Attempt at keeping Chinese influence in check has global interest

It is not just Australia that is worried about the level of Chinese interference in its domestic affairs.

Xi Jinping, second from right, and fellow leaders at the Great Hall of the People in October. Picture: Getty Images

Australia’s debate about China’s influence has sparked ­interest around the world, with decision-makers watching closely the introduction of new legislation by the Turnbull government, and its impact on ­relations with Beijing.

From Toronto to Tokyo, the debate is driving important questions: Is it possible to limit influence in a fast-globalising world, where many people move ­between countries for study and work, and where the internet — except in China itself, where it is becoming an intranet — is creating a borderless marketplace of ideas and information? And how can we know when influence is being wielded unfairly?

The issue has been building steadily in Australia in the past 18 months because of widespread media reporting, but it has taken on a greater urgency with the extent and rapidity of China’s globalising thrust since the water­shed 19th Communist Party con­gress in ­October. This was the moment President Xi Jinping started seeking to replicate his domestic dominance internationally.

There has been speculation among knowledgeable observers that Beijing may have been using Australia as something of a test case because it stands out among Western nations as relating comparatively smoothly on many levels with China and Chinese people. Thus, goes the thinking, it may be open to greater Chinese engagement. This may help explain why Canberra has been the most vocal globally in responding to Chinese influence.

This week, the usually perfervid Chinese publication Global Times has accused Australia of being “McCarthyist” and reviving “Cold War” thinking. But there’s a big difference. The Soviet Union was distinct from the West. Australia may have enjoyed a solid commodity trade but that was unusual. Most countries ­traded very little with the Soviet Union; there was zero mutual ­investment and few Russians were allowed to travel. In comparison, Chinese products, people and, increasingly, services are everywhere. Almost overnight China has become — to the many who have failed to pay adequate attention — crucial for economies, and thus societies and states everywhere, in a way the old Soviet Union never was.

Xinhua news agency summed up the recent party congress: “China has stood up, grown rich and become strong. It is time to understand China’s path because it appears that it will continue to triumph.” At home and abroad, is the underlying assumption.

It is natural for the party to ­expect that all people of Chinese ethnicity will wish to involve themselves in this triumphant cause.

But Malcolm Turnbull’s ­caveats have gathered some global resonance — to the degree that the party needs to pick up on the warnings about overreach, that it is moving too far, too fast, seduced by the apparent retreat of the US and the widespread distaste for Donald Trump.

Many countries have in place legislative barriers against foreign involvements in their politics — and discussions are under way in some of the rest about following Australia in introducing new rules. Of 180 countries ­recently ­assessed, 114 banned ­donations from foreign sources to parties; 55, including Australia, did not; and data was unavailable from 11.

Undue Russian influence ­remains a bigger concern for many in the West than does that from China, although this may be changing.

A year ago, in the final days of the Obama administration, the US congress passed the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, which is intended to counter undue foreign influence. An inter-agency centre, established within the State ­Department, it will co-ordinate counter-propaganda efforts. In August this year, Trump signed into law the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, providing for new sanctions against Russia, North Korea and Iran.

But the profile of Chinese influence is catching up fast, with ­former Republican presidential contender Marco Rubio this week taking up in Washington the story of fallen Australian Labor senator Sam Dastyari, warning that China’s alleged attempts to obtain political clout “pose serious challenges in the US and our like-minded allies”.

Former New Zealand prime minister and now opposition leader Bill ­English, whose National Party MP Jian Yang was revealed to have taught spies back in China before migrating to New Zealand, has ­expressed confidence in the country’s security agencies to handle what he called soft-power influence from China, saying New Zealand also deals with Australian soft power.

But a leading expert on China’s governance, Canterbury University professor Anne-Marie Brady, has warned: “There’s no other country engaging in major influence activities on New Zealand. We are not distinct from our allies, we are facing the same pressures … We’ll have our New Zealand way but we cannot afford to be timid, we do need to face up to it.”

China itself has acted harshly against potential influence from international non-government organisations, recently ­introduc­ing legislation that limits their activities severely unless they localise, and cutting off Chinese NGOs from gaining access to most resources, including training from international bodies. Police now supervise Chinese charities.

The visit this month by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to China ended awkwardly when the expected launch of free trade agreement talks was abandoned because he was deemed to be attempting to interfere in China’s domestic affairs by involving in the FTA “chapters” on ­labour, the environment and gender.

The Global Times lambasted Canadian media, which expressed disappointment, for their “superiority and narcissism”. The newspaper’s editor, Hu Xijin, said maybe each Chinese shoe sold to Canada should be scanned to check it was produced democratically, and each grain of Canadian wheat scanned by China to see “if it is so rich in capitalism we might choke to death eating it”.

A review by a Senate committee in Canada, concluded mid-year, urges the government to modernise and tighten the electoral legislation affecting foreign contributions. In 2015 laws came into effect in Canada that permit the government to strip dual citizens of their Canadian passports if convicted of “terrorism, high treason and spying offences”.

A teaching manual for operatives of China’s United Front Work Department — a core Communist Party agency — obtained by London’s Financial Times — notes the success of Chinese candidates in local elections in Toronto, where in 2006 10 were elected from 44 candidates. It says: “We should aim to work with those ­individuals and groups that are at a relatively high level, operate within the mainstream of society and have prospects for advancement.”

David Martin Jones, a visiting professor at King’s College, London University, where he teaches the history of international relations, says the EU, already distracted politically by Brexit and the economic fallout from the Greek crisis, has been “predictably weak and disunited” in its responses to challenges from China.

Says Martin Jones: “Ironically, despite their many current differences, both Washington and the EU are increasingly disturbed by the way China’s command economy and its state-backed companies exploit World Trade Organ­isation rules to develop and extend its economic, financial and inexorable political clout,” adding that this is especially so in central and eastern Europe.

That political clout was underlined when, following the October congress, 600 foreign delegates from 300 parties, including the US and French Republicans, the British Conservatives, the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party and New Zealand Labour, flew to a meeting over which Xi presided. They all signed up to a lengthy “Beijing Initiative” that included “highly valuing” the ­efforts of the Communist Party and of Xi in particular “as the core” in building “a community of shared future for mankind and a better world”.

This week, in contrast, the domestic intelligence agency of Germany, China’s closest friend in Europe, released a series of fake social network profiles allegedly used by Chinese intelligence, ­including of academics and consultants claiming affiliation with well-credentialed institutions.

Hans-Georg Maassen, president of the agency, BfV, said: “We are dealing with a broad attempt to infiltrate parliaments, ministries and administrations” — with more than 10,000 Germans contacted on the LinkedIn website by fake profiles, including of alleged headhunters. Part of the intention, said BfV, was to follow professional exchanges with invitations to events in China.

However, concerns about China within Europe revolve more commonly around economic issues. European Commission chairman Jean-Claude Juncker said in his state of the union address this year that there must be transparency, scrutiny and debate when “a foreign, state-owned company wants to purchase a European harbour, part of energy infrastructure, or a defence technology firm” — apparently referring chiefly to China.

Steve Tsang, the director of the China Institute at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, tells Inquirer that China is a Leninist state, which means the distinction between the public and the private is blurred and not respected. The tendency of such a government to exert ­influence is stronger than in a democratic state.

“The fact that China is seen to be rising fast,” says Tsang, “poses a strong temptation for it to take ­actions to require others to pay it due respect, which manifests in exerting influence on civic institutions in other countries”, including asking partner institutions to respect Chinese rules and prac­tices, or else collaborative projects may be cancelled.

“They don’t always carry out the implied or explicit threats. But if the non-Chinese partners accept unreasonable Chinese requests or demands, a moral hazard is ­created and the Chinese party is given an incentive to push again and perhaps harder still.”

He can understand Chinese embassies or Chinese institutions seeking to exert influence on ­behalf of the Chinese government. “But what I find really objectionable is Western institutions, ­including universities, accepting such attempts to exert influence.

“I do not believe any British university would tolerate, say, pressure from the US embassy or the US government itself telling it not to host any particular US ­national on campus. This same principle should apply to Chinese nationals whose presence on ­campus is objectionable to the Chinese government.

“We need to treat China like any other country if and when it seeks to exert undue influence. If we all do that, there will not be much point for the Chinese authorities to persist.”