Australian universities fear offending Chinese backers: Clive Hamilton

A prominent Australian academic warns Australian universities are so indebted to China they have abandoned academic freedom.

Professor Clive Hamilton. Picture: Gary Ramage.

Prominent Australian academic Clive Hamilton has told a powerful US congressional committee in Washington that Australian universities are so financially beholden to China that they have abandoned their principles of academic freedom.

Professor Hamilton’s testimony was backed by a warning from prominent US Republican senator Marco Rubio that Australia was increasingly a target for China’s ­attempts to stifle free speech and expression.

“Now the Chinese Communist Party is increasingly exporting its authoritarianism abroad, suppressing speech, stifling free inquiry and controlling the narrative,’’ Senator Rubio told The Australian yesterday. “America, Australia and other like-minded nations must contend with the long arm of China and the growing threat it poses to our open, democratic systems.”

Professor Hamilton, author of Silent ­Invasion about China’s ­attempts to undermine Australian sovereignty, was invited to speak to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which is ­examining global foreign interference by Beijing.

Professor Hamilton said Australian universities were so reliant on fees paid by Chinese students that they feared supporting any ­research, books or work that might offend Beijing.

“It is no exaggeration to say that Australian universities now tiptoe over eggshells to avoid any action that may offend party bosses in China,” he told the commission.

“Australian universities are now so closely tied into monetary flows and links with China that they have forgotten the founding principles of the Western university.”

Professor Hamilton told of how publisher Allen & Unwin had pulled out of publishing his book for fear of legal action from Beijing and of how Melbourne University Press lost interest “citing the same fear of payback”. “Clearly the situation is dire when a university press will not publish a scholarly book about the Chinese Communist Party for fear of punishment by the party,” said Professor Hamilton, a lecturer in public ethics at Charles Sturt University.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has attacked the book as “malicious hyping up” and “slander”.

But its release comes at a time of heightened concern in Australia and the US about China’s growing strategic, political and economic assertiveness overseas.

A report this week by Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies called for US nuclear attack submarines and navy warships to be based in Perth in response to China’s growing power in the Indo-Pacific region.

It was revealed last week that three Australian warships were challenged by the Chinese military as they travelled through the disputed South China sea early this month.

It also comes after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull introduced sweeping foreign interference laws designed to target countries that seek to undermine Australian sovereignty by meddling in domestic affairs.

US Congressman Chris Smith, who co-chairs the executive commission with Senator Rubio, told The Australian yesterday that the Chinese government’s “efforts to enforce a digital authoritarianism is real” .

“It is a threat to all freedom-loving countries, not to mention all those in China peacefully seeking human rights and political ­reforms,’’ he said.

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia