HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020606.jpg

147

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.”³

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.⁴ 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.⁵ 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.”⁶

Appendix 2

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020606