. Days before the 

event they asked someone else to be the main speaker, allocating only ten 

minutes to Qi Jiazhen and then interrupting her and closing the session 

before she could respond to questions. ‘They can do here whatever they 

want,’ she added matter-of-factly. ‘How can the Communist Party be so 

powerful in Australia?’ she asked me. I had no answer for her. 

Co-opting God 

^Tierever overseas Chinese gather they become a potential target for 

influence and infiltration through qiaowu work, and that includes 

churches. The classified State Council reports read by James To adopt 

an ‘ecumenical’ approach, with no discrimination between Protestants 

and Catholics. They instruct cadres to monitor, infiltrate and ‘sinify’ 

overseas Chinese churches by actively promoting the CCP’s concepts of 

Chineseness and ‘spiritual love’.'^^ For the CCP, nothing’s sacred except 

fealty to the motherland and, of course, the party itself. The churches 

have added value for qiaowu cadres because they are linked into wider 

society through non-Chinese Christian networks. In addition, if the 

party' can shape the messages coming from religious leaders, the faithful 

are more likely to believe them because they trust their pastors. 

While Christian churches are being suppressed in China, the 

rapid growth of Chinese Christian churches in Australia provides an 

opportunity for qiaowu cooptation. Sydney alone boasts over a hundred 

Chinese churches, and Melbourne sixty.In the older churches, ser¬ 

mons were mostly in Cantonese, but in the last decade more and more 

have congregations that speak Mandarin. 

Across the Tasman, in 2001 the (Chinese) Presbyterian Church in 

New Zealand issued a statement on the Taiwan issue. Quoting Matthew 

5:37, it called on the world to respect the feelings of Chinese Christians: 

Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. We are grateful for and cherish 

this gift bestowed by God.’^' According to a 2014 article on the web¬ 

site of the Canberra Chinese Methodist Church: ‘The awe-inspiring 

righteousness of Xi Jinping ... and the rise of a great nation that is 

modern China are part of God’s plan, predestination and blessing’.The 

author is Ms Zhang Xiaoyan, an Australian citizen and vice-president 

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of the Chinese Writers Association of Sydney. Elsewhere she seems to 

endorse the prediction that a ‘Red Brigade will be dispatched from 

China to stir up a huge wave, like a massive red tsunami, to rejuvenate 

AustraliaDr James Kwang, Bishop of the Chinese Methodist Church 

in Australia (CMCA), has made it clear that these are the personal views 

of one member of the church and that the CMCA does not support any 

regime or government ‘as the sole purpose of the CMCA is to spread 

scriptural Christianity to all races in Australia and beyond . 

According to Chinese-Australian pastors I have spoken with, many 

parishioners believe that they have spies in their midst whose role is to 

report to the consulate any anti-party talk or activities. One pastm told 

me: ‘There are lors of Communists in our church community. He 

guessed that around a quarter or a third are or have been Communists 

Some join the church for the companionship, some for the social 

contacts; others are the consulates assets. 

“iTuLed Front organs and sympathetic individuals, the 

CCP is attempting to control how Chinese history is understood and 

.0 promote a certain narrative about Chinas i" A-rahas^pre- 

and post-settlement history. Although taking p ace e m 

some'of it can now be exposed. ,t should be stressed ^ ™ “ 

thirty years a number of Australian historians have 

long neglected role of Chinese immigrants m Anstrahas I I 

moLn history. In the last several years, however, some 

disturbed at the way Beijing is hijacking their wor P Beijing 

ideological purposes. This followed a decision around 2008 m BeO-ng 

to actively promote the history of overseas Chinese, wi 

devoted to them springing up across China.” When ^t J-nP-g bec^ 

president in 2013 there was renewed commitment by t e 

Information Office (also known as the Central Office of Foreig 

Propaganda) to ‘telling a good Chinese story to foreign au ie 

a view to fostering warm feelings. 

In 2015 ASIO chief Duncan Lewis warned the organisational hea 

of the main political parties against accepting donations from t e 

billionaire businessmen Chau Chak Wing and Huang Xiangmo. WBile 

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their outsized politicaJ donations have attracted all of the attention, 

they have also been active in shaping Australian history and culture. 

In September 2015 the Australian War Memorial (AWM) held a 

wreath-laying service in recognition of Chinese-Australian soldiers who 

ser\^ed in the Australian Defence Force. Chau Chak Wing was con¬ 

spicuous at the ceremony. He stood between the memorial’s director, 

Brendan Nelson, and Returned Services League president Admiral Ken 

Doolan and laid the wreath on behalf of Chinese-Australians. Report¬ 

ing on the AWM event, his company’s website and the Chinese media 

described him as ‘ACFEA chairman’. The Australia China Friendship 

and Exchange Association (ACFEA) is a United Front body respon¬ 

sible for organising a series of events attended by senior Communist 

Party officials. 

Why was Chau given this prestigious role by the Australian 

War Memorial? How did this man become the representative of 

‘the Chinese-Australian community’? Inquiries revealed that he made 

no financial contribution to the event as it was one of the memorial’s 

daily Last Post ceremonies. However, Dr Chau—his honorary ‘doctorate 

of humane letters’ was awarded by Keuka College, a little-known 

university in upstate New York—was well known to the AWM. His 

company funded and bought naming rights for an oral and audio-visual 

recording studio in the building, known as the Kingold Media Centre.^^ 

The centre was opened the same day, an event reported prominently 

in China.^® 

Chau had also made a donation to fund a study exploring the 

‘ethnic diversity of the Australian Imperial Force’. The burden of that 

project appears to have been to commission an academic at a Chinese 

university to write a history of Chinese-Australian soldiers. Chau’s 

generosity is recognised by the inscription of his name on a stone inside 

the memorials entrance, along with a very select group of the great and 

good of Australian philanthropy. (The AWM will not say how much 

he has donated.) After he laid the wreath for the ‘sacrifice of Chinese 

origin soldiers , as Xinhiianet described them,’^ Dr Nelson and foreign 

minister Julie Bishop presented him with an ‘Australian War Memorial 

Fellowship, which as far as I can tell is a framed certificate given to an 

elite of mega-donors. When I asked the memorial for more information. 

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out 

and whether due diligence had been carried v>naK ' 

I was told: ‘These are matters of public record. We have nothing 

oAA ’60 

on Chau Chak Wing, 

more 

The study Chau funded resulted in a book now on sale in the 

memorial s bookshop at the heavily subsidised price of $2,95 ($4,95 for 

the hardback). Titled Quiet and Loyal Spirit: Commemorating Chinese 

Australian military service^ it was put together by historian Dr Sheng 

Fei of Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangdong and published by New 

Century Publications Fund in association with ACFEA.*^' The book is 

written in Chinese English, although some passages break into perfect 

English. The text is full of inaccuracies, at one point even referring to 

itself as The Quite Loyal Spirit the AWM as the ‘Australian National 

War Memorial’. 

But it is the historical distortions in the book that are most worry- 

ine, beginning with its opening sentence: 'Chinese were among the 

first settlers as members of the first fleet in 1788.’ Chinese conv.cts m 

England? Chinese marines? Seriously? There were no Ch.nese people 

onL First Fleet." Absurd as it seems, this claim is now m the htstory 

books’ and, going by experience, it’s not fanciful to imag.ne tt com.ng 

UP in some future sovereignty claim. 

The Second World War, which the book refers to as the Ant.-Fasc.s 

pottrayed as the time China and Australia stood together to 

resist Japanese aggtession, the point at wh.ch Austrahan “J" 

came hs feat of Chinese invasion and the two nat.ons fotmed a bond. 

The China-focused anti-communism that took Austra 

in Malava. Kotea and Vietnam is not mentioned, and when the rok of 

Chinese-Austnalian soldiets in the Korean and Vietnam wars comes up 

it is quickly passed over with no mention of the fact that ommuni 

China backed Australia’s enemies. 

The role of Chinese-Australians in Australia’s military history is 

deserving ol proper study and full acknowledgement. But why \ 

the Australian War Memorial entrust a Chinese academic with limite 

knowledge of Australia and no experience as a military historian to write 

this significant part of Australia’s military history, and then promote it 

to visitors in its bookshop? PRC history books today are a mishmash 

of semi-fiction and official propaganda.^^ China is now described by a 

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CULTURE WARS 

respected historian as ‘a country that has ... completely obliterated and 

then recreated its past’.^*^ The CCP propagates a completely distorted 

picture of the role of Chinese soldiers and the Communist Party in the 

war against Japan.^’^ Why does the memorial sell a book that is of risible 

production quality and presents to the public a distorted picture of this 

important part of the nations history? 

The gift-giving of Chinese billionaires follows a strategy of building 

legitimacy by donating to cultural, educational and medical causes.*^^ 

If a PR company were asked by a foreign investor to recommend a 

strategy to ingratiate itself with the Australian public, it might (if it were 

sufficiently cynical) propose the client sprinkle itself with Anzac dust, 

and point out that the biggest bowl of Anzac dust is to be found at the 

Australian War Memorial. It goes without saying that the memorial is 

a sacred space for the nation and access to it should never be exploited 

by a foreign power. 

Chaus Chinese Anzacs are not the only vehicle for co-opting 

Australian history. Friends of China are reinterpreting the place of 

Chinese immigrants in the nations development. Important and under¬ 

valued as that history has been, these PRC sympathisers are attributing 

to them a much larger role than impartial historians do. The effect of 

these histories is to amplify the sense of grievance over the history 

of racism among Chinese-heritage people in Australia—and in China. 

Its not surprising to see a recent one. Dragon & Kangaroo by journalist 

Robert Macklin, praised in the Communist Parry media.*^^ The book 

was launched by Bob Carr. 

Huang Xiangmo has offered to fund a book on Chinese immigrants 

in Australian history. Although some local historians, over-eager to 

demonstrate their respect for cultural diversity, have allowed them¬ 

selves to be hoodwinked, others are alive to the dangers. When some 

Australian historians working in the area heard that Huang was behind 

the project, they withdrew their expressions of interest in contributing 

to the book. 

In a similar show of caution, the Dragon Tails group of historians 

e.xpressed interest in accepting an offer from the Australia-China 

Institute for Arts and Culture to host its biennial conference. When its 

committee became aware that Huang Xiangmo had funded the institute 

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at Western Sydney University, it split over how it could protect the aca 

demic integrity of the conference. In the end it went ahead. Huang had 

donated $3.5 million to the university for the institute. Holly Huang, 

the general manager of Huangs Yuhu Group (Australia), was appointed 

to its board. Holly Huangs Linkedin profile says she has a Master of 

Local Government degree from UTS. 

The People’s Liberation Army of Australia 

In August 2015 the Australian Chinese Ex-Services Association estab¬ 

lished the ‘Australian Eighth Corps’, a unit made up of ex-PLA soldiers 

who had emigrated to Australia. A year later it staged a celebration at 

Hurstville Town Hall, its members dressed up in PU fatigues, with 

caps, insignia and flags galore.® Photos of the event show surreal scenes. 

They sang patriotic army songs and recreated life in the barracks. These 

were not Chinese Anzacs who had fought for Australia, but ex-PU who 

had served China. But in the minds of these patriots the difference is 

blurred. The event was a success and the PLA in Australia was back a 

year later, in Chatswood, singing ‘The East Is Red . 

The Communist Party is like the sun, 

Wherever it shines, it is bright 

wherever the Communist Party is 

Hurrah, the people are liberated! 

The PLA has a long history of using song and dance troupes to deliver 

L menage It takes seriously Mao Zedong’s dictum that an arm 

"th guns'is not enough, Ve must also have a cu'-J J 

is absolutely indispensable for uniting our own ranks and g 

''Thromanisers of the PLA in Australia are speaking directly m 

Chinese communities. The familiar uniforms 

belonging. Some Chinese-Australians are appalled at t is m 

of their community in support of the CCR For others, 

arc- nostalgia is attractive, keeping them emotionally, inguistic y 

culturallv close to the PRC. While at one level these evene are a piec 

of cultural theatre, they raise a challenging loyalty issue. If it comes to 

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CULTURE WARS 

potential conflicts between Australia and China, with whom do these 

niilitar)' veterans side? 

The forerunner of the Australian Chinese Ex-Services Association 

NN'as named the August 1st Brigade (the PLA was founded on that date). 

Its cliarter stipulates that ‘all members must fervently love their mother- 

K\nd’7* In March 2017, members of the association took to the streets 

oI S)Tdney to welcome visiting Premier Li Keqiang. Its president would 

go home to write: ‘Today Chinese national flags subjugated Sydney! 

Thousands of Chinese people waited in the rain. The entire CBD was a 

sea ol black hair, yellow skin and red national flags!’^^ 

Digital totalitarianism 

Theres a KFC in Beijing where a machine uses facial recognition tech¬ 

nolog}' to suggest what you might want to order. According to a KFC 

spokesperson, ‘The artificial intelligence-enabled system can recom¬ 

mend menu items based on a customers estimated age and mood.’^^ 

^Tiile companies around the world keep electronic records of what we 

buy, KFC can now keep a record of your face. The machine remembers 

>X)u next time. Asked about privacy, one customer responded, ‘In China, 

}’ou don’t have any privacy anyway.’ 

The KFC outlet sounds like a novelty item, but the Chinese state 

and private tech companies are investing huge sums in facial recognition 

technology, big data and artificial intelligence to build a national system 

of surv'eillance and social control that would make George Orwell 

blanch. As a hint of what is to come, in Shenzhen a citizen who crosses 

a road against a red light may reach the other side to be confronted 

with a large video screen displaying her face, along with a warning 

from the police. Her infraction is logged on a computer somewhere, 

along with her other infractions. In a nation estimated to have 100 

million CCTV cameras (one for every thirteen people) and growing,^'* 

it foreshadows a system of mass surveillance capable of tracking a face 

almost any'w'here. 

Jay'walking is only one small misdemeanour that will be logged 

by the ‘social-credit system’ being rolled out across China, described 

by one observ'er as the most ambitious attempt by any government 

In modern history to fuse technology with behavioural control’. 

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Government agencies will award citizens points for good behaviour and 

deduct them for anti-social behaviour like being late with the rent 

and posting social media comments the authorities don’t like. Under 

the system of reputation scores, if you perform well a promotion might 

be fast-tracked. The Economist reports a government official saying that 

by 2020 the emerging social credit system will ‘allow the trustworthy to 

roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited 

to take a single step’. It’s hoped that it will allow better control of 

corruption and, of course, track criminal activity. 

In this brave new world of ‘digital totalitarianism’ obedience to the 

state is rewarded and dissent punished.^^ China’s paranoid one-party 

state is already deploying a sophisticated and highly effective form of 

political supervision, in a nation that already possesses an immense 

infrastructure devoted to policing the thoughts and actions of its 

citizens. Journalist and blogger Liu Hu, renowned for exposing corrupt 

officials, was charged with ‘fabricating and spreading rumours’ and fined 

by a court.^^ He was placed on a blacklist that prevents him from buying 

plane tickets and property and travelling on certain kinds of trains. 

There is no appeal system. The blacklist now has over seven million 

names, including a girl placed on it when she was two years old because 

she inherited a debt from her parents. A court had imposed a large fine 

on her father after he murdered his wife. He was then executed but his 

daughter inherited the fine. 

In some cities, the ringback tone on the phone of blacklisted people 

is altered by the authorities so that callers are warned they are contacting 

a discredited person. 

The social credit system will require a vast system of integrated data 

collection, storage, analysis and retrieval, which is precisely the objective 

of research into big data—that is, ‘extremely large data sets that may be 

analysed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, 

especially relating to human behaviour and interactions’.^® The social 

credit system still requires work before it can be rolled out across the 

country. However, with the backing of President Xi the state is deter¬ 

mined to press ahead. 

To predict an individual’s potential for terrorist activity, China is 

now trialling a system that uses data on their employment history, bank 

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CULTURE WARS 

records, consumption habits, friends and movements recorded through 

sur\'eillance cameras. There’s little doubt this emerging ‘pre-crime’ iden¬ 

tification software will also be used against those proposing alternatives 

to CCP rule.7’ 

The ‘smart cities’ program undertaken by the China Electronics 

Technology Group Corporation (CETC) is at the forefront of the 

social credit scheme. CETC is one of the Chinese state’s top military 

research organisations, specialising in information and communica¬ 

tions systems. It boasts that its integrated big data centre will support 

the modernisation of governance of cities, improve the safety of 

cyberspace, and enhance cyberspace security and defence capabili¬ 

ties.®*^ By creating a city’s operational command centre, or ‘brain’, the 

smart-cities project integrates civilian-military dual-use technologies. 

There are plans to export it to other countries through the One Belt, 

One Road initiative.®' 

Australian taxpayers are helping to fund the development of the 

smart-cities program through an agreement between CETC and the 

University of Technology Sydney (UTS), as we saw in Chapter 10.®^ 

Along with its CETC collaboration on big data, UTS is contributing to 

the most sophisticated and oppressive system of surveillance and social 

control the world has seen, a kind of e-Stasi in which CCTV and AI 

take the place of neighbours and family members as informants. 

China is not the only nation to develop facial recognition technol¬ 

ogy for social regulation. It’s estimated that in the United States police 

departments already have the faces of half of the population logged on 

computers.®^ They have access to a ‘virtual line-up’ for tracking crimi¬ 

nals. The extent of the US surveillance state revealed by the Snowden 

documents raises serious anxieties about the misuse of data. Yet in the 

US there are checks on police power. Laws provide some protection: 

police who misuse data can be prosecuted; the media investigate and 

report on abuses; citizens have the right to access their information. 

In short, there is a separation of powers. None of these apply in China. 

In fact, the new national security law passed in 2017 gives the authori¬ 

ties the legal right to access any personal data they deem necessary. Civil 

liberties activists in the West keep their governments honest. In China 

they are thrown in jail. 

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Beijing’s Antarctic designs 

Australia played an active role in the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. It indefi 

nitely bans all mineral resource exploration, mining and drilling and 

includes strong protocols to protect the natural environment for the 

benefit of present and future generations. Military activities other than 

peaceful’ ones are prohibited. The Australian Antarctic Territory covers 

forty-two per cent of Antarctica, the largest of any nation, and we have 

a long and proud history of scientific endeavour and wilderness protec¬ 

tion. Six countries have recognised our claim to the Australian Antarctic 

Territory (AAT), although the rest of the world has not. 

Over the last ten to fifteen years, the PRC has become heavily 

engaged in the Antarctic, building bases, laying down airstrips and 

acquiring ships fitted out for the purpose. Most of its activity is within 

the Australian sector. Building on its physical infrastructure, China 

maintains a permanent presence there and has been actively mapping 

out geographical sites. It is also establishing a base station for its Beidou 

satellite navigation system. The Antarctic base station will give any 

Chinese missile strike greater precision.®'* 

Chinese-langtiage sources reported by Anne-Marie Brady show 

that China is preparing the ground to enable it to mine resources in 

the vast pristine continent.®^ After concerns about China’s intentions 

were raised in Western news media several years ago,®'^ Chinese offi¬ 

cials now use the language of environmental protection and scientific 

research embedded in the international discourse. When asked about its 

resource exploitation plans, the Chinese government denies it has any. 

Yet in materials aimed at Chinese audiences (uncovered by Anne Marie 

Brady), Chinese polar officials clearly state the real goal. The internal 

newspaper of the Polar Research Institute of China, for example, writes 

that the main tasks of its new, fifth Antarctic base would be resource 

exploitation and climatic studies’.®^ The same institute describes the 

continent as a global treasure house of resources’. President Xi Jinping 

himself seemed to give the game away when, on a visit to Hobart, he 

said that the PRC would work with Australia and other nations to 

better understand, protect and exploit the Antarctic’.®® 

Beijing has been an energetic participant in international Antarctic 

processes culminating in the hosting in May 2017 of the preeminent 

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Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting. Australia and New Zealand 

haNC been actively assisting China to establish itself as a major Antarctic 

pla>’cr. The PRC’s main logistics base is in Hobart. It’s not feasible to tell 

the history here, but in the Antarctic community of nations scientific 

K'searcli is power.®’ China has been spending big to acquire this power. 

China now spends more than any other nation on scientific research 

in the Antarctic.” In 2016 the CSIRO entered into a partnership with 

China to establish in Hobart a new centre for research into Southern 

Hemisphere oceans. China will contribute $20 million. CSIRO chief 

executive Larry Marshall, who in the same year was widely excoriated 

for slashing climate science research, was excited to announce the 

new collaboration. 

Through its largesse and growing role in the Antarctic, China seems 

to have cultivated a cohort of scientific and policy boosters for its efforts. 

The director of the Australian Antarctic Division, Nick Gales, finds 

the growing collaboration ‘incredibly exciting’ and is enthusiastic about 

expanding the PRC’s work in the Australian territory.” Nengye Liu, a 

law lecturer at the University of Adelaide, has taken a recent interest 

resulting in a string of articles praising Australia-China cooperation 

and describing the PRC as historically a rule-taker rather than a rule- 

maker (avoiding mention of instances where it is a rule-breaker).” 

China sees the Antarctic as resource-rich but, he reassures us, it will not 

start mining ‘in the foreseeable future’.” 

David Leary at UTS’s law faculty believes that, while stories of future 

conflict make good newspaper copy a ‘sober analysis of international 

law’ suggests a new era of cooperation. Just like other states, China’s 

interests lie in strengthening international law.'” Against all of the evi¬ 

dence, including the PRC’s manifestly illegal annexation of territory in 

the South China Sea, Lear)' believes that ‘China is no different to any 

other state’.” 

Another lawyer, Julia Jabour from the University of Tasmania, lent 

support in an address to the Confucius Institute at the University of 

Adelaide.” She began by saying she had never heard of the Confucius 

Institute before but was happy to speak about China’s intentions in 

Antarctica (and advise the Australian government accordingly). We 

demonise China because we don’t understand it, she said, just as we did 

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over its actions in the South China Sea. Her entire lecture 

to defending China against those who doubt the sincerity of its public 

posture. Because the PRC is ‘legally bound by the rules of international 

law’ those doubts are not justified, she said. Mining could only occur 

if all treaty parties agreed to overturn the ban, and that is not going to 

happen. In Jabour’s world, what is not possible legally is not possible 

and ‘provocative, dramatic headlines’ about China’s mining intentions 

are alarmist. 

Australia’s Antarctic policy wonks appear not to want to know what 

Chinese experts and officials are saying among themselves. The CCP 

regime has allowed the ruination of China’s natural environment, and 

takes a cynical view of international law, ignoring it when convenient. It 

attacked the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea when an 

international tribunal deemed unlawful China’s annexation of islands in 

the South China Sea. The decision was dismissed by China as ‘nothing 

more than a piece of waste paper’.’^ It is violating the Hong Kong Basic 

Law guaranteeing the city political autonomy. And it is already ignoring 

the 1991 protocol banning mineral explorations. 

Despite efforts by the major powers to welcome China into the 

international system as a ‘responsible stakeholder’, it must be evident 

that at bottom the PRC does not accept laws and norms that don’t suit 

it. In Canada, The Globe and Mail China ‘plays along with 

the international system’ but then acts as if it wants to overthrow it. 

‘What China wants, it gets.’‘^^ If the PRC has overridden the interna¬ 

tionally endorsed sovereign claims of its neighbours to its west, south 

and east, why on earth would we believe it will respect international law 

in the Antarctic, where sovereignty claims are agreed only by conven 

tion? After all, the PRC regards the Antarctic Treaty as part of the world 

order created by the postwar powers, and it has said it wants to make a 

new global order. Brady argues that although the Antarctic Treaty will 

serve the PRC’s interests for the next twenty to thirty years, it will seek 

to rewrite it when it comes up for review in 2048. By that point it will 

be fully prepared to begin extracting the continent’s resources. 

254 

12 

Friends of Ch ina 

The China club 

Spies, plants, informants, sympathisers and agents of influence—in 

Australia, the PRC has them all. Of equal value to China are the 

experts, commentators and business executives who take a public stance 

that setA'es Beijing’s interests. We met some of them in Chapter 7’s 

description of the fifth column and we will meet more soon. But behind 

the scenes another potent force has been operating that I have not yet 

mentioned: the China club. 

Today’s attitudes to China among Canberra’s political-bureaucratic 

elite were formed during the Hawke-Keating years. Bob Hawke was 

prime minister benveen 1983 and 1991. Keating was Hawke’s powerful 

treasurer and succeeded him as prime minister at the end of 1991, lead¬ 

ing the nation until he lost the election in 1996. A cohort of advisers 

emerged in the Hawke-Keating era that would go on to dominate the 

central agencies of government for the next two decades, setting the 

agenda and nurturing the generation that followed. They persuaded 

Hawke and Keating that Australia’s future lies in Asia and we should 

turn the nation to the north. It was a compelling case, but in the 2000s 

the Asia-only view morphed into something else: the conviction that 

‘China is our destiny’. 

Who were these advisers? 

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Dennis Richardson was Bob Hawke’s chief of staffand w 

the foreign affairs department, ASIO and the defence 

retiring in 2017. Allan Gyngell was foreign policy adviK"rir' 

and graduated to top positions in the prime minister's deparlm 

department of foreign affairs and the Office of National AssessI"''’ 

later years he became a kind of eminence grise of foreign policy. Kal' 

economic adviser Ken Henry would rise quickly and head TreasutyT' 

a decade from 2001. Martin Parkinson was economic adviser to Joh 

Dawkins (the minister who did more than anyone else to corporatise 

Australia’s universities), succeeding Henry as secretary of Treasury 

then running the prime minister’s department. ANU economist Peter 

Drysdale was not a political staffer, but his free-market worldview and 

north Asian orientation were very influential in the 1980s, not least via 

his doctoral student Ross Garnaut. 

Garnaut served as principal economic adviser to Hawke and then 

ambassador to China from 1985 to 1988. His landmark 1989 report, 

Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendency, was the blueprint for the 

China club’s new understanding of Australia’s future. It argued that we 

must reorient our economy and our thinking towards northeast Asia, 

but between the lines was a deeper message, one that had swept through 

Canberra—economics uber alles. When the Department of Foreign 

Affairs and the Department of Trade were merged in 1987 to become 

DFAT, no one doubted which of the distinct worldviews would prevail. 

Once the ideas of the China club came to rule Canberra’s central agen¬ 

cies, our economic relationship with China would begin to trump other 

considerations raised by Defence, intelligence agencies and, of course, 

those raised by human rights NGOs. By 2013 DFAT’s China strategy 

was fill about ‘deepening and broadening’ our partnership with China at 

every level, while respecting our ‘different political systems and values. 

There was no consideration of the risks and dangers; it might have been 

drafted by a think tank in Beijing. For DFAT the overriding considera- 

tion was thac we should do nothing that might upset Chinas leaders 

The 2016 Dry^sdale report (considered in Chapter 7) is a pure product 

of the China club and ranks as perhaps the most dangerous ^ 

Australian government has ever received. Its key supporters are than 

for their contributions in the foreword, a roll call of China-boosters 

256 

FRIENDS OF CHINA 

from Treasury (which supplied the cash), The Department of the Prime 

Minister and Cabinet (PM&C), DFAT and the ANU. Allan Gyngell, 

Martin Parkinson, Dennis Richardson and several second-generation 

members—Frances Adamson (DFAT), Geoff Raby (ex-DFAT), Ian 

Watt (ex-Treasury)—are all there. The effect of each one of the report s 

recommendations, which together amount to the removal of all restric¬ 

tions on Chinas economic penetration of Australia, would be to give 

Beijing far greater economic and political leverage over Canberra in 

exchange for the promise of a fistful of dollars. 

As for Hawke and Keating, when their political careers ended they 

went on to become reliable friends of China, shuttling between the 

wo countries, mixing with the top cadres and tycoons. While Hawke’s 

China links proved lucrative, Keating was more interested in influence. 

The former Fairfax correspondent in Beijing, John Garnaut, sug¬ 

gested to me that ‘China knows the vulnerabilities of our system better 

than we do’. Unregulated political donations are an obvious vulnerabil¬ 

ity in our open democracy. Another is our egalitarian culture. Former 

prime ministers can wander through an airport without anyone paying 

them too much attention. But spare a thought for those ex-prime 

ministers who move among their former constituents uttering a silent 

but desperate cry for the attention that was once heaped upon them. 

Hawke’s attorney-general (and now ANU chancellor) Gareth Evans 

once named it ‘relevance deprivation syndrome’. 

Beijing understands that our former prime ministers and foreign 

ministers have walked the world stage, and feel they have important 

things to say. So when they travel to China they are feted and fawned 

over. The people they once ruled may not give them their due, but 

the CCP knows how to honour a man of achievement, to restore the 

V and the I to the P. It has developed subtle techniques to stroke egos 

and has a whole apparatus to put them into practice. The process of 

forging close relationships with prominent figures from abroad who can 

be persuaded to disseminate Beijing’s position is known as liyong waili 

mi woxtianchuan, ‘using foreign strength to promote China’.* 

Through this program of flatter)^ and royal treatment, involving 

all-expenses trips to China and meetings with top leaders, some of our 

former prime ministers, foreign ministers and state premiers have been 

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turned into ‘friends of China*. In addition to Bob Hawke and Paul 

Keating, Kevin Rudd, Bob Carr and John Brumby are frequent flyers to 

Beijing. Julia Gillard has resisted the Chinese sirens, probably because 

she is a more modest individual not driven by money or ego. 

Guanxi is usually understood as the process of building personal net¬ 

works for business purposes. But it is more than that. It is an ‘intricate 

Chinese art of relationship management’ that Westerners often blunder 

into.^ The subde (and at times not so subtle) process of trading favours 

‘binds the parties in a deal to a set of reciprocal obligations’. Westerners 

are prone to mistake this instrumental approach to business relation¬ 

ships for genuine ‘friendship’. With their defences down, they become 

easy to manipulate. 

Not every Australian influencer has been worked on by Beijing. 

Some just arrive at a view based on their own judgement that happens to 

suit the CCP’s narrative. (Having done so they are likely to find impor¬ 

tant PRC people taking an interest in them, inviting them to events and 

having them quoted in the Peoples Daily.) But whatever the process of 

arriving at them, within our elites we can identify a number of positions 

sympathetic to Beijing’s interests and which it therefore encourages. 

The Innocents 

In response to the political donations scandal that broke out in Australia 

in August 2016, University of Melbourne legal academic Joo-Cheong 

Tham wrote an article—the bottom line of which was that foreign¬ 

ers have legitimate interests in donating to Australian political parties 

and that those who question Chinese donations are confused about 

the concept of ‘Chinese’ and fall into xenophobia of the Yellow Peril 

kind.^ It is true that the scandal risked tarnishing all people of Chinese 

heritage with the same brush, but Professor Tham shows that he missed 

the essential point of the scandal when he poses the following rhetorical 

question: ‘Why is ancestry or country of birth presumed to be signifi¬ 

cant among “Chinese’’ political donors but not among others? I hope 

by now it will be obvious to the reader that the nature of the modern 

Chinese political regime is precisely that it makes ancestry significant. 

The CCP explicitly makes ethnicity an issue. This is the danger for 

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FRIENDS OF CHINA 

Australia, and we will be able to breathe easy about the large number 

ot 'overseas Chinese’ in Australia only when their ancestry matters no 

more than it does for immigrants from Italy, Indonesia or Chile. 

Joo-Cheong Tham is but one of the many academics I have come 

acaxss working on China who believe that China is essentially the same 

as any other country and any suggestion that it is not must be motivated 

by xenophobia. Even critics of the PRC who are fluent in Mandarin 

and have deep Chinese experience and connections (often familial) are 

whispered to be xenophobic so that their arguments can be dismissed. 

The racism charge is harder to make against ethnic Chinese critics of the 

PRC. so they are typically ignored. In truth, it is not the alleged xeno¬ 

phobia of the critics but the innocence and naivety of the sympathisers 

that stand out. 

It might seem odd to place Bob Hawke, known as a wily politi¬ 

cian, among the innocents. The money seems to have smoothed his 

path to the status of‘friend of China’. For well over a decade his main 

occupation has been facilitating business deals with Chinese firms and 

by the mid-2000s he had become ‘seriously wealthy’, with a fortune of 

some $50 million.'* In 2012, National Party firebrand Barnaby Joyce 

denounced him for his (alleged) involvement in selling large parts of 

regional Australia to the Chinese’.^ 

The former prime minister has taken on the task of reassuring 

Australians concerned about China’s intentions. He was one of the most 

vocal supporters of the free trade deal with China, going against calls by 

some in the Labor Party he once led for greater protections for Australian 

jobs.^ In a 2012 opinion piece extolling the wonders of the return of the 

Middle Kingdom and its peaceful intentions, he assured his readers that 

he could see ‘absolutely no grounds for apprehension’ about China’s 

rise. He tells his nervous American friends that when China becomes 

the dominant economic power it will simply be occupying a position it 

has held for most of the past 2500 years . Even if this claim were not a 

piece of historical revisionism (an ambit claim that with repetition must 

have washed over Hawke at all of those banquets), the suggestion that 

we should not be wary of China’s dominance because that’s how it was 

for 2500 years is hardly comforting. 

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The ‘realists’ 

Paul Keating says he loiows everything about China because he talks 

to the top leadership. An old China hand in Beijing repeated this to 

me with a wry grin: as if the CCPs leaders would confide their inner 

thoughts and plans to a foreigner. Keating chairs the International 

Advisory Council of the China Development Bank, which ostensibly 

provides strategic guidance but mainly provides the bank with well-paid 

champions. But the former prime minister believes he has access to the 

genuine sentiments of Chinas leaders. 

Keating’s been lecturing Australians on how we must change. We 

must tell the Americans that we will no longer be their ‘client state’. 

Instead of our ‘slavish devotion to American demands’ we are going to 

forge an independent foreign policy. The US is finished as the dominant 

power, he says. He’s a realist. ‘The rise of China is entirely legitimate. 

It cannot be delegitimised to suit US strategic planners.’® 

While the former prime minister believes the Chinese listen to him, 

in truth he is their unwitting mouthpiece. Like Bob Hawke echoing 

the party’s nationalist propaganda, he tells us that China is return¬ 

ing to where it was before the industrial revolution. It’s returning to 

be the primary economic state of the world. Even if China were once 

the dominant economic state in the world (it wasnt), why Keating 

would accept this Han claim of entitlement to rule overall is a mystery. 

Nevertheless, for Keating, this is the new reality that must shape 

Australia’s pivot to China. So, in words straight from the song sheet 

of the Peoples Daily, China’s annexation of the South China Sea is not 

our concern. We must not provoke China. It’s ‘not our fight and if the 

Americans want to send their navy to assert their freedom of navigation 

then that’s up to them. Australia should not risk getting involved ‘in 

another of their skirmishes’. 

Chinese commentator Chang Ping describes the function of the 

post-1989 education system as one that deliberately blurs right and 

wrong’.‘^ He reports the kinds of excuses Chinese students use abroad 

to defend totalitarianism at home: ‘human rights are Western values, 

‘no society is dl good’ and ‘every society has a skeleton in the closet. 

The CCP insists that so-called universal values (like those enshrined in 

the UN Declaration of Human Rights) are Western values, and should 

260 

FRIENDS OF CHINA 

not supplant the core values of Socialism’ (in the words of the party’s 

infamous Document 9).'*’ 

It’s not surprising to hear these excuses for despotism from the mouths 

and keyboards of patriotic young Chinese abroad. But it’s alarming to 

hear them parroted by influential voices in the West, and none more 

so in Australia than our former leaders. Here is Keating speaking at a 

public event at LaTrobe University in April 2017 in which, with typical 

bravado, he wheels out five bits of Beijing propaganda in short order. 

Before the Industrial Revolution China was number one ... The 

idea that the Chinese state with its Communist Party that brought 

it together, and its general Confucian sense of itself, should in some 

way accommodate a set of broadly East Coast American values ... is 

a naive view of how the world really works. We don’t endorse abuse 

of human rights [but] ... [tjaking 600 million people out of poverty 

requires some means of central government and authority ... Or are 

we just hung up about the fact that some detainees don’t get proper 

legal representation ... The Communist Party pulled the country 

together, after European imperialism had ripped it apart, and the 

Japanese had ripped it apart. That government of theirs has been 

the best government in the world in the last thirty years. Full stop.'* 

I am almost ashamed to reproduce Keating’s contemptuous words, 

especially his scornful dismissal of human rights abuses as nothing more 

than a few detainees missing out on legal representation. Tell that to 

Liu Xiaobo. Even the CCP does not go as far as to dismiss the rights 

embedded in the United Nations Declaration as ‘East Coast American 

values. In 2016 China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, became enraged 

when a Canadian journalist asked about human rights in China. 

Foreigners have no right to ask about human rights, he fumed. ‘Do 

you know that China has lifted more than 600 million people out 

of poverty?’’^ 

Its worth commenting on the claim that 600 million were lifted out 

of poverty as it has become the most common reason cited by apologists 

to excuse the CCP’s outrages. The Communist Party did not lift 600 

million people out of poverty; it kept 600 million people in poverty. 

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It was only when the CCP lifted its foot off the neck of the Chines 

people and permitted basic economic rights—thc rights to own prop¬ 

erty, to set up a business, to move ones residence, to work for whoever 

one liked—that the Chinese people could lift themselves out of poverty. 

Anne-Marie Brady, an expert on Chinas strategy for managing 

foreigners, tells us that for two decades the first objective of Chinese 

propaganda abroad has been to deflect criticism of torture and 

repression by highlighting the nation’s extraordinary GDP growth, 

along with its political stability.'^ One of the means by which this 

propaganda effort is prosecuted is to recruit eminent figures, through 

flattery and money, to echo the Beijing line. Our former prime minister 

is the most influential antipodean figure sucked in by this strategy 

to excuse repression. 

While projecting an air of worldly sophistication, Keating plays his 

role for Beijing guilelessly. He echoes the slogans of the CCP’s more 

hawkish China Dreamers, buying into the party’s recent exhumation 

of the idea of the Middle Kingdom’s historical destiny. In 2016, at an 

exclusive meeting with China’s core leader, he fell more deeply under 

the spell.In words he repeated for our benefit, Xi Jinping told him: 

‘A strong country does not need to seek hegemony. Expansion and con¬ 

flict is not in our DNA.’ It’s mystifying that anyone can accept this kind 

of rewriting of history from the leader of a nation that has colonised its 

neighbours and is annexing a vast marine territory to which it has no 

legitimate claim.Yet, bewitched by his regal treatment and ‘access’, 

Keating is putty in CCP hands. 

The capitulationists 

Hugh White, Australia’s most high-profile strategic analyst, believes we 

do not have to know much about the nature of the modern Chinese 

state in order to decide what kind of strategic stance we ought to 

adopt.When we are dealing with great powers, the balance of power 

is all we need to know in order to craft a national strategy for deal¬ 

ing with it. In 2017 he spent an entire lecture speaking about Chinas 

rise, its intentions and its impact on Australia without mentioning the 

Chinese Communist Party, as if China is just China with what he calls 

‘Chinese values’.*^ The fact that it is ruled by an increasingly autocratic 

262 

FRIENDS OF CHINA 

and aggressive one-party government has no bearing on how Australia 

should think about and respond to it, he claims. 

Whites argument hinges on a few big facts, viz: we have been ‘relying 

on China to make us rich’; ‘our future prosperity depends on’ China; if 

China directed future investments away from Australia it would ‘send 

our share market crashing’. Rory Medcalf, by deploying a few statistics, 

poured cold water over this kind of hyperbole.'® Jonathan Fenby’s 2017 

book. Will China Dominate the 21st Century?, is a subtle assessment of 

the title’s question.'^ He concludes in the negative. Fenby may or may 

not be right, but one thing is clear: White’s assumption that the answer 

must be yes deserves careful scrutiny, especially if it forms the basis for 

arguing that Australia must sideline the US alliance and (as we’ll see) set 

aside our democratic values. 

For White, we have no choice but to back the economic winner, 

because if we don’t then we will be forced to do so by China’s sheer eco¬ 

nomic might. This is why he falls into the capitulationist camp. When 

White said the same thing in a 2010 essay his critics described it as ‘a 

masterly statement of the case for appeasing the newest manifestation of 

the totalitarian challenge, the People’s Republic of China’. 

The alternative view, that Australia together with the United States 

and Asian allies can do a great deal to circumscribe the political and 

strategic influence of China in other nations, is given short shrift by 

White. He aims to convince us that this option is not available because 

the only alternative to capitulation is war. For him the grand struggle 

can be reduced to the willingness of each party to go to war. The nation 

less willing to risk war will lose. Whether Australia must succumb to 

China depends on whether China’s resolve is greater than the US’s, and 

on that question White has no doubts. America will back down while 

‘we would be very unwise to underestimate China’s resolve’.^' 

Here you’d think an understanding of the CCP, including its evo¬ 

lution under Xi Jinping, is indispensable, but no. Somehow being a 

‘realist’ absolves one of the need to know any detail. All we need to 

know is the balance of economic and strategic power. If Australia sides 

with the United States in any kind of push back we would be on the 

wrong side of history and probably plunge ourselves into a war with 

China, quite possibly a nuclear one. 

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In this view, strategic analysis of world futures and the stance 

should adopt is a kind of chess game played by great powers, in whidi 

pawns like Australia can be sacrificed. Assuming no one would be fool¬ 

ish enough to risk a nuclear war, a players strength depends above all 

on economic power; China is becoming stronger and the United States 

weaker and so the logic of the situation leads to an inevitable outcome. So 

why would we align ourselves with the loser? The world is like a chicken 

coop, he suggests, in which harmony reigns when all the birds accept 

their place in the ‘pecking order’.^^ Forget any commitment to ‘arcane 

questions of international law’; it’s all about ‘pure power politics’.” 

Like Keating, White believes that as a growing hegemonic power 

China needs breathing space and we should give it that space. But who 

has to lose breathing space in order for China to gain it? The United 

States, of course, but also Southeast Asian nations that have already 

been bullied out of traditional fishing grounds and whose territorial 

claims have been bulldozed. Yet by standing back while China fiilfils 

its ambition to dominate Asia, are we not saying that the autonomy 

of the Philippines, Malaysia and even Vietnam has to be sacrificedr 

Maybe say the hardheads. What about Papua New Guinea? Would we 

be comfortable with a Chinese naval base next to Port Moresby? (They 

already have one in Djibouti.) 

In the actual world, the one ‘realists’ find too messy to think about, 

heRemonic powers understand, or soon come to learn, that using mi i- 

tary superiority to subdue other states is a mug’s game. There are muc 

cheaper and more effective options, options perfected by the United 

States in Latin America. They involve cultivating a comprador class 

(businesspeople who know their interests lie with the hegemon) an^ 

putting in place a domestic ruling party that acts on the hegemons 

wishes. Essential to the long-term success of this strategy is disempower- 

ing the populace or shifting its worldview so that it comes to accept 

the inevitability and desirability of its own domination. In this task the 

hegemon recruits elites, including leading intellectuals. 

So the world is not a chess game and Australia is not a pawn. The 

choice for Australia is not capitulation versus war. Weaker nations 

have always had strategies to av'oid being ruled by more powerful ones. 

264 

FRIENDS OF CHINA 

The)' have various ‘weapons’ at their disposal. The CCP understands 

this well and, as the weaker power, has been using subde strategies 

against the United States. 

Since the formalisation of the Australia-US alliance in 1951, 

Australia has not really needed US protection because there has been 

no direa threat to us. Now there is an emerging threat in the shape of 

a PRC that clearly wants to be the Asian hegemon. Yet powerful voices 

in this countr}-^ are calling for us to weaken the US alliance and adopt 

‘an independent foreign policy’. But what does an independent foreign 

policy' mean when an aggressive new power is determined to dominate 

the region in which we live? 

Three of Hugh White’s clearest conclusions make sense. The first 

is chat ‘we should never underestimate China’s resolve to be the pre¬ 

eminent power in Asia’.^^ The second is chat ‘we are seeing the most 

fundamental transformation of Australia’s strategic environment since 

British setdement’. And the third is that ‘Australian politicians say we 

do not have to choose between the United States and China. But we do’. 

For him, we must choose China because soon Asia will be ‘without 

America’. The question of what kind of Australia we would live in if 

China were allowed to dominate in the way he believes it inevitably 

will is an awkward one for him. So whenever he gets close to issues 

like democracy, human rights and the rule of law, he tries to deflate 

their importance. Adopting a kind of postmodern moral relativism, he 

argues that one set of values is as good as the next.'^ We have yet to take 

China’s ‘moral standing’ seriously enough, he believes. He writes as if 

‘China’s values’ can be found in the propaganda of the CCP, forgetting 

that the people of Taiwan might be thought to be living according to 

more authentic Chinese values, and are doing their best to resist having 

the CCP’s version imposed on them. 

Yet he tells us, seriously, chat maybe the CCP’s values would not be 

so bad for Australia. ‘China’s values are very diflPerent from ours,’ he 

writes, but who is to say ours are better? After all, our values are ‘hard 

to define and we prefer to keep them vague’.’' Moral choices, he tells 

us, are not black and white. Really? Are Australians in two minds about 

whether arbitrary arrests are desirable or not? ^Tat about judges who 

265 

SILENT INVASION 

do what the party tells them to do? Are we undecided over whether 

electing our parliaments to make laws is a good thing? 

White says we must be realistic: we are going to have to compromise 

our values so lets not get on our high horses. The values he will not 

name include freedom of speech, religious freedom, the rule of law 

popularly elected government, and protections against arbitrary arrest 

and torture. Some of these, in Hugh Whites realist worldview, will have 

to be compromised. The only questions, he concludes, ‘are which ones 

we will compromise’.^® That’s just how the world is. To think otherwise 

is ‘crude sloganeering’. 

Isn’t this just the sophistry of a philosopher, someone who does 

not believe he will ever be the one thrown in jail for his views or have 

his family members persecuted? The logic of White’s position is that 

Australia has no choice but to live in China’s shadow and bow to its 

influence. But rather than drawing such a conclusion with regret and 

foreboding, White engages in apologetics. We’ve been lucky so far, he 

writes, but now ‘it’s welcome to the real world’.Maybe, if we ‘think 

deeply enough’ about it, such a state would not be such a bad thing. 

After all, our images of China remain ‘very simplistic’.^ So let’s go 

with it, and see whether domination by the Chinese party-state is as 

uncomfortable as some fear. 

The pragmatists 

Writing in 2005, Richard Bullivant, a former intelligence analyst at the 

Office of National Assessments, made a provocative claim about the 

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 

The Chinese intelligence service’s most valued asset in Australia is 

DFAT and their opaque network of former diplomats, intelligence 

analysts, academics, Australia-Chinese consultants, all of whom 

reflect subtle but unremitting pro-Chinese and anti-U.S. sentiment. 

GeofI Raby was once Australia’s ambassador in Beijing. Today, 

ensconced in the Chinese capital, he makes a lucrative living as an 

adviser and go-between for corporations wanting information on and 

networks into China. He is close to mining magnate Andrew Forrest. 

He had a seat on the board of Forrest’s Fortescue Metals.^^ He was 

266 

FRIENDS OF CHINA 

instrumental in setting up the Boao Forum where senior Chinese and 

Australian business leaders and politicians build guanxi. 

Raby is a frequent contributor to the opinion pages, arguing the 

‘pragmatist’ position. He’s keen for Australia to link its northern devel¬ 

opment plans to the One Belt, One Road initiative, highlighting the 

priority given to this link by Xi Jinping himself He believes Canberra 

is confused if it believes that the OBOR has an ulterior motive ‘to 

impose a “Sino-centric” order on the world’.’'' He doesn’t know what 

such a thing would even look like and can’t identify any risks to us in 

Xi’s grand program. 

Some see Geoff Raby as a ‘panda-hugger’, but there is much more 

to him than that. Unlike Bob Carr, who doesn’t know so much about 

China, Raby knows a great deal (more than he lets on) and understands 

how the system works (to the extent that any foreigner can). He justifies 

his position with a narrative that is superficially convincing. After two 

bibulous dinners with him in Beijing, I worked it out. Paraphrasing his 

words, it goes like this. 

China is what it is. We must be pragmatic. Beijing has no strategy or 

strategic objectives for its future. The CCP’s only goal is to keep the 

countr)' growing so that the party can continue to survive. Look at all 

these middle-class Chinese [gesturing to the other diners]—they’re 

happy, they’re not complaining. [What about, I ask, forced organ 

removals from Falun Gong prisoners?] Some say that’s happened; 

others say it hasn’t. I don’t know what the truth is. 

China doesn’t want to take over Australia. What we see in 

Austnilia is all down to a few corrupt businessmen. We just need to 

get along with China and adopt an independent foreign policy and 

stop tagging along behind the US. Australia’s institutions are strong 

enough to resist any attempts by China to erode or corrupt them. 

[Wliat about, I ask, the erosion of academic freedom, free speech, in 

universities?] That’s only some universities; others are fine, so what’s 

the problem? Besides, we have an independent media that exposes 

any problems as they arise. 

The South China Sea is lost. There’s no point protesting or 

resisting. China is not going to do anj'thing with its military bases. 

267 

silent invasion 

It wants free movement of trade l 

China. The bases aren’t a military threat m ,n >o 

the US could wipe them out with a missile al”"' 

-ed forces are no match for the Americans: aldTei r, 

Australia should sign up to the OBOR initiative /L f ? 

ratify the extradition treaty. People are completely 

that OBOR has a strategic objective. There was no problem Lllr 

arwin Port to a Chinese company, although we should have le^ 

the ^ericans know in advance. Canberra is becoming increasingly 

hawkish in its view of China, and that’s a big mistake. 

The former ambassador (whose name and face are used to sell bottles 

of Australian red wine in China) delivers his story with conviction. For 

cosmopolitan Westerners quaffing red in an upmarket restaurant in 

Beijing’s ritzy Sanlitun district, it’s hard to resist. Of course, it’s the kind 

of pragmatism that suits Beijing’s interests down to the ground. And 

so for the pragmatic Australian view Raby is the go-to man for official 

parry newspapers. Behind this line of argument lies one sentiment: 

China is too big to resist, we can’t change anything, so let’s just go with 

it and not think about what the consequences might be.^^ 

Dear friends 

When eminent Australian Sinologist and founding director of Griffith 

University’s Confucius Institute Colin Mackerras attended President 

Xi linping’s speech to the Australian parliament in November 2014, he 

described it as one of the best and most meaningful experiences of my 

life’.''’ The speech, he wrote, ‘was in all ways triumphantly successful. 

Professor Mackerras had been visiting China since 1964 and he was 

‘bowled over’ when Xi praised him for his ‘tireless efforts to present a 

real China to Australia’. Xi may have been thinking especially of the 

professor’s claim in the Chinese press that ‘some western observers speak 

of the Tibetan people’s culture suffering destruction or of China sup¬ 

pressing Tibeum Buddhism, but that is complete nonsense .^^The praise 

from the Communist Part}’ leader was ‘the crowning of my career . 

268 

FRIENDS OF CHINA 

In a brief audience with the President at the official dinner, Mackerras 

w-as struck by the leaders charisma. When he discovered that in 2014 

Xi had finally visited Tasmania and so every Australian state, Mackerras 

realised that in precisely the same year\\Q too had visited the last of Chinas 

provinces, and diis amazing coincidence made him feel ‘an extra bond 

with him*. Leaving the dinner, he resolved that he would ‘do more, 

much more, in the future’ to improve Australia-China relations.’® 

While Colin Mackerras is at the end of his career, Callum Smith is at 

die beginning of his. An ANU graduate, in 2017 Smith was a research 

fellow at the Hunan Academy of Social Sciences International Relations 

Institute. He was in Shanghai as the Fairfax—ABC Four Corners investi¬ 

gation went to air. The 23-year-old typed out an opinion piece for the 

nationalist tabloid the Global Times, criticising Australian ‘media phobia’ 

of China and the ‘malicious language’ of the Four Corners program.’^ If 

the Chinese government controls ethnic media in Australia, so what.^ 

Fairfax too ‘has its own political position’. If ‘rational’ Australians 

understood the true situation of China’, instead of listening to ‘pro- 

US’ media like Fairfax and the ABC, then we would see ‘the healthy 

development of Australia-China relations’. 

If this sounds eerily similar to standard PRC propaganda. Smith 

later defended his views, attacking Fairfax and the ABC for their ‘fear- 

mongering’. As for the claim that wealthy businessmen Huang Xiangmo 

and Chau Chak Wing used their donations to influence our political 

parties, well, we should understand that ‘building positive relationships’ 

is common business practice in China. China does not have a ‘sinister, 

secret agenda’; there is nothing secret about China’s Australia policy, 

he assured us. 

In a previous article for the Global Times, Smith had sided with 

Chinese patriots in their outrage at the slight to the nation’s honour 

from the Olympic broadcast screw-up by Channel Seven, which he 

suggested was in fact a deliberate attempt to dishonour Chinese people 

because of the rise of xenophobia in Australia.^*^ (If only he knew more 

about Channel Se\ens owner, Rerry Stokes, of whom more below.) 

Defending the patriotic trolls who were savaging swimmer Mack 

Horton, he drew on Bob Carr as an authoritativ'e voice representing 

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Australia’s real interests and called on Australia to break its links with the 

United States and become ‘independent’. And in September 2016 when 

the Hague court ruled against China’s claims in the South China Sea, 

Smith borrowed from the Propaganda Bureau’s hymn sheet to accuse 

Australia of ‘brazen hypocrisy’ because it has violated international law 

in its dealing with East Timor, as if this shameful episode somehow 

validated China’s actions.'^' 

China has found a dear friend in the up-and-coming China scholar 

and has probably been showing its appreciation while he resides there. 

When he returns to Australia, his employability will be enhanced 

by his deep personal connections with officials from across the 

party-state apparatus. 

The appeasers 

Naturally, there is no shortage in the business community of those 

who can find excuses to cover over the PRC’s poor behaviour, or to 

tell us we need a more nuanced understanding. They take the high 

ground by leaping into print to attack all those who have succumbed 

to xenophobia, including those who question the benefits of Chinese 

investment in Australia. Andrew Parker is the head of the Asia desk at 

the mega-accounting firm PwC Australia (financially linked to Minshen 

Zhu’sTop Education Institute). He complains that public debate about 

Chinese investment had become ‘a fact-free zone , before launching into 

an encomium to the manifold benefits of foreign investment."*^ Those 

who worry about Chinese control of critical infrastructure hide behind 

a veil of defence and security’. Parker presents himself as one of the 

special few in possession of ‘the facts’, unclouded like the rest of us by 

‘populist alarm and misinformation’. He’s a director of China Matters, 

Linda Jakobson’s Sydney think tank that seems to have a monopoly 

on the truth. 

Along with fellow West Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest, Kerry 

Stokes has been a powerful pro-Beijing voice in public and behind the 

scenes. ‘Human rights have to be seen through Chinas eyes as well as our 

eyes,’ he argues, adopting Beijing’s moral relativism."*^ Our alliance with 

the United States undermines our relationship with China, he asserts; 

we should become ‘the Switzerland of our region’. Stokes has plenty 

270 

FRIENDS OF CHINA 

of opportunity to put his pro-Beijing views behind closed doors. He’s 

Neiy' close to fellow West Australian and minister for foreign affairs Julie 

Bishop. Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott were his mates. Most of Stokes’ 

capital is invested not in media assets but in supplying equipment to the 

mining industry. His Caterpillar franchise in Western Australia (now 

sold) has been very lucrative and so too the one he has held in the 

northern provinces of China, covering Beijing. 

Kerr}' Stokes is close to President Xi Jinping. Xi has dined at Stokes’ 

Sydney residence a number of times.'*'* He first got to know the future 

president when Xi was governor of Zhejiang in the early 2000s. The 

Stokes—Xi friendship was cemented in the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing 

Olympics, which in its later stages Xi oversaw. The Seven Network 

\Nas the Australian broadcaster for the games so Stokes knew the lie 

of the land and had global contacts. He helped China win its bid for 

the Games. 

Xis short tenure as Shanghai party secretary in 2007 overlapped 

wth Stokes media venture in that city. Stokes entered a joint venture 

to operate the English-language Shanghai Daily, a highly unusual posi¬ 

tion for a foreigner. According to Xinhua News Agency, in a meeting 

with the head of the CCP s Propaganda Department, Liu Yunshan, the 

media mogul pledged greater cooperation between his Seven Network 

and Chinese state media.'*^ The Shanghai Daily faithfully followed the 

part}' line, overseen by its in-house censors, which is to be expected. 

But the pledge seemed to have spilled over into the pages of Stokes’ 

newspaper in Perth, The West Australian. 

While I was researching China’s spreading influence in this country, 

a number of journalists pointedly asked me: ^Have you seen what 

The West Australian is printing?’ Stokes’ newspaper has been a reliable 

cheerleader for Beijing. An editorial in November 2015, for instance, 

criticised the United States for its ‘blatantly provocative’ freedom of 

navigation exercises.'*^ Echoing the party line, it told its readers that the 

dispute in the South China Sea ‘has nothing to do with Australia’. We 

should stay out of it and devote ourselves solely to building our trade 

relationship with China. 

One former journalist with the paper told me that Stokes had been 

allowing China to use the West as a billboard’.'*^ The newspaper had 

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SILENT INVASION 

turned over‘acreage’ to Beijing’s propaganda, like the opinion piec^ 

from China’s consuls general in Perth, and another solicited from the 

Chinese ambassador, Cheng Jingye, who tried to persuade readers that 

other nations were to blame for the dispute in the South China Sea 

and that China had acted with ‘utmost restraint’/® In case we think 

that the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia have been bullied, the PRC 

ambassador assured us that China is opposed to all provocation and 

only wants peace. 

The day after the ABC broadcast its Four Corners television program 

on China’s infiltration of Australian institutions in June 2017, the 

Lowy Institute’s East Asia Program director, Merriden Varrall, opined 

that she was not persuaded.^^ She suggested the program’s claims of 

Beijing silencing dissent and interfering in our politics were jumping 

at shadows. Although she didn’t have time to ‘counter every claim in 

the Four Comers program’, it’s not true that the Chinese party-state is 

a ‘communist behemoth’. Even so. it is legitimate, she implied, for the 

CCP to silence critics abroad because once Chinese, always Chinese, 

and being Chinese ‘means loving China like one would love one’s own 

father’ and refraining from any public criticism. Chinese people (who in 

her view act as one) accept the ‘social contract’ under which they agree 

to stay out ofpolitics in exchange for higher living standards. 

For Dr Varrall, if we hear of Chinese students in Australia dobbing 

in fellow students to the Chinese authorities because they are overheard 

criticising the CCP or defending human rights, then we Austr lans 

should accept that this is ‘how things work’m Chma.^^ ts natur 

students to continue to operate this way in Austra la. or p 

cal donations, it’s true that the past of billionaire Huang 

unclear, and he does have Communist Party connections, ut t 

does not mean there is anything wrong with his large donatmns to our 

political parties. If he withdrew his promised donation of $40 , ^ 

the Labor Party when its shadow minister expressed a view on mas 

aggression in the South China Sea that Beijing did not , 

so what? He just decided not to give money to an organisation t at 

opposed his own beliefs. 

In sum, nothing in the program persuaded Dr Varrall that C ina 

is trving to influence Australia or that the Chinese party state 

J o 

272 

FRIENDS OF CHINA 

doing anything untoward in this country. If we were ‘well-informed’, 

‘realistic’ and ‘moderate’, in the way she is, then we would reach the 

same conclusion.^' 

When at the end of 2017 public concern over PRC influence 

operations spiked, Varrall felt obliged to give the Chinese point of 

view.^’ Australians are ungrateful. Taxi drivers in Beijing are not as 

friendly to Australians. There’s talk of retaliation. The way our political 

leaders criticise China’s influence is ‘embarrassing’. When they imply 

that the proposed new security laws are aimed at China, CCP leaders 

become upset. In short, relations are strained not because of China’s 

aggression in the South China Sea or because of its subversion activities 

in Australia; it’s our fault and we need to change. This is the view now 

propagated by the Lowy Institute. 

In the West, it’s not often we come across such transparent 

apologetics for totalitarianism. More nuanced variations of Varrall’s 

argument, however, are not uncommon in Australian academic and 

polic)' circles, where recognising the legitimacy of the PRC’s aspirations 

and overlooking its methods of pursuing its ends frees one of the stain 

of ‘xenophobia’. The academic arguments have a kind of seductive 

appeal, in the way Bob Carr’s crude ‘China-Whatever’ arguments do 

not. Carr’s own rejoinder to the Four Corners program was laughable 

for its misrepresentations and ropey arguments, and hardly worthy of a 

reply.” Nevertheless, ABC journalist Chris Uhlmann took up a rifle to 

blast away at the giant carp in the very small barrel, pointing out that, 

of the program’s two billionaires, whom Carr could not bring himself to 

name, one gave him his job and the other provided a daughter to work 

in his office when he was premier of New South Wales.” 

Australians against democracy 

As I studied the views of the various ‘friends of China’ driving the debate 

in this country, one thing came as a shock to me: how little some value 

democracy. Many influential figures among our political, bureaucratic, 

media and academic elites seem to believe that democracy is a luxury, 

and is often a nuisance. Or they see it as a charade we engage in while 

knowing that it’s the economy that really matters (just as in China). 

And when Australian citizens demand that governments respect human 

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rights and follow the rule of law they might be shooting themselves 

in the foot. When Hugh White counsels, ‘No more lecturing China 

about dissidents, Tibet or religious freedom,’^^ the advice is offered 

not because lecturing/China about rights is ineffectual, but because 

rights and freedoms are trivial in the grand strategic game that is world 

history. When Geoff Raby complains that Australia is adopting an 

‘idealist approach’ to China, too focused on values and human rights, 

he is telling us that a ‘pragmatic approach aimed at boosting economic 

ties’ is what really matters.^*' 

In his joint report with a CCP-directed think tank, the prominent 

ANU economist Peter Drysdale signed off on the following justification 

for totalitarianism: 

Australia is a multi-party liberal democracy. China is governed 

as a one-party state. Australia has a freewheeling media [sic; not 

a free media]. China has a more controlled media environment 

[not a controlled media]. The Australian people provide input to 

their political system through regular representative elections. The 

Chinese people provide input to their political system through 

consultative mechanisms.^^ 

One system is not better than the other; they are just different, and 

the differences ‘need not be an obstacle to deeper trade or economic 

engagement’.^® 

If the Communist Party now defines ‘Chinese values’, then that 

is only one of the offensive elisions Drysdale accepts. He would soon 

be telling readers of the Australian Financial Review that the contrast 

between liberal democracy and totalitarianism is a ‘false dichotomy. 

In fact, China ‘is becoming a critical defender of the rules-based order 

on which we rely for economic and political security’. 

We Australians have never had to fight to protect our democracy 

not really, despite Japanese militarv' overreach and Cold War fears of 

infiltration. We have never had to resist the looming threat of a power¬ 

ful authoritarian neighbour, like the Baltic States in the decades after 

the war, or Latvia and the Ukraine todav. Yet within the Australian 

community there are many who love our democratic institutions an 

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FRIENDS OF CHINA 

iKc kilui of daily life they permit. None feel more passionately than 

ifu'se Chincse-Australians who came here to find freedom, to escape 

the grip of the Chinese Communist Party. When they hear prominent 

Austndians argue that there’s not much difference between Cl^nas 

ixditical s>'stcm and ours, or that our freedoms can be traded off for 

ecv.nomic'benefits, or that the CCP represents ‘Chinese values’, they 

feci sick to the stomach. 

275 

13 

The price of freedom 

This book’s message is succinctly captured in the words of an email I 

received from Professor Frank Dikotter, the eminent China historian 

and CCP scholar based at the University of Hong Kong. 

Three things matter. First, the CCP remains, structurally, a Leninist 

one-party state. Second, like all Leninist one-party states, it has both 

an organisation and a philosophy (propaganda) on how to under 

mine anything and everything opposed to it at home and abroad, 

namely the United Front. Finally, Leninist one-party states always 

make promises (or, phrased differently, lies) that can be discarded 

when no longer convenient; that is, very little it says should be taken 

at face value. 

To these three points should be added a qualifier: it is relentless. 

It relentlessly seeks to undermine any and all opposition to it both at 

home and abroad. In fact, there is no ‘abroad’ for people identified 

as PRC citizens by the CCP. All of this is so alien to the very nature 

of liberal democracies that it is hard for outsiders to comprehend. 

It’s like a Boy Scout dealing with Don Corleone.' 

We Australians like to think that we ‘punch above our weight’. This 

is because we think of ourselves as a bantamweight when we ought to be 

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THE PRICE OF FREEDOM 

4 mkiviloNxx'iglu. rhiiik about Russia, surely well above Australia in the 

xxxx^t divisions. Its militarily foriniciable, and not afraid of defending 

its interests. It kecjxs Europe nervous. The United States is furious with 

it N\';uise it may hav'C changed the outcome of the presidential election. 

China treats Russia as a .serious player in the global strategic game. Yet 

vWTsIder this fact. In 2016, the GDP of the Russian Federation stood 

it US5I.28 trillion. Australia’s stood at US$1.20 trillion. By 2020 our 

ecvxnomy will be bigger than Russia’s. So why do we feel like a koala to 

Russia’s bear? 

More to the point, why are we so terrified of annoying China? Why 

hax’e we allowed this increasingly bellicose power to spread its shadow 

ox-er us? As this book argues, one factor dominates ail others. Since the 

I9S0s, xve have set the economy before everything else and put power 

in the hands of those who tell us we must sacrifice everything to it, 

including our sovereignty as a free country. 

When I began working on this book I believed that China’s attempts 

ro promote its position in Australia were ham-fisted and self-defeating. 

Its official spokespersons and media come across as strident and bully- 

inc^ a throwback to the Cold War more likely to turn people off. But 

I slowly began to realise that the PRC’s campaign to change Australian 

perceptions has been extremely effective. In addition to silencing most 

of its critics and winning over or intimidating the Chinese diaspora, 

the PRC has cultivated a highly influential cohort of pro-Beijing 

voices among this country’s elites and opinion makers. In the media, 

and among business leaders and politicians, voices that are either pro- 

Beijing or urging appeasement are the loudest. Self-censorship among 

academics in our universities is rife. In the wider Australian community, 

PRC programs aimed at promoting a benign view of China have drawn 

in individuals and organisations attracted by the lure of Chinese friend¬ 

ship and money. 

The subservience and self-interest of our elites provide the primary 

explanation for why we believe we are so powerless to resist the PRC 

takeover of Australia. There is a widespread view that China’s rise is 

unstoppable, that our economy’s fate is in Beijing’s hands, and that 

China’s size means it must dominate Asia. So it’s best if we go along 

with this historical inevitability, because we don’t really have any choice, 

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SfLEMT INVASION 

and it won’t be such a bad thing anyway. So we pursue ‘fr»end.thjp and 

cooperation*, accept the flood of money, sell our assets, jump when 

China’s diplomats shout, look the other way when our technolo^ h 

funnelled offshore, recruit Beijing’s agents into our poIiticaJ system, stay 

silent on human rights abuses, and sacrifice basic values like free and 

open inquiry in our universities. In the nation’s post'Setilement history, 

has there ever been a greater betrayal by our elites^ 

Protecting our freedom from the PRC’s incursions will come at a 

price. We have seen that Beijing has made itself the master at pulling 

economic levers for political and strategic ends. As we begin to resist, 

Beijing will respond first with belligerent rhetoric and threats designed 

to scare us. In January 2018 the Global Times threatened ‘strong 

countermeasures’ if we continue to support the United States in its 

freedom-of-navigation exercises.^ Then it will impose economic pressure 

at our weakest points, those seaors of our society most vulnerable to its 

blackmail and to which politicians are most sensitive. If we value our 

freedom, Australians will need to remain resolute and take the pain. 

Experience shows, howe\'er, that Beijing backs off when others stand 

up to its economic bullying. Even so, it would be prudent to see past 

the self-interested or deluded demands of the China lobby and embark 

on sustained efforts to diversify our economy so that we become less 

reliant on China. In particular, forging stronger trade, investment, 

migration, student and tourist links with the other Asian giant, India, 

a democratic nation whose values mostly overlap with ours, would not 

only help insulate Australia against PRC coercion but contribute to 

India’s emergence as a strategic counterweight to China. 

At the same time, we could build a more balanced alliance with the 

United States by pursuing an Alliance of Asian Democracies, bringing 

together the democratic states of India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, 

New Zealand and Australia. The alliance would work towards reinforcing 

the freedoms of democratic governance across the region, countering 

the PRC’s systematic program of undermining sovereignty, and forging 

strategic and military cooperation to the same end. Lets remember that 

resisting the PRC’s influence in Australia is only one of many battles going 

on in a global war between democracy and the new totalitarianism. The 

re-emergence in late 2017 of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—an 

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THE PRICE OF FREEDOM 

mtv'tmhil vsccurit}' partnership between the United States, India, Japan 

jnvl Australia—could become an essential counterbalance to the PRC’s 

anen^pts tx> g-ain strategic supremacy in Asia, as well as strengthening 

Australias economic relations with India and Japan.^ 

Witen Australia pushes back, the CCP will apply pressure not only 

(k>m outside through trade and investment. It will mobilise its forces 

*la'ady embedded in Australian society. PRC apologists will exploit our 

\enophobia-phobia’, conflating the CCP with ‘the Chinese people’. 

Its here that Chinese-Australians fearful of Beijing’s growing influence 

are essential to any pushback. Organisations like the Australian Values 

^Alliance send die message that many Chinese-Australians are Australians 

who see the danger and want to protect the freedoms they came here 

to live by. They are the ones best placed to counter the PRC’s highly 

successful strategy of presenting its puppets in United Front organi- 

sadons as the legitimate voice of overseas Chinese in Australia. After 

being lobbied and seduced by those puppets, politicians, journalists 

and leaders of all sorts of organisations across the country believe they 

are responding to the wishes of ‘Chinese-Australians’. They are in fact 

dancing to the tune of the CCP. 

Chinese-Australians who fear the creeping takeover of Australia 

by the PRC and watch in dismay as one independent institution after 

another falls under the sway of forces loyal to the Chinese Communist 

Party. Having lived under the CCP they understand its methods and its 

objeedves. They also understand that when Australians begin to resist 

the growing influence of the CCP there is a danger that all Chinese- 

Australians will come under a pall of suspicion. They accept its a risk 

they must take. 

We shouldn’t underestimate the lengths the CCP will go to. The 

Chinese embassy and consulates have organised street protests at which 

some Chinese-Australians and Chinese in Australia waved Chinese flags 

and chanted pro-Beijing slogans. This should give pause for thought, not 

least for Australia’s security agencies. A military standoff or engagement 

between the United States and China is quite possible in the foreseeable 

future. It may be the only way to stop China annexing and controlling 

the entire South China Sea right down to the coast of Indonesia. A 

conflia in the East China Sea is perhaps even more likely, as China 

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SILENT INVASION 

pushes its demand to incorporate Taiwan and take islands claimed by 

Japan. In these circumstances Australia would be under an obligation to 

back the United States. 

Remembering that there are over one million people of Chinese 

heritage in Australia, we could expect some, citizens and non-citizens 

alike, to take to the streets to express their loyalty to Beijing—in other 

words, to Australia’s enemy. This could create ongoing ai.J potentially 

severe civil strife, unrest that would be orchestrated by the Chinese 

embassy in Canberra. The prospect of civil discord is not mere specula¬ 

tion. In an email to rally supporters, the organisers of the pro-Beijing 

protest in Melbourne in July 2016 actually threatened trouble should 

Australia continue to oppose China’s claims in the South China Sea: 

As Chinese in Australia, we do not want to see Australia to fall into 

conflict and turmoil. 

Civil strife would be only one of several forms of pressure China 

would apply to an Australian government in a conflict situation. 

Already Beijing sympathisers occupy positions of influence in leading 

institutions. Some are calling for the abandonment of the US alliance 

and an ‘independent’ foreign policy, or even one aligned with Beijing. 

They can be found in the media, think tanks, universities, businesses, 

business lobbies, the public service and, of course, parliaments. In a 

conflict, many of these fifth columnists would be calling for ‘peaceful 

resolution’, no matter how aggressively China had acted to precipitate 

the conflict. 

I asked some of my Chinese-Australian friends in Sydney a difficult 

question: What proportion of the one million Chinese-Australians are 

loyal to Beijing first and what proportion are loyal to Australia first? And 

how many fall somewhere in between? It’s impossible to answer with 

any accuracy, but we do need to have some idea. The immediate reply 

was: What do you mean by ‘Chinese’? Do you include those from Hong 

Kong, Singapore, Malaysia? What about Tibetans—are they Chinese? 

Fair enough, let’s confine it to Han Chinese born on the mainland. 

One estimated those with strong pro-Beijing sentiments to be at 

twenty to thirty per cent. Perhaps another forty to fifty per cent are 

neutral; they are not anti-Beijing because of their patriotism, but 

they prefer to stay out of politics. That leaves around twenty to thirty 

280 

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM 

f'Cr otnt who are loy;iJ to Australia first. Few of them, however, are will¬ 

ing tt> sjTcak out because they fear retribution. 

Another guessed differently. Those strongly ‘pro-Communist’ 

avvount for around ten per cent of Chinese-Australians, he said, while 

the s;ime proportion are strongly anti-Communist. Perhaps twenty to 

thirt)’^ per cent are quiet supporters of the CCP regime. They all agreed 

that a large majority of the community supports Beijing’s assertion 

of Chinese sovereignty in the South China Sea. And almost all Han 

Chinese believe Tibet and Taiwan belong to China. 

Some of the China experts I have spoken to believe it’s too late. In 

their assessment, the Chinese Communist Party and its offshoots have 

implanted themselves so deeply in the soil of Australia’s institutions that 

^^'e can no longer extract their roots. Others argue that we can do it, 

but that the process would take ten years. That seems about right to 

me. But it depends in the first instance on whether Australians want 

to rid our society of CCP influence. Today, few understand the dangers 

sufficiendy to feel we need to begin raking steps to regain our inde¬ 

pendence, and keep at it despite the inevitable retaliation. Our naivety 

and our complacency are Beijing’s strongest assets. Boy Scours up 

against Don Corleone. But once Australians of all ethnic backgrounds 

O O 

understand the danger, we can begin to protect our freedoms from the 

new totalitarianism. 

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