Academic Chen Hong had ears of prime ministers

Among millions of names on the Chinese Communist Party’s leaked Shanghai membership database, one stands out for Australia.

Among the millions of names on the Chinese Communist Party’s leaked Shanghai membership database, one stands out for anyone following Sino-Australian relations: Chen Hong.

The academic, who has devoted a life of study to Australia and its literature, had his Australian visa abruptly cancelled on the orders of the Australian Secret ­Intelligence Organisation in August.

At the time Professor Chen said he was shocked and devastated by the cancellation.

Although acknowledging he had become sharply critical of Australia’s handling of the relationship with China, Prof Chen said he was in no way a security threat.

“I received an email saying my visa was revoked on the basis that I was a security risk to Australia,” he said in September.

“I thought it was a fraud or a scam … I wrote a letter back saying that there was no way I accept that assessment of me.

“I am one of the most vocal proponents of understanding between Australia and China.

“I have a deep fondness for Australia.”

Prof Chen fell in love with Australian literature as a youth after reading the work of Patrick White, and wrote his PhD on White’s masterwork Voss.

Former Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam first invited him to Australia in 1991, when Prof Chen was 24, under a program run by the federal government’s Australia China Council, which aimed to promote the study of Australian literature in Chinese universities.

In 1994 he was asked to translate for another former Labor prime minister, Bob Hawke, during a visit to China.

Prof Chen rose to become head of the Australian Studies Centre at East China Normal University and once said he described himself to students as an “Australianist”.

He visited Australia numerous times each year and in 2017 began publicly criticising ­Canberra’s handling of the bilateral relationship in a series of social media posts and articles in China’s nationalistic paper Global Times.

In 2018, he described Australia’s policy in the South Pacific as a“paranoid … (and) hypocritical” attempt to suppress China’s ambitions in the region.

Prof Chen was asked to leave Australia after ASIO said it had assessed him and another academic as security risks.

Both were out of the country at the time.

At the same time another four Chinese nationals, who were working as journalists in Australia, were also asked to leave the country by ASIO.