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have been taking security agencies and credible media investigations seriously. The director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, Duncan Lewis, said the espionage and interference threat is greater now than at any time during the Cold War due to a greater number of foreign intelligence actors and the advent of cybertechnologies. He said foreign interference activities range from “a foreign power using local Australians to observe and harass its diaspora community here in our country through to the recruitment and co-opting of influential and powerful Australian voices to lobby our decision-makers.”?
Much of the debate—particularly in its early stages—has been anchored in the community of Chinese Australians. Ethnic Chinese writers, entrepreneurs, and activists led the way in drawing the nation’s attention to the party’s efforts
to suppress the diversity of their opinions through surveillance, coercion, and co-option. In 2005, Chinese defector Chen Yonglin exposed an enormous informant network that kept tabs on Chinese Australians, including Falun Gong practitioners, who defied the party line. In 2008, thousands of red flag-waving students were mobilized to march on Canberra’s Parliament to “defend the sacred Olympic torch” against pro-Tibet and other protestors as the torch wound its way to the Olympic ceremony in Beijing.* More recently, Chinese Australian journalists have laid a foundation
of investigative reporting on the Chinese Communist Party’s concealed links
to Australian politics. Philip Wen, Beijing correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald, showed how the party was “astroturfing” grassroots political movements
to give the impression of ethnic Chinese support for Beijing’s policies and leaders and to drown out its opponents. Over the past two years, Australian investigative journalists have documented a series of examples of Beijing-linked political donors buying access and influence, universities being co-opted as “propaganda vehicles,” and Australian-funded scientific research being diverted to aid the modernization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Some of those reports showed how the CCP was using tools of coercion and co-option to manipulate deliberations of the Australian Parliament.
In 2017, CCP interference in Australian democratic processes became so brazen that party officials began to use their capability for interference as diplomatic leverage. The targets were bipartisan. The CCP reportedly leveraged the fact of its arbitrary power over Australian prisoners in China as it sought to persuade the Malcolm Turnbull government to ratify a controversial extradition treaty.* And Meng Jianzhu, then China’s minister of public security, warned the Labor opposition leadership about the electoral consequences of failing to endorse the treaty. According to the Australian newspaper: “Mr. Meng said it would be a shame if Chinese government representatives had to tell the Chinese community in Australia that Labor did not support the relationship between Australia and China.”
Appendix 2
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