China’s agents of influence run for cover

Chinese community groups closely affiliated with Beijing’s Communist Party have begun lowering their profile.

Chongyi Feng. Picture: Britta Campion

Chinese community groups ­closely affiliated with Beijing’s Communist Party have begun lowering their profile ahead of new foreign interference laws aimed at cracking down on China’s growing ­involvement in Australian political affairs.

As the government prepares to introduce new laws aimed at cracking down on foreign espionage, one of the foremost experts on the Chinese Communist Party’s activities in Australia, Chongyi Feng, said the looming crackdown had not gone unnoticed in Beijing.

His comments came as outspoken Labor MP Michael Danby delivered a tough speech in Japan warning of China’s rise in “hard power” and praising the “push-back by Australia’s democratic system” against soft power initiatives. Mr Danby accused China of “Comintern-like activity’’ and said it had increasingly pursued efforts to influence the politics and economies of neighbours in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, “as an aspect of Mr Xi’s overall program to ­compete with the influence of the US globally”.

Mr Danby criticised efforts of China’s United Front Work ­Department to guide activities outside China, “working with politicians and other high-profile individuals, Chinese community associations and student associations, and sponsoring Chinese language, media and other cultural activities”. This amounts, he said, to “a new level of ambition” in harnessing the overseas Chinese population for the party’s economic and political agenda.

Professor Feng, who teaches Chinese studies at University of Technology Sydney, made headlines this year when he was held by Chinese security officials because of his often critical stance on China’s overseas activities.

He said his sources had told him some Chinese organisations had begun minimising their public links to Beijing.

Some had deleted their profiles from social media, Professor Feng told The Australian. “The Chinese authorities and those associations know that something is coming from that legislation,” he said.

Professor Feng said more than 90 per cent of the dozens of Chinese community groups across Australia were effectively controlled by Chinese authorities, usually through local consulate ­offices. Such organisations could expect to be targeted under the new regime, which will also ban foreign political donations.

The Turnbull government has all but confirmed it will introduce a US-style foreign agents register that would require individuals or organisations acting on behalf of a foreign entity to register their ­affiliation. Critics say the laws are clunky and easy to evade, particularly as they do not apply to citizens — often a key source of foreign influence.

One of Australia’s leading ­experts on national security legislation, Bret Walker SC, hailed the government’s efforts at preventing foreign meddling, but wondered how the regime would work in practice. He said the government needed to spell out how it planned to define a foreign agent.

“The idea of exposing all foreign influence is hopelessly over-ambitious,’’ Mr Walker told The Australian. “An apprehension I have is that you might obtain disclosure for decent and law-abiding people but miss the rest.’’