AUKUS port purchases alarm: fears of Chinese Communist Party links

Companies controlled by the family of a Shanghai businessman with connections to the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign influence arm have purchased two commercial properties located within port precincts earmarked for AUKUS submarine bases.

Wang Yongxin is tied to property deals at the Kembla and Newcastle ports.

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Companies controlled by the ­family of a Shanghai businessman with connections to the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign ­influence arm have purchased two commercial properties located within port precincts earmarked for AUKUS submarine bases.

As Beijing ramps up pressure on Canberra to stop the Port of Darwin from being prised from Chinese hands, The Australian can reveal that Chinese businessman Wang Yongxin, president of the Shanghai Xinyang Chamber of Commerce, is tied to property deals at the Kembla and New­castle ports.

The chamber has links to China’s Communist Party and hosts party-related events, according to its WeChat channel, raising the spectre it is linked to the ­United Front – the Communist Party’s organisational effort to turn opinion at home and abroad in Beijing’s favour.

Both the Kembla and New­castle ports were shortlisted by the Defence Department in 2023 for a future east coast submarine base that would serve as the home port for Royal Australian Navy nuclear-powered submarines and support allied visits from the UK and the US.

It is unclear whether the two acquisitions were subject to ­approval processes by the Foreign Investment Review Board, with the Treasury Department not responding to questions about the matter sent in early July.

Mr Wang’s son and director of the company that purchased the Port Kembla site, Wang Zhongdong, said the acquisitions were “commercial investments” in green energy and emphatically denied any link to China’s United Front Work Department.

At nearly 220,000sq m, the Port Kembla site – formerly home to a copper smelter – was acquired by Port Kembla Group in January and is located adjacent to the port.

As director, Wang Zhongdong’s address is listed at a luxury apartment in the Crown Residences at Sydney’s Barangaroo Tower One, according to ASIC records. Transfer documents value the property at more than $10.5m.

Port Kembla Group also lists businessman Jian Chen as a director, while Binggang Jiang, ­secretary-general of the Australia-China Environmental Protection Association, holds a 15 per cent stake. Wang Yongxin also serves as president of that association.

In addition, Mr Wang is connected to a 70,000sq m property in New­castle, owned by Ausdragon Holdings Pty Ltd, which is located less than 500m from the port and was purchased late last year.

On the day the company was incorporated, Mr Wang was listed as its director, before he immediately transferred ownership to his daughter, Wang Rui, who remains the sole director. While serving as director, Mr Wang was registered to the Barangaroo apartment, and he retains directorship of a separate company, Newport International ­Investments Pty Ltd, at that same address.

Peter Jennings, a former executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the port acquisitions were of “serious concern” and called on Canberra to scrap the deal if United Front links were confirmed. “China’s No.1 intelligence target in Australia will be anything to do with AUKUS and nuclear submarines,” he said.

“We’ve had lots of experience of having to … fight them away from the Osborne precinct in South Australia.”

Mr Jennings said he would be “appalled” if the FIRB had greenlit the acquisitions. “This is how China operates and yet we just seem to be in this naive space where you know property purchases or businesses being purchased by Chinese companies are thought to be just commerce – those deals drive back to the interests and priorities of the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.

The 222,000sq m site in Port Kembla, NSW, bought by Port Kembla Group in January. Picture: Supplied

The acquisition of the two sites was unveiled at the 2025 ­Australia-China Environmental Protection Forum held in June, an event hosted by the Australia-China ­Environmental Protection Association. The forum, under the auspices of environmental preservation, was used by Mr Wang to launch several projects at the sites, which were characterised as green energy investments that aligned with the objective of sustainable development.

That included a “smart port service platform” that would employ technology that “empowers the upgrade of Wollongong and Newcastle ports” and a “circular economy system”, according to Chinese media reports of the event. Co-organisers of the event were the Shanghai Xinyang Chamber of Commerce and another group, the Australian Sichuan and Chongqing Chamber of Commerce, established “under the advocacy of the Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality Government”, a report in the Sichuan Financial Daily said.

Clive Hamilton, an expert on China’s influence in Australia and a professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University, said Beijing exercised an “extremely comprehensive” level of influence over Chinese-linked associations and chambers of commerce overseas.

“Those who assume official roles in them are almost certainly linked in some way to United Front influence activity – it’s just how the system works,” he said. “Basically, the CCP does not permit Chinese organisations abroad to act independently.

The 70,000sq m Newcastle port development site purchased by Ausdragon Holdings in 2024. Picture: Supplied

“Why would you be acquiring the Port of Darwin back from a Chinese company with some doubtful links and allowing properties with close access to ports in Newcastle and Port Kembla to be put in the same position? It doesn’t make sense at all.”

Chinese-owned company Landbridge was granted a 99-year lease of Darwin Port in 2015, with the company insisting the CCP had no influence over its operations. Both major parties vowed before the May election to wrest control of the asset back into Australian hands.

Since the Shanghai Xinyang Chamber of Commerce was formed in 2015, Mr Wang has served as its president. It is among the thousands of local chambers of commerce across China that are affiliated with the United Front Work Department.

In establishing the chamber, the United Front, the Xinyang muni­cipal party committee and municipal government provided “careful guidance and assistance to the organisation”, according to Chinese media, while its registration is authorised by Shanghai’s Civil Affairs Bureau, an arm of the Shanghai municipal government.

Wang Zhongdong said neither his family nor any directors and shareholders had “any links whatsoever to China’s United Front Work Department”.

“Our business operations are entirely independent and privately funded,” he said, describing the acquisition of the properties at Port Kembla and Newcastle as “purely a commercial investment” undertaken via “legitimate market channels” and for “business purposes only”.

“These projects are focused on sustainable infrastructure, environmental technology deployment, and green logistics develop­ment aligned with broader global ESG trends,” he said.