Stopping the Chinese Communist Party’s sleeper agents

Amid security woes and human rights abuses in Hong Kong, the Morrison government wisely has adjusted policy on migration, extradition and travel advice. Canberra has offered special visas for Hong Kong Chinese, including a five-year graduate visa for Hong Kong students, five-year temporary skilled visas and incentives to attract highly skilled migrants and businesses; it has suspended its extradition treaty with Hong Kong; and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has advised Australians not to travel to Hong Kong, and for Australians living there and concerned about the draconian security law to reconsider their need to remain. Used to neither pushback nor another’s free will, the Chinese Communist Party government was flummoxed like a thwarted suitor in a Mills & Boon story. Australia, you’re “not irreplaceable”, the CCP moaned in its English-language daily.

Scott Morrison said the moves were about sovereignty, made “rationally and soberly and consistently”. See a problem, fix it, move on. Some argue we should be doing more to provide a safe haven for refugees. Acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge said the 10,000 Hong Kong passport holders currently here “almost certainly” would be able to get permanent residency if they met character and security tests. While Canberra expects a wave of asylum claims — 137 Hong Kong Chinese applied for refugee status last year — Hong Kong nationals are urging the government to undertake strict political vetting of those fleeing the territory, fearing CCP supporters could take advantage of the resettlement offer.

As Ben Packham revealed on Monday, Beijing could plant sleeper agents here, while the children of senior CCP officials studying in Australia also could seek a path to permanent residency. As well, some migrants to Australia fear the families of Hong Kong police members, who led a year-long battle with pro-democracy protesters, could seek Australian residency. Mr Tudge told Packham national security “is our No 1 priority”. He said a strict character- and security-checking regime applies to all applicants. So it should. There are fears in the Chinese diaspora and in political and security circles that CCP agents could slip into the country. ASIO director-general Mike Burgess believes the level of threat to us from espionage and interference is unprecedented. “It is higher now than it was at the height of the Cold War,” he said in February.

Naturally, Hong Kong refugees and migrants would be CCP targets, leaned on by local arms of the CCP’s global influence arm, the United Front Work Department. Under Xi Jinping, this vast network of subversion — influencing politicians, meddling in Chinese communities and stealing technologies — has been well documented by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The system undermines our social cohesion, fuels racial tension, harms media integrity and facilitates spying. Writing in Inquirer on Saturday, Paul Monk drew attention to Operation Fox Hunt. For six years Mr Xi’s agents have been “tracking and intimidating hundreds of Chinese emigres on all manner of grounds inside Western countries”. Last week, US FBI director Christopher Wray spoke at length about Fox Hunt’s “shocking” tactics in a relentless pursuit of dissidents and Mr Xi’s critics. Hong Kong’s new security law, Monk explained, was of a piece with this “brutal modus operandi”.

Lies, coercion, the diplomatic “deep freeze”, even claims of an Australian spying “offensive”, are part of the CCP’s tool kit. If we are to counteract this onslaught, we need to understand its structures, agencies, methods and effects. Canberra has updated foreign interference and espionage laws, toughened up investment screening, banned Huawei from the 5G network and put curbs on foreign donations to political parties. Yet somehow Beijing sees our latest domestic housekeeping as an affront, with the visa changes akin to “interfering in China’s internal affairs”. Inconceivable! Again, we have to be vigilant in standing up for values, protecting our institutions — political parties, businesses, universities and media — and providing hope and safety to the thousands of talented, hardworking and vulnerable people who have come here, and will continue to come, to start a new life.