Neighbourhood bully ratchets up repression

One shudders to think how our fellow citizen Yang Hengjun will be spending Australia Day as a guest of China’s Ministry of State Security.

• China charges Australian-Chinese writer Yang Hengjun with espionage

One shudders to think how our fellow citizen Yang Hengjun will be spending Australia Day as a guest of China’s Ministry of State Security.

Yang, a former Chinese diplomat and now a proud Australian was detained at Guangzhou airport earlier this week on dubious claims of espionage.

I doubt if his host’s manners have improved since 1995 when I spend the most uncomfortable night of my life in a room in a five-star hotel in Beijing being interrogated by a pair of gruff, chain smoking Communist goons who seemed to think I was a journalist.

My request for consular access was answered with a derisive laugh.

Yang Hengjun, former Chinese diplomat and now a proud Australian. Picture: Supplied

“You are small potato,” said one, stubbing out his cigarette on the Egyptian cotton bedspread. “Australian ambassador does not care about you.”

I was lucky. My guests took their leave shortly before dawn, after which I paid my bill and took a one-way taxi to Beijing International Airport.

Yang’s ordeal is certain to be much worse. The speed at which he is bought to trial and the length of his sentence depend entirely on the whim of Chinese Communist Party officials.

Detaining foreign citizens on trumped up charges is just part of everyday diplomacy to China.

Yang’s detention has the hallmarks of the kind of state-endorsed kidnapping that Beijing regards as a test of strength.

China has been holding two Canadians, entrepreneur Michael Spavor and former diplomat Michael Kovrig, for more than a month in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou at the request of the United States.

Yang’s detention is almost certainly a way of ratcheting up the pressure on Australia. The Australian government led the way in blocking Huawei’s technology from the new 5G mobile phone network on the advice of security services.

Other nations have since followed suit in the light of credible evidence the Chinese would use the network for it own nefarious purposes.

‘Detaining foreign citizens on trumped up charges is just part of everyday diplomacy to China’

For forty years the West’s self-styled China experts have been predicting that China would eventually come good, allowing greater freedom to its citizens and fairer protection under law.

The Chinese administration as become skilled at laying on the charm for visiting politicians, academics, journalists and businessmen.

Increasing prosperity, the hosting of the Olympic Games in 2008 and the arrival of the Internet were all given as reasons why China was on an inevitable path to becoming a normal nation, the China experts implored.

And yet the opposite has occurred. China has become more repressive, not less. It uses digital technology as a way of keeping an even tighter watch on its critics, at home and abroad.

The US under President Donald Trump has broken with the soothing consensus. Deputy President Mike Pence has warned in no uncertain terms of China’s “sharp U-turn toward control and oppression of its own people.”

Yang’s arrest is further proof, if it were needed, that China is not a nation that acts with respect for the rule of law or respect for citizens of friendly nations.

Any hint of weakness in Australia’s response to his arrest will only encourage China to act with even more disregard for national norms.

Beijing must be left in no doubt about our resolve.

Nick Cater is Executive Director of the Menzies Research Centre