By Deborah Snow
A SYDNEY newspaper belonging to Australia's largest foreign-based political donor helped stage support for China during the strife-torn Olympic torch relay last year.
The Chinese-language Australian New Express Daily, owned by Dr Chau Chak Wing, helped to urgently import 1000 Chinese flags to be handed out to pro-Beijing Chinese student groups mobilising for the Canberra leg of the relay on April 24 last year.
Dr Chau Chak Wing . . . urgent import of Chinese flags.
The rushed import of the flags was billed as part of a campaign to ''dye Australia red'' in answer to the pro-Tibet and anti-Beijing protests that erupted against the torch's progress through Britain, the US and France.
However, Dr Chau's office told the Herald yesterday he had no knowledge of such a ''small'' issue as the flags' importation.
''At the time, we understood this to be connected with everybody wanting to give support to the Beijing Olympics and this was a purpose that we were proud to back,'' his assistant, Jim Zheng, said in a written response to questions.
Dr Chau is the billionaire head of the Kingold Group, based in Guangzhou, where he now lives. He set up the Australian New Express Daily in 2004 as an offshoot of the Guangzhou New Express Daily, which he runs in partnership with the Chinese provincial government.
The Herald recently revealed that Dr Chau is the largest overseas-based donor to Australia's political parties, having given more than $2 million to both sides of politics over the past decade. As well as enviable political connections in China, he has enjoyed top-level entree to political circles in Canberra and Sydney.
He was well acquainted with the former prime minister John Howard and the former NSW premiers Bob Carr and Morris Iemma. He partially paid for a trip to China for Kevin Rudd, when Mr Rudd was leader of the opposition. He also helped fund trips to China for the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, the Agriculture Minister, Tony Burke, and the Employment Services Minister, Mark Arbib, when they were in opposition.
In a recent interview Dr Chau, who is an Australian citizen, told the Herald the ''management and operation'' of the Guangzhou New Express Daily was under his direction.
In mid-April last year the newspaper reported that ''overseas Chinese are urgently in need of national flags for supporting the torch relay''.
It quoted Chinese students in Australia as saying they were finding it difficult to buy Chinese flags locally.
''As conscientious patriotic media, and to let more overseas Chinese raise the national flag to support and cheer for the motherland … and to bless the Olympics and the torch, New Express decided to initiate a campaign called ''support the torch relay, dye Australia red with the national flag,'' it said.
It asked manufacturers to supply 1000 flags to be rushed to Sydney. A few days later the newspaper reported that the flags had arrived and that its sister publication, the Australian New Express Daily, was distributing hundreds of them to student groups.
Liu Weidong, a manager for Kingold in Sydney, confirmed the distribution but said the paper had not been involved in organising the rallies. ''We just helped the Guangzhou newspaper to pass the flags to the students here,'' he said.
Beijing's interest in maintaining a sway over the Chinese diaspora gained fresh prominence recently when a politburo member, Wang Zhaoguo, exhorted Chinese living abroad to recognise their ''blood lineage'' and ''do a better job of uniting the force of the circle of overseas Chinese around the party and the Government''.