Tag Archive for: Australia-China Relations

What should Australia do about Uyghur forced labour in China?

International momentum is building to formally censure China for human rights violations. The Netherlands parliament has now joined the Canadian House of Commons and the US government in labelling China’s treatment of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang a genocide.

Australia’s response has so far fallen short of that designation. In October, the government, along with 38 other countries, expressed ‘grave concern’ about China’s ‘gross human rights violations’ in a letter to the United Nations.

Now the Australian parliament is considering a law to ban the import of goods produced in China with Uyghur forced labour, introduced by independent Senator Rex Patrick. While the proposed ban appears a reasonable response, there might be more effective ways of dealing with this urgent problem.

Under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party has launched an extraordinary campaign in China’s northwestern autonomous region of Xinjiang to forcefully integrate the indigenous Uyghur population into the Han majority, in violation of China’s own constitution and international legal norms.

As is now well documented, the CCP’s crackdown in Xinjiang includes mass extrajudicial detention of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in hundreds of purpose-built internment camps; near ubiquitous surveillance; the systematic destruction of indigenous culture, language and religious practices (including the demolition of mosques); forced birth control including sterilisation; psychological and physical torture, including sexual abuse; and forced labour and restrictions on freedom of movement.

The aim is what is widely referred to as ‘re-education’ in the Western media. But it should also remind us of colonial policies and eugenics programs of the 19th and early 20th centuries aimed at the social re-engineering of communities of people believed to be inferior or deviant. We don’t need to delve far into history to find examples of these destructive and discriminatory practices in our own backyard, or elsewhere in the world, and their devastating consequences.

ASPI’s March 2020 report Uyghurs for sale, and the work of other researchers and human rights experts, have documented the central role that forced labour plays in the CCP’s Xinjiang social re-engineering project. Since 2014, millions of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities have been assigned compulsory state work both inside Xinjiang and across China in the name of ‘poverty alleviation’. With the threat of further detention or even criminal prosecution hanging over their heads, Uyghurs find it impossible in practice to refuse a state work assignment.

Uyghur forced labour is now part of the global supply chain and ASPI has found links to at least 80 international brands, including many companies active in Australia, selling to consumers, businesses and governments.

The corporate responses to our report varied widely. Some multinational companies launched immediate investigations into their supply chains in China and are changing their manufacturing processes to reduce their exposure to Uyghur labour abuses. Many kept in touch to update us on their findings. Some claimed they had no ‘direct contractual’ relationships with suppliers using Uyghur labour and therefore didn’t have any culpability or any obligation to investigate further down their supply chains. Others tried to dismiss the problem by arguing that, while there may be evidence of forced labour in a company supplying them, it wasn’t occurring in the factory making their parts. But many ignored it or continue to publicly deny any exposure or responsibility despite the evidence. One multibillion-dollar company has even repeatedly threatened ASPI with legal action. It’s clear that not all companies are interested in addressing the problem.

Unsurprisingly, the report—which was funded by a grant from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office—has been repeatedly criticised by the Chinese government. These criticisms, and the disinformation operations that have often accompanied them, seek to besmirch ASPI as an organisation and its researchers (who have been repeatedly harassed, doxxed and threatened online) while ignoring the substance of the report and the evidence it presents.

Within days of the report’s publication, the propaganda machine in China issued a ban on coverage of Uyghur labour transfers ‘to the interior’. Yet, in September, the Chinese government published a white paper on employment and labour rights in Xinjiang in which it acknowledges the CCP’s ‘proactive’ role in allocating ‘surplus rural labor’ in the pursuit of ‘better lives.’

Companies, consumers and governments have a moral and legal responsibility to ensure that the products they produce and use do not contribute to modern slavery and are manufactured in accordance with international labour laws and norms.

So, what should the Australian government do?

This is not a simple question. No single action will solve the problem. Governments do have an important role to play, but a blanket ban on imports of goods produced by Uyghur forced labour is likely to be difficult and costly to enforce, and might ultimately prove ineffective, since the problem stretches far beyond Xinjiang.

Human rights and other core democratic values are of central importance here, and clear signalling is too. But these messages must be communicated consistently and not used episodically as a stick to bash the Chinese government at politically opportune moments. Any ban on importing goods made with forced labour to Australia should apply to all countries, not just to goods from Xinjiang or elsewhere in China.

The Australian government should urgently ratify the International Labour Organization’s 2014 Forced Labour Protocol. If Australia wants to speak with global credibility on ending forced labour, it must join the 45 other countries that have ratified the protocol and fully abide by the ILO’s Forced Labour Convention.

The Australian parliament should also amend and strengthen the Modern Slavery Act 2018, by, for example, lowering the financial threshold for reporting, creating stronger penalties for non-compliance, and requiring mandatory reporting on exposure to specified issues of pressing concern (including Uyghur forced labour).

The government should take a targeted approach to the Xinjiang problem. China poses a unique set of challenges in confronting forced labour abuses. Unlike other countries, the Chinese government both runs a nationwide system of coerced labour and ensures information about what it is doing is tightly controlled, making it extremely difficult for any company to conduct an independent and creditable audit. Australia should focus on punishing the most egregious actors while sending a warning signal to other bad actors.

Measures could include banning imports of specific goods produced or manufactured in Xinjiang where evidence of forced labour links are strongest (such as cotton, tomato products and solar panels) and imposing targeted sanctions on Chinese companies, officials and other entities (such as the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps) known to be directly profiting from Uyghur forced labour and other human rights abuses.

This could involve the regulatory strengthening of the newly created Australian Sanctions Office and the expansion of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s consolidated list to include companies and individuals who are known to be complicit in Uyghur and other forced labour abuses. Human Rights Watch has called for Australia to publish an annual list of countries and products considered a forced labour risk. Companies importing from these places would have the onus placed on them to prove goods are not made with forced labour.

The Australian government should incentivise corporations to be transparent with their supply chains and to employ new tracing technologies to ensure their integrity and compliance with sanctions and existing legislation.

Consumers also have a role to play in boycotting companies that fail to respond.

To be truly effective, governments that are concerned about Uyghur forced labour and wider human rights abuses occurring in China, and elsewhere, must act collectively. A multilateral approach will provide companies with clarity and stability in how any new legislation, sanctions or reporting requirements will operate across multiple jurisdictions and increase the effectiveness of any bans or sanctions.

For example, the UK and Canada made coordinated announcements in January about each country’s moves to restrict the import of goods made with forced labour from Xinjiang. This was a good start but much more is needed, especially from Australia, which is still playing catch-up.

Policy, Guns and Money: 2020 in 30 minutes

In the final episode of Policy, Guns and Money for 2020, The Strategist’s Brendan Nicholson, Anastasia Kapetas and Jack Norton share their thoughts on the key events and geopolitical developments of 2020, and the areas they’ll be watching closely in 2021.

They discuss climate change and the bushfire crisis that began 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic and its ramifications, the deteriorating Australia–China relationship, the US election and the impact of disinformation as well as the Brereton inquiry into alleged war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan.

Thanks to our listeners for tuning in throughout the year. Policy, Guns and Money will be back with more episodes next year.

Policy, Guns and Money: Violent extremism, Biden’s climate agenda and tweet weaponisation

In this episode, Leanne Close, head of ASPI’s counterterrorism program, speaks with Peta Lowe, who has over 15 years’ experience working with young people involved with the justice system. They discusses countering violent extremism in youth populations, key risks for radicalisation, and strategies for awareness and prevention.

The Strategist’s Anastasia Kapetas speaks with Christian Downie from the Australian National University. They discuss President-elect Joe Biden’s climate goals, what impact they may have on US domestic and foreign policy, and what the implications might be for Australia.

The infamous tweet from Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian was yet another setback in the Australia–China relationship. ASPI’s Jake Wallis, Ariel Bogle and Albert Zhang talk about their analysis of the Twitter activity around the tweet and discuss the increasing weaponisation of social media in the global geopolitical landscape.

China playing mind games in the grey zone

Amid the cranky grey-zone conflict with the People’s Republic of China, members of Australia’s elites are displaying eagerly their whateverist credentials.

The first iteration of whateverism emerged from a notorious editorial jointly published by the People’s Daily, Red Flag and the People’s Liberation Army Daily in 1977: ‘We will resolutely uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made, and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave.’

The more recent iteration says, ‘Whatever the PRC might do wrong, the United States or Australia does the same, or worse.’

Beijing arrested Australian writer–entrepreneur Yang Hengjun and journalist Cheng Lei for no clear reason yet divulged, and has detained Yang for two years and Lei for four months, in grim circumstances, without access to family or friends. Only Yang has been allowed to see a lawyer, this September after 22 months.

This has been balanced, in such whateverist thinking, by Canberra raiding the homes of Chinese journalists—albeit they weren’t arrested and continued to live in Sydney for some weeks before choosing to return home—and cancelling the visas of two academics, again without detailing the reasons.

While Beijing rounds up most of its Uyghurs, splitting millions of families and consigning many children to state institutions, Washington under President Donald Trump separated 4,368 children from their parents, until stopped by the courts, after holding the families as illegal immigrants. Canberra has also treated illegal immigrants shabbily.

The attack on Australia by Beijing’s wolf-warrior diplomats was led by foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, who tweeted a concocted image of a child-slaughtering digger, and Global Times editor Hu Xijin, who said Prime Minister Scott Morrison ‘should kneel down to the ground, slap himself in the face, and kowtow’.  Hu added that Morrison’s government was ‘akin to a mafia’ and ‘wants a spanking’.

Australian media frequently in turn criticise the Chinese Communist Party and its united front influence efforts, and Morrison described Zhao’s tweet as repugnant, outrageous and appalling. A chairman of a large Australasian company lamented that the Australian government has ‘effectively punched [China] in the face in public’. Thus Zhao’s and Hu’s outpourings are interpreted almost as a cry for help.

Virtually all Western online platforms, such as Google, Facebook and YouTube, and mass media sites are banned from China, where no criticism of Xi Jinping or his party is permitted, everyone who posts must provide all their personal details, and surveillance is ubiquitous.

In Australia, libel laws seem to protect the powerful, media mogul Rupert Murdoch is branded a monopolist, and the government has surveillance powers against suspected terrorists.

Surely, these whateverists claim, we need to call time on disagreeing (after all, it balances out really) and work out how better we can adjust to whatever modest requirements Beijing might seek in return for the massive economic benefits it generously provides us. Both countries, surely, are suffering from being pushed down the wrong track by hawkish nationalists?

Australia’s 14 great sins listed by the Chinese embassy provide the whateverists with a helpful guide. Those among our elites anxious about our need to find an acceptable way to ‘reset’ the relationship with Beijing have suggested, in social media posts and elsewhere, how many wrongdoings we could and should confess. Maybe we should admit to committing three, suggest some helpfully; others feel we should more honestly stick up our hands to half a dozen or more. Like Kevin Rudd during his 2007 campaign, they’re ‘here to help’.

Many of those who urge such confessions and backtracks have been solicited over the years by friendly Chinese diplomats, business types and others.

The latter share, with remarkable consistency, talking points that may be parlayed, or interpreted, as especially valuable information or perceptions that should be conveyed widely for the good of one’s own country, corporation or other organisation. Such privileged people have been granted, they may be led to feel, rare and valuable insights.

Here are the 10 core talking points:

  1. If there’s a falling out between the PRC and your country, the latter is chiefly to blame, while problems emanating from China are to be acknowledged merely in passing, if that.
  2. To criticise the PRC is to be racist, or to dog-whistle to racists. This emanates from the CCP’s claim, for its state, on the primary loyalty of all people of Chinese ethnicity.
  3. The PRC and CCP cannot and must not be separated out from ‘China’ and the Chinese people whom the party-state rules. Although a 71-year-old dynasty, the PRC seeks to wrap around itself the history and culture of the multi-faceted Chinese civilisation.
  4. Even comparatively mild questioning of party-state strategies or leaders—or raising concerns that Beijing resents—is to be branded as ‘vilification’.
  5. The surge of the PRC, especially economically, is inexorable, and thus realpolitik requires acknowledging not merely China’s rise but also its regional and global dominance as the US withers.
  6. Anyone who criticises the PRC is doing so because they’ve fallen under the thrall of the US.
  7. Chinese people all align with the CCP’s tightly scripted version of the country’s history that dwells on its suffering.
  8. Taiwan is an inalienable province of China whose ‘return’ to full Chinese sovereignty is inevitable.
  9. China can only be governed effectively by a firm central autocratic ruler.
  10. Most importantly, in discussion or debate about your country’s relationship with the PRC, focus on the former. Do not raise or encourage questioning of the conduct of the CCP or its leaders.

What are the special ingredients that enable well-schooled Chinese officials to reel in international elites so effectively, that magnetise cosmopolitan folk—not only in Australia, but in many other countries—who are usually so sceptical and worldly-wise?

They are surprisingly straightforward, they even appear rather 20th century, and they are thoroughly integrated:

  • Flatter the recipients to make them feel they are treasured, honoured and fully recognised for their achievements when visiting the PRC. In comparison, they may lament, especially if they are retired from their substantive positions, that they and their knowledge and skills are comparatively neglected back home.
  • Foster among those with limited China experience an unrealistic sense of the potential weight of their roles there. A meeting involving foreigners will routinely be branded as ‘global’.
  • Provide them with red-carpet treatment while travelling, such as upgraded flights and hotel suites, dedicated drivers and cars to obviate the need for taxis or public transport, and official companions who speak fluently the visitor’s language. Foreigners being targeted through such invitations are usually quarantined from non-curated access to ordinary Chinese people.
  • Give them a sense of becoming ‘insiders’ granted access to privileged information and, especially, perceptions about their home countries and organisations.
  • Provide constant access to China. Gaining a visa to visit China is becoming increasingly challenging. Denying it is used to send a message, as when federal Liberal politicians Andrew Hastie and James Paterson were told when their applications were rejected that they should ‘genuinely repent and redress their mistakes’. Politicians, academics, journalists and others who seek to visit China are led to presume—including by their own Australian employers and colleagues—that they need to self-censor any remarks about the PRC to ensure access.
  • Promote the notion that top-level visits can solve all problems. Engineered breakdowns in relations with the PRC are routinely blamed on the failure of leaders from foreign countries to secure face-to-face meetings in Beijing. Naturally, this is especially deemed disastrous by diplomats, for whom such encounters comprise significant career achievements.
  • Keep elite targets well away from people who possess authoritative autonomous understanding of the PRC.

Policy, Guns and Money: US election disinformation, China’s soft power and data digitisation

In this episode, ASPI’s Ariel Bogle speaks to Dr Kate Starbird, associate professor at the University of Washington and researcher at the Election Integrity Partnership. They discuss the growing challenges for social media companies in moderating online disinformation and misinformation in the context of the US election.

Next, Michael Shoebridge talks to journalist and author Rowan Callick about The elite embrace, his recent report for the Centre for Independent Studies. They discuss how the Chinese Communist Party influences key elites in Australia and around the world, and the 10 talking points to look out for.

And last, ASPI’s Anne Lyons chats with the director-general of the National Archives of Australia, David Fricker, about plans to digitise more than 650,000 World War II service records and over 30,000 at-risk audiovisual records.

Australia’s China problem

Australia’s China problem—official contacts frozen and many of our exports under siege—is now gaining attention far beyond our shores. Much of the world, given stark evidence of the economic havoc that China’s displeasure can wreak, and of the ugly depths to which its ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy can descend, is trying to understand both how we fell into this hole and whether we can climb out of it with our dignity intact.

How have Australia’s relations with China deteriorated so spectacularly? The short answer is that, although the most recent escalations have come from the Chinese side, for several years Australia hasn’t properly managed the need both to get along with China and to stand up to it. As Geoff Raby, a former Australian ambassador to China and now director of Chinese mining company Yancoal, has argued, we have failed to devise a middle way between sycophancy and hostility. Or, to cite the immortal wisdom of the 1930s Scottish labour leader Jimmy Maxton: ‘If you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the bloody circus.’

Australia’s huge economic dependence on China—the market for more than a third of our exports, far more than the United States or any European country—gives us no choice but to get along with our larger regional neighbour. It is fanciful to think we can find alternative markets on that scale anytime soon, or perhaps ever.

But, as a self-respecting sovereign country committed to a decent, rules-based international order, nor can we simply roll over when confronted with many aspects of China’s behaviour. These include its defiance of international law in the South China Sea, egregious domestic violations of human rights in Xinjiang (and in the case of Hong Kong, of treaty obligations as well), discriminatory and overprotective trade and industrial policies, periodic cyberattacks, and attempts to exercise undue influence over Australia’s governing institutions. Most recently and extraordinarily, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian tweeted a fake image of an Australian soldier murdering an Afghan child.

On these issues, the question is not whether Australia should stand up to China, but how. Unfortunately, our recent responses to official Chinese behaviour have made us extremely vulnerable—much more so than other regional powers such as Japan, which have been performing a similarly tricky balancing act vis-à-vis China.

One error is what the French statesman Talleyrand once described as ‘excessive zeal’—evident in the strident, tone-deaf language used by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull when he introduced legislation targeting undue Chinese influence in 2017. There has also been too much over-the-top behaviour, such as the June 2020 police and security service raids on the homes of Chinese journalists living in Australia. And there has been too much outright offensiveness on the part of a small number of parliamentarians who have channelled US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s anti-communist rhetoric and tended to demonise our hugely valuable Chinese–Australian community.

In addition, Australia has failed to consider fully the risks of not only irritating but also hurting China, as we have done by not just joining but leading international efforts to shut out the telecommunications firm Huawei and introducing tough foreign investment restrictions and foreign influence laws. For a medium-size, middleweight and highly economically vulnerable country, caution is sometimes the better part of valour. China needs Australia’s iron ore, but it can comfortably live without our coal, wine, food, and student and tourist destinations.

Moreover, many of Australia’s recent stands—in particular, our operationally and diplomatically ill-prepared braying for an inquiry into China’s Covid-19 response—have fuelled the narrative that we are a US ‘deputy sheriff’. This has left Australia—a far easier target than America—exposed to even heavier Chinese counterpunching.

Analysis of the problem points the way to the solution, for both Australia and others whom China might similarly target. Getting out of the hole will not be quick or easy, but it can be done, by following five guidelines.

First and foremost, Australian leaders need to stop digging and not add any more grounds for complaint to those already on China’s charge sheet. That doesn’t mean backing off on issues like the South China Sea, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Nor does it entail reversing our failure to curb China-unfriendly press comment (though some self-restraint from the media would be a consummation devoutly to be wished). But it does mean thinking carefully about whether it would be wise to introduce even more legislation inhibiting Chinese investment and partnerships with China by universities and state governments.

Second, we must moderate our official language, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison and some of his senior ministers have belatedly started to do. This should include continuing to emphasise the positives in the Australia–China relationship, and remembering that, in diplomacy, words are bullets—even when our criticism of Chinese behaviour is entirely legitimate.

Third, the optics of independence are vital. Our leaders should continue to make it clear that any negative Australian position on China reflects our own national judgement and not the guidance of imperial masters in Washington.

Fourth, Australia needs to acknowledge the legitimacy and inevitability of some of China’s international aspirations. That means not getting overly agitated that China wants strategic space, the military capacity to protect its economic lifelines, and a level of global policymaking influence commensurate with its new strength. We should also accept that some of China’s commercial concerns may not be entirely groundless. Australia has made many more anti-dumping complaints against China than the number coming in the other direction.

Finally, Australia should work hard to identify issues on which it shares genuine common ground with China. We should use what’s left of our reputation as a good international citizen committed to effective multilateral solutions to global and regional public-goods issues, as well as China’s desire (though not much in evidence recently) to project soft power. On issues like climate change, peacekeeping, counterterrorism, nuclear and other arms control, and—for the most part—responding to pandemics, China has played a more interested, constructive and potentially cooperative role than has generally been recognised.

Once adults—tough-minded though they may be—are back in charge in Washington under a Joe Biden administration, US–China tensions will likely ease. And if, in parallel, Australia’s leaders keep their heads down and act a little more maturely than they generally have done during this government, then a resumption of something like normal Australia–China relations over the course of the next year or so will certainly be within reach.

Strong alliances and defence will keep the peace with China

Here are some positive outcomes from the Chinese Communist Party’s descent into North Korean–style insult and abuse: Australians get to see firsthand the entity we are dealing with, and Beijing’s collection of local useful idiots are tested to see how far they will defend the indefensible behaviour of their patron.

Leaders in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States, Taiwan and elsewhere have supported Australia unbidden. They realise that the communist party’s treatment of Australia will be meted out to them if, like us, they refuse to accept a silenced, subordinate status.

There is now a consensus that Australia must diversify its trade markets, a view shared by many exporters who are reassessing the risk of doing business with China. Even a year ago, that reality was rejected by many.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison saw that a line had been crossed, necessitating a strong response. That nixes a disposition of many Canberra mandarins that masterful inactivity and saying nothing is somehow a clever way to deal with Beijing.

Decades of diplomatic nuance in our China relationship have delivered nothing. Saying what is authentically Australian and defending our national values might just work.

There will be senior communist party officials viewing the arrival of ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy as a disaster for China’s position in the world.

Over the last year we have seen some remarkable leaks from China, exposing document troves about the mistreatment of ethnic minorities and the botched early response to Covid-19. There are many in China appalled at the party’s behaviour.

Regrettably, Beijing is not about to change direction. Our government knows that and so does the opposition. Australia is well placed to drive a coherent, bipartisan response to China’s bullying and is likely to get popular support and international backing for it.

Can China be peacefully persuaded to behave as a responsible member of the global community? The government’s July defence strategic update tactfully says that conventional war ‘while still unlikely, is less remote than in the past’. The strategy unveiled a major new effort to increase the range and hitting power of the Australian Defence Force.

On Tuesday, Defence Minister Linda Reynolds announced Australia has agreed with the United States to develop and test a ‘hypersonic cruise missile prototype’.

On any day not dominated by China’s foreign ministry tweeting a fake image of an Australian soldier slitting a child’s throat, the announcement would have received more attention.

Hypersonic cruise missiles fly at speeds above Mach 5—that is, five times the speed of sound. Air-breathing cruise missiles, which fly like aircraft, have been tested to speeds of Mach 9.6. Russia, China and the United States want to field these weapons, and quickly.

The speed of these weapons means they have vast ranges. As Reynolds said, hypersonic missiles are potentially a game-changer, adding more deterrence weight to our defence force and ensuring that an adversary will have to deal with that risk thousands of kilometres from our shores.

The force structure plan released alongside the defence strategic update allocated $9.3 billion to ‘high-speed long-range strike and missile defence’. It is a fundamental reset to Australian defence thinking and central to it is a joint effort with the United States.

Our biggest strategic challenge is to do everything we can to keep America active in the Indo-Pacific and the Chinese military as far away from us as possible. That means keeping the alliance active and future-focused.

Australian researchers have been working on hypersonic vehicles for 15 years. Canberra and Washington should fast-track this collaboration. The right question to ask is what can be delivered in two to five years, not in a decade.

People can be a bit squeamish when it comes to talking about weapons development. Surely one lesson from the Brereton investigation into the special forces is that we need to be clear-sighted about what we are doing. Defence is not there for parades.

Potentially linked to the hypersonic cruise missile plan is the idea that Australia will look to domestically produce ‘complex munitions’—code for missiles.

The fastest way to do that would be to team with a US or possibly a European manufacturer. The lesson from Covid-19 is that we need to make our military supply chains more secure. In modern conflict the first item to fall into short supply (after trained people) is missiles. The government needs to look at radical options to get things moving quickly rather than plod through a decade’s worth of development and procurement.

There are two footnotes to add: first, there is a view that China thinks Australia is acquiring the wrong defence equipment and that Chinese (and indeed Russian) aircraft are superior.

This is wrong. I have met quite a number of People’s Liberation Army generals over the years. They envy the military capability we extract from the US alliance and a force of 90,000 regulars and reserves. If China didn’t rate our military, their officials wouldn’t so relentlessly demand that we abandon the US alliance.

Chinese combat aircraft are improving but suffer from critical capability deficiencies in engine and stealth technology, among others, and are no match yet for the F-35 joint strike fighter and the linked systems of the wider ADF. This is one reason Beijing so actively spies on our Defence and industry base.

Footnote two: Last financial year ASPI received 3% of its funding from the Australian defence industry. Some of our critics seem as opposed to a strong Australian military as much as they are prepared to forgive Beijing’s aggressive posturing. The funding has no impact on our analysis any more than substantial Defence and industry funding does to most of Australia’s universities.

ASPI would have no value to government, parliament or Defence if it did not provide a strong element of policy contestability.

One test of credibility is that shutting ASPI down is demand number 10 on the Chinese embassy’s 14-point grievance list. The truth hurts the Chinese Communist Party. In these difficult times, independently minded policy research matters now more than ever.

Policy, Guns and Money: Australia–China relations, India’s naval power and TikTok censorship

In this episode, Michael Shoebridge, head of ASPI’s defence, national security and strategy program, speaks with Darshana Baruah, non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, about India’s navy and maritime goals, the Quad and Australia–India relations.

ASPI executive director Peter Jennings, and The Strategist’s Brendan Nicholson consider the return of Australian journalists Bill Birtles and Mike Smith from China and the general state of the Australia–China relationship.

Fergus Ryan from ASPI’s cyber centre and research intern Daria Impiombato speak to senior analyst Tom Uren about their recent report on censorship on TikTok and WeChat.

Policy, Guns and Money: Fuel security, Australia–China relations and the CCP’s coercive diplomacy

In this episode, Brendan Nicholson, Anastasia Kapetas and Jack Norton of The Strategist discuss some of the latest developments in the vexed Australia–China relationship.

Next, Michael Shoebridge and John Coyne from ASPI’s defence, strategy and national security program consider the ongoing issue of improving fuel security for Australia and our allies.

And finally, ASPI’s Emilia Currey and Tracy Beattie talk to Olivia Nelson about the findings of their recently released report, The Chinese Communist Party’s coercive diplomacy, co-authored with Fergus Hanson, head of ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre.

Detention of Australian journalist gives lie to Xi’s ‘reform and opening up’ agenda

The detention of Australian journalist Cheng Lei by authorities in Beijing, and its timing, sit within the Chinese government’s larger strategy to expand its international influence and power over others. But it also shows the flaws in that strategy.

Cheng’s detention may be not so much about what she herself may have done or not done, but about Beijing’s willingness to use its political control of the Chinese legal system for strategic purposes. There’s no doubt that it will have the intended chilling effect on reporters and journalists living in China so they avoid doing anything that could offend the Chinese government.

In a larger sense, though, it’s likely to achieve the opposite effect to what Beijing intends, and be another step in the outside world becoming less accommodating to Beijing and working together to create options that rely less on China.

The Chinese Communist Party controls China’s legal system in ways that countries governed by the rule of law and independent systems of justice find hard to come to terms with. The legal system, like all other government institutions, is party-centred, so the Chinese government’s claims that Cheng’s detention is just an example of an arm’s-length legal system doing its thing are not credible.

It’s hard not to read the detention of such a high-profile person, who was trusted to work for Chinese state media channel CGTN in a prominent role, at this time as being a symbolic further step in Beijing’s coercion of the Australian government—because Canberra has acted in Australia’s national interests in ways Beijing doesn’t like.

It is almost certainly intended to be seen as part of Beijing’s other measures that follow the menus China’s ambassador in Canberra and other Chinese officials have described and put into effect since April. Even Geoff Raby—a well-connected Australian business consultant in Beijing whose consultancy thrives by promoting closer business and economic engagement with China—said he was shocked at Cheng’s detention.

It’s an indicator that the risk to every foreign citizen—notably to Australians, but not just Australians—of arbitrary arrest in mainland China has risen in recent months. This is a matter that the boards and CEOs of any companies with Australian employees in China need to pay attention to.

That fits with ASPI’s recent report on the topic, which shows that coercive action by Beijing against foreign governments and companies in 2020 is occurring at twice the rate of recent years. Canadian citizens in China, for example, have been detained on doubtful grounds as part of a similar attempt by Beijing to put political pressure on Canadian authorities—because Canada is processing a US extradition request for a senior Huawei executive.

Cheng Lei joins Yang Hengjun, another Australian, who has been held by Beijing for some 20 months on the very broad ground of ‘endangering national security’, which gives Beijing maximum flexibility to use its legal system for political purposes. His detention has included Chinese officials subjecting him to over ‘300 interrogations, sometimes for hours in the middle of the night’. That makes statements about foreign governments calling for ’proper process’ for their citizens ring very hollow indeed.

Beijing’s coercion is mainly working to enhance policy- and decision-makers’, whether in Europe, North America, India, Japan or Australia, understanding of the growing risks of engaging with China’s economy and legal jurisdiction, and the need for a cooperative multinational effort in response.

Major European powers are recognising the growing risks and the need to work with partners like Australia to shape the security and economic order in the Indo-Pacific, because it’s the region that will shape the global order of the 21st century. Germany, for example, has released a new strategy for its engagement in the Indo-Pacific that emphasises the importance of multilateral partnerships and cooperation with regional organisations like ASEAN.

European authorities identified China as a ‘systemic rival’ in early 2019, and have since noted that this ‘sharp change in the balance of assumptions’ about the Sino-European relationship has now been ‘tilted further’ by the pandemic, and that Europe needs to reduce its overdependence on the Chinese economy. Japan is also reducing its economic dependence on China, for similar reasons, as is India.

So, with actions like the detention of Cheng, the Chinese government is achieving the opposite result to the acquiescence it wants. Interestingly, this kind of action undercuts a separate line of Xi Jinping’s policy, which is to push for deeper foreign company presence and investment in China as part of a ‘reform and opening up’ agenda that the Chinese government sees as key to getting its post-pandemic economy moving.

It’s hard to see how creating fear about personal safety through arbitrary detention will encourage more foreigners and foreign companies to live in and engage with China.