Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia

349 Pages·2018·2.88 MB·English

by  Clive Hamilton

Clive Hamilton AM is an Australian author and public intellectual. His books
include Growth Fetish, Silencing Dissent (with Sarah Maddison) and What Do
We Want: The Story of Protest in Australia. He was for 14 years the executive
director of The Australia Institute, a think tank he founded. For some years he
has been professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra.
‘Anyone keen to understand how China draws other countries into its sphere of
influence should start with Silent Invasion. This is an important book for the
future of Australia. But tug on the threads of China’s influence networks in
Australia and its global network of influence operations starts to unravel.’
—Professor John Fitzgerald, author of Big White Lie:
Chinese Australians in White Australia

Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Preface
1 Dyeing Australia red
2 How China sees itself in the world
‘Brainwashed’
The party is the nation
Sick man no more
‘Twisted patriotism’
The great rejuvenation
China’s claim to Australia
3 Qiaowu and the Chinese diaspora
Mobilising overseas Chinese
Bob Hawke’s gift
The United Front in Australia
Chinese-Australians resist
Contesting Chineseness
Chinese Hansonism
Controlling the news
Chinese voices
The long arm of China’s law
‘They can do anything. They don’t care.’
4 Dark money
Huang Xiangmo in China
China’s crony capitalism
Xi’s corruption crackdown
Huang in Australia
Bipartisan guanxi
Chau Chak Wing
Zhu Minshen
Zhu and the Olympic torch
Zhu’s role in Dastyari’s downfall
Political plants
5 ‘Beijing Bob’
The ‘China-Whatever’ research institute
ACRI under pressure
A true friend of China
Media deals
Credulous journos
6 Trade, invest, control
How dependent are we?
The party-corporate conglomerate
Beijing’s Australia strategy
Trade politics
Assets for sale
One Belt, One Road
The Australian OBOR connection
7 Seduction and coercion
China’s fifth column in Australia
‘China is our destiny’
Norway and the Dalai Lama effect
China’s geoeconomics
Coercing Australia
8 Spies old and new
Spying on ASIO
A thousand spies and informants
Huawei and the NBN
Huawei’s reach
Honey traps
The Fitzgibbon–Liu affair
Hikvision
Cyber theft
Racial profiling
Cyber warriors
9 ‘Malicious insiders’ and scientific organisations
‘Mobilising Ten Thousand Overseas Chinese’
HUMINT (human intelligence)
Professional associations
CSIRO
10 ‘Engineering souls’ at Australia’s universities
Thought management
Funding PLA upgrade
‘Make the foreign serve China’
More PLA collaboration
Carrying the torch at UNSW
Ethnic enclaves
‘Academic malware’: Confucius Institutes
The party in our classrooms
Patriotic students
‘Denounce and inform’
What to do?
11 Culture wars
Chinese voices
Sally Zou’s gold
Real estate woes
Patriot writers
Co-opting God
Chinese Anzacs
The People’s Liberation Army of Australia
Digital totalitarianism
Beijing’s Antarctic designs
12 Friends of China
The China club
The innocents
The ‘realists’
The capitulationists
The pragmatists
Dear friends
The appeasers
Australians against democracy
13 The price of freedom
Images
Acknowledgements
Notes
Copyright Page
Preface
On 24 April 2008, the Olympic torch arrived in Canberra on the last leg of its
worldwide relay in preparation for the Beijing Games. I went along to the lawns
outside Parliament House to lend quiet support to the Tibetan protesters. I had no
idea what I was walking into. Tens of thousands of Chinese students had arrived
early and their mood was angry and aggressive. As the torch approached, the
pro-Tibet protesters, vastly outnumbered, were mobbed and abused by a sea of
Chinese people wielding red flags. Everyday Australians who’d turned up
complained later that they were jostled, kicked and punched. Some were told
that they had no right to be there. The police presence was too small to maintain
order and I feared a riot would break out and people would be severely beaten or
worse.
What happened that day left me shocked. Where did all of those people come
from? Why were they so frenzied? And I was affronted. How dare they arrive,
on the doorstep of our parliament, the symbol of our democracy, and shut down
a legitimate protest, leaving me and a few hundred others feeling intimidated for
expressing our opinion?
I had no answers, the world moved on and everyone seemed to forget about it.
But the incident left a nagging question at the back of my mind. Eight years
later, in August 2016, a political storm engulfed Senator Sam Dastyari (which
would a year later lead to his exit from parliament). Among the many revelations
to emerge over the next couple of weeks was that a handful of very rich Chinese
and Chinese-Australian businessmen had become the largest donors to our major
political parties. They had bought a lot of influence; our politicians were in bed
with them and there were photos to prove it.
China and Australian democracy had collided again. Something big is going
on, I thought. I decided to investigate and write a book so that Australians could
on, I thought. I decided to investigate and write a book so that Australians could
understand what has been happening to our country.
I had no inkling when I began that publishing this book would prove so
challenging. My usual publisher, Allen & Unwin, was enthusiastic about the
book when I proposed it and we soon signed a contract. But just as the revised
manuscript was about to be sent to be typeset, Allen & Unwin told me they were
pulling the plug. They were afraid of retaliation from Beijing, or people in
Australia acting on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. When their
withdrawal became public it attracted worldwide media coverage, but it left me
without a publisher. Other publishers were scared off. Fortunately, Sandy Grant
at Hardie Grant Books took up the challenge. In 1987, Sandy published
Spycatcher, a book the British government attempted to ban.
• • •
‘What about the Yanks?’
When I mentioned to some that I was writing a book about the growing
influence of the Chinese party-state in Australia, this was their first response.
What about the Pine Gap spying base, they said, and how we slavishly followed
the Americans into the Iraq War? We’ve already given up our independence,
haven’t we, so what’s the big issue with China?
I hope those people will read this book and see that there is a world of
difference. Australia may have sacrificed some of its independence, mainly in
defence policy, to be in an alliance with the United States, although the degree is
open to debate. But after decades of ‘American colonialism’ do we really feel
that our daily lives or democratic freedoms are constrained by this foreign
power?
We share the guilt with the United States for the post-2003 disaster in Iraq,
but through the decades of the close relationship our big ally has never
threatened to take away our freedoms. The United States never had the kind of
economic leverage over Australia that China has, nor made threats to damage us
if we did not toe its line. It hasn’t endangered our democratic system of elected
governments, and its government has never used money to buy off our
politicians. The United States hasn’t attempted to erode the rule of law. Nor has
it attempted to mobilise a diaspora to oppose Australian policy. The United
States government has never shut down dissenting views in Australia, even ones
harshly critical of the USA. Can we imagine a United States government using
our laws to frighten publishers into dropping a book criticising it? Within the
alliance, the rights of women and gay people have blossomed because of a