A recurrent theme in Australia’s defence strategy has been our reliance on and need to defend Australia’s trade routes in a globalised world. The vulnerability of Australia’s limited stockpiles of critical goods and its concentrated sources of supply have driven military capability and planning for decades and remain a justification for strategic investments.
The 2023 Defence Strategic Review argued that the danger of any power threatening to invade the Australian continent was remote, but that an adversary could implement military coercion at a distance with threats against our trade and supply routes. With limited resources and finite defence capability, yet vast interests at sea, it’s important that Australian security and economic planning is trained on the most critical pain points in our sea lines of communication. Strategy and planning must derive from up-to-date and accurate data about what we trade, via which routes, and to and from which specific locations.
We also need to understand the factors that contribute to our resilience. They include the depth of supply options, the availability of alternative routes and the sheer strength in numbers which our shipping enjoys when it enters the mighty flow of commerce through the waters of our Asian trading partners. This report explores our trading routes in peace-time. Any conflict would bring sharper focus on what shipping and what trade is truly necessary and on what can be done to secure it. However, the strengths and vulnerabilities of our linkages to the world are evident now and are the focus of this report.
Concerns have been sharpened by the assaults by Houthi militias on commercial shipping through the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the entrance to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, disrupting the 12% of global trade that passes through those waters.2 In addition, drought has slashed the capacity of the Panama Canal, which in normal seasons handles a further 5% of world trade.
Surprisingly, the course and operation (who is moving what) of Australia’s trade routes has received extraordinarily little analysis. The last significant public paper on the topic was conducted by the Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics (now the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics, BITRE) in 2007 and was based on data from 2001 to 2004. The profile of Australia’s trade has changed radically since then. This report makes five key policy recommendations and the first of these is that the government fund BITRE to update its 2007 study of trade routes so that Defence can make assessments of how best to secure Australia’s trade routes.
A dangerous combination of complacency and tolerance could be born of a view that conflicts are in faraway locations. The reality is that few saw either of the current wars as imminent when they started, and we mustn’t make the same mistake in our region. A central finding in this report is that the greatest risk to the security of our trade routes lies relatively close to home, in the narrow channels through the Indonesian archipelago through which more than half Australia’s maritime trade must pass. Another strong conclusion is that trade has a surprising resilience in the face of conflict: it is important to understand the sources of that strength and develop plans to maximise it.
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India has a vital role to play in deterring China from unifying Taiwan by military force, a new Australian Strategic Policy Institute report finds, highlighting New Delhi’s significant economic, diplomatic, legal and strategic narrative levers.
The report looks beyond traditional thinking on military preparations to dissuade Beijing from taking the island by force and offers six ways for India, with its great strategic and economic weight, to “help shape Beijing’s calculus away from the use of force”.
The author writes that the use of such long-term measures is vital to New Delhi’s own interests, as the economic and regional security impacts of a major war would be devastating for India itself. India and other “non-belligerent states” could apply a range of measures to persuade Beijing that the time is not right for a military attack. The aim would be to convince Beijing that “its ducks aren’t quite in a row… so that it defers military action to some uncertain point in the future”.
The report states that China remains deterrable. While it is determined to assume control of the island as a paramount strategic priority, it knows a military invasion would be enormously costly and uncertain.
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12213313/SR202-Deterring-an-attack-on-Taiwan_banner.png8261144nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2024-03-21 06:00:002024-12-12 21:41:03Deterring an attack on Taiwan: policy options for India and other non-belligerent states
A pro-China technology and anti-US influence operation thrives on YouTube
Executive Summary
ASPI has recently observed a coordinated inauthentic influence campaign originating on YouTube that’s promoting pro-China and anti-US narratives in an apparent effort to shift English-speaking audiences’ views of those countries’ roles in international politics, the global economy and strategic technology competition. This new campaign (which ASPI has named ‘Shadow Play’) has attracted an unusually large audience and is using entities and voice overs generated by artificial intelligence (AI) as a tactic that enables broad reach and scale.1 It focuses on promoting a series of narratives including China’s efforts to ‘win the US–China technology war’ amid US sanctions targeting China. It also includes a focus on Chinese and US companies, such as pro-Huawei and anti-Apple content.
The Shadow Play campaign involves a network of at least 30 YouTube channels that have produced more than 4,500 videos. At time of publication, those channels have attracted just under 120 million views and 730,000 subscribers. The accounts began publishing content around mid-2022. The campaign’s ability to amass and access such a large global audience—and its potential to covertly influence public opinion on these topics—should be cause for concern.
ASPI reported our findings to YouTube/Google on 7 December 2023 for comment. By 8 December, they had taken down 19 YouTube channels from the Shadow Play network—10 for coordinated inauthentic behaviour and nine for spam. As of publication, these YouTube channels display a range of messages from YouTube indicating why they were taken down. For example, one channel was ‘terminated for violating YouTube’s community guidelines’, while another was ‘terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s policy for spam, deceptive practices and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations’. ASPI also reported our findings to British artificial intelligence company, Synthesia, whose AI avatars were used by the network. On 14 December 2023, Synthesia disabled the Synthesia account used by one of the YouTube accounts, for violating its Media Reporting (News) policy.
We believe that it’s likely that this new campaign is being operated by a Mandarin-speaking actor. Indicators of this actor’s behaviour don’t closely map to the behaviour of any known state actor that conducts online influence operations. Our preliminary analysis (see ‘Attribution’) is that the operator of this network could be a commercial actor operating under some degree of state direction, funding or encouragement. This could suggest that some patriotic companies increasingly operate China-linked campaigns alongside government actors.
The campaign focuses on promoting six narratives. Two of the most dominant narratives are that China is ‘winning’ in crucial areas of global competition: first, in the ‘US–China tech war’ and, second, in the competition for rare earths and critical minerals.2 Other key narratives express that the US is headed for collapse and that its alliance partnerships are fracturing, that China and Russia are responsible, capable players in geopolitics, that the US dollar and the US economy are weak, and that China is highly capable and trusted to deliver massive infrastructure projects. A list of visual representative examples from the network for each narrative is in Appendix 1 on page 35.
Figure 1: An example of the style of content generated by the network, in which multiple YouTube channels published videos alleging that China had innovated a 1-nanometre chip, without using a lithography machine
Sources: ‘China Charged’, ‘China reveals the world’s first 1nm chip & SHOCKS the US!’, YouTube, 3 November 2023, online;‘ Relaxian’, ‘China’s groundbreaking 1nm chip: redefining technology and global power’, YouTube, 4 November 2023, online; ‘Vision of China’, ‘China breaks tech limit: EUV lithography not needed to make 1nm chips!’, YouTube, 17 July 2023 online; ‘China Focus—CNF’, ‘World challenge conquered: 1nm chips produced without EUV lithography!’, YouTube, 5 July 2023, online; ‘Curious Bay’, ‘China’s NEW 1nm chip amazes the world’, YouTube, 24 July 2023, online; ‘China Hub’, ‘China shatters tech boundaries: 1nm chips without EUV lithography? Unbelievable tech breakthrough!’, YouTube, 30 July 2023, online.
This campaign is unique in three ways. First, as noted above, there’s a notable broadening of topics. Previous China-linked campaigns have been tightly targeted and have often focused on a narrow set of topics. For example, the campaign’s focus on promoting narratives that establish China as technologically superior to the US presents detailed arguments on technology topics including semiconductors rare earths, electric vehicles and infrastructure projects. In addition, it targets, via criticism and disinformation, US technology firms such as Apple and Intel. Chinese state media outlets, Chinese officials and online influencers sometimes publish on these topics in an effort to ‘tell China’s story well’ (讲好中国故事).3 A few Chinese state-backed inauthentic information operations have touched on rare earths and semiconductors, but never in depth or by combining multiple narratives in one campaign package.4 The broader set of topics and opinions in this campaign may demonstrate greater alignment with the known behaviour of Russia-linked threat actors.
Second, there’s a change in techniques and tradecraft, as the campaign has leveraged AI. To our knowledge, the YouTube campaign is one of the first times that video essays, together with generative AI voiceovers, have been used as a tactic in an influence operation. Video essays are a popular style of medium-length YouTube video in which a narrator makes an argument through a voiceover, while content to support their argument is displayed on the screen. This shows a continuation of a trend that threat actors are increasingly moving towards: using off-the-shelf video editing and generative AI technology tools to produce convincing, persuasive content at scale that can build an audience on social-media services. We also observed one account in the YouTube network using an avatar created by Sogou, one of China’s largest technology companies (and a subsidiary of Tencent) (see page 24). We believe the use of the Sogou avatar we identified to be the first instance of a Chinese company’s AI-generated human being used in an influence operation.
Third, unlike previous China-focused campaigns, this one has attracted large views and subscribers. It has also been monetised, although only through limited means. For example, one channel accepted money from US and Canadian companies to support the production of their videos. The substantial number of views and subscribers suggest that the campaign is one of the most successful influence operations related to China ever witnessed on social media. Many China-linked influence operations, such as Dragonbridge (also known as ‘Spamouflage’ in the research community), have attracted
initial engagement in some cases but have failed to sustain a meaningful audience on social media.5 However, further research by YouTube is needed to determine whether view counts and subscriber counts on YouTube demonstrated real viewership or were artificially manipulated, or a combination of both. We note that, in our examination of YouTube comments on videos in this campaign, we saw signs of a genuine audience. ASPI believes that this campaign is probably larger than the 30 channels covered in this report, but we constrained our initial examination to channels we saw as core to the campaign. We also believe there to be more channels publishing content in non-English languages that belong to this network; for example, we saw channels publishing in Bahasa Indonesia that aren’t included in this report.
That’s not to say that the effectiveness of influence operations should only be measured through engagement numbers. As ASPI has previously demonstrated, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence operations that troll, threaten and harass on social media seek to silence and cause psychological harm to those being targeted, rather than seeking engagement.6 Similarly, influence operations can be used to ‘poison the well’ by crowding out the content of genuine actors in online spaces, or to poison datasets used for AI products, such as large-language models (LLMs).7
This report also discusses another way that an influence operation can be effective: through its ability to spill over and gain traction in a wider system of misinformation. We found that at least one narrative from the Shadow Play network—that Iran had switched on its China-provided BeiDou satellite system—began to gain traction on X (formerly Twitter) and other social-media platforms within a few hours of its posting on YouTube. We discuss that case study on page 29.
This report offers an initial identification of the influence operation and some defining characteristics of a likely new influence actor. In addition to sections on attribution, methodology and analysis of this new campaign, this report concludes with a series of recommendations for government and social media companies, including:
the immediate investigation of this ongoing information operation, including operator intent and the scale and scope of YouTube channels involved
broader efforts by Five Eyes and allied partners to declassify open-source social-media-based influence operations and share information with like-minded nations and relevant NGOs
rules that require social-media users to disclose when generative AI is used in audio, video or image content
national intelligence collection priorities that support the effective amalgamation of information on Russia-, China- and Iran-linked information operations
publishing detailed threat indicators as appendixes in information operations research.
Shadow play (or shadow puppetry) is a storytelling technique in which flat articulated cut-out figures are placed between a light source and a translucent screen. It’s practised across Southeast Asia, China, the Middle East, Europe and the US. See, for example, Inge C Orr, ‘Puppet theatre in Asia’, Asian Folklore Studies, 1974, 33(1):69–84, online. ↩︎
A recent Pew Research Center poll indicates that technology is one of the few areas in which public opinion in high-income and middle-income countries sees China and the US as equally capable, which suggests that narratives on those lines are credible for international viewers. Laura Silver, Christine Huang, Laura Clancy, Nam Lam, Shannon Greenwood, John Carlo Mandapat, Chris Baronavski, Comparing views of the US and China in 24 countries, Pew Research Center, 6 November 2023, online. ↩︎
‘Telling China’s story well’, China Media Project, 16 April 2021, online; Marcel Schliebs, Hannah Bailey, Jonathan Bright, Philip N Howard, China’s public diplomacy operations: understanding engagement and inauthentic amplification of PRC diplomats on Facebook and Twitter, Oxford Internet Institute, 11 May 2021, https://demtech.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/posts/chinas-public-diplomacy-operations-understanding-engagement-and-inauthentic-amplification-of-chinese-diplomats-on-facebook-and-twitter/#continue. ASPI’s work on foreign influencers’ role in telling China’s story well includes Fergus Ryan, Matt Knight, Daria Impiombato, Singing from the CCP’s songsheet, ASPI, Canberra, 24 November 2023, https://www.aspi.org.au/report/singing-ccps-songsheet . Fergus Ryan, Ariel Bogle, Nathan Ruser, Albert Zhang, Daria Impiombato, Borrowing mouths to speak on Xinjiang, ASPI, Canberra, 10 December 2021, https://www.aspi.org.au/report/borrowing-mouths-speak-xinjiang ; Fergus Ryan, Daria Impiombato, Hsi-Ting Pai, Frontier influencers, ASPI, Canberra, 20 October 2022, https://www.aspi.org.au/report/frontier-influencers/. . ↩︎
Reports on China-linked information operations that have targeted semiconductors and rare earths include Albert Zhang, ‘The CCP’s information campaign targeting rare earths and Australian company Lynas’, The Strategist, 29 June 2022, online; ‘Pro-PRC DRAGONBRIDGE influence campaign targets rare earths mining companies in attempt to thwart rivalry to PRC market dominance’, Mandiant, 28 June 2022, https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/dragonbridge-targets-rare-earths-mining-companies ; Shane Huntley, ‘TAG Bulletin: Q3 2022’, Google Threat Analysis Group, October 26 2022, https://blog.google/threat-analysis-group/tag-bulletin-q3-2022/ . ↩︎
Ben Nimmo, Ira Hubert, Yang Cheng, ‘Spamouflage breakout’, Graphika, 4 February 2021, online. ↩︎
Danielle Cave, Albert Zhang, ‘Musk’s Twitter takeover comes as the CCP steps up its targeting of smart Asian women’, The Strategist, 6 November 2022, online; Donie O’Sullivan, Curt Devine, Allison Gordon, ‘China is using the world’s largest known online disinformation operation to harass Americans, a CNN review finds’, CNN, 13 November 2023, https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/13/us/china-online-disinformation-invs/index.html . ↩︎
Rachael Falk, Anne-Louise Brown, ‘Poison the well: AI, data integrity and emerging cyber threats’, Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre, 30 October 2023, online. ↩︎
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The Northern Australia Strategic Policy Centre’s latest report, North of 26 degrees south and the security of Australia: views from The Strategist, Volume 8, contains articles published in ASPI’s The Strategist over the last six months.
Building on previous volumes, this edition discusses the opportunities and intersections between improved national defence and capability development in northern Australia, regional economic growth, and enhanced engagement with the Indo-Pacific region.
Similar to previous editions, Volume 8 contains a wide range of articles sourced from a diverse pool of expert contributors, writing on topics such as: northern Australia’s critical role for national defence, how Defence can improve operational capability and re-design its strategy in the north, critical minerals and rare earths, national disaster preparedness, and economic opportunity in northern Australia.
Volume 8 also features a foreword by the Hon. Natasha Fyles, Chief Minister of the Northern Territory. Chief Minister Fyles writes, “this edition sheds light on our region’s position at the intersection of significant national and international interests.”
The 27 articles discuss practical policy solutions for decision makers to facilitate the development, prosperity and security of Australia’s north. The authors share a belief that Australia’s north presents yet to be tapped opportunity and potential, and that its unique characteristics – its vast space, low population density, specific geography, and harsh investment environment – can be leveraged to its advantage.
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The role of foreign influencers in China’s propaganda system
Disclaimer: Please note that because of a website upload issue, an earlier version of this page and report contained errors including incorrect author names & acknowledgement text from a previous report. We have rectified these issues.
Executive summary
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has always viewed contact with foreigners and the outside world as a double-edged sword, presenting both threats and opportunities. While the CCP and its nationalist supporters harbour fears of foreigners infiltrating China’s information space and subtly ‘setting the tempo’ (带节奏) of discussions, the CCP also actively cultivates a rising group of foreign influencers with millions of fans, which endorses pro-CCP narratives on Chinese and global social-media platforms.
In the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the information ecosystem is geared towards eliminating rival narratives and promoting the party’s ‘main melody’ (主旋律)—the party’s term for themes or narratives that promote its values, policies and ideology.1 Foreign influencers who are amenable to being ‘guided’ towards voicing that main melody are increasingly considered to be valuable assets. They’re seen as building the CCP’s legitimacy for audiences at home, as well as supporting propaganda efforts abroad.
This report examines how a growing subset of foreign influencers, aware of the highly nationalistic online environment and strict censorship rules in China, is increasingly choosing to create content that aligns more explicitly with the CCP’s ‘main melody’.2 In addition to highlighting the country’s achievements in a positive light, these influencers are promoting or defending China’s position on sensitive political issues, such as territorial disputes or human rights concerns.
As we outline in this report, foreign influencers are involved in a wave of experimentation and innovation in domestic (and external) propaganda production that’s taking place at different levels around the PRC as officials heed Xi Jinping’s call to actively participate in ‘international communication’. That experimentation includes their use in the Propaganda Department’s efforts to control global narratives about Covid-19 in China and the cultivation of Russian influencers in China to counter Western narratives.3 This research also reveals that the CCP is effectively co-opting a widespread network of international students at Chinese universities, cultivating them as a talent pool of young, multilingual, social-media-friendly influencers.
Foreign influencers are guided via rules, regulations and laws, as well as via platforms that direct traffic towards user-generated propaganda. Video competitions organised by propaganda organs and the amplification of party-state media and government spokespeople further encourage this trend. The resulting party-aligned content foreign influencers produce, coupled with that of party-state media workers masquerading as influencers and state-approved ethnic-minority influencers4 are part of a coordinated tactic referred to as ‘polyphonous communication’ (复调传播).5
By coordinating foreign influencers and other communicators, Beijing aspires to create a unified choir of voices capable of promoting party narratives more effectively than traditional official PRC media. The ultimate goal is to shield CCP-controlled culture, discourse and ideology from the dangers of foreign and free political speech, thereby safeguarding the party’s legitimacy.
As this report outlines, that strategy reveals the CCP’s determination to defend itself against foreign influence and shape global narratives in its favour, including through covert means. As one party-state media worker put it, the aim is to ‘help cultivate a group of “foreign mouths”, “foreign pens”, and “foreign brains” who can stand up and speak for China at critical moments’.6
The CCP’s growing use of foreign influencers reinforces China’s internal and external narratives in ways that make it increasingly difficult for social-media platforms, foreign governments and individuals to distinguish between genuine and/or factual content and propaganda. It further complicates efforts to counter disinformation and protect the integrity of public discourse and blurs the line between independent voices and those influenced by the party’s narratives.
This report makes key recommendations for media and social-media platforms, governments and civil society aimed at building awareness and accountability. They include broadening social-media platforms’ content labelling practices to include state-linked, PRC-based influencers; preventing PRC-based creators from monetising their content on platforms outside China to diminish the commercial incentives to produce party-aligned content; and, in countries with established foreign interference taskforces, such as Australia, developing appropriate briefing materials for students planning to travel overseas.
Key Findings
Foreign influencers are reaching increasingly larger and more international audiences. Some of them have tens of millions of followers in China and millions more on overseas platforms (see Appendix 1 on page 65), particularly on TikTok, YouTube and X (formerly Twitter).
The CCP is creating competitions that offer significant prize money and other incentives as part of an expanding toolkit to co-opt influencers in the production of pro-CCP and party-state-aligned content (see Section 2.3: ‘State-sponsored competitions’ on page 20).
Beijing is establishing multilingual influencer studios to incubate both domestic and foreign influencers in order to reach younger media consumers globally (see Section 2.5: ‘The influencer studio system’ on page 33).
The CCP is effectively using a widespread network of international students at Chinese universities, cultivating them as a latent talent pool of young, multilingual, social-media-friendly influencers (see breakout box: ‘PRC universities’ propaganda activities’ on page 32).
Russian influencers in China are cultivated as part of the CCP’s strategic goal of strengthening bilateral relations with Russia to counter Western countries (see Section 3.4: ‘Russian influencers’ on page 53).
The CCP is using foreign influencers to enable its propaganda to surreptitiously penetrate mainstream overseas media, including into major US cable TV outlets (see Section 3.3: ‘Rachele Longhi’ on page 44). Chinese authorities use vlogger, influencer and journalist identities interchangeably, in keeping with efforts aimed at influencing audiences, rather than offering professional or objective news coverage.
CCP-aligned influencer content has helped boost the prevalence of party-approved narratives on YouTube, outperforming more credible sources on issues such as Xinjiang due to search-engine algorithms that prioritise fresh content and regular posting (see Section 2.2 ‘Turning a foreign threat into a propaganda opportunity’ on page 15).
Foreign influencers played a key part in the Propaganda Department’s drive to control international narratives about Covid-19 in China and have, in some instances, attempted to push the CCP’s narrative overseas as well (see Section 1.1: ‘Case study’ on page 7).
Efforts to deal with CCP propaganda have taken a step backwards on X, which under Elon Musk has dispensed with state-affiliation labels and is allowing verification for party-state media workers, including foreigners (see Section 2.5 ‘The influencer studio system’ on page 33).
The term ‘Propaganda Department’ is used here for the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the CCP. Subordinate CCP organisations in many cases have their own propaganda departments. ↩︎
Fergus Ryan, Daria Impiombato, Hsi-Ting Pai, Frontier influencers: the new face of China’s propaganda, ASPI, Canberra, 20 October 2022. ↩︎
Devin Thorne, ‘1 key for 1 lock: the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy for targeted propaganda’, Recorded Future, September 2022. ↩︎
Du Guodong [杜国东], ‘A tentative analysis of how to leverage the role of foreign internet celebrities in China’s international communication’ [试析如何发挥洋网红在中国国际传播中的作用], FX361, 10 September 2019. ↩︎
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The strategic partnership between Australia and South Korea holds great potential in an increasingly challenging time. The two nations have many common strategic interests and both can rightly claim to be regional powers. However, the relationship remains a relative underperformer compared with other key regional relationships and has suffered from inconsistency. When Canberra’s contemporary relationship with Seoul receives attention from Australian analysts, it tends to be framed largely in the context of the threats posed by Pyongyang.
While some uncertainties remain over the long-term trajectory of South Korea’s foreign and security policy due to concerns that Seoul’s current vision is tied to the Yoon government as opposed to being embedded in longer-term statecraft, the structural basis for deeper engagement between Seoul and Canberra is sound. Investing in the relationship is in both nations’ interests. Building bureaucratic and commercial frameworks for cooperation now would help ensure that bilateral strategic alignment is less prone to future changes in government.
This paper assesses the Australia–South Korea partnership through the three-pillar structure outlined in the 2021 Australia-South Korea Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and offers recommendations for strengthening the relationship. These recommendations include furthering strategic cooperation by incrementally aligning key trilateral formats, developing bilateral cooperation in critical technologies including those relevant to AUKUS Pillar 2, and nurturing collaboration with respect to the Indo-Pacific clean energy transition.
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Australia and the US are both federations of states in which power is shared constitutionally between the national and subnational levels of government. However, traditionally, one domain that hasn’t been considered a shared power, but rather the constitutionally enshrined responsibility of the national governments, has been international affairs (in the US Constitution through Article I, Section 10 and other clauses and in the Australian Constitution through section 51 (xxix), known as the external affairs power). For this reason, foreign-policy and national-security decision-makers in Washington DC and Canberra have rightly seen themselves as the prime actors in the policymaking that develops and strengthens the US–Australia alliance and all global relationships, with limited power held by subnational governments.
However, in our globalised and digital world, constitutional power no longer means that subnational governments have only narrow roles and influence on the international stage. While national governments will continue having primary responsibility for setting foreign policy, subnational governments have offices overseas, sign agreements with foreign governments, and regularly send diplomatic delegations abroad. Recent events, including the Covid-19 pandemic, have highlighted subnational governments’ decisive role in shaping, supporting, adapting to and implementing national and international policy. The pandemic, including post-pandemic trade promotion, demonstrated that the relationships between layers of governments in both federations are essential to national security, resilience, economic prosperity and social cohesion.
Subnational governments have vital roles to play in helping to maximise national capability, increase trust in democratic institutions, mitigate security threats and build broader and deeper relationships abroad. At the subnational level in Washington and Canberra, people-to-people, cultural and economic links create the deep connective tissue that maintains relationships, including those vital to the US-Australia alliance, no matter the politics of the day. But that subnational interaction must be consistent with national defence and foreign policy.
Australia’s federal system should help facilitate international engagement and incentivise positive engagement while ensuring that the necessary legislative and policy levers exist to require the subnational layer to conduct essential due diligence that prioritises the national interest. In this report, the authors make a series of policy recommendations that will support the development of such a framework.
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ASPI and a non-government research partner1 conducted a year-long project designed to share detailed and accurate information on state surveillance in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and engage residents of the PRC on the issue of surveillance technology. A wide range of topics was covered, including how the party-state communicates on issues related to surveillance, as well as people’s views on state surveillance, data privacy, facial recognition, DNA collection and data-management technologies.
The project’s goals were to:
improve our understanding of state surveillance in China and how it’s communicated by the Chinese party-state
develop a nuanced understanding of PRC residents’ perceptions of surveillance technology and personal privacy, the concerns some have in regard to surveillance, and how those perceptions relate to trust in government
explore the reach and potential of an interactive digital platform as an alternative educational and awareness-raising tool.
This unique project combined extensive preliminary research—including media analysis and an online survey of PRC residents—with data collected from an interactive online research platform deployed in mainland China. Media analysis drew on PRC state media to understand the ways in which the party-state communicates on issues of surveillance. The online survey collected opinions from 4,038 people living in mainland China, including about their trust in government and views on surveillance technologies. The interactive research platform offered PRC residents information on the types and capabilities of different surveillance technologies in use in five municipalities and regions in China. Presenting an analysis of more than 1,700 PRC Government procurement documents, it encouraged participants to engage with, critically evaluate and share their views on that information. The research platform engaged more than 55,000 PRC residents.
Data collection was led and conducted by the non-government research partner, and the data was then provided to ASPI for a joint analysis. The project details, including methodology, can be found on page 6.
Key findings
The results of this research project indicate the following:
Project participants’ views on surveillance and trust in the government vary markedly.
Segmentation analysis of survey responses suggests that respondents fall into seven distinct groups, which we have categorised as dissenters, disaffected, critics, possible sceptics, stability seekers, pragmatists and endorsers (the segmentation analysis is on page 12).
In general, PRC state narratives about government surveillance and technology implementation appear to be at least partly effective.
Our analysis of PRC state media identified four main narratives to support the use of government surveillance:
Surveillance helps to fight crime.
The PRC’s surveillance systems are some of the best in the world.
Surveillance is commonplace internationally.
Surveillance is a ‘double-edged sword’, and people should be concerned for their personal privacy when surveillance is handled by private companies.
Public opinion often aligns with state messaging that ties surveillance technologies to personal safety and security. For example, when presented with information about the number of surveillance cameras in their community today, a larger portion of Research Platform participants said they would prefer the same number (39%) or more cameras (38.4%).
PRC state narratives make a clear distinction between private and government surveillance, which suggests party-state efforts to ‘manage’ privacy concerns within acceptable political parameters.
Project participants value privacy but hold mixed views on surveillance.
Participants expressed a preference for consent and active engagement on the issue of surveillance. For example, over 65% agreed that DNA samples should be collected from the general population only on a voluntary basis.
Participants are generally comfortable with the widespread use of certain types of surveillance, such as surveillance cameras; they’re less comfortable with other forms of surveillance, such as DNA collection.
ASPI supported this project with an undisclosed research partner. That institution remains undisclosed to preserve its access to specific research techniques and data and to protect its staff. ↩︎
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/12133959/Surveillance-privacy-and-agency_-insights-from-China-banner.png471740markohttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngmarko2023-10-12 13:39:192025-03-12 15:38:35Surveillance, privacy and agency
As we approach four years since the first cases of Covid-19 in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the world seems relatively familiar again, albeit an increasingly scary place because of war in Europe, accelerating climate change, and the unhealthy nexus between new technologies and authoritarian coercion by Beijing and others.
Within this ‘polycrisis’, Covid-19 now feels like a secondary concern. But the world remains unprepared for the next pandemic, which the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has warned could come soon and be even more deadly.
This report provides a comprehensive stocktake of the lessons our region should draw from Covid-19 at precisely the time we risk forgetting the pandemic’s significance, not just for health but also for the resilience of our societies, economies and international rules-based trade and security.
This collection of papers by Japanese and Australian academics, journalists and think tankers explores varying aspects of the regional impact of the pandemic, including on trade, foreign affairs and security. The collection includes detailed case studies on Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia, as well as thematic analysis at the regional and multilateral levels.
We hope the compilation is useful for policy makers and decision makers throughout the region, in particular the examination of the systemic links between different forms of crisis preparedness, the sovereign resilience of smaller powers against great power influence, and the effect of Covid-19 in accelerating pre-pandemic regional trends, including mounting challenges to liberal democracy.
This report was produced with funding support from the Japanese Government.
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AUKUS has a heavy focus on R&D of military capabilities. A number of departments, including defence, foreign affairs and prime ministerial equivalents are engaged. The science and technology to deliver those capabilities must resolve issues of insecure supply chains. Currently, supply chains for processed critical minerals and their resulting materials aren’t specifically included.
Yet all AUKUS capabilities, and the rules-based order that they uphold, depend heavily on critical minerals. China eclipses not only AUKUS for processing those minerals into usable forms, but the rest of the world combined. Without critical minerals, states are open to economic coercion in various technological industries, and defence manufacturing is particularly exposed to unnecessary supply-chain challenges.
This is where Australia comes in. Australia has the essential minerals, which are more readily exploitable because they’re located in less densely populated or ecologically sensitive areas. Australia also has the right expertise, including universities offering the appropriate advanced geoscience degrees, as well as advanced infrastructure, world-class resources technology and deep industry connections with Asia and Africa, which are also vital global sources of critical minerals.
This paper outlines why Australia offers an unrivalled rallying point to drive secure critical-mineral supply among a wide field of vested nations, using AUKUS but not limited to AUKUS partners, how WA has globally superior reserves and substantial expertise, and why northern Australia more generally has a key role to play. The paper also explains why policy action here must be prioritised by the Australian Government.
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The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s (ASPI) International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) is pleased to announce it’s been awarded a 2018 Fulbright Specialist Grant. With this grant ICPC will bring out Elsa Kania, adjunct fellow in the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
Elsa’s expertise lies in Chinese defence innovation and emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence. Her research interests include Chinese military modernisation, information warfare and defence science and technology. Her most recent publication “Battlefield Singularity: Artificial Intelligence, military revolution and China’s future military power” was accompanied by an essay in Foreign Affairs magazine.
Elsa is also an independent analyst, consultant and co-founder of the China Cyber and Intelligence Studies Institute (CCISI). A graduate of Harvard College, her thesis focused on the evolution of the PLA’s strategic thinking on information warfare. She speaks Mandarin and in 2014-15 was a Boren Scholar in Beijing.
ICPC senior analyst Danielle Cave said: “We are delighted to host Elsa Kania and her visit couldn’t be better timed. Last year, the Chinese Government committed to expand its AI industry to USD 150 billion by 2030. And as Elsa states in her recent report, the People’s Liberation Army ‘is pursuing advances in impactful and disruptive military applications of AI’. Such investments will have profound security, political, economic and social implications for the entire Asia-Pacific region. It’s imperative Australia invests in understanding how such emerging technologies will re-shape our economy and the potential impacts on regional security. Elsa is perfectly positioned to make a valuable and timely contribution as Australia, and our wider region, seek to navigate both the opportunities and challenges presented by the proliferation of AI technologies.”
Elsa will be in Australia from mid-March to mid-April. She will participate in ASPI events, roundtables and have meetings with government, business and civil society. Watch our event page and @ASPI_ICPC for more information. For event, meeting and media enquires please contact reneejones@aspi.org.au / 0400 424 323
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/17135358/v2Artboard-1-copy-scaled.jpg8532560markohttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngmarko2018-01-16 18:12:002024-11-15 18:14:29ASPI to bring out China defence & Artificial Intelligence specialist with Fulbright grant
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/17135358/v2Artboard-1-copy-scaled.jpg8532560markohttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngmarko2017-12-12 14:12:002024-11-17 14:14:23Report reveals growing cyber threat in Asia Pacific
