International Australia's Position in Asia-Pacific Geopolitics, as Beijing's Rising Shadow Casts Over Canberra.

Because the Chinese are building carriers and if they can establish air supperiority on important sea lanes they can blockade AustralAsia into submission.

You will need a Carrier to break the blockade and establish air supperiority in the open seas so you can bring to bear your destroyers to hunt their subs.

They outspend us 5 to 1 and outnumber us 60 to 1, we simply can't play that game in open seas.

We can only fight on neutral ground as part of a much bigger alliance but alone we can compete if close to our mainland.
 
i feel obama, trump or any presidents influence on military matters is mininal.

ok so we piss america off and then what. who are our regional allies, whats the plan ?

In terms of direct military strategy that's no doubt true, but it's foreign policy which creates the environment which that strategy has to contend with.
In the case of the "pivot to asia" the idea was that the American focus on the Middle East and comparative lack of engagement in East Asia was behind China's increasingly aggressive actions. Hence the idea (although this was denied) that China could be "contained" with increased American military presence and engagement in the region.
That has demonstrably been shown not to be true, as China only increased it's actions in response.

The problem with Australian foreign policy is that we've always relied on having a powerful ally with a big stick standing behind us. First the UK, then the US. Our geographic location was treated simply as an unfortunate impediment to our anglo-american political identity. We've held off from joining ASEAN or indeed forging any independent political identity and strong regional relationships.
With the relative decline of the US power into a new multipolar global order, that may no longer even be an option. What's more, if there's anything signified by Trump's election, it's American dissatisfaction with the current political order. Trump's mixed signals are hard to interpret, but that makes them an unreliable ally at best.

The only effective strategy to counter a major power like China in the region without a "big brother", is further economic, cultural, military and political integration with our neighbours. More complex to negotiate sure, but also more independent and resilient. In terms of China locking down the shipping lanes for example, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia and Malaysia (/Singapore) all have major interest in that not happening. As well as the smaller/less developed nations. In a multipolar world where we have major interests with all the major powers, negotiating with those regional allies is the only independent option.
 
Not sure about a carrier, but If we want to form any sort of regional defence alliance, even for peace keeping activities such as in East Timor or the Solomon Islands, we will need an ability to project force without relying on the US for logistical support. Imagine what would have been needed if we'd had to manage INTERFET without the US.

Still that kind of insurgency can be adequately contained with helicopter carriers. It's more about boots on the ground than air support.

Not saying it's easy but carriers are for big powers and not an inefficient use of our budget.
 
Still that kind of insurgency can be adequately contained with helicopter carriers. It's more about boots on the ground than air support.

Not saying it's easy but carriers are for big powers and not an inefficient use of our budget.

My understanding is that it was our logistics capabilities that were at breaking point. The US helped out with a couple of C-17s, but comparatively speaking that's the sort of mission their 11th MEU is designed for. I guess we could always just privatise that sort of logistic support to the lowest bidder. Seems like a common approach these days.
 
Why would we need carriers?

Carrier groups are offensive, we need defence.

If we are going to have carriers they might as well have an offensive capability. The heli carriers are a waste of money. A real carrier can do all that they can do and more.
 
If we are going to have carriers they might as well have an offensive capability. The heli carriers are a waste of money. A real carrier can do all that they can do and more.

True but at what cost?
What's the average spend compared to a heli carrier? Can't imagine they are close.
 
My understanding is that it was our logistics capabilities that were at breaking point. The US helped out with a couple of C-17s, but comparatively speaking that's the sort of mission their 11th MEU is designed for. I guess we could always just privatise that sort of logistic support to the lowest bidder. Seems like a common approach these days.

Is that really something a carrier would help with?

It's under 700km from Darwin.
 
Is that really something a carrier would help with?

It's under 700km from Darwin.

Well, no. The need for increased logistical capabilities wasn't about having an aircraft carrier. Just what we'd need for any sort of force projection that didn't involve relying on the US.
 
I'd just prefer Australia to hop off America's coattails.
Why? To jump on China's coat tails?
Are you a fuckin labor voter ruprecht? I always pegged you as more intelligent than that.
 
Why? To jump on China's coat tails?
Are you a fuckin labor voter ruprecht? I always pegged you as more intelligent than that.

No, I certainly wouldn't want, and can't imagine us ever having, a military/foreign policy alliance with China and joining in any future military adventurism they might engage in.
Strictly speaking the ANZUS treaty would only have required us to come to America's aid after 9/11 (which legitimised our involvement in Afghanistan, but not Iraq), but obviously that's not how it's worked.
I voted for Howard once, and then never again. Out of the major parties Liberal actually got my preference last election (mostly due to competence), although I tend to put independents whose policies are closest to my preferences at the top of the ballot (Nick Xenophon has consistently gotten support from me).
What about you? Always Liberal? Don't bother to number all the candidates?
 
No, I certainly wouldn't want, and can't imagine us ever having, a military/foreign policy alliance with China and joining in any future military adventurism they might engage in.
Strictly speaking the ANZUS treaty would only have required us to come to America's aid after 9/11 (which legitimised our involvement in Afghanistan, but not Iraq), but obviously that's not how it's worked.
I voted for Howard once, and then never again. Out of the major parties Liberal actually got my preference last election (mostly due to competence), although I tend to put independents whose policies are closest to my preferences at the top of the ballot (Nick Xenophon's consistently gotten support from me).
What about you? Always Liberal? Don't bother to number all the candidates?

Mr.Howard has no shame he also lambasted my country when we decide to pull out our troops in Iraq mind you most of the Troops for small security and medical details but Mr.Howard made it sound like we sided with the Terrorists and that we have a capability to wage a war.

And about Future Chinese Military adventurism well I hope they don't start shit like that we already have the USA and Russia doing that.

I wonder where they will do their adventurism?
 
Because the Chinese are building carriers and if they can establish air supperiority on important sea lanes they can blockade AustralAsia into submission.

You will need a Carrier to break the blockade and establish air supperiority in the open seas so you can bring to bear your destroyers to hunt their subs.

I think Aus might be better served countering China the way China intends to counter america - A2/AD.
So, the threat of subs and such.
 
Erwin Rommel, perhaps the most famous general of WW2, stated:

If I had to take hell, I would use the Australians to take it and the New Zealanders to hold it.

If you like your military history you should look up the Rats of Tobruk.

Australins have proved themselves terrifying in all their engadgements other than the disastrous emu war. But what’s amazing is the only engagement they really celebrate or remember is their defeat at Gallipoli. It a humility other nations should aspire to. Never do you hear about the Australian vanguard killing Germans enmasse with bayonets during the Somme.

Australins were a large part of the group that beat the Germans in ww2, first to used combined arms in ww1 under Monash, out tracked The Vietnamese in the jungle (thanks to the indigenous members of the SAS). All this whilst fighting in an entirely different continent.

There is a terrific quote from a German officer about how the Australian line was impossible to break, as when the Panzers broke through the infantry would continue to advance. Crazy bastards.
 
Well, no. The need for increased logistical capabilities wasn't about having an aircraft carrier. Just what we'd need for any sort of force projection that didn't involve relying on the US.

True, my thinking is if we can't fly planes to wherever it is in a single loop it's probably not our regional concern.

I do know what we need exactly but I'm thinking logistics planes and multiple runaways for them to use scattered around the country (esp north) seems like a good idea.
 
True, my thinking is if we can't fly planes to wherever it is in a single loop it's probably not our regional concern.

I do know what we need exactly but I'm thinking logistics planes and multiple runaways for them to use scattered around the country (esp north) seems like a good idea.

Yeah, I think we'll be limited by the F-35As. They have about 2/3 the range of the Super Hornets, and about 1/3 the range of the old F-111s.
 
Australia - India relations will never be good because of cricket.

It's unfortunate that India-Australia's political and economic ties barely exists as it is, consider that both are Commonwealth members, Democratic, and have exactly what each other needs.

Australia could really use India's vast size/population/labor/market to balance their dependency on China, and India are currently using Australia's vast natural gas reserves to fuel their growth, at a rock-bottom price that's actually cheaper than what Australians are paying - just like Japan.

(Australia's natural gas exports could have been a very useful card on the table to increase their geopolitical soft power as well as national budget, but that complete clusterfuck is another discussion all together, untaxed revenue and all).

As it stands, I believe India's involvement is critical in any Indo-Pacific Alliances, for they are only the only Asian country besides Japan that could stands on their own two feet with political leaders who aren't intimidated or controlled by Beijing.
 
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Tensions rise as Chinese government’s influence infiltrates Aussie universities
Chinese students are turning on their Australian teachers using secret videos amid growing fears about their government’s influence.​

AUSTRALIAN educators are increasingly coming under attack from Chinese students, raising concerns their government’s influence is permeating our universities.

The students have been openly complaining about Western teaching methods and ideas, and publicly demanding apologies or changes to how subjects are explored.

The trend has raised concerns that the ideology of China’s Communist Party is weaving its way into Australian academic teaching through overseas students.

Chinese students have even released footage online - filmed secretly in classes - of professors teaching classes that contradict Chinese ruling party ideology.

As a result of the critical videos published on Chinese websites and social media, some students received apologies from the academics.

Last week, a Chinese University of Newcastle student posted a YouTube video of him arguing with a professor who referred to Taiwan and Hong Kong as independent countries. “You are making us feel uncomfortable,” the student is heard saying to business professor Nimay Khaliani. “You have to consider all the students.”

Professor Khaliani replies: “Exactly, all the students, not one set of students.”

The video was published on several Chinese websites and provoked a backlash from readers, with Newcastle University eventually contacting China’s consulate-general to resolve the matter.

Days before the Newcastle University incident, a Chinese website reported that students at the University of Sydney were outraged at IT professor Khimji Vaghjiani displaying a map showing three regions contested by China and India as being part of India.

Mr Vaghjiani said in a statement. “Over 18 months ago, I used an out-of-date map, downloaded from the internet ... I was unaware that the map was inaccurate and out-of-date. This was a genuine mistake and I regret any offence this may have caused.”

The communist party-owned newspaper Global Times later wrote: “The China-India border dispute broke out in Australia, and China won!”

There was also controversy when the Cambridge University Press agreed to the censorship of an academic journal for China, removing 300 articles. On August 21, it said it had reinstated them.

And back June, an academic at the University of Sydney said the Chinese consulate had asked the instiution to reconsider holding a forum on the Tiananmen Square protests.

THE POST-TIANANMEN WORLDVIEW

The Lowy Institute’s East Asian director Merriden Varrall told news.com.au there was “certainly an increase” in the “willingness of Chinese students to stand together and push back against what they perceive as injustice” in Australia.

“I don’t think it’s about the Chinese embassy saying do this, act in this way. I don’t think that’s out of the question, but it reflects students’ beliefs.”

These young people have been brought up indoctrinated into certain beliefs that flatter China’s government, according to Dr Varrall, who said she was regularly told by student to change her methods while teaching in Beijing.

She said Chinese students were not taught to engage with critical thinking and interpretation, and often struggled to question ingrained beliefs. “After Tiananmen Square in 1989, China really ramped up the ideology,” said Dr Varrall. “It creates a view of the world all Chinese young people share.”

She said many of these students had strong sense of territoriality and sovereignty and believed their country had been victimised by the outside world for years. Issues such as whether Taiwan should be an independent country — it currently is not — are very “emotional” for them, and “hard for them to have an objective discussion about.”
‘DEBATE IS NOT NORMAL IN THEIR COUNTRY’

Earlier this month, an Australian National University computer science professor came under fire on Chinese social media after he was photographed lecturing beside a slide that read, in English and Chinese, “I will not tolerate students who cheat.” The professor later wrote a lengthy apology, calling it a “poor decision” and adding that he was “not sensitive to how some people would interpret it.”

In May, an Australian lecturer at Monash University was suspended after Chinese students found a test question that joked that their country’s officials only tell the truth when they are “drunk or careless.”

Dr Varrall believes we “need to do more to understand the complexity of China’s influence” and not let their students — whose fees are now vital to Australian universities — feel isolated or as though the Australian environment is antipathetic to their interests.

“From what I can see, the Australian Government is alert to the situation,” she said. “We need to ensure Chinese students in Australia are really supported.

“A lot of them don’t speak in class because they are afraid their language skills aren’t up to it. Debate is not normal in their country, they don’t have that practice.

“You get students unwilling to participate, befriending others in similar situations and then you don’t get that integration and cross-pollination of ideas.”

http://www.news.com.au/finance/econ...s/news-story/e7768b0bb1f5953a7608884527387372
 
The Chinese Communist Party's power and influence in Australia
By Nick McKenzie, Richard Baker, Sashka Koloff and Chris Uhlmann | 28 Mar 2018


Tony Chang's activities in Brisbane meant that his terrified father in China feared he was being "watched and tracked".​
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-...y-under-threat-from-chinese-influence/8583832
University student Tony Chang had suspected for months that he was being secretly monitored, but it was a panicked phone call from a family member in China that confirmed his fears.

It was June 2015 and Mr Chang's parents had just been approached by state security agents in Shenyang, in north-eastern China, and invited to a meeting at a tea house. It would not be a cordial catch-up.

As Mr Chang later detailed in a sworn statement to Australian immigration authorities, three agents warned his parents about their son's involvement in the Chinese democracy movement in Australia.

From a Brisbane share house littered with books and unwashed plates, the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) student told Four Corners the agents had intelligence about his plans to participate in a protest in Brisbane on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and also during the Dalai Lama's visit to Australia.

Mr Chang's activities in Brisbane meant that his terrified father in China feared he was being "watched and tracked".

His father, a cautious, apolitical man, had already spent years worrying about his unruly son. In 2008, when Mr Chang was 14, he was arrested for hanging Taiwan independence banners on street poles in Shenyang.

His family was forced to call on Communist Party contacts to ensure the teenager was released after several hours of questioning.

After Mr Chang was questioned again in 2014 for dissident activities, he decided it was no longer safe to remain in China. He applied for an Australian student visa.

The June 2015 approach to his parents back in China was the second time in two months that security agents had warned Mr Chang's family to rein in his anti-communist activism in Australia.

These threats helped convince the Australian Government to grant Mr Chang a protection visa.

Mr Chang's treatment as a teen is typical of the way the party-state deals with dissidents inside China, as revealed in a joint investigation by Four Corners and Fairfax Media.

But the monitoring of the student in Brisbane and his decision to speak out about the threats to his parents in Shenyang, despite the risk it poses to them, provides a rare insight into something much less well known: the opaque campaign of control and influence being waged by the Chinese Communist Party inside Australia.

An influence-and-control operation by the Communist Party

Part of this campaign involves attempts to influence Australian politicians via political donors closely aligned with the Communist Party — something that causes serious concern to Australia's security agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).

But some of the 1 million ethnic Chinese living in Australia are also targets of the Communist Party's influence operations.

On university campuses, in the Chinese-language media and in some community groups, the party is mounting an influence-and-control operation among its diaspora that is far greater in scale and, at its worst, much nastier than any other nation deploys.

In China, it is known as qiaowu.

Some analysts argue the party's efforts are mostly benign, ham-fisted or ineffective.

Former Australian ambassador to China Geoff Raby stresses that influence operations are conducted by many countries. He singles out Israel as an example.

But the most recent chief of Australia's diplomatic service, Peter Varghese, who is now chancellor at the University of Queensland (UQ), said China's approach to influence-building was deeply concerning, not least because it was being run by an authoritarian one-party state with geopolitical ambitions that may not be in Australia's interests.

"The more transparent that process [of China's influencing-building in Australia] is, the better placed we are to make a judgment as to whether it is acceptable or not acceptable, and whether it is covert or overt," Mr Varghese said.

"This is an issue ASIO would need to keep a very close eye on, in terms of any efforts to infiltrate or subvert our system which go beyond accepted laws and accepted norms."

The depth of the concern at the highest levels of the defence and intelligence establishment can be measured in recent public statements by the departing Defence Force chief and the director-general of ASIO.

Australia's domestic spy chief Duncan Lewis has warned Parliament that foreign interference in Australia were occurring on "an unprecedented scale".

"And this has the potential to cause serious harm to the nation's sovereignty, the integrity of our political system, our national security capabilities, our economy and other interests," Mr Lewis said.

A China expert, Swinburne professor John Fitzgerald, agrees.

The coercion category

The definitive text on Beijing's overseas influence operations is Qiaowu: Extra-Territorial Policies for the Overseas Chinese by China expert James To.

Citing primary documents, Mr To concludes the policies are designed to "legitimise and protect the Chinese Communist Party's hold on power" and maintain influence over critical "social, economic and political resources".

Those already amenable to Beijing, such as many student group members, are "guided" — often by Chinese embassy officials — and given various benefits as a means of "behavioural control and manipulation", Mr To said.

Those regarded as hostile, such as Mr Chang, are subjected to "techniques of inclusion or coercion".

Australian academic Feng Chongyi is another who falls into the "coercion" category.

In March, Dr Feng travelled to China to engage in what he called the "sensitive work" of interviewing human rights lawyers and scholars across China.

He told Four Corners he expected to be closely watched and harassed when he arrived in Beijing, but accepted it simply as an irritating feature of his job.

Dr Feng is a small, energetic man who has retained his Communist Party membership in the hope that he will live long enough to see some results from what has become his life's mission: democratising China.

But he is also a realist, which meant he was initially unconcerned when, on March 20 and after he had arrived in the city of Kunming, he was approached by agents from the Ministry of State Security (MSS).

Dr Feng was driven to a hotel three hours away to be questioned.

He expected the matter to end there but, a day later, he realised he was being followed by security agents to the sprawling port city of Guangzhou. There he was told his interrogation would continue.

"That's the time when I really realised something serious is happening," he recalled.

'I was in deep trouble'

In a Guangzhou hotel room, the security agents subjected Dr Feng to daily six-hour questioning sessions, all of it videotaped.

Many of the questions were about his activities in Sydney, including the content of his lectures at UTS, the people in his Australian network of Communist Party critics, and his successful efforts to stop a concert glorifying the Communist Party founder, chairman Mao Zedong.

Then the agents turned their attention to his family, asking him specific questions to show him that his wife and daughter were also being closely watched.

He described the change in tactics as a means of getting him to fully submit to his inquisitors' demands.

It was the only part of his story that the wily academic hesitated to recall, as if emotion might have overtaken him.

"I can suffer this or that but I'll not allow ... my wife and my daughter and my other family members [to] suffer from my activities," he said. "That is the thing that's quite fearful in my mind."

When his inquisitors demanded Dr Feng take a lie detector test on March 23, he called his wife who told him to make a run for it.

A few hours later, after midnight, Dr Feng crept out of his hotel, hoping to board a 4:00am flight.

But as he sought to check in, an airport official told him he could not leave China because he was suspected of endangering state security.

His daughter immediately called a foreign affairs specialist in the Australian Government and asked for help.

Dr Feng's questioning continued for six more days until his daughter was contacted by an Australian Government official and told he would be permitted to board a flight back to Australia.

In his final interrogation session, the MSS agents presented Dr Feng with a document to sign that forbade him from publicly discussing his ordeal.

But by then, his detention had already been covered by several Australian media outlets. When he landed at Sydney airport on April 1, a small group of supporters was waiting for him with banners.

Dr Feng believes his treatment in China was designed to send other academics, along with his supporters in the Chinese-Australian community, a message to "stay away from sensitive issues or sensitive topics".

"Otherwise they can get you into big trouble, detention or other punishment," he said.

Campus patriots

Mostly though, the Communist Party's influence on Australian university campuses takes a subtler form, and works through the Chinese Students' and Scholars' Associations.

The Communist Party targeted these patriotic associations after the Tiananmen Square student uprising as a way of maintaining control over overseas students.

In Australia, which has 100,000 Chinese students, the associations are "sponsored" by Chinese embassy and consular officials.

One student involved in an Australian CSSA explained to Four Corners and Fairfax Media how Chinese embassy officials played an active role in organising a large student rally to welcome Premier Li Keqiang when he visited Australia in March.

On the day, the rally had two shifts, the first starting at 5:00am.

The CSSA insider insisted it was students rather than the embassy calling the shots.

"I wouldn't really call it helping," the student said of the embassy's role, while confirming it provided flags, transport, food, a lawyer and certificates for students that would help them find jobs back in China.

"It's more sponsoring."

Whoever was really pulling the strings did so effectively. Students were willing to assemble at 5:00am to welcome Premier Li. Some, said the student, were proud of China's economic rise.

Other factors that helped mobilise the students include an early education system that extols the virtues of the Communist Party and the reality that positive connections with the Government can help a person land a job in China.

Federal police officers still describe with awe events in 2008 at the Olympic torch rally, when hundreds of chartered buses entered Canberra from NSW and Victoria, delivering 10,000 Chinese university students "to protect the torch".

"If the Aussie embassy in London issued a similar call to arms to Australian students in London, there would be two students and a dog," an officer said.

There was another means to inspire students to assemble before dawn: a CSSA member stressed the importance of blocking out anti-communist protesters.

Would the CSSA member who spoke to Four Corners go so far as to alert the embassy if a human rights protest was being organised by dissident Chinese students?

"I would definitely, just to keep all the students safe," the student said. "And to do it for China as well."

The extent to which this student nationalism is directed and monitored from Beijing, and what this means for academic freedoms, is uncertain.

Former China ambassador Geoff Raby played it down, saying Australian universities were "pretty much aware this activity goes on".

But last year, ANU Emeritus Professor and the founding director of the Australian Centre on China in the World, Geremie Barme, was so concerned he wrote a lengthy letter to chancellor Gareth Evans.

Professor Barme's fears were sparked by a series of viral nationalistic videos created and posted by a Chinese ANU student Lei Xiying.

One of Mr Lei's videos, "If you want to change China, you'll have to get through me first", attracted more than 15 million hits.

"I would opine that Mr Lei is an agent for government opinion carving out a career in China's repressive media environment for political gain," Professor Barme wrote.

The ANU defended the student's activities on free speech grounds, but Professor Barme said the university was ignoring Mr Lei's likely sponsorship by an authoritarian government that routinely threatens scholars and journalists.

"Make no mistake, it is officially sanctioned propaganda," Professor Barme said.

He urged the university to confront the issue by debating it openly. His supporters have said that request was ignored.

'We are real media'

A gracious host, Sam Feng is in a gregarious mood when he invites us to the headquarters of Pacific Times, the once proudly independent community Chinese-language newspaper he founded in the 1980s.

Over Chinese tea, he scoffs at suggestions that his paper is involved in financial dealings with an arm of the Chinese Communist Party that shapes its coverage.

"It is false. It is fake ... they don't need to do that," he said, while insisting that questions of bias should be directed to Western media outlets whose coverage supports the US version of the world.

But corporate records suggest his paper is less independent than he claims.

Subsidiaries of the Communist Party's overseas propaganda outlet, the Chinese News Service, own a 60 per cent stake to Mr Feng's 40 per cent in a Melbourne company, the Australian Chinese Culture Group Pty Ltd.

The results of this joint-venture deal appear evident in the newspaper's content, vast chunks of which are supplied direct from Beijing where propaganda authorities control the media.

UTS associate professor Dr Feng describes Pacific Times as one of several Australian Chinese-language media outlets that have forgone any semblance of editorial independence in exchange for deals offered by the Communist Party's propaganda apparatus.

In a backroom in Sam Feng's West Melbourne headquarters is evidence suggesting his Beijing dealings extend beyond what is placed in his newspaper.

A well-placed source leaked to Fairfax Media photos of dozens of placards resting against a wall of the room.

"We Against Vain Excuse for Interfering in South China Sea," reads one of the placards.

To a casual observer, the placards would barely warrant a glance.

But along with other information provided by the source, they point towards what Australian security officials suspect: that the Chinese Communist Party has had a hand in encouraging protests in Australia.

"The Chinese would find it unacceptable if Australia was to organise protests in China against any particular issue," former DFAT chief Peter Varghese said.

"Likewise, we should consider it unacceptable for a foreign government to be [encouraging], organising, orchestrating or bankrolling protests on issues that are ultimately matters for the Australian community or the Australian Government."

The placards stored at Pacific Times were handed out to hundreds of protesters who marched in Melbourne on July 23, 2016, to oppose an international tribunal ruling — supported by Australia — that rejected Beijing's claim over much of the South China Sea.

Of Pacific Times owner Sam Feng, the source said the newspaper owner sought to keep the Chinese Communist Party onside for commercial reasons: "He is a nationalist, but he just cares about business."

A review of the corporate records of other large Chinese-Australian media players reveals the involvement of Communist Party-controlled companies.

Those who turn down offers to become the party's publishing partners and seek to print independent news face the prospect of threats, intimidation and economic sabotage.

Overseas forces

Don Ma, who owns the independent Vision China Times in Sydney and Melbourne, said 10 of his advertisers had been threatened by Chinese officials to pull their advertising.

All acquiesced, including a migration and travel company whose Beijing office was visited by the Ministry of State Security every day for two weeks until they cut ties with the paper.

Mr Ma said he was happy to speak publicly because he had already been blocked from travelling to China

His journalists, though, request their names and images not be used when we visit his Sydney and Melbourne offices. They are fearful of retribution.

Ex-DFAT chief Mr Varghese and Swinburne's Professor Fitzgerald said Australia should require more accountability and transparency around the way the Communist Party and its proxies are operating in the media and on university campuses.

Professor Fitzgerald has warned Communist Party influence operations in Australia not only risk dividing the Chinese community, but sparking hostility between it and other Australians.

"The Chinese community is the greatest asset we have in this country for managing what are going to be complex relations with China over the next decades — in fact for centuries to come — and we need them to help us in managing this relationship," he said.

Mr Ma has not only endured economic sabotage from the Communist Party, but a campaign of vilification from pro-Beijing members of the local Chinese community.

Yet he keeps publishing, not only because he embraces freedom of the press but because many members of the disparate Chinese community urge him to keep doing so.

"I felt that the media here, all the Chinese media, was being controlled by overseas forces," he said.

"This is harmful to the Australian society. It is also harmful to the next generation of Chinese. Therefore, I felt I wanted to invest in a truly independent media that fits in with Australian values."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-...rtys-power-and-influence-in-australia/8584270
 
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