When China knocks at the door of New Caledonia

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China’s covert foreign interference activities in the Pacific are a very important, and yet under-researched, topic. This report uses New Caledonia as the case study to examine China’s hidden front, 隐蔽战线, throughout the wider Pacific.

Successive months of violence and unrest in New Caledonia in 2024, have heightened regional and international awareness of the uncertain future of the territory, and the role of China in that future. The unrest erupted after France pushed through legislation extending voting rights in the territory.

The CCP has engaged in a range of foreign interference activities in New Caledonia over many decades, targeting political and economic elites, and attempting to utilise the ethnic Chinese diaspora and PRC companies as tools of CCP interests. Local elites have at times actively courted China’s assistance, willingly working with CCP front organisations.

Assessing the extent of China’s foreign interference in New Caledonia is a legitimate and necessary inquiry. The debate about China’s interests, intentions and activities in the territory has lacked concrete, publicly available evidence until now. This study aims to help fill that lacuna. The report draws on open-source data collection and analysis in Chinese, French and English. It was also informed by interviews and discussions that took place during my visits to New Caledonia and France in 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2023, as well as conversations in New Zealand.

My research shows that the French Government and New Caledonian authorities are working to manage risks in the China – New Caledonia relationship. Moreover, civil society, the New Caledonian media, many politicians, and Kanak traditional leadership have also had a role in restraining the extent of the CCP’s foreign interference activities in New Caledonia. Few Pacific Island peoples would welcome a relationship of dependency with China or having the Pacific become part of a China-centred order.

The report concludes by recommending that New Caledonia be included in all regional security discussions as an equal partner. New Caledonia needs to rebalance its economy and it needs help with the rebuild from the riots. Supportive partner states should work with France and New Caledonia to facilitate this.

Ice panda: navigating China’s hybrid Antarctic agenda

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Antarctica is often overlooked in strategic discussions, but its role in geopolitical competition deserves attention.

This report assesses the continents importance to Australian security, China’s hybrid Antarctic activity, and the need for Australia to develop a balancing strategy capable of bolstering the Antarctic Treaty and ‘pushing back’ against growing Chinese power in Antarctica.

Antarctica offers significant strategic advantages for the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Although Beijing’s actions in Antarctica may not overtly violate the Antarctic Treaty (AT), they effectively undermine its principles and, by extension, Australia’s strategic interests. Currently, the PRC is adeptly navigating the AT System to challenge the status quo without explicitly breaching the treaty.

China’s domestic policies, which merge civil and military sectors, appear to contravene the spirit of the AT’s military prohibitions, even if they have not yet resulted in direct military activity on the continent. This evolving dynamic underscores the pressing need for Australia to safeguard the existing Antarctic status quo.

With robust Australian foreign and security prioritization, the AT can counter Beijing’s growing ambitions, which may directly impact Australian interests. We must protect and uphold the principles of the AT.

With diverse domestic and international priorities, Australia must not neglect Antarctica, as Beijing continues to exploit the strategic gap left by our limited focus. Australia, with its rich history and commitment to Antarctica, must assert its role as an Antarctic claimant and clarify that China’s presence is contingent on Australian and other claimants’ cooperation. It’s time for Australia to lead in Antarctica and protect our strategic interests.

Australia’s new digital ID system: finding the right way to implement it

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This report reviews the Australian Government’s proposed plans for establishing a digital ID, and the ways the new system is expected to work. It explores the planned digital ID system, the key features of the approach, and the privacy and security protections that have been built into the proposals.

Australia has had a long and troubled history with national ID systems, dating back to the mid-1980 when the government failed to introduce the Australia Card. Since then, Australia has ended up with a clunky and inefficient process to identify peoples’ identities online. It has led to an oversharing and storage of sensitive personal data. As the Medibank and Optus data breaches has shown, this creates serious cybersecurity risks.

Now that Parliament has passed the Digital ID legislation, it’s critical that government gets the implementation right.

The report outlines that, although the proposed federated model for a digital ID system is commendable and a needed step-forward, there is a need to still address a range of policy issues that – if left unresolved – would jeopardise trust in the system.

The ‘official’ histories of Australian and British intelligence: lessons learned and next steps

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Unclassified, official histories of ‘secret’ intelligence organisations, for public readership, seem a contradiction in terms. These ‘official’ works are commissioned by the agencies in question and directly informed by those agencies’ own records, thus distinguishing them from other, outsider historical accounts. But while such official intelligence histories are relatively new, sometimes controversial, and often challenging for historians and agencies alike, the experiences of the Australian and British intelligence communities suggest they’re a promising development for scholarship, maintaining public trust and informed public discourse, and more effective functioning of national security agencies. Furthermore, these histories remain an ongoing project for Australia’s National Intelligence Community (NIC).

Gender mainstreaming in United Nations peace operations: an unfulfilled promise?

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The principle of gender equality is a cornerstone of the United Nations (UN). Centred on equal access to rights, opportunities, resources and decision-making powers irrespective of gender, it’s embedded within the UN Charter and championed in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Mechanisms such as the inaugural resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agreed to in 2000 by the UN Security Council (UNSC), and the adoption of an additional nine WPS resolutions, further represent the critical intent to achieve this goal. The purpose of such WPS mechanisms is to cultivate gender balance, foster diverse leadership and champion gender equality in a global effort to establish sustainable peace after conflict.

Yet, as we stand on the threshold of the 25th anniversary of UNSC resolution 1325, the UN’s stride towards gender equality for uniformed women in peace operations has been ‘exceedingly slow’. The lofty aspiration of ‘equal opportunity peacekeeping’ through gender mainstreaming policies and practices remains elusive, entangled in a web of misconceptions and entrenched systemic barriers and institutional challenges.
The purpose of this ASPI report is threefold.

First, it examines the blocks to implementation and the effects of gender mainstreaming strategies.
Second, it advances three strategic interventions for the UN system and its global peace and security community:

  • redefining peacekeeping benchmarks for an efficient and effective uniformed component
  • shifting the narrative on peacekeepers’ contributions regardless of gender
  • incorporating feminist voices and practices in the development of policies and practices for the deployment of peacekeepers.

These proposed interventions offer a unique prospect for the final section of this report: encouraging Australian Government departments and agencies that have responsibilities for and commitments to execute the Australian National Action Plan (NAP) on WPS. Those commitments extend to fostering gender equality in both domestic and international WPS endeavours, thereby strengthening Australia’s position as a proactive UN member state.

The geopolitics of water: how the Brahmaputra River could shape India–China security competition

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This report assesses the geopolitical impact of a possible dam at the Great Bend of the Brahmaputra. In particular, it exams the dam as a potential source of coercive leverage China may gain over India. A dam there would create four likely strategic effects: it would very likely consolidate Beijing’s political control over its distant borderlands; it would create the potential for massive flooding as a tool of violence; it may affect human settlement and economic patterns on the Indian side of the border, downstream; and it would give Beijing water and data that it could withhold from India as bargaining leverage in unrelated negotiations.

To mitigate those challenges and risks, the report provides three policy recommendations for the Indian Government and its partners in Australia and the US. First, it recommends the establishment of an open-source, publicly available data repository, based on satellite sensing, to disseminate information about the physical impacts of the Great Bend Dam. Second, it recommends that like-minded governments use international legal arguments to pressure Beijing to abide by global norms and conventions. Third, it recommends that the Quad—the informal group comprising Australia, India, Japan and the US—use its humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) guidelines to begin to share information and build capacity for dam-related contingencies.