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Chinese Communist Party Influence in Australian Universities

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Chinese Communist Party Influence in Australian Universities Chinese Communist Party Influence in Australian Universities A lecture at the University of Queensland Brisbane, 28 August 2019 Clive Hamilton1 Recent events at the University of Queensland have brought into sharp relief the Chinese Communist Party’s influence activities on Australian campuses. Tensions arising from the mass protests in Hong Kong have prompted democracy activists in the West to speak out, but they have also inflamed nationalist sentiment among some Chinese students, to the point where here and other places around the world they have engaged in angry confrontation and even violence against pro-Hong Kong protesters. This has left many Australians asking what is going on, so I hope tonight to give some context that helps explain recent events. In particular, I will suggest that the University of Queensland has itself created an enabling environment for the aggressive counter-protests we saw. In Silent Invasion, I argued that the Chinese Communist Party has for some 20 years been engaged in a systematic campaign to shift elite opinion in Australia so that decision-makers act in ways conformable with Beijing’s wishes. The elites include those who run our universities. The CCP has a deep understanding of the importance of ideas and ideological struggle in the contest for political power, so ideas and those who generate them are a central target of the CCP’s influence work. Uuniversities are a vital front for the Party to change the global conversation about China and its role in the world in the long run. While much of the debate has focused on Confucius Institutes, the Party’s global “thought management” project is much more ambitious and is pursued through many subtle channels at foreign universities. It exerts pressure by: • direct lobbying from Chinese embassies and consulates • the usually unspoken threat of cutting off the flow of cash from Chinese students • threatening to cancel joint programs and lucrative executive training classes • funding and controlling Confucius Institutes • threatening to withhold visas to researchers too critical of the CCP, and • encouraging Chinese students to report on university activities and to organize protests. 1 Professor of Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University, Canberra. University administrators have structural incentives to seek out cooperation agreements with Chinese institutions while knowing very little about the CCP’s objectives and modus operandi, and so they often unwittingly facilitate the CCP’s influence operations. The United Front To carry out this campaign of overseas influence the Party has over some decades built a complex network of agencies tasked with exerting influence abroad. Their work, known as United Front work, deploys sophisticated techniques to influence, persuade and coerce others to act in ways approved by Beijing. The techniques have been refined over decades and are far more extensive, intrusive and secretive than those used by other nations. In the words of CCP expert James To, the psychological techniques used in United Front work are effective tools for “intensive behavioural control and manipulation” while appearing to be “benign, benevolent and helpful”.2 Under President Xi Jinping, United Front work has assumed much greater prominence in the CCP’s conduct of foreign relations. Xi has echoed Mao Zedong’s description of United Front work as one of the Party’s three “magic weapons” (along with Party building and military activities). In the West, United Front work has traditionally been aimed at suppressing dissidents, winning overseas Chinese to the CCP cause and mobilising them to act in support of Beijing’s political and strategic interests. But over the last decade or so, United Front work has increasingly been oriented towards promoting a more favourable view of the PRC in the Australian mainstream. Most of the efforts have been directed at non-Chinese Australian elites—political, business, media and academic. In the words of a party newsletter, News of the Communist Party of China, the key targets of overseas influence activity “are representative individuals with political influence, economic power, high social standing and academic status, as well as community leaders.”3 Figure 1 presents an organisational chart of the United Front Work Department and how its operations are structured in Australia. United Front work falls under the aegis of the Politburo of the CCP Central Committee.4 It has four main agencies—from right to left in Figure 1, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (OCAO), the China Overseas Friendship Association, the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification (CCPPNR), and the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese. The last is an agency formally of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a large political advisory body run by the UFWD. Its membership includes overseas Chinese who direct United Front bodies abroad or who use their wealth to acquire political influence. 2 James Jiann Hua To, Qiaowu: Extra-Territorial Policies for the Overseas Chinese, 2014 3 海外统⼀战线⼯作对象是台湾同胞、港澳同胞、国外侨胞及⼀切热爱中华民族的⼈们。重点是政治上 有影响、经济上有实⼒、社会上有声望，学术上有造诣的代表性⼈⼠和社团领袖。 https://web.archive.org/web/20190410115632/http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/64107/65708/65722/4444411.html 4 For an excellent, recent commentary see Alex Joske, ‘Reorganizing the United Front Work Department: New Structures for a New Era of Diaspora and Religious Affairs Work,’ China Brief, 19:9, May 2019. 2 Importantly, each of the four agencies has provincial, city and county counterparts throughout China, and these have a direct role in maintaining and cultivating links with provincial and hometown associations of overseas Chinese in Australia and elsewhere. Examples include the Australian Guangdong Chamber of Commerce and the Australia Fujian Association. The China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification (CCPPNR) has been especially important for its work in Australia where it is represented by the Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China (ACPPRC), described by expert Gerry Groot as “the overarching organisational vehicle in Australia for helping coordinate smaller bodies”.5 Media attention on the activities of the ACPPRC and its controversial former president Huang Xiangmo—now banned from entering Australia because of his CCP links—has been instrumental in raising public awareness of the United Front in Australia. The ACPPRC has state-based subsidiaries, with Tasmania being the last state to acquire one, in October 2017. In the third box from the left we find a range of United Front organisations, including: • hometown associations; • business associations, such as the Australia China Economic, Trade and Cultural Association (ACETCA); 5 Gerry Groot, https://soundcloud.com/user-340830825/how-to-make-friends-and-influence-people-inside-the- magic-weapon-of-the-united-front, minute 9.30 3 • ethnic Chinese professional and scientific associations, such as the Federation of Chinese Scholars in Australia (FOCSA); and • cultural and religious groups, such as dance troupes, writers’ organisations and certain Buddhist sects. Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSAs) are a further category. Confucius Institutes Although Confucius Institutes are ostensibly devoted to teaching Chinese language and promoting Chinese culture, they are in fact a part of the CCP’s broader program of “discourse management” abroad. And so former propaganda chief Li Changchun has said that Confucius Institutes are “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up.” He added: “Using the excuse of teaching Chinese language, everything looks reasonable and logical.”6 In 2010 Minister of Propaganda Liu Yunshan was reported as saying “we should actively carry out international propaganda battles … We should do well in establishing and operating overseas cultural centers and Confucius Institutes.”7 A recent report produced by the UFWD of the Dalian Municipal Party Committee concerning Dalian University of Foreign Languages is revealing. The university, in Liaoning Province, trains many teachers to be sent abroad to Confucius Institutes.8 The report was prepared for central office in Beijing and concerns the innovative United Front work of the university. The Party Committee writes that the University has actively developed new approaches to United Front activity abroad. As part of its United Front efforts, it has established ten Confucius Institutes overseas since 2007. It says that Dalian University of Foreign Languages Confucius Institute staff have “promoted the Confucius Institute brand and blazed a new path for united front work overseas.” It also keeps a data base of overseas alumni of Dalian University of Foreign Languages and helps establish alumni associations as part of its United Front work. Since 2011, it has established seven overseas alumni of Dalian University of Foreign Languages, including one in Sydney. There are more than 500 Confucius Institutes worldwide. In the western world, the largest number of Confucius Institutes is to be found in English-speaking countries. Unlike Goethe Institutes, British Councils and cultural institutes of other nations, Confucius Institutes are mostly embedded in foreign universities.9 This gives them leverage over the host institutions. Selection of academic staff and the curriculum are decided in Beijing, leading China scholar John Fitzgerald to observe: 6 https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/PSI%20Report%20China%27s%20Impact%20on%20the%20US
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