Global warning: fear rules Xi Jinping’s security state

Chinese President Xi Jinping. Picture: AFP

Xi Jinping’s government could not put it any clearer: foreign passports are not going to protect you from China’s legal system with Communist Party characteristics.

Naturalised Australian Yang Hengjun’s death sentence – albeit delivered with caveats of reprieve – confirms again just how low the ceiling is on any further improvement in Canberra’s dealings with Beijing.

Perhaps Australian lobster sellers will be able to sell their produce in China again before the end of the year. Perhaps not. Not a lot more should be expected of the relationship in the months ahead.

Surprises are more likely to be bad news than good.

But Monday’s chilling judgment is much bigger than the just bilateral relationship.

Yang, who once lived on Sydney’s leafy north shore, has now become the face of an increasingly brazen campaign by Beijing’s security apparatus.

The message, which China’s security state is going to extraordinary lengths to publicise, is this: get on its wrong side at your peril.

Last week, China’s feared Ministry of State Security took to WeChat to spread the message, publishing an article outlining 10 reasons it might summon you for a “cup of tea”, a euphemism for being questioned by Beijing’s most terrifying department.

The vague list included “suspected crimes endangering national security”, “committing or assisting espionage” and “failing to take security precautions against spying”. The Communist Party will decide when those lines are crossed.

Foreigners are being portrayed in the same propaganda campaign as people to treat with extreme suspicion.

It is part of a rising climate of fear, one that is making it increasingly hard for international businesses to recruit staff to send to China. It’s partly why the numbers of foreign students studying in the country have plummeted.

Yang’s sentencing seems to be a piece of that ongoing campaign.

To be clear, his is not any regular consular case for the Australian government.

At least until the late 1990s, Yang was an employee of China’s Ministry of State Security, the same agency that nabbed him at Guangzhou airport in 2019.

He served in the notorious agency, in undercover positions, in Hong Kong and America. Whether he was still on its books when he moved to Sydney is not clear.

Privately, the Australian government has always admitted his case was much more difficult for them to advocate for than Cheng Lei’s. You don’t need to be an old China hand to appreciate why.

Yang’s friends and supporters say living outside China opened his eyes to the world. It converted him into a believer in democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

Yang wrote eloquently on those topics for years; about the need for China to reform from within.

To many in China, he was a liberal champion. That has earned him many supporters in Australia too. They are moved by his extraordinary commitment to values that are taken for granted in established liberal democracies such as ours.

Of course, in the eyes of Xi’s security state, Yang’s career trajectory only makes him more dangerous.