How Chinese government uses ‘front organisations’ to influence Australian society and monitor behaviour of its citizens studying there
Parliamentary submission details how the influence of pro-Beijing organisations in Australian business has been ‘supercharged’ by the rapid growth in trade and investment flows
The Chinese government uses a sophisticated network of supposedly non-political organisations to suppress criticism, cultivate relationships and exert influence over Australia’s business, academic and political worlds.
MPs investigating foreign interference have been handed evidence with unprecedented detail of the complex network of soft power used by extensions of the Chinese Communist Party in boardrooms and on university campuses across Australia.
The submission, by prominent Charles Sturt University author and ethicist Professor Clive Hamilton and Australian National University researcher Alex Joske, claims China uses its United Front Work Department to exert its influence on Australian society.
United Front’s purpose, Hamilton said, is to “mobilise sympathetic or potentially sympathetic Chinese community groups to serve the interests of the CCP” while marginalising those opposed to the party.
Its influence extends across Chinese associations on university campuses and the CSIRO.
[These associations] play a central role in the Chinese government’s efforts to monitor, control and intervene in the lives of Chinese students in Australia
Chinese Students and Scholars Associations, Hamilton says in his submission to the joint parliamentary committee on intelligence and security, was “the core of Beijing’s presence on university campuses” and an “integral component” of United Front activity in Australia, with the primary purpose of “monitoring the thoughts and behaviours of the 130,000 Chinese students on campuses across Australia”.
