A China analyst and author said Australia, the United States and other countries need sunlight, legislation, capability and deterrence to keep the Chinese Communist Party’s undue influence out of their countries.
Alex Joske took part in a livestream Oct. 12 on his new book, “Spies and Lies: How China's Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World,” which examines how China's Ministry of State Security has spent decades shaping foreign attitudes toward China's rise. The Center for Strategic and International Studies Australia Chair Charles Edel hosted the livestreamed event. Joske's study of the CCP’s influence came after covering the story of a student-run organization at Australian National University intimidating the university pharmacy to stop stocking Epoch Times, a newspaper published by Falun Gong, an organization that’s outlawed inside China.
"When I reported on this, members of the student organization started tracking me at events, following me into the bathroom,” said Joske, senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, during the event. “And it was really kind of exciting at the time, but also puzzling and terrifying.”
A bigger issue was CCP leaders, billionaires and businesspersons donating generously to both sides of Australian politics to see their friends as candidates or advisors to sitting politicians, he said during the livestream.
The Ministry of State Security uses its clandestine and covert trade craft with political backing within China to change how people who engage with China have understood the country, according to the comments made during the event. The Ministry created front organizations and think tanks, inviting foreign scholars and foreign policymakers to China only to mislead them.
“It was rising peacefully in many people’s eyes. It was going to become a democracy potentially, it was opening up its economy,” Joske said in the livestream.
The 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of students protesting for freedom and democracy began to change some minds, he said in the event.
Court documents allege that when a democracy activist from China decided to run for U.S. Congress, the Ministry of State Security began surveillance and planned to accuse him of tax fraud or honeypot him with prostitutes, Joske reported. If that failed, the indictments alleged they planned a car crash to hurt him so badly that he couldn’t run for office.
“This is really building fear and violence as a way to influence politics in a foreign country,” Joske said during the event.
They present themselves as journalists and as cultural exchange officials when they’re intelligence officers, he said during the livestreamed event. That’s not normal diplomacy. It undermines and interferes in the normal operations of politics and society, he added.
Ministry of State Security officers who presented themselves as scholars or cultural exchange officials worked with friends in America to persuade them China was going in a more peaceful direction. They opened doors and gave privileged insights into what they wanted them to see – but the West was being misled, Joske said during the event.
China has some trouble running its operations in the United States, so it may try to influence places like Thailand, which has a more favorable environment, it was noted during the event.
“We've seen so much attention on the Solomon Islands recently, rumors of Chinese military base being built in Cambodia, in Guinea, in Africa,” Joske said during the livestreamed event. “So this is a real global struggle for influence. This is something where governments are just learning how to counter influence and interference in their own countries.”
