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Aussie think tank fuels anti-China hysteria while getting US funds

By Karl Wilson in Sydney | China Daily Global | Updated: 2020-10-25 13:50
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In early October three Chinese Australian citizens took part in a senate hearing on issues facing diaspora communities in Australia.

Nothing unusual about that but for Yun Jiang, Osmond Chiu and Wesa Chau they came away wondering if they had been transported back in time to the dark days of United States Senator Joseph McCarthy's communist witch hunt in the 1950s.

At the hearing on Oct 14 right-wing Senator Eric Abetz asked all three if they were prepared to "unconditionally condemn the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship".

The line of questioning was straight out of the McCarthy handbook and received a swift backlash on social media.

Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner Chin Tan said: "No Australian should have their loyalty to this country questioned or undermined because of their ethnic origin, nor should they be required to prove their loyalty."

Abetz represents the growing anti-China Cold War cancer that has been festering in Australia in recent years.

Behind the paranoid, anti-Chinese hysteria is a small clique of politicians, journalists, academics, and a think tank that calls itself the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).

Established in 2001, ASPI describes itself as "an independent, non-partisan think tank that produces expert and timely advice for Australia's strategic and defence leaders." The reality is different if not opposite.

ASPI's executive director, Peter Jennings, is a former public servant who worked in defence and national security. He has been prominent in the anti-China push with frequent commentaries in the right-wing Australian media.

ASPI is big on pushing the anti-China barrow whether it be buying political influence, taking over Australian companies, infiltrating universities, or simply spying.

The current anti-China push has been gathering pace over the last years prompting some analysts to speculate Australia's China policymaking has undergone a leadership shift with influence moving away from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and toward the Prime Minister's Office and defence and national security agencies.

Former Australian foreign minister, Bob Carr, has said that ASPI "consistently expresses pro-American positions" while being funded by major US military and armaments corporations.

ASPI itself declares it "receives funding from Australian and overseas Governments, industry and civil society groups for sponsorship, research and project support".

Labor Senator Kim Carr in a speech to the senate earlier this year said: "In parts of the defence and security establishment, there are hawks intent on fighting a new Cold War. They have waged a muttering campaign against collaborations with China and have found eager acolytes in sections of the Australian media."

The global geopolitical environment has shifted substantially in the past four years, especially since the election of US President Donald Trump. ASPI is among those willing advocates in Australia for smearing at China.

In July, it was reported by the Business Analysis and Commentary (BAC) website that ASPI was awarded a contract worth A$214,500 (US$153,000) by the Department of Defence for "management advisory services". Last year, it was given an even bigger amount, $614,536.

ASPI has been less than forthcoming about where it gets its money and contracts from.

"Last year, these contracts amounted to more than US$2 million and were signed by the chiefs of a small group of government departments which, say ASPI's critics, have vested interests in promoting China as Australia's No 1 strategic threat," says BAC.

It has been reported that ASPI has received funding from the governments of Britain and Japan as well as NATO. Among its corporate supporters are global weapons makers Thales, BAE Systems, Raytheon, SAAB, Northrop Grumman, Naval Group and MBDA Missile Systems.

Disclosures to the Senate revealed that ASPI had at least 56 sources of income in 2018-19 which it categorized as either sponsorships or commissioned income.

Senator Carr says of ASPI: "It is an Australian government organization, a Commonwealth company, and they've been at the centre of Sinophobia. This is what happened in the Cold War, you set up a front and create a world view that's unchallengeable."

Jocelyn Chey, Australia's former consul-general to Hong Kong, recently criticized ASPI for lacking the basic knowledge of China's political system.

Geoff Raby, former Australian ambassador to China, says ASPI is "very much the architect of the China threat theory in Australia".

ASPI is widely read by members of the Australian parliament especially those beating the Cold War drum.

Andrew Hastie, who chairs the influential Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, is one good example.

Last year he penned a commentary linking the West's handling of China's rise to a failure to contain the advance of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Outside the Federal Parliament there is academic Clive Hamilton, a professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra and author of several books attacking China.

In a review of 'Hidden Hand' Hamilton co-authored with German anti-China scholar Mareike Ohlberg, Andrew Podger, honorary professor of public policy at the Australian National University in Canberra, said "the book is not a balanced, scholarly document".

James Laurenceson, director of the Australia China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney, said political tensions between Australia and China date back to at least 2016.

"Apart from a brief 'reset' when then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull gave an upbeat speech on China at the University of New South Wales in August 2018, the trajectory of ties at the government level has been downhill since then."

He said with no sign of the political tensions between the two countries easing, the big danger is the erosion of the economic and people-to-people ties that were once the glue holding the relationship together.

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