Fishing boss sanctioned by the US for human rights abuses backs powerful Chinese-Australian group

The owner of a Chinese fishing fleet sanctioned by the US for human rights abuses is the ‘permanent honorary chairman’ of an influential China-Australia organisation.

Zhuo Xinrong (aka Zhuo Longxiong), chairman and majority shareholder of Pingtan Marine Enterprises, one of China’s largest publicly-traded fishery companies.

A Chinese fishing magnate ­recently blacklisted by the US government for human rights abuses is a top donor and ‘permanent honorary chairman’ of an influential China-Australia organisation with suspected links to the Chinese government.

An investigation by The Australian has revealed that Zhuo Xinrong has been a donor and senior office-holder with the Sydney-based Australia China Economics Trade and Culture Association (ACETCA) for more than eight years, and the organisation refuses to say it has cut ties with him.

Mr Zhuo, known also as Zhuo Longxiong, is also chairman and majority shareholder of Pingtan Marine Enterprise, a notorious global fisheries industry player linked to labour abuses in Indonesia and poaching in the Galapagos Marine Reserve – a globally-treasured, protected marine area.

The US Treasury Office declared Mr Zhuo a Specially Designated National under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act - which targets any foreign person identified as engaging in human rights abuse or corruption in December, he had his US-held assets frozen at the time, and his company is subsequently being delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Mr Zhuo has been associated with ACETCA – one of Australia’s most influential Chinese organisations whose membership ­includes some of the diaspora community’s wealthiest businesspeople – since at least 2014.

Mr Zhuo was the host and funder of a 2019 ACETCA event in Pingtan, Fujian Province, at which former prime minister Kevin Rudd, now Australian ambassador to the US, delivered a keynote speech, and which the now-outgoing NSW parliamentary speaker Jonathon O’Dea ­attended and also spoke.

Both Dr Rudd and Mr O’Dea said had they known about Mr Zhuo’s activities. they would not have attended the event.

The Chinese fisheries magnate with close links to the Fujian provincial government was also singled out for thanks for his financial contributions to ACETCA’s Hong Kong-based funding arm at a Sydney event in 2018 at which Anthony Albanese gave a speech.

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd at the ACETCA 2019 event held in Fujian.

Mr Zhuo’s Australia connections, through ACETCA and at least one Australian-registered company, raise fresh concerns about the role of China’s foreign influence organisations and the ability of federal authorities to police them.

Pingtan Marine told The Australian when contacted that “we are in conversation with the US Treasury” over the sanctions, but would make no further comment.

Mr Zhuo declined to comment on his ACETCA links or his sanctioning when approached through Pingtan Marine Enterprise’s Fujian offices, though was still credited as an ACETCA honorary chairman on its WeChat page in March last year when he donated $5000 to a NSW flood appeal.

The Australian Government would not comment specifically on Mr Zhuo, his association with ACETCA or whether the group should be registered under the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, which requires individuals and entities to register “if engaged in lobbying, communications or disbursement activities on behalf of a foreign principal for the purpose of influencing a particular political or governmental process, and where no exemption applies”.

But, a government spokesman told The Australian; “The sanctions laws of other countries may apply to the activities of Australian citizens or Australian-registered bodies corporate, whether undertaken in Australia or overseas.

“We encourage individuals and entities to consider the wider legal and commercial context of their activities and seek advice about whether they might be affected by the sanctions law of another country.”

Australian academic Clive Hamilton, author of the book Silent Invasion which examined how the Chinese state integrated itself into Australian public life, first noted ACETCA’s “close ties” to the Chinese government in a joint 2018 parliamentary submission with Chinese Communist Party expert Alex Joske into foreign interference.

Professor Hamilton says the fact Zhuo Xinrong was able to infiltrate influential Australian organisations shows domestic foreign interference laws have had little deterrent effect on Beijing’s influence activities.

“It’s concerning that a bad actor like Zhuo can be given a senior position in an Australian organisation that seems to have access to political leaders,” Professor Hamilton told The Australian.

“ACETCA is now the foremost Beijing influence and interference organisation in this country, certainly in Sydney. Yet some of our political leaders wander into its orbit with their eyes closed.”

ACETCA was named again in a February 2023 parliamentary review into the effectiveness of Australia’s 2018 Foreign Intelligence Transparency Scheme as the likely successor to the scandal-tainted Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China (ACPPRC) _ previously the Chinese Communist Party’s main influence arm in Sydney.

Outgoing NSW parliamentary speaker Jonathon O’Dea, right, receiving a souvenir from ACETCA's Xue Shuihe at the ACETCA event.

China expert Alex Joske told that review the ACPPRC “very clearly in the past operated at the direction of the United Front Work Department or its officials”, a CCP agency that aims to build support for China’s political ­agenda and accumulate influence overseas but that is also used “as cover for more concerning ­influence operations by agencies such as the Ministry of State ­Security”.

“Many of the individuals there really shifted to operating through another organisation called the Australia-China Economics, Trade and Culture Association, which is still very active and essentially has much of the same membership as this organisation,” Mr Joske said.

Mr Zhuo is one of those whose membership overlapped both organisations.

The ACPPRC group was listed in January by the federal Attorney-General’s office as a foreign government-related entity, but ACETCA is not on that registry. While its financial operations are tightly held, the group’s lavish functions have caught the eye of Australian government officials. 

Last November, ACETCA hosted an opulent banquet at Sydney’s Star Casino with hundreds of guests to celebrate the 50th anniversary of relations between Australia and the People’s Republic of China.

China’s Ambassador Xiao Qian gave a toast to a boisterous audience of mostly Chinese Australian business people, along with former Trade Minister Andrew Robb, Liberal MP Paul Fletcher, then NSW Minister Geoff Lee and the current NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey.

One source said their understanding was that major donors had contributed around $1m to the group’s operating budget, although ACETCA has not revealed details of its finances.

ACETCA declined to comment when approached through multiple channels over the last fortnight, though a person close to the organisation told The Weekend Australian that while they were aware of sanctions against Mr Zhuo he was a “very generous donor”.

The group _ whose activities are subsidised by its board of honorary chairmen, including Mr Zhuo and other wealthy Chinese mostly based in Fujian province _ has repeatedly denied links to the Chinese state.

It insists it is apolitical but has made more than $18,000 in declared political donations since 2014, the most recent a $1500 donation this year to the NSW Liberal party.

Mr Zhuo has been a delegate to at least two influential CCP bodies; the Fujian Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee and deputy chair of the Fujian Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese.

The two groups are known to be a bridge between Chinese overseas associations and the United Front Work Department.

His Pingtan Marine Enterprise, one of China’s largest publicly-traded fishery companies until its delisting, operates a distant water fishing fleet through a web of affiliated companies heavily subsidised by the Chinese state to fish in the high seas.

ACETCA also came under scrutiny in 2019, when NSW Labor staffer John Zhang was forced to step down as its vice chair after he was found to have participated in a propaganda training course run by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office and the Chinese Academy of Governance _ the same body that trains senior CCP cadres.

ACETCA sponsors an annual Sydney Lunar New Year festival, finances university scholarships, and donates to numerous good causes, including children’s hospitals and disaster funds such as the 2022 NSW floods to which Mr Zhuo contributed $5000.

For years it has also courted Australian politicians, though with less success since the foreign influence legislation, and less prominence during the pandemic.

A spokeswoman for Dr Rudd told The Australian in a statement that he was offered a speaking fee _ which he donated to the National Apology Foundation _ to attend the 2019 Pingtan event for ACETCA, which had a “long history of engagement with Australian political leaders, including Scott Morrison, Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott”.

The former PM had “no recollection of ever meeting this particular individual (Zhuo Xinrong)”, no record of correspondence and did not recognise his name though, “given the nature of these speaking events, it is entirely possible that they met at the event in Fujian which was also attended by other prominent Australians”.

“Dr Rudd finds forced labour and torture entirely repugnant. He has spent his life campaigning against these matters and for the rights of workers, just as he has long worked with the Pacific Island nations and others in the region to combat illegal fishing,” it said.

“Of course, if Dr Rudd was aware of this individual’s activities which have just been detailed by the US Treasury, then he would not have attended.”

Mr O’Dea, an outgoing NSW Liberal MP and speaker, told The Australian he had paid his own way to the 2019 event and “vaguely” recalled meeting the Hong Kong and China-based

Mr Zhuo, but he too would have reconsidered his trip had he known more about its host.

“I certainly would have thought twice (about attending) and I suspect Albo and Kevin Rudd might have also rethought if they knew this guy’s sponsorship was underwriting the event,” he said.

Mr Zhuo’s alleged illicit business operations and links to the Chinese Communist Party have been the subject of extensive investigations in the US in recent years, and numerous media reports dating back to 2016 and earlier.

Pingtan has received tens of millions of dollars in state subsidies and grants since 2014 and hundreds of millions more in state investment and bank loans, according to a May 2022 report by the Washington-based Centre for Advanced Defence Studies (C4ADS).

Pingtan Marine Enterprise or its subsidiaries_ controlled largely by relatives of Zhuo _ have been prosecuted in Ecuador, fined in East Timor and banned in Indonesia. Last month, alarm bells were raised in the Philippines after five Pingtan vessels were found to be fishing just outside of the Southeast Asian nation’s exclusive economic zone.

The damning C4ADS report on Pingtan and Zhuo Xinrong, entitled Net Worth, cited more than a dozen reports of forced labour and abusive conditions aboard Pingtan-owned or controlled ships.

In December, Mr Zhuo, Pingtan Marine, eight affiliated companies including Fuzhuo Honglong Ocean Fishing, and 125 fishing vessels were sanctioned by the US Treasury office of Foreign Assets Control under the Magnitsky Act which targets perpetrators of serious human rights abuse and corruption around the world.

Pingtan was the first Nasdaq-listed company to be targeted under the United States’ Global Magnitsky Act, prompting the US Stock Exchange to announce its delisting in December. The company’s appeal failed and it is now in the process of being delisted.

US Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said the “designations demonstrate how seriously we take the problem of illicit fishing and our commitment to holding the perpetrators of serious human rights abuses to account”.

China’s foreign ministry responded with immediate fury, claiming the actions represented interference in China’s internal affairs and accusing the US of “double standards”.

Despite few obvious business links to Australia beyond a shelf company registered to ghost offices in the same Sydney Chinatown building as ACETCA, Mr Zhuo has also been an office holder of the Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China (ACPPRC), which courted politicians through its honorary chairman and billionaire property developer, Huang Xiangmo. Mr Huang was deemed unfit to have an Australian passport in 2019.

Additional Reporting: Remy Varga