In addition to our translations, we are pleased to present below the thoughts of three thinkers. While the three pieces below examine Common Prosperity from different angles, they are united in their scepticism of Xi’s political rhetoric. Taken together, they point us to the palpable gulf between the stated aspirations of common prosperity on the one hand, and policy measures and environment on the other.

Mary Gallagher, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan:

Old Wine, New Bottle?

Comparing Xi Jinping’s recent speech on common prosperity to similar speeches by the last leader of China, Hu Jintao, offers an instructive corrective to the hype over Xi’s apparent turn toward populism, a ‘red New Deal’, and Maoist economic policies. The two administrations have remarkably similar ambitions to reduce inequality, promote development, and placate the people’s demands for a better life. 

While there are clear differences in style and power projection between the two administrations, it’s just not possible at this point to conclude that  Xi’s Common Prosperity drive is going to be more successful than the reforms of the Hu-Wen Era. Xi has accomplished some high-profile populist interventions in the tech and education sectors, further reduced abject poverty, and is in the process of weaning the Chinese economy off real estate as a major source of growth. However, so far, his pursuit of Common Prosperity has been mainly through crackdowns and campaigns. 

For sustained redistribution to succeed, these crackdowns need to be followed by policy changes, legal reforms, and fiscal reform. Despite his image as China’s strongest leader since Mao, Xi’s government has not implemented new social welfare reforms or laws that significantly change how the “cake” is divided. His property tax plans have been curtailed and hukou reform remains thwarted by resistance of both local officials and urban residents. 

What about the Hu administration, which reigned from 2003 to 2013? Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao cancelled the agricultural tax, increased the minimum income guarantee, improved rural children’s access to free public education, developed and expanded rural and urban residency pension and medical insurance systems, and passed labor and employment laws that enhanced employment security and raised the minimum wage. 

Despite the perception that Xi is a much stronger leader than Hu, his term in office has so far been disappointing on redistributive policy changes. What’s most striking about the comparison between Xi and his predecessor is how consistent the CCP leadership is in its worry that persistent inequality and regional disparities continue to threaten the legitimacy of the Party.

Eli Friedman, Associate Professor and Chair of International & Comparative Labor, Cornell University:

The laissez-faire approach to labor

Xi’s recently published speech on common prosperity rehashes the old ideal of an “olive-shaped” income distribution. A notable feature of his proposal is that it fails to mention labor issues. 

Reducing economic inequality is a stated priority. But based on this speech and the policy environment, his hope appears to be that it will come about via improved human capital formation, charitable donations from the rich, and possibly from some still unspecified tax increases on income and property. There is no mention of direct intervention in the labor market, either through big minimum wage hikes, sectoral wage agreements, or collective bargaining. 

The lack of attention to labor issues raises serious questions about the viability of these efforts. The historical record shows that it is extremely unlikely for countries to realize significant reductions in income inequality in the absence of robust interventions in the labor market. Xi’s recent track record suggests he is indeed committed to a non-interventionist approach: Since assuming power, growth in minimum wages has slowed considerably, timid experiments with state-managed collective bargaining have ended, and even the percentage of workers with labor contracts has declined. 

Moreover, Xi has been brutal in his treatment of labor activists, from the 2015 crackdown on labor NGOs, to the 2018 repression of student labor activists, and the recent imprisonment of prominent labor leader Mengzhu. We will have to see how aggressive the state is in expanding universal social services (having spent a decade studying education inequality, I am not optimistic about that either). 

Regardless, it is hard to see how major realignments in income distribution will be possible without significant labor market intervention. And with civil society decimated and the official union under tight Party control, workers have no political organization that can hold Xi’s feet to the fire.

Shahar Hameiri, Associate Professor, University of Queensland:

The Chinese-style regulatory state

To make sense of common prosperity’s prospects and the factors that will shape its implementation, we need to view it within the wider context of how the Chinese party-state operates. 

In our just-published book, Fractured China: How State Transformation is Shaping China’s Rise, Lee Jones and I elaborate on what we call the ‘Chinese-style regulatory state’. Rather than manage issues directly, top leaders often provide vague guidance aimed to give overarching direction for the wider party-state. Such pronouncements are typically short on implementation detail and sometimes include apparently contradictory aims. 

Xi’s recent article on common prosperity is a classic of the genre. For example, it calls for developing the state-owned and private sectors. It calls for expanding social security and the social provision of services, like education, but cautions against laziness and ‘welfarism’. 

Additionally, Xi’s article lists dozens of priority areas, grouped into six broad categories. This is another classic of the genre, where there are so many priority areas, in effect nothing is prioritised.

Rather than directly ordering subordinates, statements such as Xi’s provide the wider ‘envelope’ within which subordinates – subnational governments, state-owned enterprises, regulatory agencies – jostle for power and resources. They seek to influence official programs and interpret them in ways that support their interests. Rarely, at their peril, they may even ignore central agendas. 

The result is an incoherent, even contradictory, process of implementation, which often leads to outcomes that top leaders did not intend to achieve. 

Some implications of this process are becoming apparent in the case of common prosperity. Central efforts to drive down real estate prices via a new national property tax to reduce speculation have been resisted vigorously within the party and by local governments, and a plan to pilot the tax in 30 cities had to be scaled back. Instead, it appears the government may pivot towards public housing, which would benefit the SOE sector, the main beneficiary of many common prosperity reforms so far. 

In short, Xi’s speech and overall guidance from the top are important, but common prosperity’s implementation will emerge piecemeal from below.

Chubb argued that “Responding effectively to the challenges presented by the PRC’s overseas political activities starts with disaggregating the distinct risks they pose”. He disaggregated risks posed by the PRC’s overseas political activities into three categories: national security, civil liberties, and academic freedom.

We are pleased to re-publish an excerpt from Chapter 1 of the report, which analyses the problem with the term ‘Chinese influence’ and provides a deeper understanding of the concepts underpinning PRC overseas political activities.

He reminds us that:

In a liberal democracy, individuals are held to be sovereign actors, equal under the law. Upholding this principle requires that political activities — especially problematic ones that may warrant government intervention — are accurately attributed to the actors that perform them. Foreign states are not entitled to the same rights as individuals, such that attributing an individual’s actions to a foreign state may entail a diminution of that person’s rights. Equitability depends on this being done only according to clearly defined standards.

The Problem with ‘Chinese Influence’

In early December 2017, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced a major shakeup of the country’s national security laws, citing ‘disturbing reports about Chinese influence’ as an impetus. In the same press conference, Turnbull emphasised that the bills, which passed the parliament in 2018, were country-agnostic and that ‘interference’, rather than influence, designated the line between legitimate and illegitimate foreign political activity. However, it is ‘Chinese influence’ that has predominated in debates over China policy in Australia and around the English-speaking world.

But when applied as a shorthand to describe problematic or nefarious PRC political activities, the ‘Chinese influence’ projects two highly misleading conflations that carry negative consequences for both social cohesion and policymaking process.

The first is that it conflates Chinese with PRC or CCP. The party-state’s orthodoxy holds that ethnic Chinese people worldwide are its naturally loyal allies, but in reality most Chinese diaspora communities are highly diverse, including many migrants from around Southeast Asia and Greater China. Politically, overseas Chinese communities are highly diverse too, including migrants from Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as many of the CCP’s staunchest dissident opponents in exile from the mainland.

As Jinghua Qian points out, ‘it is people of Chinese descent who are doing most of the work of challenging Chinese authoritarianism’. Far from importing authoritarian values, Chinese diaspora communities have a long and deep affinity with liberal democracy. The PRC overseas political activities that have raised risks in liberal democracies are, in short, not Chinese in character.

The root of this definitional problem lies in the fact that the English-language term ‘Chinese’ simultaneously denotes an ethnicity, geography, culture and state. As a result, labelling problematic PRC overseas political activities as ‘Chinese’ projects an unwarranted association between Chinese ethnicity and the CCP’s political activities. This presents risks to social cohesion, civil liberties and national security.

A second conflation is between influence and attempts at exercising influence. As Evelyn Goh notes, influence refers to ‘modifying or otherwise having an impact upon another actor’s preferences or behavior in favor of one’s own aims’. Among the various issues discussed under the ‘Chinese influence’ label, the actual level of influence the PRC and its supporters have achieved ranges widely.

Beijing’s political red lines now powerfully shape the content of the Chinese-language news environment abroad. However, its attempts at altering the foreign and security policies of Anglophone liberal democracies have generally been abject failures, with the US, the UK and Australia all hardening their positions on key security and technology-related issues in recent years. London and Canberra’s military alliances with Washington have remained a matter of bipartisan consensus, despite strongly negative public views of then US President Donald Trump during his tenure.

Failing to distinguish influence from attempts to influence is not merely a semantic problem; it carries potential negative consequences for analysis and policy. Most directly, it impedes the identification of priority areas for response. As Charles Parton observed in 2019, ‘If the judgement is that certain activities are ineffective and are likely to remain so, the best policy is to ignore them’.

Finally, referring to PRC political activities as ‘Chinese influence’ inflates the party-state’s power and masks its limitations. This too is both inaccurate and counterproductive. As the familiar idea of ‘bandwagon’ effects suggests (and the related Chinese concept of ‘shi’ [势], meaning ‘propensity’ or ‘potential’), the more powerful or inexorable an actor appears the more futile resistance can seem to those living in its shadow.

PRC Overseas Political Activities

Addressing the challenges presented by PRC overseas political activities requires consideration of the concepts that underpin them. Within the CCP’s own policymaking systems, United Front work and Overseas Chinese work are among the most important, with specialised bureaucracies responsible for their implementation. However, an array of other concepts also inform PRC activities outside China’s borders, bringing involvement from other parts of the party-state.

United Front and Overseas Chinese Work

The immediate targets of the party’s United Front work are individuals and groups that the CCP considers ‘patriotic’ but not necessarily committed ideological allies. These include intellectuals, capitalists, religious and minority ethnic groups, and more recently professionals and overseas students.

In return for aligning with the CCP’s goals, these individuals and groups stand to gain prestige, connections and a degree of privileged access into the PRC political system. As Gerry Groot observes, the United Front system enables ‘corporatist co-optation … of otherwise potentially dangerous elements’, helping both to control and leverage such groups’ knowledge, skills and connections. The CCP's fundamental ambivalence towards its United Front targets is embodied in the privileged, but arms-length, ‘consultative’ role granted to members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the party-state’s peak United Front body.

Today, United Front work aims at cultivating ‘patriotic’ links with non-party elements in the service of PRC goals. As specified in Article 2 of the CCP Central Committee’s 2021 regulations on United Front work, the united front that United Front work seeks to create refers to

the Chinese Communist Party-led, worker-peasant-based, alliance including all socialist workers, socialist entrepreneurs, patriots who defend socialism, and patriots who defend the unity of the ancestral land and strive for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

Article 3 specifies the key tasks of United Front work to include ‘developing the broadest patriotic united front’ and supporting the realisation of ‘the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’ — implying nationalistic goals rather than ideological subversion, except in territories over which the PRC claims sovereignty. But Article 3 also calls for ‘the maintenance of social harmony and stability and safeguarding the state’s sovereignty, security and development interests’. The italicised language indicates that United Front work also entails the suppression of dissent against CCP rule over territories to which it lays claim, notably Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

United Front work has been central to the CCP’s promotion of cross-straits ties and opposition to independence in Taiwan, and for its management of Hong Kong’s affairs. Beyond this scope, United Front work involves promoting economic cooperation with the PRC, fomenting opposition to anti-CCP dissent, and building support for ‘reunification’ with Taiwan and other key PRC foreign policy positions — a function that has expanded in recent years.

An overlapping party-state concept is ‘Overseas Chinese’ work, or the management of the PRC’s relations with diaspora communities around the world. This too has domestic and international dimensions, being concerned with both the management of relations with ethnic Chinese who return to the PRC from abroad and with communities located in foreign countries.

Like its predecessors, the Qing Empire and the Republic of China (ROC), the PRC has sought, via its diaspora policy, to stifle dissent and neutralise political threats from overseas Chinese communities. However, it has also long focused on the goal of drawing in overseas Chinese capital and skills for the PRC’s economic development, especially since the reform era.

The PRC’s Overseas Chinese work bureaucracy was subsumed under the United Front Work Department in 2018, indicating the party-state leadership’s desire to increase coordination and control of both internal and external United Front work.

Other PRC Concepts

Besides United Front and Overseas Chinese work, numerous other party-state concepts mandate overseas political activities. These are typically implemented by better-known bureaucracies such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of State Security (MSS) and CCP propaganda units. These include:

• ‘State Security’ (国家安全): China’s MSS conducts overseas operations aimed at actively forestalling political threats, for instance by infiltrating and disrupting dissident organisations, and putting under surveillance key target groups such as overseas students. The MSS has a ‘Foreign Security and Reconnaissance Bureau’ (对外保防侦察局) responsible for such tasks. Communications technologies also now enable PRC police from the Ministry of Public Security (公安部) to directly intimidate overseas-based critics and ethnic minority groups, including by harassing their families in China.

• ‘Public Diplomacy’ (公共外交), a responsibility of the Foreign Ministry that, in contrast to the English-language concept of the same name, concerns communication with audiences both inside and outside China’s borders regarding foreign policy issues.

• ‘Foreign-Directed (External) Propaganda’ (对外宣传), a narrower concept referring to mass communications directed at non-Chinese audiences, usually in non-Chinese languages.

• ‘International Liaison Work’ (联络工作), which refers to the CCP’s outreach to foreign political organisations and individuals, particularly socialist and communist parties, but also other organisations and persons, particularly those considered fraternal.

• ‘Military Liaison Work’ (军事联络工作), the efforts of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to engage and influence high-level counterparts in the defence and security establishments of foreign polities, especially Taiwan, through its own Political Work Department’s Liaison Bureau.

Many of these activities overlap with each other, and with United Front and Overseas Chinese work. This list is not exhaustive, but it illustrates the significant variety of party-state overseas political activities that exist. Each of the activities discussed so far is carried out by the party-state, but the political behaviours that they induce — if successful — may not be. This makes attribution challenging.

Terminology and Attribution

In a liberal democracy, individuals are held to be sovereign actors, equal under the law. Upholding this principle requires that political activities — especially problematic ones that may warrant government intervention — are accurately attributed to the actors that perform them.

Foreign states are not entitled to the same rights as individuals, such that attributing an individual’s actions to a foreign state may entail a diminution of that person’s rights. Equitability depends on this being done only according to clearly defined standards. PRC overseas political activities may be carried out by the party-state (the CCP), or they may be spontaneous, self-directed or self-interested actions of its citizens or supporters legitimately exercising liberal-democratic freedoms.

A crucial distinction must therefore be drawn between (1) the CCP and its agents, and (2) PRC citizens and pro-PRC supporters. ‘Agents’ refers only to people acting under the direction or material support of another.

The distinction is crucial because foreign states and those acting on their behalf are not entitled to the same political rights that ordinary private individuals are in a liberal democracy. They may also be justifiably subjected to more stringent disclosure requirements in the exercise of those rights to which they are entitled.

To take an illustrative example, there is a fine yet fundamentally important distinction between the CCP’s United Front and Overseas Chinese work, performed by party members, cadres and agents, and the PRC-aligned words and actions of people within the target scope of United Front and Overseas Chinese work. The latter are the desired outcome of the former, but the two may or may not be causally connected. The CCP’s guiding philosophy of dialectical materialism collapses this distinction, determining the character of political actions by which side of an assumed contradiction between opposing ‘forces’ they are perceived to fall on.

Liberal democracies operate from the opposite starting assumption — that political actions result from the choices of sovereign individuals pursuing their own beliefs and interests. Even if individual choices are shaped by incentive structures created by the CCP, the resulting actions cannot be attributed to the party-state without justification — such as evidence of material support or direction. Absent such evidence, actions seen to support or align with the party-state or its political positions are best described as ‘pro-PRC’.

Conceptual Clarity

Concepts and terminology are crucial to the methodical and effective development of public policy, but many of the terms that now dominate global English-language discussion of PRC overseas political activities have been vague or inaccurate. In particular, the idea of a wide-ranging, ill-defined threat to national security from ‘Chinese influence’ appears to have taken hold first in Australia, and then more broadly in English-language policy discourse on China. But liberal democracies are not in fact facing a generalised threat from ‘Chinese influence’.

As the RUSI Whitehall Paper shows in detail, what they are grappling with is three complex but distinct sets of risks: to national security, to civil liberties and to academic freedom. The use of inaccurate and inflammatory catch-all terms to refer to these complex and varied issues raises further risks that range from misdiagnosed causes of problems to damaged social cohesion and even harm to national security.

Foreign food exporters have long benefitted from a perception among Chinese consumers that some domestic foodstuffs do not meet sufficient safety and quality standards. But in the wake of COVID-19, better securing the domestic supply chains of China’s critical resources — including food — has now become a top priority for Beijing. One region in China, not known for its agricultural output, has already begun a transformation into becoming the new ‘breadbasket of Asia’: the northeast. Success in this region could present a serious challenge to exporter countries like Australia if China is able to replace its food exports with increased local production.

From ‘revitalisation’ to ‘rejuvenation’

China’s northeast, formerly known as ‘Manchuria’, has always been synonymous with heavy industry and resource extraction. Comprising Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces, it is a region rich in strategic resources like iron ore, coal, oil, and surrounded by China’s northern neighbours: Russia, Japan, and North Korea. Since the 2000s, it has fallen behind other parts of the country perceived to be more embracing of Deng Xiaoping’s market reforms. 

‘Making Northeast China Great Again’ has been a major policy priority of China’s political leaders since a strategy to revitalise the region was introduced by then-President Hu Jintao in 2003. 

In its early years, the model for revitalisation of China’s ‘rust belt’ centred around encouraging industrial restructuring of the powerful state-owned enterprises and returning the region to its position as a manufacturing and industrial heartland of the Chinese economy. 

In the wake of the escalating trade war with the United States, Xi Jinping made headlines following his inspection tour of the northeast in 2018, by giving his support for efforts to improve China’s food security through creating greater “self-reliance” in Chinese agriculture. Before Japanese annexation in 1931, Manchuria had been known for its soybean exports and massive cattle ranches as the region’s rich black soil and sheer geographic size had been underutilised compared to other regions of China over centuries. 

Xi has incorporated revitalisation of the northeast into his wider ‘dream’ to rejuvenate the Chinese nation. It is no longer enough to restore the economy of the northeast to former Maoist glories — the northeast has always been a strategic asset, and as such it has always attracted the interest of rising powers. Xi Jinping is signalling a much wider transformation of the region, to help in “maintaining the strategic position of national defence security, food security, ecological security, energy security, and industrial security” of the Chinese nation. 

‘Self-reliance’ is back in fashion for China’s rust belt, when previously it had been specifically identified as one of the underlying problems with the insulated business culture of northeasterners. Xi, unlike his predecessors, has sided with powerful local economic interests who have always been much more sceptical about the benefits of greater marketisation and exposure of the northeast to the global economy. A part of China that had for decades felt forgotten is now taking centre stage.

The new ‘breadbasket of Asia’?

Development of the region’s agricultural capacities for the domestic market is likely to increase, as secure supply chains for food are affected by the trade war with the United States and the reshaping of the global economy post-COVID-19. 

As one example, the block on soybean imports from the United States in 2019 created an opportunity for soybean growers in the northeast to increase their market share. The Heilongjiang provincial department of agriculture and rural affairs has estimated that the soybean planting area in the province would increase by over 10 per cent in 2019.

For Australia, China has been the number one agricultural export market since 2010-11. In 2017-18, around 25 per cent, or $11.8 billion, of Australian total agricultural exports went to China, with wool, barley, and beef being the top three commodities worth a total of $5.7 billion. The northeast’s attempt to build a productive agricultural sector could be a serious challenge to Australia’s export position in that market, if successful. 

Putting aside implicit or explicit threats by Chinese ambassadors on trade bans and consumer boycotts, transforming northeast agriculture has been in the works for many years. Indeed, the will of China’s political leadership to make the supply chain of food more secure and solve the problems of the northeast regional economy has grown only stronger in recent years.

China’s issues with food security remain largely the same as they did before Xi’s 2018 inspection tour. Arable land is scarce, the regulatory regime for food safety is still not trusted by Chinese consumers, and the Australia ‘brand’ is still strong. However, the sheer size of the Chinese economy means even regional changes, like those in the northeast, could have significant global consequences. And with Xi Jinping’s maxim of: “the Chinese people’s rice bowls must be firmly in their hands at all times”, China may be more determined than ever to rely on itself for its own food security.

This article was published on China Story on May 12, 2020.

Some in the West are portraying China as an uncompromising existential enemy. Media and elite narratives on the “China threat” has major implications for public opinion and policy. By solely focusing on Beijing’s perceived malicious intentions, we risk simplifying China’s challenge and self-fulfilling a prophecy.

As John Lee illustrates below with the case of the future Internet architecture, “[t]he role of Chinese actors should be measured against political and technical realities” and that “excessive focus on Chinese political motivations can obscure [the complexity involved].”

- Yun and Adam

Adam: Yun just got a new kitten!!! If you want future appareances from General Meow 猫将军 please help me persuade her by indicating through sharing and liking this post.

John Lee, Senior Analyst Digital China, Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS).

In a world where interdependence is increasingly being ‘weaponized’, more attention is being paid to hidden levers of control embedded in transnational technological design and infrastructure. In an environment of growing suspicion towards China, the role of Chinese actors in this regard is increasingly scrutinised. But while the Chinese Party-state has political goals for technological development, these should not be the sole lens through which the actions of Chinese firms are perceived. The case of design for the future Internet illustrates how excessive focus on Chinese political motivations can obscure many other interests and factors involved.

Exporting digital authoritarianism?

Recent reporting by the Financial Times (FT) claims that China is on a “mission to reinvent the Internet”. It concerns a proposal made last September to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for a ‘New IP’ to replace the current Internet Protocol (IP), which determines how data is transmitted across the Internet. Chinese interests allegedly plan to “push through the standardization of New IP” at the ITU conference this November.  

Citing inadequacy of the Internet’s current architecture to meet future requirements, the Huawei-led proposal advocates a ‘top-down design’ to replace the extant modular architecture. The FT paints a picture of closed-door efforts by China Inc. to “embed a system of centralised rule enforcement” through the state-dominated ITU, giving telecoms operators, and hence governments, control over access to the Internet at the expense of civil society. The result would be to “bake authoritarianism into the architecture underpinning the web”.

This claim may have intuitive appeal, but is a stretch from the documents obtained by the FT (which were in fact already publicly available online). The September proposal only suggests principles to guide research over the ITU’s next study period (2021-2024), reflecting arguments made in Huawei documents (also publicly available) going back at least two years. Another document given to the FT — which is not an ITU submission, but a paper for an April 2020 professional conference — provides some technical details, but nothing resembling the centralised “shut up command” allegedly described by Huawei at the September meeting. Collectively, these documents are a slim basis on which to finalise a lengthy ITU standard by November.

The most tangible concern raised about ‘New IP’  is that “internet service providers would have control and oversight of every device connected to the network”. This reflects similar concerns raised around IPv6, which was agreed a quarter-century ago as the Internet’s next-generation standard, concerning the increased potential for surveillance and control. Yet governments from Japan to the European Union are transitioning to IPv6, for the good reason that IP addresses available under the previous standard are running out. China began work on an IPv6-based ‘Next Generation Internet’ in 2003, showcasing applications at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Internet standards are always political

With IPv6, privacy concerns were partially addressed by removing physical identifiers from the standard’s specification. Likewise, the potential for ‘New IP’ to enable state authoritarianism seems far from ‘baked in’, and it should not be viewed with suspicion simply because it comes from Chinese actors. There is an arguable case for Huawei’s claim that “IP technology has not kept up with the needs of the industrial Internet.” By comparison, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute has just launched its own process to develop non-IP networking technology better suited to the Internet of Things.

Internet standardisation has always been political. Selection of IPv6 reflected a contest for control between a hierarchical process dominated by governments (the ISO) and an engineering community dominated by American ICT firms (the IETF). In the 1990s, telecoms operators used the ITU to promote a competing networking standard to IP, the successful technology being ultimately decided by market forces.  

Likewise, the debates around ‘New IP’ are less likely to reflect a novel Chinese master plan for exporting digital authoritarianism than the long-entrenched institutional politics of Internet design.  As one response put it, “evolution [of the Internet] should take place from within the organisations that invented the Internet” and “build upon existing structures”, whereas ‘New IP’ “represent[s] a departure from the Internet’s fundamental values”.  The issue with the proposal is less that it comes from Chinese actors than that it threatens orthodox principles of Internet design such as interconnectivity and bottom-up ‘permissionless innovation’, raising the prospect of a greater role for hierarchical, proprietary development and state-dominated institutions.   

China and technical standards

The FT’s reporting raises questions about how we view increasing involvement by Chinese actors in global technical standard-setting. These processes do reflect competing interests, but they do not “magically embed better or worse values” in technology: the politics that technology enables are expressed through social environments involving many actors, interests and relations of power. We need to examine this context before we can conclude that ‘New IP’ represents a Chinese conspiracy to enact authoritarianism worldwide through the Internet.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has limited incentives to redesign the global Internet from the bottom up simply to enable political repression. Cyberspace inside China has already been largely secured against domestic challenges, through a combination of regulatory and technical measures that leave no place to hide. At the international level, Chinese actors have already made attempts at changing the global domain name system to allow a nationally configured Chinese Internet, enhancing authorities’ control over which websites can be accessed within China’s borders.

Yet China’s networks remain connected and compatible with the global Internet. Xi Jinping himself has made clear that China’s development requires a balance to be struck in cyberspace between control and openness. Given the massive benefits China reaps from the global interoperability of networks that characterises the current Internet, the CCP has a strong interest in not fragmenting it, as critics have claimed that ‘New IP’ threatens to do.

‘Reinventing the Internet’ would require influencing the whole array of institutions and interests that shape this global technological artifact. While this proposal by Chinese actors might move the distribution of Internet design and governance in new directions, this implies neither a monopoly of Chinese interests, nor the absence of technical justifications that have nothing to do with the CCP’s ideology. ‘New IP’ has after all emerged in an environment where increasingly, “traditional notions of Internet freedom are disconnected from actual technical, political and market conditions”. 

What are China’s interests here

Seen in this context, the goals behind ‘New IP’ are more likely to be what the documents say they are: enabling new economy applications that China, and the CCP, has hitched its future to.  In a world where the Internet is ‘in’ everything, leadership of Internet design is a path for Chinese firms to capture first-mover commercial advantages. Unsurprisingly, criticism of ‘New IP’ by the IETF and American business lobbies has focused on how it would promote monolithic (rather than heterogeneous) development of the Internet, and thereby “certain technical leadership ambitions.”

Beijing does in fact have well-publicised political goals for transforming global Internet governance, in line with a vision of national ‘Internet sovereignty’ that is both state-centric and adaptable to evolving conditions. But this doesn’t mean that every technical proposal from Chinese firms is a Trojan horse for authoritarianism. The role of Chinese actors should be measured against political and technical realities, not against a fetishized ‘free and open Internet’ ideal that many would argue has already failed.

As David points out below “[t]he episode only highlights once again the deep contradictions that plague Australia’s China policy.”

This article was first published on the new China Story blog of which Neican is now a part.

- Yun and Adam

David Brophy, senior lecturer in modern Chinese history, University of Sydney.

Last Friday, Ambassador Cheng Jingye’s musings that people in China might reduce their consumption of Australian beef and wine exports have set off an intense, ongoing stoush between his embassy and Australian officials. But Cheng is only telling us what should already be obvious: the COVID blame game is stoking animosity towards China and its people. The fierce outrage that pundits are now directing the ambassador’s way is doubly curious when you consider that many of the same voices have long been arguing to reduce Australia’s trade dependency on China. The episode only highlights once again the deep contradictions that plague Australia’s China policy.

An outbreak of COVID nationalism

COVID-19 has triggered a wave of nationalism and finger-pointing towards China. As the virus hit, the Foreign Investment Review Board set its screening threshold to $0, with much anxious talk of Chinese companies swooping in to buy up the country. Chinese Australians have been depicted as predators for exporting masks and Personal Protective Equipment to Wuhan at the height of its crisis, and as subversive influence-peddlers when they imported the same items back from China to Australia. In Andrew Hastie’s view, ties to China make us vulnerable to “supply-chain warfare.”

Shock jocks and the tabloid press have had a field day, with Sky News hosts endorsing wild conspiracy theories of COVID-19 as a deliberate Chinese Communist Party plot. “Making China pay for breaking the world” was how 60 Minutes billed one of its recent episodes on the virus. The Daily Telegraph, predictably enough, has gone into overdrive: Tim Blair’s cracks at bat-eating Chinese; a sympathetic profile of a man who brandished a whip while ranting at Chinese bystanders for knowingly spreading the virus; this week’s “BATMAN” front page featuring the mugshot of a respected Chinese virologist. The list could go on. 

White Australia might imagine it can binge on bat jokes and endless media images associating Chinese people with a dangerous virus, all without any consequences. Australians of Asian appearance know otherwise, of course, with an upsurge of racist attacks in the last two months. Asian Australians have had to take note of the alarming rise in anti-Chinese sentiment. Do we think that people in China won’t?

Chinese international students are now among the most vulnerable in this climate, with racism rubbing salt into the wounds of lost part-time jobs and disruption to studies. The Prime Minister, though, delivered a blunt message to these visitors. “It’s time to go home,” he told them, cutting them off from Jobkeeper benefits that might keep them in work. 

What did the Chinese ambassador make of all this? He said, reasonably enough, that the climate in Australia could eventually cause the parents of Chinese students to ask “whether [Australia], which they found is not so friendly, even hostile, is the best place to send their kids to.” Was this a veiled threat, or simply a statement of the obvious?

Probing Morrison’s strategy

To be sure, much of Cheng’s Friday interview with Andrew Tillett dwelt on Scott Morrison’s call for an international investigation into the origins of COVID-19. But China doesn’t have to “coerce” Australia to scotch those plans. All that requires is a simple “no,” which was always going to be Beijing’s response to this proposal. 

Even at the best of times, it’s hard to see China allowing outsiders to snoop around its labs. Morrison only made things worse by invoking the example of “UN weapons inspectors.” Apart from the provocative analogy here between COVID-19 and WMDs, let’s think about what else this reference implies. UN resolutions required that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, for example, give inspectors “immediate and unconditional access to any weapons sites and facilities.”

Can anyone imagine the United States, in the wake of the 2007-8 global financial crisis, allowing foreign forensic accountants “immediate and unconditional access” to its financial institutions and their balance books?

As many have already said, political grandstanding will only get in the way of the scientific collaboration that’s needed to trace the origins and transmission paths of the COVID-19 virus. So far, the chief value for Morrison in floating his proposal for an international investigation has been to have China shoot it down. That then permits the next rhetorical move in the game of tit-for-tat, which Peter Hartcher provided on Tuesday. In his view, China’s opposition to Morrison’s scheme “suggests the Beijing regime has a lot to hide.” The mystery deepens.

Today’s COVID-19 conspiracy theories are too outlandish for most Australian politicians and commentators to embrace openly, the way Republican right-wingers like Tom Cotton have in the United States. But at the same time, in focusing people’s COVID-induced frustrations and anxieties on China, they’re far too politically valuable to completely hose down. A nice climate of uncertainty serves just as well, in which they can continue to fester and influence public opinion on China. That where we’ve now ended up.

Newscorp’s BATMAN “exclusive” on Tuesday is a good example of the propagandistic logic at work here. We’re told that the Five Eyes intelligence agencies are on the trail of two scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology who once did stints at CSIRO. Of course, “[t]he Daily Telegraph does not suggest the two scientists are responsible for the outbreak or spread of COVID-19.” But still, the spooks must be onto something, right?

No cure in sight

For Australia’s foreign policy establishment, the best of all possible worlds is one in which Australia supports the United States to retain its dominant position in East Asia, while losing as little skin off its nose as possible in trade with China. 

In the first weeks of 2020, voices from the defence and intelligence world greeted the arrival of COVID-19 with an unmistakable sense of opportunity. That’s since been tempered, though, by the spectacle of American dysfunction and failure. In this situation, the instinctive response of Australian politicians and pundits has been to step up and ensure that the spotlight of global recriminations for COVID-19 remains on Beijing. The accompanying rise in anti-Chinese racism will be deplored by all, but it’s an unavoidable by-product of the course we’re on. 

This dynamic explains the desire to fan the dying embers of Morrison’s inquiry plan into a diplomatic conflagration. But the injured response to Cheng Jingye’s mild interview tells us something else as well. For all the tough talk about sucking up the economic consequences of confronting China, Australia’s China hawks have yet to really come to terms with the implications of the policies they’re advocating. 

For years now, commentators have been warning us of Australia’s dependency on China. “Australia is far too reliant on an unreliable nation,” as Chris Uhlmann put it recently. They’ve also told us that Australia will have to tough out the likely economic impact of standing up to Beijing: “If we value our freedom, Australians will need to remain resolute and take the pain,” Clive Hamilton wrote in Silent Invasion. A reduction in trade with China has been widely discussed as a predictable, indeed desirable, outcome of Australia’s policies. You’d think, then, that we’d be comfortable enough with what Cheng Jingye was saying. But no, we’re crying foul, and denouncing him as a bully and an extortionist.

Australia’s China policy is a mass of contradictions, but one thing remains constant: our ability to position ourselves as the victim. Anyone who was serious about diversifying Australia’s exports, or “decoupling” from China, would be buying Ambassador Cheng a beer. To kick up such a stink at the thought that Chinese mums and dads might take their business elsewhere really only shows how reliant Australia still is on China.

COVID-19 has resulted in racist abuse and unsubstantiated claims of hoarding against Chinese and other Asian-Australians. Narratives about disease and competition for resources echo themes in anti-Chinese campaigns during the 19th century that shaped Australia’s identity. The Australian government has failed to adopt policies to educate the community about casual racism, making these deeply rooted anxieties far harder to combat. Australia’s comparatively large Chinese diaspora means a sizable minority is affected.

COVID-19 and racism in Australia

The global COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in reports of growing racism towards individuals of Chinese and East Asian descent around the world. Australia has not been exempt from this trend with numerous reports of racist abuse in public spaces, refusals to be treated by medical staff of “Asian” appearance, and even violent attacks. 

More recently, with panic buying in supermarkets, misinformation has spread via conservative talkback radio and social media, including through fake accounts, that:

• Bus loads of “Asians” have emptied regional supermarkets of groceries to sell them overseas; 

• Chinese-Australians have been ordered to obtain medical supplies by the Chinese government; and

• A business in Melbourne was hoarding food to send to China (a claim shared on Facebook over 95,000 times).

Previous media stories on the organised dàigòu (代购) — the purchasing of goods such as baby formula to sell to consumers in China — have added to the public’s propensity to believe in these rumours.

The centre-right Commonwealth Government has responded to these rumours by announcing it would take action to restrict the purchasing of goods such as face masks, hand sanitiser and medicines to be re-sold or exported in bulk with a penalty of up to five years’ imprisonment.

While there is evidence that companies with China-based owners were organising donations of medical supplies to China in January and February, contrary to claims of secrecy, these activities were publicised at the time. Unfortunately, it has become conflated with general shortages in supermarkets that are due to supply chain distribution issues.

Recent reportage has only fed into existing racialised anxieties towards any individuals of Chinese or East Asian appearance doing grocery shopping. Recent polling shows three-quarters of Australians believe supermarkets are being emptied by “outsiders” and that hoarding to onsell is occurring.

Parallels with 19th century anti-Chinese sentiment

The common themes in racism related to COVID-19 are not new. Parallel narratives about disease and competition for resources were prominent in 19th century anti-Chinese campaigns. For example, comments about the eating and hygiene habits of Chinese people mirror 19th century anti-Chinese rhetoric focused on the ‘strange ways’ identified with the Chinese, citing them as the source of various diseases, and representing them as unclean, sick, contagious ‘aliens’.

These narratives were by no means unique to Australia — they were also common in the United States during the 19th century. But unlike the United States, anti-Chinese rhetoric was formative to the concept of Australian identity. John Fitzgerald’s Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia noted a clash of cultures was emphasised to justify exclusion, with the construction of a Chinese “Other” against stereotypical Australian values such as equality, mateship and the fair go. He explained the caricature was that the Chinese were hierarchical and servile, prioritising profit over friendship, and preferring ‘Oriental’ despotism to Australian democracy.

Australia’s problem with casual racism

While Australian political leaders have spoken out against racism, some commentators have retorted that “It’s fear not racism”. This highlights a continuation of casual racism, that is, conduct involving negative stereotypes or prejudices about people on the basis of race, colour or ethnicity. To these commentators, racism stems from the actions of “bad” individuals with malice or hatred, rather than being caused by a combination of prejudice and institutional power. This misunderstanding makes racism harder to combat. Former Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane has noted this problem, suggesting that calling out racism is often seen to be worse than the act itself. 

The Chinese diaspora in Australia

By global standards, Australia has a large China diaspora, at 5.6% of its total population. Proportionally, Australia’s Chinese diaspora is amongst the largest in the Western world. The sizeable and growing minority of Australians of Chinese descent, as well as other Asian-Australians who are often mistaken for being Chinese, are becoming collateral damage during this pandemic, reflecting the historical caricature and casual racism of many (white) Australians. 

Given concerns that the Chinese government has sought to position itself as a global protector of the Chinese diaspora, and to seek its loyalty, the Australian government should not downplay worries about growing discrimination and suspicion towards Chinese-Australian communities. Instead, this problem should be taken seriously. 

Policy recommendations

The recommendations below aim to mitigate against the COVID-19 related racism and xenophobia we are currently seeing in Australia.

1. The Commonwealth Government should fund a national anti-racism campaign and education program to improve community understanding about what is racism and discrimination.

2. The Australian Press Council, working with the Australian Human Rights Commission, should develop advisory guidelines for reporting on China and Chinese-Australian communities to assist newsrooms and media professionals understand what might be considered Sinophobic, and the reasons why.

3. Social media platforms should be required to make it easier to report and remove trending content confirmed as false that may encourage COVID-19 related racism. Individuals who share removed content should be directly informed by platforms that the content was verified as false.

4. Online reporting tools should be used by civil society groups to track instances of racism and discrimination against Chinese-Australians (and indeed all ethnic minority groups), provide support to victims, track trends, develop resources and inform advocacy.

Osmond Chiu is a Research Fellow at the Per Capita think tank. He has worked in policy roles for over a decade and written for the Guardian Australia, Sydney Morning Herald and South China Morning Post. He tweets @redrabbleroz

The Swedish Defence Research Agency (Totalförsvarets forskningsinstitut, FOI) recently published the first comprehensive audit of Chinese corporate acquisitions in Sweden. The list of identified acquisitions is dominated by industrial, electronics, biotech and automotive companies. In many cases, their operations match the key technology areas highlighted in China’s plans for industrial development. By and large, policymakers and pundits have been unaware of the deals identified in FOI’s report, which now features prominently in an intensifying debate about the Chinese party-state’s activities in Sweden.   

Before 2018 it was all about Volvo. In 2010, China’s Geely Holding had snapped up the Swedish carmaker from its U.S. owner, Ford Motor Co., in a deal valued at US$1.8 billion. As a result of this acquisition, Sweden appeared on the top four list of recipients for Chinese investments in Europe. At the time of the deal, some feared that it would lead to job cuts by Geely moving some of Volvo’s production to China. Geely’s ownership of Volvo, however, proved to be quite a success story, not least due to Geely’s favourable position in its Chinese home market, and there was no evidence of any negative effects on employment. 

In 2010, perceptions of China in Sweden were generally influenced by the potential opportunities for Swedish businesses in the large Chinese market. Of course, there were also concerns with China, not least due to its human rights abuses, but Swedish interests did not seem to be directly challenged. The 2018 Global Attitudes Survey compiled by the Pew Research Center showed that the Swedes held a more favourable view of China than the public opinion in Italy, Germany or France. 

Then, in the summer of 2018, all of this took a new turn.

Tantrum diplomacy

From June 2018, the Chinese embassy in Stockholm began issuing written statements in which it expressed its indignation over how Swedish media covered China, including the 2015 abduction and subsequent detention of the Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai. The critical statements have since been issued on average almost once a week. 

In September 2018, the Chinese embassy made headlines when it demanded an apology from Sweden’s police for the eviction of a Chinese family from the lobby of a hostel in Stockholm. Only days later, the embassy requested yet another apology — from Sweden’s national public television broadcaster, SVT. A satire show on SVT had included a skit which mocked the incident at the hostel while poking fun at Swedish casual racial stereotyping of ethnic Chinese. The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Geng Shuang described it as a “gross insult to and vicious attack on China and the Chinese people.”

While the embassy’s intent may have been to inspire a more positive coverage of China, the effect has been the opposite. Critical reporting of China — including Hong Kong protests, Huawei and the repression of Uighurs — has increased rather than decreased. Public perceptions of China have deteriorated sharply. According to Pew’s most recent poll of global attitudes released this September, 70 per cent of Swedes now hold unfavourable views of China. Out of 34 countries in the survey, only Japan holds a more negative opinion of China. Two of the eight parties in Parliament have called for the Chinese ambassador to be declared persona non grata and expelled from Sweden.

It is in this context that we should understand the reactions to FOI’s effort to identify Chinese corporate acquisitions in Sweden.

The survey

In spring 2019, the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs commissioned FOI to identify and compile a list of companies that had been acquired by Chinese investors. My team set up a database which covered the ownership of over 600,000 companies in Sweden, based on data from the Swedish Company Registration Office (Bolagsverket) on beneficial owners. We found that more than 1,000 of the companies had reported to Bolagsverket that they were owned by Chinese citizens. 

The vast majority of these businesses appeared to have been incorporated in Sweden by entrepreneurs from China, rather than having been acquired by Chinese investors. Having excluded those, as well as the many subsidiaries of Volvo and other companies, we were able to ascertain that the Chinese ownership of roughly 30 firms was the result of acquisitions. By using other open sources, we eventually were able to identify a total of 51 majority acquisitions of Swedish parent companies and another 14 minority stakes.

The study, published on 27 November 2019, provides a snapshot of deals that FOI has been able to identify. It shows that the acquired companies mainly operate in four sectors: industrial machinery, biotech, electronics and automotive, and that some develop high-tech products such as microprocessors and satellite navigation systems. In 30 of the cases, we were able to note a correlation between the acquired technologies and those highlighted in Made in China 2025 industrial development strategy, launched by China’s State Council in 2015.   

A new debate on Chinese ownership

The report’s conclusions should not come as a surprise: China has been quite transparent about its intentions to acquire foreign technology. However, neither officials nor journalists had previously paid attention to the activities of Chinese investors in Sweden. Consequently, the release of FOI’s study triggered a debate on potential issues with Chinese ownership in Sweden, which included comments in the parliament by the Minister for Home Affairs, the Swedish Security Service, and the leader of Sweden’s main opposition party, as well as editorials in several leading newspapers. In response to the study, Sweden’s main business daily Dagens Industri concluded that “something has to be done in order to protect democracies’ control over their own economies.”

If Geely’s acquisition of Volvo Cars had been proposed today, it is likely that other concerns would have been raised, in addition to those regarding employment. For example, some might ask how Geely was able to raise the capital to fund the acquisition, and the actual ownership of Geely would also likely be thoroughly scrutinised.

Rumours and conspiracy theories associated with the HK protests are rife in part because there is a collective information overload. OSINT can fill the niche role of fact-based inquiry and analysis, and establish “parameters of truth” around confusing events.

Rumours associated with the continuing protests in HK are rife. On the pro-government side, there have long been conspiracy theories about “hostile foreign forces black hands” leading this entire movement from Day 1. Many white HK residents who were photographed in and around these protests were labelled CIA agents. One of the strangest pro-government conspiracy theories, proffered by a member of Lam’s Executive Cabinet, was that teenage girls were offering free sex to frontline protesters.

On the ‘yellow’ pro-protest side, of which I am a member, I at first believed that our side was doing a decent job of self-policing and fact-checking. One of the ways we distinguished ourselves from the government and the pro-government side was that ‘we’ were truthful and honest, ‘they’ were not. But things took a post-fact conspiratorial turn after the 8/31 Prince Edward Incident, wherein many people began believing that someone(s) died in the attack the same night.

Getting past the Mass Transit Rail (MTR) turnstiles before 8/31 was more-or-less a ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card for protesters because that’s where police would end a pursuit. Simply getting inside an MTR station had been sufficient a few weeks earlier because it was seen by both sides as ‘neutral ground.’ On the night of 8/31, police crossed that physical and psychological barrier for the first time at the Prince Edward MTR Station. What followed was some of the most horrific incidents of police brutality. They beat a young man until he became unconscious and started foaming at the mouth. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, the police slammed the gates shut and closed the MTR station. No injured casualties were brought to the ambulances waiting outside.

MTR refuses to release the CCTV footage of that night. The Fire Services Department changed the number of victims (and their condition) several times in the next few hours. We still don’t know the name of that beaten boy or his current medical condition. There are no clear answers from the official statements. 

In the following days, two death notices were sent out at two schools saying that students had committed suicide (a routine practice to notify teachers and parents). This set off a new and ever-expanding conspiracy theory that the police killed someone(s) that night and covered it up with ‘fake’ suicides. Social media and Telegram channels have been awash in gore pictures as almost every suicide is now deemed ‘suspicious.’ There are a substantial number of people who believe dozens, maybe hundreds, have been murdered by police and covered-up as suicide.

Why rumours and conspiracy theories?

The broader context is that the 2019 Hong Kong protests are the most live-streamed protest movement in history. There’s a collective information overload, and even journalists and activists can’t keep track of all the different events and incidents over the past seven months. I see a lot of errors made in good faith: people getting sequences wrong, misdated or timed pictures and video clips, etc. It’s not easy to piece together complex events, and people jump to conclusions that make the most narrative sense to them. There’s also a profound distrust of government statements and accounts.

It’s not difficult to understand how the suicide cover-up theory takes root. We see how police treat people on the streets with cameras rolling — it often only stops when they realise they’re being filmed. I’ve heard third-hand accounts of young men and women sexually assaulted — even raped — while in detention. Many detainees are getting injuries that doctors describe as post-arrest beatings or torture. Even for a natural sceptic like me, it’s difficult to believe there’s only been one confirmed protester death so far when they’re acting like this on the streets. What would they do if they accidentally killed someone?

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) HK

OSINT HK is filling what I identified as a niche role of fact-based inquiry and analysis. It requires a different set of skills and approaches than traditional journalism. We can spend time on incidents even after they’re out of the news cycle. Often, we’re trying to establish what I call “parameters of truth” around confusing events by establishing what likely did or didn’t happen. Sometimes we can rule out or confirm scenarios, but more often we’re saying what we think most likely happened. We’ve written reports on Alex Chow’s fall and the November 18 stampedes in Kowloon. We debunked widespread misunderstandings in each case. Among the other things we’ve investigated: 

• the tear-gassing of a peaceful march on December 1 and have found that police did not raise a black warning flag before gassing;

• the circumstances of the death of a 70-year-old man, Luo Changqing, who died when hit with a brick in November; and

• a police attack on journalists in Mong Kok. Our synced footage disproves the official HKPF statement.

As the protests enter a more ‘quiet’ period, we intend to spend more time looking at thematic issues. For instance, we’ve seen a lot of evidence that police are preventing EMTs and ambulances from reaching people with severe injuries. We want to look up local and international guidelines and look for more examples to establish a clear pattern.

Us

We have 40 volunteers in our Working Group and another 80 in a larger chat group. By working in private encrypted channels on Telegram, people are able to participate anonymously — which is a ‘must’ for a lot of people in 2019. This kind of work appeals to people who like ‘getting to the bottom of things’ by establishing fact patterns and searching for evidence. Some members of our group have taught themselves how to use professional video editing software to sync footage reels together. 

Elsewhere, there’s a healthy competitive spirit to produce high-quality work or be the first to discover new footage or accounts. Our limited crowdsourced model has accumulated a massive amount of shared expertise and knowledge in a short period. There’s about a dozen of us that can approximately timestamp and geolocate any new footage out of either the Yau Ma Stampede or Alex Chow’s fall in Tseung Kwan O almost instantly. That kind of collective ‘knowledge on tap’ can feel very empowering. 

The flexibility and scalability of the model are also very appealing. For example, a group of about ten people wanted to monitor reports of District Council election irregularities. We set up a separate OSINT HK channel for them to work with, and they borrowed the methods and tools they see us use in the primary Working Group. About 70% of the work we produce isn’t via an editorial decision, but rather because the work has caught the interest of a few members. I’ll usually post anything high quality they produce in terms of findings, videos, or graphics under the OSINT HK name.

With escalating state/party-sponsored disinformation campaigns from China, the lack of media regulation is opening the West to unprecedented attack. The official investigations on China Global Television Network (CGTN) by the UK’s TV regulator Ofcom demonstrates what the West can do in response to CCP’s disinformation campaign. This includes developing a new Magnitsky Act sanctions scheme against individual perpetrators and placing Chinese party media operations under greater scrutiny.

China’s media has undergone a massive re-organisation under Xi Jinping. In 2018, CCTV, the world’s largest media organisation, was transferred from State to direct CCP control. At the same time, the CCP has successfully co-opted hundreds of independent Chinese language media in the West. There is an urgent need to counter CCP’s disinformation campaigns, and the UK is well-placed to do so due to its powerful TV regulator Ofcom. 

Last month in a BBC interview, UK Consulate worker Simon Cheng spoke about his experiences after his mysterious disappearance. A day later, CGTN responded with a broadcast, which was in multiple severe violations of the UK’s Broadcasting code. As a result, Simon, with the help of Safeguard Defenders, filed an official complaint with Ofcom against CGTN.

During his incommunicado detention, Simon was forced to record six ‘confession’ on video, after bouts of torture and solitary confinement. These ‘forced TV confessions’ has become a mainstay over the last years. Victims, often rights defenders, those involved in politically sensitive cases, or foreigners, are paraded on Chinese media confessing to various crimes, long before their trials.  

The practice of ‘forced confession’ is not merely an internal matter in China. Such confessions are routinely broadcast by CGTN across the world. The victims are often foreigners or the crimes alleged related to international affairs. These broadcasts are used as direct foreign policy statements by the CCP. An example is the TV confessions by Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, used to attack Sweden’s right to provide assistance to its citizen.

A year ago, a British citizen and former journalist Peter Humphrey was forced to make several TV confessions while being denied cancer treatment and awaiting trial. He filed a similar complaint to Ofcom, which has led to a currently ongoing official investigation. Since then, another such investigation has been launched, on the broadcasts of Swedish citizen Gui Minhai. Ofcom has also launched investigations for CGTN’s biased reporting on the Hong Kong protests. 

Ofcom found evidence that CGTN had violated the Broadcasting Code in a severe manner, which led to official investigations on matters related to Mr Humphrey and Mr Gui. The UK regulator has taken important steps in launching these investigations into CGTN, and the verdict will have far-reaching consequences. The UK is the base for CGTN’s expansion plans across Europe and setup of a new CGTN Europe division. A guilty verdict will force CGTN to stop these broadcasts as well as to pay greater attention to the UK’s regulations overall. 

UK’s requirement for TV broadcaster licensing sets it apart from many other countries, where such requirements are either missing or very limited. Likewise, the UK’s Broadcasting code is unique in its detail. There are clearly spelled out and easy to use complaints mechanisms. This is not the case in most other western countries. 

At the same time, Safeguard Defenders are filing CCTV personnel directly involved in extracting, recording and producing such ‘confessions’ for Magnitsky sanctions, a law aimed at going after individuals who perpetrate gross human rights violations. 

Through Ofcom, the UK can continue to demonstrate the way forward by ensuring consistent enforcement of existing rules. The UK also needs to ensure that once its Magnitsky Act procedures are finalised, it gives civil society a channel for filing such recommendations for sanctions, and move towards regular enforcement.

However, the UK could do more. It can place greater scrutiny of staff hires by Chinese media organisations in the UK, to prevent these entities from hosting Ministry of State Security agents. It can also enact legislation similar to the U.S.’s Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), to force disclosure of staff and financing by those entities that are deemed to be operating in the UK under control of a foreign government.

Australian universities are increasing their economic reliance on China. There are risks that academics self-censor to maintain visa access and universities censor sensitive research to keep the rivers of gold flowing. However, academic discussion on issues such as the Xinjiang re-education camps, CCP influence, and the Hong Kong protests is flourishing in Australian universities. Yet this does not mean that it is inevitable that this space will be protected into the future. Universities, funding bodies and governments must ensure that China-topics are not off-limits in Australian universities.

Academic debate and research is healthy in Australia

The CCP is hostile to academic freedom and seeks to restrict global research into topics such as democracy, human rights and the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations. In the controversial book Silent Invasion, Clive Hamilton claims that Beijing is successful in pressuring Australian universities and academics to censor and avoid sensitive research topics. This is to stay on the right side of the CCP. However, this is not the reality. Research and teaching continues in Australian universities on a wide range of sensitive issues.

Australian universities are contributing to global discussions on issues that the CCP would like silenced. Brief examples include:

• At Latrobe University, James Leibold is leading an investigation into CCP policy, ethnic affairs and repression in Tibet and Xinjiang;

• At Sydney University, David Brophy is continuing research into the social and political history of the Xinjiang region;

• At Monash University, Kevin Carrico is undertaking research into nationalism and the Hong Kong independence movement;

• At the University of Technology Sydney, Feng Chongyi is undertaking research into Chinese political thought and united front work.

Creeping censorship issues globally

There are no guarantees that the current research on China will continue into the future. Globally, there are concerns that censorship and self-censorship is creeping into China studies research.

James Leibold encountered research problems when two European academics no longer wanted to publish journal articles on the Belt and Road Initiative’s impact on ethnic minorities in China. They feared that they would lose visa access to China.

Junior academics and those without secure working conditions may be avoiding sensitive topics such as human rights topics. Two global studies found that supervisors and funding bodies have discouraged post-graduate students and junior faculty from undertaking sensitive research topics because they may be blacklisted or lose access to Chinese markets.

Policy recommendations

The following recommendations aim to ensure that Australian universities do not engage in censorship and undertake free and open research.

1. Academics and universities should create a list of priority topics in China studies across research disciplines that require designated funding.

   The Australian Research Council, government grants and university funding must support sensitive research topics that the CCP is seeking to silence. These topics may include the re-education camps in Xinjiang, human rights and the Hong Kong protests. This is important as economic reliance grows on China and pressure will come to avoid topics that may offend the CCP.

2. Australian universities should be willing to sponsor and host dissident scholars and academics who are no longer able to work and/or are in danger in China and Hong Kong and other authoritarian states.

   Currently, only six Australian universities are members of the global Scholars at Risk network. This member network invites threatened scholars to work and visit their institutions. More Australian universities should become members and signal their willingness to play a stronger role in assisting scholars under threat. Australian governments should provide financial assistance and incentives to universities who join and host these scholars.

3. Australian universities should promote reforms to global university rankings to include protections for academic freedom.

   Chinese and other authoritarian states’ universities are rising in global academic rankings. However, these rankings ignore the restrictions on academic freedom. The Australian Government, universities and universities bodies, such as the Group of Eight, should develop guidelines on reformed global university rankings that include academic freedom. It would incentivize Australian universities to protect academic freedom.

4. Universities ensure that speakers on sensitive topics are able to present without being heckled and intimidated.

   Events need to provide clear warnings to attendees that inappropriate heckling and comments that disrupts the speaker will result in the individuals being removed from events. Universities must investigate any student or staff who harasses speakers during and/or after the event and be willing to punish them. However, hosts need to avoid shutting down comments and questions that may be critical but add to the debate. Universities globally and in Australia should share information on how to manage lectures and classrooms on sensitive topics that may encounter heckling from pro-CCP individuals.

5. Hiring and promotion policies need to recognise that CCP entry restrictions affect research output.

   Scholars’ careers should not be hindered if they are blacklisted and unable to receive visas to undertake fieldwork and collaboration in China. Academics should not be sanctioned if they do not undertake sufficient research if there is proof they have been denied access to China to undertake fieldwork or to research participants. Extensions for research should be given if academics need to reach a certain amount of points/credits within a certain timeframe. Quality not quantity should be the criteria for employment.

China Neican: concise, timely, and policy-focused analyses.