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Inside the global alliance attempting to stifle China
By Eryk Bagshaw
The medieval church cloisters in the small Dutch city of Maastricht are an unlikely setting for Chinese Communist Party influence.
Local councils in the Limburg province, struggling for cash amid an economic downturn, have been happy to accept assistance from Chinese community groups for repairs. The offers are genuine efforts at collaboration, combining the Chinese diaspora's appreciation for European art with a need for investment in decaying buildings.
Chinese flag flies outside the Office for Safeguarding National Security of the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong.Credit: Getty Images
It gets more complex when local councils are asked to then take positions on foreign affairs, according to Dutch MP Martijn van Helvert, who sits on the Netherlands' Foreign Affairs Committee.
"They try to help provinces and local councils with restoring old buildings, old cloisters and start Confucius Institutes," he says. "And then the local government is very happy. They think we don’t have to pay for it but then they agree that they don't say anything critical on China."
The tactics are familiar to Australia, where political donations led to former Labor senator Sam Dastyari contradicting the federal opposition's policy on the South China Sea in 2017 after an association with billionaire party-linked businessman Huang Xiangmo. It followed years of rising influence among Chinese community groups through the United Front network and high-profile donations to universities for new facilities, including the University of Technology Sydney and the University of Sydney.
In Europe, the approaches have remained largely under the radar until this year, when the coronavirus, the crackdown in Hong Kong and the detention of Uighurs in Xinjiang brought the economic and diplomatic levers used by the Chinese Communist Party to wider public attention.
Van Helvert says groups of Dutch local councils have been approaching the foreign affairs committee asking for advice on how to handle their political position, as ties with China have strained and the long-held benefits of economic cooperation are being challenged by allegations of human rights abuse.
The Dutch government, which has been attempting to maintain economic relations while the European Union takes on a more forthright foreign policy position, quietly slipped China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi into Amsterdam last month. The first Van Helvert heard of it was when his colleagues on the Inter Parliamentary Alliance on China [IPAC] alerted him to Wang's imminent visit the next day.
"That is something we are not used to doing in the Netherlands," he says.
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China founder and British MP Sir Iain Duncan Smith is pushing for International Olympic Committee to strip Beijing of the 2022 Winter Olympics over its human rights issues.
His coalition's numbers have surged by 60 per cent since June. Indian MPs are set to join the group of more than 160 imminently. It now counts government and opposition MPs from Japan, Africa, US, Europe, New Zealand and Australia among its members and co-chairs.
They have been criticised for ideological prejudice, pushing an aggressive anti-China line, and fermenting a cold-war mentality. Internally, the mismatch of left, right, centrist MPs is not a unanimous voice, with disagreement over tactics and direction, but the purpose of the group is mostly to share experiences of the Chinese governments approach in each country.
"Individual countries are not really discussing this with each other," says Duncan Smith, a former leader of the Conservative Party and one of the more hawkish members of the coalition. "The whole point of IPAC is to get legislators to stand together. An attack on one is an attack on all."
China's Foreign Ministry has urged the alliance to stop fanning the flames of anti-Chinese sentiment and "play a more constructive role in the solidarity and cooperation of the international community".
But as their numbers grow IPAC's tactics are becoming more unconventional and brazen.
Duncan Smith says the alliance was behind the protests that greeted Wang when he landed in Europe in August, linking establishment politicians with anti-establishment protesters.
He accuses former UK administrations of having a "kowtow policy", British industrialists of taking the "Chinese shilling" and says the Chinese government has bullied Australia as a warning to others: "this is what will happen to you".
The group has endorsed research into the Chinese government's sterilisation of Uighur's in Xinjiang, the establishment of labour camps in Tibet, as well as promoting the Czech parliamentary speaker's recent visit to Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province.
The unofficial body, acting as its own extra-parliamentary foreign policy unit, is pushing domestic politicians not involved with the group to take a more assertive stance.
"If history has taught us anything at all it is when a country behaves like this in a dominant position and you turn a blind eye it always gets worse," Duncan Smith says.
"When Germany walked into the Rhineland everybody sort of shrugged. They said 'they are their territories, they had a right to do it'. So when China decided to crack down on Hong Kong, there were protests and governments saying 'you should not be doing this' but next to nothing to follow that up.
"They broke a treaty in Hong Kong and did it believing the free world would do next to nothing. Lo and behold they are quite right: the free world will do next to nothing."
The United States has launched trade sanctions on Chinese government officials responsible for implementing the Hong Kong national security laws and establishing detention centres in Xinjiang. The UK and Australia have offered visas to Hongkongers looking to leave the former British colony. But most countries have preferred to continue economic cooperation with China while voicing concerns over its policies.
"The point is right now China believes that protests are not problems because at the end of the day, governments are persuaded by money," says Duncan Smith.
New Zealand is a case study in cautious diplomacy.
The chair of its foreign affairs committee, Simon O'Connor, says there is a lot of "quiet admiration" for Australia's stance on China, which has seen it hit with multiple trade strikes after pushing for an independent inquiry into the coronavirus, "but we don’t want to make too much noise so we don't get hit".
O'Connor, a National Party MP who sits with the opposition in Wellington, says if he had to be "somewhat uncharitable" there is a contradiction in high-profile Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who "is very big on human rights and global cooperation yet relatively silent on these matters".
"New Zealand unfortunately is so highly dependent on China and trade that she is probably making the calculation that I'm better off not saying too much than to get massive backlash from the industry."
Unlike Australia, New Zealand continues to have bilateral contact with its Chinese partners. On Wednesday it was lauded by China's Deputy Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen for "continuing to lead relations between China and Western countries".
The Australian government has been attempting to turn down the temperature on Chinese relations this week after months of escalation but two reports filled the void.
One, compiled by German anthropologist Dr Adrian Zenz and endorsed by IPAC, found China had pushed more than 500,000 rural labourers into recently built military-style training centres in the first seven months of this year alone.
The second by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute used satellite imagery to locate 380 suspected detention centres for the Uighur Muslim minority in Xinjiang in north-west China, where separate ethnic identities are being forcibly assimilated under the One China policy.
At least 61 of the detention centres have seen new construction and expansion between July 2019 and July 2020. Many have 10-metre high walls and watch-towers, with layers of barbed wire fencing. Up to 14 are still under construction.
Three days after leading Amsterdam in August, China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi claimed that the program was being wound down and all of the Uighurs in the "re-education" centres had graduated.
correction
A previous version of this story said Dr Zenz’s research was funded by IPAC. His work was endorsed and released through the inter-parliamentary group but not funded by it.