China portraying ‘intolerant, divisive’ Australia, top diplomat warns

Beijing is increasingly using our own words against us to portray Australia as ‘intolerant, divisive and discriminatory’.

DFAT Secretary, Frances Adamson. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

The nation’s top diplomat has warned Beijing is using Australian public commentary over China to portray Australia as intolerant and discriminatory.

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Frances Adamson said while Australia rightly valued free speech and democracy, public figures needed to be aware that what they said about China would be recorded and used by Chinese state media.

“What, to be very frank, I think Beijing is looking for is division, and where they are able to show division,” Ms Adamson told a budget estimates hearing.

“They project an image of Australia that is intolerant, that is divided, that discriminates against various groups within our society.”

The comments follow a debate over Liberal backbencher Eric Abetz’s demands that Chinese Australians appearing before a Senate committee “unconditionally condemn the Chinese Communist party dictatorship”.

Senator Abetz has defended the demand, saying he was not questioning the loyalty of Chinese Australians.

‘Damaging for us’

But Ms Adamson warned such comments were “damaging for us in China.”

She said public figures should remember “the cameras in Beijing … will capture what you say”.

“They will play it back into their own population – 1.4 billion people, mostly pretty attentive to what is coming out through state media – and they will form an opinion of us, Australians and Australia, which is very different I think from the way we would like ourselves to be portrayed,” Ms Adamson said.

“The Chinese are increasingly resorting to project – not only in their own country but potentially elsewhere – images of Australia which do not … represent who we are.”

Ms Adamson said she read Chinese media reports every day, “and what I see is not reflective of what I know to be the reality”.

That was particularly the case in relation to social cohesion in Australia and it’s diaspora communities, she said.

Senator Eric Abetz had demanded that Chinese Australians appearing before a Senate committee “unconditionally condemn the Chinese Communist party dictatorship”. Picture: Luke Bowden

“The reality is that no matter what their nationality, China sees people of Chinese origin as ultimately being Chinese.

“They have certain expectations of them which aren’t necessarily shared at all or felt at all by Chinese Australians or people who live here.

“But we just need to be conscious about the way it is portrayed in Beijing.”

Chinese Australian witnesses to the recent hearing of the Senate’s diaspora inquiry were incensed at Senator Abetz’s demand that they condemn the CCP.

One of the witnesses, China analyst Yun Jiang, who previously worked in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, said the questioning was like “some sort of loyalty test”.

Another witness, Per Capita think tank analyst Osmond Chiu, said the questioning implied “divided allegiances”.

A third witness, National Foundation for Australia-China Relations board member Wesa Chau, said it was akin to “race-baiting McCarthyism”.