Chinese interference in Australian government, politics and education, and its effort to silence critics was the topic of a Zoom discussion hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
CSIS Australia chair Charles Edel was host for an Aug. 18 virtual round table with three analysts on foreign interference, John Fitzgerald, John Garnaut, and Sophie McNeill. It was titled “Democratic Responses to Foreign Interference: Learning from Australia’s Experience.” CSIS is a nonprofit policy research organization founded in 1962 that focuses on national security issues.
Edel opened the Zoom discussion with “a quick primer on foreign interference” and why it is important to understand its dangers.
“While Russia's interference in the 2016 American presidential election brought greater attention to the threat of foreign interference, Russia is obviously not the only country seeking to shape the choices of democratic societies,” he said. “A different, subtler, more sophisticated and potentially longer ranging effort is being waged by Xi Jinping's China.
"But because most of Beijing's efforts fly under the radar and because Beijing has repeatedly claimed that state-directed activities are solely the exercise of soft power, many Americans have missed China's attempts to influence, shape, subvert and suborn democratic decision-making," he added. "But look at the debates that have roiled Australian political, educational, business and civic communities over some notable insights into Beijing's efforts.”
Edel said the discussion would focus not only on what the CCP has been doing in Australia for several years, but how Australia has grappled with it.
“There might be a broader lesson here in Australia's efforts,'' he said. “Protecting the open and multicultural society while attempting to strike the right balance between economic interests and democratic values, is not just an Australian challenge, it's increasingly a global one. As such, Australia's experience is one that should be closely watched by leaders and citizens alike of other democracies.”
Fitzgerald noted in the last several decades, there have been alarms raised about Russian and U.S. interference in Australia. Chinese involvement is relatively new, he said.
“In mid-2016, Canberra spoke out in favor of a ruling by the Intergovernmental Part Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which dismissed China's claims to the South China Sea," he said. "Beijing responded quite predictably to Canberra's outspokenness to its foreign ministry network and its national media. But less predictably, it mobilized networks within Australia.
"... Astroturf groups began making public declarations in support of China’s claims and here in Melbourne, taking to the streets in very prominent public display of support of the Chinese government," he added. "Few of us had ever heard of these organizations which were operating at that time.”
He said prominent politicians and business figures with close ties to China spoke about the dangers of sending Beijing over the South China Sea. The message was Australia should keep its nose out of this situation. But reporting revealed many of these Chinese advocates had financial reasons for their support for the CCP’s actions, Fitzgerald said.
Sen. Sam Dastyari of New South Wales, a member of the Australian Labor Party, spoke at a news conference to urge Australia to drop its opposition to China's air defense zone in the contested region. Once it was revealed he had received more than $45,000 from Chinese sources, he was demoted by the party and eventually resigned from Parliament.
“To the federal government, Beijing's reaction to the 2016 South China Sea decision was like a light turning on,” Fitzgerald said. “Civil society had been highlighting and warning of Beijing's united front tactics for over a decade and been largely ignored. Following the maritime territorial dispute, however, which touched on issues of national security and international alliances and the postwar order, the influence operations that community activists and investigative journalists had long been talking about, suddenly lit up like an integrated network designed for strategic purpose.”
He said Australia's government has acted appropriately to reduce Chinese influence on politics and government strategy, but the CCP has continued to target individuals and not near enough has been done to reduce that problem.
Fitzgerald pointed to the U.S., where five people with ties to the Chinese secret police were charged with stalking, harassment and spying on Chinese-Americans, including a U.S. resident running for political office.
“Nothing like that has happened in Australia,” he said. “As my friends are quick to point out, Australia needs to do something similar.”
Garneau said the United States has a well-developed counterintelligence system and law enforcement system. Australia does not have these assets.
The solution is to provide enforcement and deterrence power with “the softer elements of the Australian approach,” to forge consensus around common principles with important communities, universities, businesses and others and communities, he added.
Fitzgerald said other countries are closely watching how Australia deals with the Chinese challenge, particularly since the Australian economy has had heavy dependence on China.
“Beijing has punished Australia, I mean quite severely, as a lesson to other countries, not to the United States, but to Germany, France, the countries of Europe, countries of Latin America and Africa which might want to take Australia's position,” he said. “And Australia has much to learn from and much to share with Lithuania, with Germany. Governments in Canada and Germany are very interested in the Australian experience.”
Garneau said one of his focus points as a journalist had been trying to highlight how Beijing was targeting ethnic Chinese Australians to convince the Australian government that they should not enjoy the rights and freedoms that other Australians take for granted. There have been several cases of Australian Chinese community leaders and business leaders being arrested in China.
Garneau said he has criticized the Australian government for not doing enough to protect Australians of Chinese descent. That’s a message he brought with him when he was “unexpectedly” invited to work for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
“I was struck by how their methodologies and their successes were often about influence," he said. "It was not always about espionage, it was about influence and their ability to shape perceptions and language and behavior of important people outside of the party, including abroad. It's not just about chasing the money and counting the battleships, it's all the spaces in between the gray where we're not focusing on and we need to understand that.”
Garneau said he worked with the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, assuming his role would be to explain the CCP’s methods.
“But it turned out that the most useful thing that could be done is simply mapping from open source materials what you could see the transmission from Beijing to ostensible community groups, Astroturf community groups in some cases, showing how invasive they were, how important they were, and how often they were behind acts of state-backed acts of covert or coercive or corrupting activities in Australia,” he said.
Fitzgerald has seen signs of progress. Laws requiring people who receive funding from China to promote Chinese geostrategic geopolitical positions are required to register under the Foreign Ministry on the Foreign Influence Transparency scheme register.
“This has led to a number of public figures pulling back from their well-funded engagement on behalf of Chinese corporations and state agencies,” he said. “But it's also led to some community media organizations, which could be directly funded from China more or less pulling out and all but disappearing, one going bankrupt, another reverting to a very modest online presence.”
However, some Australians of Chinese ancestry who are outspoken critics do not feel safe.
“That concerns me very, very much,” Fitzgerald said. “And that's why I ended pointing to the case in the United States, which has come to a lot of attention and got a lot of attention here. A client said, ‘Despite the gun violence, the U.S. is probably a safer place, certainly for Chinese-Americans than Australia is for Chinese-Australians. We are not adequately protected.’”
Edel said he had planned to invite a fourth analyst to weigh in on the matter, but that person “politely declined for fears of security both affecting their own work, those who it affects them, and for issues that they have dealt with.”
Fitzgerald said three successive administrations, the Turnbull government, the Morrison government, and the Albanese government, have focused on sunlight, enforcement, deterrence and capability.
Investigative journalists deserve much of the credit, with some think tanks, researchers, university academics and some civil society groups contributing as well, he noted.
“On the other three criteria – enforcement, deterrence and capability – I'd have to say it's been really disappointing,” Fitzgerald said.
He said the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization traditionally does not have a law enforcement capability, so it relies on the Australian Federal Police to provide that service. It has struggled to do so, Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald said a legitimate concern is that resentment over Chinese interference in Australia could translate into anti-Chinese sentiment and racist reaction.
The government produced a report called “Mind Your Tongue” to combat such hatred and ignorance.
In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic “really complicated this issue,” Fitzgerald said. The focus of the problem was the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party, not the Chinese people, he said.
Edel previously worked as a professor of strategy and policy at the U.S. Naval War College, and also taught at the University of Sydney. He Edel is the author of multiple works, including “Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic” (Harvard University Press, 2014). He has offered foreign policy commentary on CNBC, ABC, Sky News, Australia’s RN and NPR.
Fitzgerald is emeritus professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne where he headed the Asia-Pacific philanthropy studies program from 2013-17. Before that he served five years as China representative of The Ford Foundation in Beijing and previously was director of the International Centre of Excellence in Asia-Pacific Studies at the Australian National University.
His books include “Cadre Country: How China became the Chinese Communist Party” (2022), “Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia” (2007), which was awarded the Ernest Scott Prize of the Australian Historical Association, and “Awakening China” (1997), which received the Joseph Levenson Prize of the U.S. Association for Asian Studies.
Garnaut is the author of the e-book “The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo” and served as a China correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald from 2007-2013. He was a senior adviser to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and principal adviser on international affairs at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
