How Vladimir Putin uses natural gas to exert Russian influence and punish his enemies

Pipes for Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline are loaded onto a ship at a German port, June 1, 2021.
Stefan Sauer/picture alliance via Getty Images

Lena Surzhko Harned, Penn StateThe recent U.S.-Russia summit between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin suggests that a controversial Russian natural gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2, is a done deal.

If completed as planned by the end of this year, Nord Stream 2 will convey 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea and thence to the rest of Europe. It is expected to bring US$3.2 billion to Russia annually.

Construction had been halted for over a year by U.S. sanctions passed in 2019 on the pipeline’s construction and financing. Sanctions were later expanded in 2020. Some Russia experts expected those sanctions to be a bargaining chip for Biden at the recent Geneva summit to pressure Putin over Russian occupation of territories in Ukraine and Georgia; support for Belarus’ dictatorial regime; violation of human rights within Russia; and the poisoning, jailing and outlawing of political opposition.

Instead, a month before the summit, the White House lifted sanctions on Nord Stream 2, dismaying some U.S. legislators and U.S. partners in Europe.

The pipeline project is a joint venture between a handful of European gas companies and Russian giant Gazprom, a majority state-owned company that is the largest gas supplier in the world. For Putin, the pipeline is an opportunity to increase his influence in Europe by deepening the region’s dependence on Russian energy.

Natural gas has been the bedrock of Putin’s power both domestically and internationally for decades. Nord Stream 2 gives the Russian leader a new direct and powerful line of control in Western Europe.

Biden and Putin had a tense if cordial meeting in Geneva.
Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images News via Getty Images

How Putin controls Russian oil

Since taking office in 2000, Putin began seizing control of the Russian gas and oil industry. He renationalized Gazprom, the state oil company that had been privatized after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Scholarly research has demonstrated that regaining government control over the gas and oil industry contributed to consolidation of authoritarianism in Russia. And it coincided with crackdowns on Putin’s political opposition.

In 2003 Mikhail Khodorkovsky, owner of the Yukos oil company and a vocal critic of Putin’s growing authoritarianism, became the regime’s first famous political prisoner, after he was arrested at gunpoint and imprisoned for 10 years for tax evasion. Yukos was eventually seized by the government and absorbed into the state-owned companies.

By the end of his first term in office in 2004, Putin’s government had significant control over oil and gas production in Russia, which is the one of largest producers and exporters in the world. Proceeds collected from oil and gas sales allowed Putin to pay for his domestic agenda and boost military spending. It also gave him extraordinary leverage over neighboring countries that relied on Russia for their energy needs.

For example, in 2006 and 2009, when the Ukrainian government adopted more pro-Western policies and upset the Kremlin, Russia outright shut off the country’s gas supply – and by extension, shut off the gas of countries down the supply line in Central and Western Europe, including Germany.

Russia versus Europe

As a direct line of supply from Russia to Europe, Nord Stream 2 could avoid such problems for Western Europe in the future. But it also opens Western Europe to the same kind of direct Russian pressure it has used to punish Ukraine. So the proposed pipeline has been divisive.

Nord Stream 2 has already produced a rift between NATO allies, even before its completion.

Sweden, Poland and the Baltic countries, for example, have all raised concerns, citing environmental problems related to construction and maintenance of the pipeline. They worry that Russia will use its new pipeline infrastructure to increase its military naval presence in the Baltic Sea. That would increase Russia’s intelligence-gathering capacity.

Further “crumbling NATO,” as Putin puts it – sowing divisions in the alliance – would be a win for his regime.

The Russian leader sees NATO, which he calls a Cold War relic, as the greatest threat to Russian security. Disunity in Europe allows Russia to continue pursuing political repression of its own citizens and territorial aggression against neighboring nations with less foreign interference.

Ukraine’s dilemma

For Ukraine, Nord Stream 2 presents both a security and financial threat.

Ukraine largely stopped buying gas from Russia in 2015 following Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea and support for a still-deadly Russian-sponsored separatist war in Donbas, in eastern Ukraine.

A Russian military drill in April 2021 in Crimea, a former territory of Ukraine that was annexed by Russia in 2014.
AP Photo/Russian Defense Ministry Press Service

However, Ukraine still collects up to US$3 billion in annual fees because Russian gas currently runs through a pipeline in Ukrainian territory to get to Europe.

Nord Stream 2 will deprive Ukraine of this income. According to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, the money lost in gas transit fees will mean Ukraine will have “nothing to pay for the Ukrainian army” to defend Ukraine from further Russian aggression.

In April 2021, observers documented a build-up of Russian military at Ukraine’s border with Russia, as well as in the waters of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. The Russian military pulled back after a few weeks, but there is evidence that some 80,000 Russian troops remain near Ukraine, along with military equipment, including trucks and armored vehicles.

Zelensky says the pipeline has become a “real weapon” against Ukraine. In Kyiv, fears are that once Russia stops relying on Ukraine for transit to Europe, Putin will begin to exert more pressure on the Ukrainian government over the warring Donbas region or resume military aggression.

The risk may not be worth the reward of cheaper gas prices for European consumers. The economic boost that Russia will likely receive from capturing the European gas market will further enrich Putin’s kleptocratic regime – and, history shows, finance his undemocratic projects in Eastern Europe and beyond.

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Lena Surzhko Harned, Assistant Teaching Professor of Political Science, Penn State

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Russian Influence in Australia

Will Russia influence the American vote?

As American voters cast their ballots, they are also being targeted with foreign disinformation.
Mark Makela/Getty Images

Scott Jasper, Naval Postgraduate School

The idea that someone recently tried to influence Americans to vote for a particular candidate by sending them threatening emails may sound outlandish – as might federal officials’ allegation that the Iranian government is behind those messages.

But U.S. voters should prepare for even more strange and unexpected examples of information warfare that manipulate, distort or destroy election-related information between now and Election Day – and perhaps beyond that, depending on whether there are questions about who may have won the presidency.

Since 2016, Americans have learned that foreign interests attempt to affect the outcomes of presidential elections, including with social media postings and television ads.

As a scholar of Russian cyber operations, I know other nations, and Russia in particular, will go to extreme measures to influence people and destabilize democracy in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Be on guard

Here is what to look out for.

Other measures the Russians could still take include announcements aimed at influencing the vote, such as leaked emails and documents that may not be authentic.

Also, watch for claims that hackers have gained access to, or manipulated, state or local election systems. It doesn’t have to be true for people to become worried, uncertain and untrusting of election results.

Be prepared to see ransomware attacks – software that seizes control of key computers and demands a ransom to unlock the system – on precincts in key battleground states, which may not aim to alter the vote, but rather stall the vote count and certification. A mid-October ransomware attack on Hall County, Georgia, government networks interrupted phone service and some computer systems, including a database used to verify voters’ signatures.

Anything can happen – but Americans can be ready to skeptically and critically examine any announcements of attempted, or claims of successful, election interference.

Russian government agents interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and are poised to do so again.
FBI

Misleading propaganda

The real goal of information warriors – no matter where they are from, even beyond Russia and Iran – is to make it hard for Americans to know what is real.

In 2016, for instance, Russian disinformation operations created fake social media accounts claiming to be U.S. citizens, in hopes of spreading political division and conflict. They portrayed Hillary Clinton as weak and corrupt, which damaged her support among voters.

In this election cycle, the information warfare is more sophisticated. Russian-made propaganda has portrayed Joe Biden as incompetent and corrupt – but has also claimed that U.S. democracy is failing. Examples include an episode on a Kremlin-controlled Sputnik show titled “How much money to buy the presidency? Bloomberg tries to find out” and an episode called “Iowa Caucus Chaos: People are Losing Confidence in Election Results” on its sibling Russia Today video network. These outlets are available across the U.S. on radio, cable and satellite TV systems, and online – including on conservative websites.

Russian information warriors are impersonating real advocacy groups. They even created a now-defunct news website named Peace Data, which used fake names and photos for its editors, but hired unsuspecting real journalists as freelancers and ordered them to write stories critical of Biden, discussing corruption, abuse of power and human rights violations.

Some of the stories were also hostile to Trump, which indicates that the main goal remains to sow division in the United States.

A building in St. Petersburg, Russia, where U.S. officials allege Russian trolls worked to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Voice of America via Wikimedia Commons

Visible responses

Fortunately, businesses, federal cybersecurity officials and intelligence leaders are signaling that they are more willing than they were in 2016 to sound the alarm about foreign interference in the U.S. presidential election.

For instance, in August, the National Security Agency warned the cybsersecurity community about malicious software written by the Russian military, including details of the military unit involved, as well as advice on how system administrators can protect their networks and servers.

And in September, Microsoft reported that a Russian hacking group has attempted to intrude into the digital files of at least 200 organizations tied to the 2020 U.S. election. It targeted political campaigns, advocacy groups, parties and political consultants. Affiliated with Russian military intelligence, this is the same group that hacked and leaked damaging Democratic Party emails in 2016.

In late October, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Christopher Wray alleged that Russia and Iran had obtained U.S. voter registration information, at least some of which is publicly available. They also claimed – without offering evidence – that Iran is responsible for sending threatening emails to voters in as many as four states, including Florida and Alaska, that reportedly said “You will vote for Trump on Election Day or we will come after you.”

Big technology platforms have also taken steps to fight disinformation. Facebook took down a network of fake accounts linked to Russian military intelligence. Facebook will not post political ads in the week week before Election Day and Google will reject all election-related ads after Election Day to prevent false claims.

Twitter has also shut down accounts that it could reliably attribute to Russian-sponsored entities. And Twitter has sought to slow the spread of posts by limiting retweeting – though that has concerned Republicans, who fear this measure will stifle conservatives’ speech.

U.S. officials make a presentation about foreign information warfare.

Post-vote chaos

The week after Election Day could be volatile, especially if mail-in ballots are slow to be counted and results appear to change as the count continues.

Russia could use social media accounts that have not yet been detected to push reports of voter suppression or ballot fraud, trying to convince the public that election results are somehow inaccurate. U.S. Cyber Command might take Russian troll servers offline, as it did during the 2018 U.S. midterm election.

Meanwhile, voters can protect themselves by being skeptical of urgent or alarming claims in online media, and by remembering that they may be targets of disinformation campaigns. U.S. security agency efforts might stop Russia from altering the vote count, but sowing discord about its integrity could be enough to serve Russia’s goal of undermining democracy.

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Scott Jasper, Lecturer in National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia is spending less on diplomacy than ever before – and its influence is suffering as a result

Scott Morrison has heavily promoted his government’s ‘Pacific Step Up’, but it hasn’t invested the requisite funds to support the initiative diplomatically.
Darren England/AAP

Melissa Conley Tyler, University of Melbourne

Ten years ago, the Lowy Institute published a report on the state of Australia’s diplomatic capacity that painted a “sobering picture” of overstretched foreign missions and declining resources.

In the words of then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who was quoted in the report:

Given the vast continent we occupy, the small population we have and our unique geo-strategic circumstances, our diplomacy must be the best in the world.

However, since then we haven’t put enough resources into our diplomacy as we should. New research by Asialink at the University of Melbourne published in Australian Foreign Affairs shows continuing under-investment in Australia’s diplomatic capacity, with funding for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) now at a new low of just 1.3% of the federal budget.

Still in deficit?

According to Allan Gyngell, the founding director of the Lowy Institute, the reason for its 2009 report, Diplomatic Deficit, was simple.

For Australia to do things in the world, it needs a number of assets. These include the instruments of foreign policy, including the overseas network of posts.

The idea for the report was to go beyond the usual suspects and involve people like business leaders in making the case for diplomacy. It made 24 recommendations, many of which were not specifically about funding. These have mostly been met.

Sadly, the situation is less positive for recommendations that called for additional funding. Since 2013, Australia’s total diplomatic, trade and aid budgets have fallen from 1.5% of the federal budget to 1.3%. In pure dollar terms, this is a fall from A$8.3 billion to A$6.7 billion.

At the same time, the budgets for defence, intelligence and security have ballooned. In the almost two decades since the September 11 terror attacks, the Department of Defence budget has increased by 291%, while the allocation for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation has grown by 528% and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service by 578%.

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Lost opportunities

This systematic under-funding of DFAT has run down Australia’s diplomatic capacity to the point that it is under-resourced to confront current foreign policy challenges.

To give an idea of what this means, these are some examples of what Australia’s diplomats do on a day-to-day basis:

• consular work assisting Australians in trouble with law enforcement, such as visiting them in prison and advocating for fair treatment

• counter-terrorism cooperation, working with overseas governments to build capacity and help keep Australian travellers safer

• business promotion of Australian products and services and investment promotion for companies considering setting up operations in Australia

• networking with influential politicians and business people to try to impact decisions that will affect Australians.

When Australia’s diplomats are asked to accomplish more with fewer resources, they have to cut back what they can do.

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As Australia’s soft power in the Pacific fades, China’s voice gets louder

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Scaling back has a real effect on Australia’s influence. If Australia reduces the scholarships to bring future regional leaders to study in Australia, for instance, they’ll likely study and form bonds elsewhere.

If Australia reduces its investment in Indonesia’s education system, it will be dominated by the country’s other major funder, Saudi Arabia.

When Australia pulls back on its diplomacy, other countries take up the slack.

One impetus for the Morrison government’s much-vaunted “Pacific Step Up” was the realisation that cuts in aid and diplomacy had led to lessened Australian influence in its neighbourhood. In the words of one diplomat I spoke to, “China had been eating our lunch”.

The problem is that the “step up” did not come with increased funding for diplomats, meaning that DFAT’s new Office of the Pacific is being formed by taking staff and resources from other parts of department.

Getting back in black

We recommend an immediate increase in spending on diplomacy, trade and aid to 1.5% of the federal budget. This is closer to the spending of countries such as Canada (1.9%) and the Netherlands (4.3%), though still much lower than the challenging era after the second world war, when Australia was spending 9% of the federal budget on diplomacy, trade and aid.

If nothing else, DFAT should be granted an exemption from the efficiency dividend – an annual funding reduction for government agencies – until its budget rises to a more normal, historical level. This measure, usually levied at 1% to 1.25% of the administrative budget, reached 4% in 2012–13. With DFAT cut to the bone, the focus should be on increasing its budget, not constant cuts.

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Next government must find Australia’s place in a turbulent and rapidly changing world

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The aspirations for our diplomacy must be upgraded beyond the bare minimum. Ten years on from Diplomatic Deficit, Australia must resist the magical thinking that foreign affairs and trade somehow happen by themselves. In the 2009 report, former DFAT Secretary Richard Woolcott is quoted as saying:

I do feel that the Department of Foreign Affairs … has been allowed to run down to a dangerously low level … we can’t go on doing more with less … these sorts of undertakings do need to be properly resourced.

If only this had changed in the last 10 years.

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Mitchell Vandewerdt-Holman, a Master of International Relations student at the University of Melbourne, contributed to this report.

Melissa Conley Tyler, Director of Diplomacy at Asialink, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How much influence will independents and minor parties have this election? Please explain

Chris Salisbury, The University of Queensland

For some time now, Australian voters have rattled the cage of the political establishment. Frustrated with prime ministerial “coups”, political scandals and policy inertia, growing numbers have turned away from the major parties.

Does this mean minor parties and independent candidates will have a significant impact on the coming federal election?

Anti-major party sentiment doesn’t usually disrupt the numbers in parliament by much. Only five of 150 seats weren’t won by the major parties at the 2016 federal election, despite a national minor party/independent vote of over 23%. But a nationwide minor party Senate vote of over 35% in 2016 resulted in a record 20 crossbenchers – helped by a lower quota bar at a double dissolution election.

Familiar groups and faces are well placed to capitalise on this sentiment during the current election campaign.

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A matter of (mis)trust: why this election is posing problems for the media

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Chasing the protest vote

Despite internal instability rocking its New South Wales branch, the Greens will hope to capitalise on growing progressive support (in Victoria especially) and an expected anti-Coalition swing to secure Senate influence.

Yet with recent Senate voting rule changes being tested for the first time at a normal half-Senate election, the Greens may in fact struggle to retain, let alone build on, their current nine Senate spots. Final Senate seats in most states will be fought over by a slew of (mainly right-wing) minor parties.

Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party (UAP), Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (PHON), and – unlikely as it seems – Fraser Anning’s new Conservative National Party will chase the “protest vote” in all states and (apart from PHON) territories.

But intense competition for the conservative vote means they and other minor parties stand only an outside chance of winning lower house seats. One exception is Bob Katter likely holding Kennedy in north Queensland for his eponymous Australian Party.

Still, an expected high minor party vote will keep the major parties – and the media – focused on preferencing arrangements throughout the campaign. These preferences will likely play a key role in electing minor party candidates to the Senate, potentially returning familiar faces like One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts from Queensland.

Deference to preferences

Recent opinion poll results have unexpectedly placed Palmer’s party ahead of the field of minor parties on the right. Months of saturation advertising, it seems, have imprinted the billionaire’s messaging on voters’ minds. Yet this sudden poll prominence, like Palmer’s billboard pledge to “make Australia great”, is largely illusory.

Nevertheless, both major parties have responded to this seeming upsurge in UAP support. The Coalition has hurriedly concluded a preferencing arrangement that sees Palmer and Prime Minister Scott Morrison somewhat “reconciled”. The deal might deliver much-needed preferences to Coalition MPs in marginal seats, particularly in Queensland. It also increases the chances of Palmer candidates – and the man himself – winning a Senate seat.

But these are big “maybes”. Minor party voters are renowned for following their own preference choices. In 2013, voters’ preferences from Palmer’s United Party candidates split only 54% the Coalition’s way.

Clearly stung by the attention being shown to Palmer, Hanson has announced PHON will preference Labor last in some key marginal seats held by Liberal incumbents. That includes Peter Dutton, whose seat of Dickson is under siege. In 2016, PHON took a different approach when it preferenced against sitting MPs, costing the Coalition its hold on Queensland seats like Herbert and Longman.

As part of the same deal, PHON will exchange preferences with the Nationals – whose leader Michael McCormack claimed “it just made sense” – lifting the Nationals’ hopes in marginal and at-risk regional seats.

Labor has also sealed a deal to boost its chances in marginal Victorian seats, concluding an arrangement with Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party. This will see Labor how-to-vote cards in tightly contested seats like Dunkley and Corangamite suggest second preferences go to Hinch’s Senate candidates ahead of the Greens (repeating Labor’s approach at the 2016 election).

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The reputational risks of preference deals

But doing preference deals with minor parties carries reputational risks, as former Western Australia Premier Colin Barnett has warned. As has often been the case with personality-driven outfits, choosing suitable or qualified candidates easily brings minor parties undone.

Anning’s party has already stumbled badly. A pair of candidates in Victoria and the ACT has been called into question, and a party supporter allegedly assaulted journalists in Sydney.

Hanson’s party, no stranger to this pitfall, is still hosing down the controversy of the Al Jazeera taped conversations with party insiders, which has likely cost the party some support. Freshly released video footage has now forced Queensland Senate candidate, Steve Dickson, to resign in disgrace, in another blow to the often shambolic party’s standing.

Palmer’s candidates are similarly coming under scrutiny with doubts raised over citizenship qualifications, putting legitimate doubts into voters’ minds just as pre-polling has commenced.

Familiarity is key for independents

The best chances for independents are in lower house seats, yet there’s been only a dozen elected to parliament in the last several decades. Those who’ve broken through in election campaigns, like Kerryn Phelps at last year’s Wentworth byelection, typically benefit when there’s some controversy or ill-feeling towards an incumbent or their party.

But in the absence of full-on media glare of a high-profile by-election contest, Phelps might struggle to hold her seat – assuming the angst of local voters over Malcolm Turnbull’s deposing has dissipated.

Personal profile and high media interest puts Zali Steggall in with a chance to unseat Tony Abbott in Warringah. Likewise, a well-organised local campaign structure such as “Voices for Indi” behind Cathy McGowan’s hopeful successor, Helen Haines, can make the difference – though transition of support from one independent to another isn’t assured.

Newcomers on the ballot paper generally find the odds against them. Candidates with an established record and voter recognition, such as Andrew Wilkie in Tasmania’s Clark (like the Greens’ Adam Bandt in Melbourne and Centre Alliance’s Rebekha Sharkie in South Australia’s Mayo), enjoy an easier path to reelection.

Similarly, Rob Oakeshott is given a good chance of winning the New South Wales seat of Cowper from retiring Nationals MP, Luke Hartsuyker. He carries strong name recognition from his time as Independent MP for the neighbouring seat of Lyne.

But recognition alone mightn’t be enough for Julia Banks, the former Liberal MP for Chisholm in Victoria who is now challenging in Greg Hunt’s seat of Flinders. Her decision to preference Labor’s candidate above Hunt might turn away potential support from Liberal-leaning voters, yet could put the seat within Labor’s grasp.

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Minors and independents cloud the outcome

The chances of an “independent tide” sweeping several seats this election is unlikely, in part due to the ability of major parties to drown out the competition. And counter to long speculation about the “march of the minors”, there could in fact be a reduced crossbench in both the lower house and Senate.

But voter dissatisfaction with the major parties persists, and minor party preferences are likely to play a critical role in many seats.

The prominence of minor parties will maintain an air of unpredictability for the remainder of the campaign, clouding an election outcome many saw not long ago as a foregone conclusion.

Chris Salisbury, Research Associate, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Agents of foreign influence: with China it’s a blurry line between corporate and state interests

Australia’s Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act obliges individuals to register if they act on behalf of “foreign principals”.
Shutterstock

John Garrick, Charles Darwin University

Former federal trade minister Andrew Robb says he has quit his A$880,000-a-year consultancy job with Chinese-owned Landbridge Group because it didn’t have anything for him do.

Former Victorian premier John Brumby says he has quit as a director of Chinese tech giant Huawei in Australia because he has too much else to do.

Former federal foreign minister and ex-NSW premier Bob Carr has quit his job as director of the Australia-China Relations Institute, an organisation bankrolled by a Chinese billionaire with a history of using donations to cosy up to politicians.

It might be just a coincidence that these decisions have come just days before new foreign influence transparency laws come into effect on March 1.

The new laws are supposed to make visible the “nature, level and extent of foreign influence on Australia’s government and political process”. There is more than enough evidence that greater transparency is needed. But the extent to which the new rules will achieve this is questionable.

Money talks

Federal parliament passed the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act (FITS) in December. The Act obliges individuals to register if they act on behalf of “foreign principals” – be they governments, government-related entities, political organisations or government-related individuals.

Failing to apply for (or renew) registration, providing false and misleading information or destroying records may lead to a prison term of up to six years for individuals and fines of A$88,200 for companies.

Registrable activities include:

• parliamentary and political lobbying on behalf of a foreign principal
• communications activities for the purpose of political or government influence
• employment or activities of former cabinet ministers.

An example of the latter is Andrew Robb.

In February 2016 Robb resigned as federal trade minister and announced he would not recontest his seat. He left parliament in July. Three months later he had his new job, getting paid way more than the prime minister as a consultant to the Landbridge Group.

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View from The Hill: Would Landbridge be on or off the government’s register of foreign interests?

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It is always instructive to note the first jobs taken by politicians after they leave parliament. Those appointments generally reflect relationships already well-groomed.

Landbridge is a privately owned Chinese company, but like many Chinese companies has strong ties to the ruling Chinese Communist Party. Its substantial interests in petrochemicals and ports includes a 99-year lease over the Darwin port, which is considered of strategic importance in China’s diplomatic dance with the United States.

Qualitative differences

China isn’t the only foreign power interested in having influence in Australia, of course. Historical ties have meant that Britain once dictated Australia’s foreign policy. Since World War II the United States has had almost as much power.

Now China, Australia’s largest trading partner, taking about 30% of our exports, looms large. But the power exercised by the Chinese regime is qualitatively different.

For all its economic liberalisation since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, China remains a one party state, with repression worsening under Xi Jinping. On freedom of the the press, for example, China ranks 176 out of 180 countries.

Commercial, military and political influences are wrapped up together. Lines between state and private enterprises are blurred. When Chinese business interests curry favour with foreign politicians and officials, there’s a high chance that statecraft is also being advanced. “Soft power” is used extensively.

Agent of influence

This is what made the tawdry scandal involving former NSW senator Sam Dastyari so alarming.

Though a humble senator, Dastyari was a key Labor Party fundraiser and powerbroker. He later admitted that vanity and arrogance made him susceptible to the charm offensive of Huang Xiangmo – the billionaire who courted Bob Carr to head up the Australia-China Relations Institute.

Dastyari accepted financial gifts from Huang’s company, including a A$44,000 payment to settle a legal dispute, along with payments from other donors connected to the Chinese Communist Party.

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Such payments made it obvious why he defied his own party’s policy and defended China’s militant stance in the South China Sea. He was subsequently labelled a Chinese “agent of influence”.

These revelations resulted in Dastyari resigning from parliament in 2017. Earlier this month it was revealed the federal government had rejected Huang’s bid to become an Australian citizen and stripped him of his permanent residency visa.

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Why do we keep turning a blind eye to Chinese political interference?

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On the basis of these examples highlighted above, there’s a strong case for making influence peddling open and transparent.

Whether the new laws can achieve that is another matter. They may curtail flagrant scenarios where those leaving public office sell their wares to the highest bidder. But to work effectively, the laws and their enforcers will need to constantly adapt and evolve as agents look for creative ways to wield influence from the shadows.

John Garrick, Senior Lecturer, Business Law, Charles Darwin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We’ve been hacked – so will the data be weaponised to influence election 2019? Here’s what to look for

Michael Jensen, University of Canberra

Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently said both the Australian Parliament and its major political parties were hacked by a “sophisticated state actor.”

This raises concerns that a foreign adversary may be intending to weaponise, or strategically release documents, with an eye towards altering the 2019 election outcome.

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A state actor has targeted Australian political parties – but that shouldn’t surprise us

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While the hacking of party and parliamentary systems is normally a covert activity, influence operations are necessarily noisy and public in order to reach citizens – even if efforts are made to obscure their origins.

If a state actor has designs to weaponise materials recently hacked, we will likely see them seek to inflame religious and ethnic differences, as well as embarrass the major parties in an effort to drive votes to minor parties.

If this comes to pass, there are four things Australians should look for.

1. Strategic interest for a foreign government to intervene

If the major parties have roughly the same policy position in relation to a foreign country, a foreign state would have little incentive to intervene, for example, in favour of Labor against the Coalition.

They may, however, attempt to amplify social divisions between the parties as a way of reducing the ability of Australians to work together after the election.

They may also try to drive down the already low levels of support for democracy and politicians in Australia to further undermine Australian democracy.

Finally, they may also try to drive the vote away from the major parties to minor parties which might be more favourable to their agenda.

This could be achieved by strategically releasing hacked materials which embarrass the major parties or their candidates, moving voters away from those parties and towards minor parties. These stories will likely be distributed first on social media platforms and later amplified by foreign and domestic broadcast media.

It is no secret that Russia and China seek a weakening of the Five Eyes security relationship between Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. If weakened, that would undermine the alliance structure which has helped prevent major wars for the last 70 years.

2. Disproportionate attention by foreign media to a local campaign

In the US, although Tulsi Gabbard’s polling numbers rank her near the bottom of declared and anticipated candidates for the Democratic nomination, she has received significant attention from Russia’s overt or “white” propaganda outlets, Sputnik and RT (formerly Russia Today).

The suspected reason for this attention is that some of her foreign policy positions on the Middle East are consistent with Russian interests in the region.

In Australia, we might find greater attention than normal directed at One Nation or Fraser Anning – as well as the strategic promotion of Green candidates in certain places to push political discussion further right and further left at the same time.

3. Promoted posts on Facebook and other social media platforms

Research into the 2016 US election found widespread violations of election law. The vast majority of promoted ads on Facebook during the election campaign were from groups which failed to file with the Federal Election Commission and some of this unregistered content came from Russia.

Ads placed by Russia’s Internet Research Agency, which is under indictment by the Mueller investigation, ended up disproportionately in the newsfeeds of Facebook users in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – two of the three states that looked like a lock for Clinton until the very end of the campaign.

What makes Facebook and many other social media platforms particularly of concern is the ability to use data to target ads using geographic and interest categories. One can imagine that if a foreign government were armed with voting data hacked from the parties, this process would be all the more effective.

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Seats in Australia which might be targeted include seats like Swan (considered a marginal seat with competition against the Liberals on both the left and the right) and the seats of conservative politicians on GetUp’s “hitlist” – such as Tony Abbott’s and Peter Dutton’s seats of Warringah and Dickson.

4. Focus on identity manipulation, rather than fake news

The term “fake news” suffers from conceptual ambiguities – it means different things to different people. “Fake news” has been used not just as a form of classification to describe material which “mimics news media content in form but not in organisational process or intent” but also used to describe satire and even as an epithet used to dismiss disagreeable claims of a factual nature.

Studies of propaganda show that information need not be factually false to effectively manipulate target audiences.

The best propaganda uses claims which are factually true, placing them into a different context which can be used to manipulate audiences or by amplifying negative aspects of a group, policy or politician, without placing that information in a wider context.

For example, to amplify concerns about immigrants, one might highlight the immigrant background of someone convicted of a crime, irrespective of the overall propensity for immigrants to commit crimes compared to native born Australians.

This creates what communication scholars call a “representative anecdote” through which people come to understand and think about a topic with which they are otherwise unfamiliar. While immigrants may or may not be more likely to commit crimes than other Australians, the reporting creates that association.

Among the ways foreign influence operations function is through the politicisation of identities. Previous research has found evidence of efforts to heighten ethnic and racial differences through Chinese language WeChat official accounts operating in Australia as well as through Russian trolling efforts which have targeted Australia. This is the same pattern followed by Russia during the 2016 US election.

Liberal democracies are designed to handle conflicts over interests through negotiation and compromise. Identities, however, are less amenable to compromise. These efforts may not be “fake news” but they are effective in undermining the capacity of a democratic nation to mobilise its people in pursuit of common goals.

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Read more:
How digital media blur the border between Australia and China

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The Russian playbook

No country is immune from the risk of foreign influence operations. While historically these operations might have involved the creation of false documents and on the ground operations in target countries, today materials can be sourced, faked, and disseminated from the relative security of the perpetrating country. They may include both authentic and faked documents – making it hard for a campaign to charge that certain documents are faked without affirming the validity of others.

Most importantly, in a digitally connected world, these operations can scale up quickly and reach substantially larger populations than previously possible.

While the Russian interference in the 2016 US election has received considerable attention, Russia is not the only perpetrator and the US is not the only target.

But the Russians created a playbook which other countries can readily draw upon and adapt. The question remains as to who that might be in an Australian context.

Michael Jensen, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Morrison to unveil broad suite of measures to boost Australia’s influence in the Pacific

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

Scott Morrison on Thursday will announce an extensive suite of military, diplomatic, financial and people-to-people initiatives in a major boost to Australia’s role in the Pacific.

They include setting up a $2 billion infrastructure financing facility to promote development in the region.

The facility – coming hard on the heels of Labor proposing a government-backed infrastructure investment bank to assist the Pacific – would provide grant and loan financing for telecommunications, transport, energy, water and similar projects.

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Read more:
Shorten proposes investment bank to help Pacific nations’ development

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The military initiatives include an Australian Defence Force Pacific
Mobile Training Team and more naval deployments, while diplomatic
missions will be opened in Palau, the Marshall Islands, French Polynesia, Niue and the Cook Islands.

APEC focuses minds on Papua New Guinea

The Pacific push is against the background of China’s growing involvement in the area. But the government also points to issues of
potential instability in some countries, and the Islamic State terrorism threat in the broader Indo-Asia Pacific region.

The announcement comes ahead of the APEC meeting in Port Moresby on
November 17-18, and it follows Australia and Papua New Guinea agreeing
on a joint redevelopment of the naval base on Manus Island.

In Thursday’s speech at Lavarack base at Townsville, released ahead of
delivery, Morrison says: “My government is returning the Pacific to
where it should be – front and centre of Australia’s strategic outlook, foreign policy and personal connections, including at the highest levels of government”.

Morrison says it is time to “open a new chapter in relations with our
Pacific family”.

“Australia has an abiding interest in a Southwest Pacific that is secure strategically, stable economically and sovereign politically”.

The region is “where Australia can make the biggest difference in world affairs” – but too often had taken its influence for granted.

Defence to tie Australia to the Pacific

Morrison says that in future the Australian Defence Force, which already has a pivotal role, will play an even greater one with partner countries in training, capacity building, exercises and on “building interoperability to respond together to the security challenges we face”.

The proposed rotational ADF Pacific Mobile Training Team will be based in Australia, travelling to places in the Pacific, when invited, to undertake training and engagement with other forces.

Work with regional partners would be in areas such as disaster response, peacekeeping, infantry skills, engineering and logistics.

Morrison says the Navy will be deployed more to the Pacific to conduct
training and exercises with other countries. “This will enable them to
take advantage of the new Guardian Class Patrol Boats we are gifting
to them, to support regional security”.

Ties with Pacific police forces are to be strengthened, with a new Pacific faculty at the Australian Institute of Police Management that will help train future police leaders.

More regular in-person contact

To deepen people-to-people links with Pacific security forces, there
will be annual meetings of defence and police and border security
chiefs.

A security alumni network will be set up to maintain connections with
those who have taken part in the Defence Cooperation Program over
decades.

Military sporting engagements will be expanded, as will general
sporting links with a new sports program.

Announcing the new diplomatic posts, Morrison says “this will mean
Australia is represented in every member country of the Pacific Islands Forum”. He stresses also that the government wants “our best and brightest, young and experienced diplomats alike, working on the Pacific”.

As well as the infrastructure financing facility, Morrison is announcing that the government will seek parliamentary approval for Australia’s export financing agency, Efic, to have an extra $1 billion in callable capital and more flexibility to support investments in the region that benefit Australia’s national interest.

More investment in the Pacific

This would “enhance Efic’s ability to support Australian SMEs to be
active in the region. Private capital, entrepreneurialism and open
markets are crucial to our mutual prosperity,” Morrison says.

He says it is estimated the Pacific region will need US$3.1 billion
annually in investment to 2030.

Morrison says the government will work with Australia’s commercial media operators to enable people in Pacific countries to have “access to more quality Australian content on TV and other platforms.

“This will include lifestyle programs, news, current affairs, children’s content, drama and potentially sports. This is an initial step towards providing more Australian content that is highly valued by the Pacific community,” he says.

On 2GB Morrison on Wednesday had to defend Pacific countries from broadcaster Alan Jones’ attack on them as “rent seekers”.

Not rent-seekers after all

Jones lashed out after Morrison gave the importance of the Paris climate agreement to these countries as one reason for Australia not leaving the agreement.

“Do you think all these rent-seekers in the Pacific should get money that you’ve said you’re not going to contribute to Paris. … They’re
rent-seekers, they just want money,” Jones said.

Morrison replied: “I don’t think that’s very respectful to the Pacific
Islands, Alan, I really don’t, and I don’t share that view. They’re
part of the world in which we live here and we’ve always been doing
the right thing by them and we think back to Papua New Guinea, they
did the right thing by us when it came to our Diggers.

“So we have a very special relationship with the Pacific and we need to, for our own interest as well as that it’s part of the community and family of nations we live in in this part of the world. We do the right thing by them, they’ll do the right thing by us.”

Postscript: bid for gas piplines blocked

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has effectively blocked a $13 billion bid by the Hong
Kong-based CK Group for the Australian gas pipeline company APA.

The decision complicates the current visit to China by Foreign
Minister Marise Payne.

Chinese approval for the Payne trip has been hailed as an important
sign of the improving relationship between the two countries after a
period of frostiness, which included tension over the federal
government’s legislation against foreign interference and the ongoing dispute over China’s build up in the South China Sea.

Foreign investment decisions rest with the treasurer, who takes advice
from the Foreign Investment Review Board. Frydenberg said he had
decided the proposed acquisition would be “contrary to the national
interest”

“It would result in an undue concentration of foreign ownership by a
single company group in our most significant gas transmission
business.”

Frydenberg said the board had been “unable to reach a unanimous
recommendation, expressing its concerns about aggregation and the
national interest implications of such a dominant foreign player in
the gas and electricity sectors over the longer term.”

His “preliminary decision” – which under the usual process will be
finalised a fortnight – reflected the size and significance of APA
Group. It was not a reflection on the CK Group, he said.

“The APA Group is a unique company, widely held amongst investors with
significant Australian ownership and management,” Frydenberg said.

“It is by far the largest gas transmission system owner in Australia,
owning 15,000 km of pipelines representing 56 per cent of Australia’s
gas pipeline transmission system, including 74 per cent of New South
Wales and Victorian pipelines and 64 per cent in the Northern
Territory.

“It also supplies gas for part of all mainland capital
cities’ consumption, gas-fired electricity generation assets and
liquefied natural gas exports.”

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Influence in Australian politics needs an urgent overhaul – here’s how to do it

Transparency isn’t a silver bullet, but increasing it would go some way to changing the secrecy around who has access – and how much – to the government of the day.
AAP/Lukas Coch

Kate Griffiths, Grattan Institute; Carmela Chivers, Grattan Institute, and Danielle Wood, Grattan Institute

Public policy should be made for all Australians – not just those with the resources or connections to lobby and influence politicians. And mostly it is. But sometimes bad policy is made or good policy is dropped because powerful groups have more say and sway than they should.

Australia’s political institutions are generally robust, but many of the “risk factors” for policy capture by special interests are present in our system. Political parties are heavily reliant on major donors, money can buy access, relationships and political connections, and there’s a lack of transparency in dealings between policymakers and special interests.

A new Grattan Institute report, Who’s in the room? Access and influence in Australian politics, reveals that access and influence are heavily skewed towards the businesses and unions that have the most to gain (and lose) from public policy.

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Grattan Institute, CC BY-ND

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Many examples of special-interest influence over policy look contrary to the public interest: special deals for insiders (for example, James Packer’s Sydney casino), interest groups with a seat at the table in deciding how their own industry is regulated (such as pharmaceuticals pricing), and lobby groups blocking reforms that have broad support (such as climate change policy and pokies reforms).

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Read more:
Time for the federal government to catch up on political donations reform

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Better checks and balances are needed. But the question of what to do about undue influence is tricky. Interests should be able to advocate for themselves, and donate money to support causes they believe in. Lobbying helps to introduce new ideas and reduce the likelihood of uninformed or damaging decisions by those in office. We propose a suite of reforms to reduce the risks of policy capture while still protecting the rights of all individuals and groups to contribute to policy discussions.

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Start with transparency

Transparency isn’t a silver bullet, but it can play an important role in reducing the sway of special interests. Greater transparency means more opportunity for the public, media and the parliament itself to scrutinise the policy-making process and call out undue influence or give voice to under-represented views.

We recommend three key reforms to improve transparency.

1. Improve the “visibility” of major donors to political parties

2. Publish ministerial diaries so people know who ministers meet with

3. Create a public register of lobbyists who have unescorted access to federal Parliament House. These reforms would substantially reduce the secrecy around money and access.

Transparency is not enough on its own – strong voices are still needed to call out problems, and voters still need to hold elected officials to account. But transparency gives them better information to do so.

Boost public trust in politicians

Trust in government is in decline: in a 2018 survey, 85% of Australians thought at least some federal MPs were corrupt. We recommend setting clear standards for all parliamentarians to avoid conflicts of interest – particularly around hospitality, gifts and secondary employment.

Codes of conduct for parliamentarians and lobbyists should be independently administered, to build public confidence that the high standards of public office are respected and adhered to. A separate ethics adviser could also encourage public officials to seek advice when they’re in doubt.

And a federal integrity or anti-corruption body should be established to deal with tips and complaints of serious misconduct. It should be empowered to investigate corruption risks, publish findings, and refer any corrupt activity to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.

The best defence against policy capture is healthy public debate

Greater transparency and accountability would help reduce the risk of policy capture by special interests. But ultimately Australia’s best defence is countervailing voices in policy debates. Who’s in the room matters – but who’s not in the room can matter even more.

Consumers, community groups and those less privileged are consistently under-represented in public debate. Our analysis of ministerial diaries in Queensland and NSW shows well-resourced special interests account for the bulk of senior ministers’ external meetings.

People who lack the resources or organisational capacity to band together can struggle to be heard – even when they represent a large chunk of Australian society – taxpayers, consumers, small business and young people, for example. Special interests are particularly likely to win out in technical, niche or complex policy areas because they are more difficult for other groups, voters and the media to engage with.

We suggest two reforms to reduce the influence of well-resourced special interests and promote broader participation in public debate:

First, a cap on political advertising expenditure during election campaigns would reduce the imbalance between groups with very different means to broadcast political views. It would reduce the reliance of political parties on major donors and might redirect communication to less-superficial channels that are conducive to deeper discussion, such as political debates and interviews.

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Read more:
Australians think our politicians are corrupt, but where is the evidence?

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Second, government can boost countervailing voices through more inclusive policy review processes and advocacy for under-represented groups. This would give politicians better information with which to adjudicate the public interest.

The reforms proposed here are in line with OECD recommended practice. They would strengthen Australian democracy by enabling voters to better hold government to account and could boost the public’s confidence that the system is working for them.

Kate Griffiths, Senior Associate, Grattan Institute; Carmela Chivers, Associate, Grattan Institute, and Danielle Wood, Program Director, Budget Policy and Institutional Reform, Grattan Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When it comes to China’s influence on Australia, beware of sweeping statements and conflated ideas

Australia’s approach to the debate over Chinese influence should be to carefully disaggregate the various problems under discussion in this debate and risk-manage them individually.
Shutterstock

Andrew Chubb, Princeton University

In December, the Turnbull Government tabled sweeping new national security legislation in response to what the PM called “disturbing reports of Chinese influence” in Australian politics.

An ongoing parliamentary review of the proposed laws has attracted hundreds of public submissions, with intelligence agencies and civil society organisations predictably lining up on opposite sides of the argument.

More surprising, perhaps, is the controversy the laws have sparked within Australia’s community of China experts.

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Read more:
Dastyari saga shows the need for donations reform, and for politicians to take more care

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Rival petitions

On March 19, a group of 30 China scholars submitted a petition calling for the espionage and foreign interference legislation to be withdrawn, pending more extensive consultation and rigorous, measured public debate.

The open letter argued the bill directly threatened academic freedom, and that the “alarmist tone” of recent public discourse over China was impinging Australia’s ability to calmly and rationally deal with the issues.

In particular, it warned that “a racialised narrative of a vast official Chinese conspiracy” was taking shape:

We should be vigilant that public discourse in Australia does not create undue pressure on one particular section of our society to demonstrate its loyalty to Australia at the expense of its freedom to criticise Australian policies and actions.

A week on, a different group of China and Asia experts submitted another letter — ostensibly in response to the first — defending public policy debates over the issue in light of “well-documented reports about the Chinese Communist Party’s interference” in Australia. It read:

We firmly believe the current debate is not characterised by racism and that it is crucial for Australia to continue this debate. Indeed, Chinese Australians are among the main initiators and drivers of this debate.

The rival letters attracted international media coverage, with a reports touting a split among Australian China scholars over the issue.

But how much did the two letters really differ?

Furious agreement

In fact, the two letters share a great deal in common. Both call for informed debate over the issues; both denounce racism; both affirm scrutiny of the CCP’s activities in Australia and the application of legal penalties where evidence of wrongdoing is clear.

Most signatories would agree that discussion of the set of issues raised is necessary, and that it is not motivated by racism. They would also agree that new laws may be necessary but must be carefully drafted, and there have been problematic elements in the public debate as it has unfolded so far.

Both lists of signatories contain trenchant critics of Beijing, as well as relatively China-friendly voices.

Yet, I’m aware of only one person who signed both.

Why have Australia’s China scholars cleaved into two camps on a matter of great public interest that requires their collective expertise — camps that seem to cut across personal networks and ideological preferences?

To some extent, as ANU National Security College head Rory Medcalf has observed, this reflects healthy scholarly disagreements among colleagues.

But the rival letters are also indicative of a less-than-healthy polarisation in the discourse at a time when identifying consensus views might be more valuable. After all, the letters were substantively in agreement on many of the key issues.

It may help, then, to clarify what we do disagree about.

As a signatory to the first letter, but not the second, I can identify four main points of contention. Yet, as shown below, even within these four areas there appears to be more agreement than the rival letters might suggest.

Four points of contention

The scope of CCP activities in Australia

While the first letter cautions against conflating distinct China-related issues in Australia into “a vast official Chinese conspiracy”, the second offers a list of ten bullet-point examples of the “CCP activities” Australia should be vigilant against.

The list ranges from espionage and intimidation of dissidents, to university student groups and pro-China political rallies.

The view that vigilance is warranted over the party’s activities in Australia should be uncontroversial. It is an unreformed and increasingly dictatorial Leninist regime with a ministerial-level department tasked with instrumentalising non-party actors to advance the party’s interests and counter its perceived enemies.

The scope of this “United Front Work” system is vast and expanding, and it is rooted in a thoroughly cynical vision of the world. It is an institution and a vision that Australians — especially political elites — ought to be properly educated about.

But it should also be equally uncontroversial to affirm that a person or group’s inclusion as a target within the scope of united front work does not constitute grounds for suspecting them of disloyalty or subversiveness if they espouse a CCP-friendly view on an issue.

Causes of racist and alarmist sentiments

The first letter criticises the Australian media for fanning “suspicion and stigmatisation of Chinese-Australians”.

The second letter acknowledges the public discourse has prompted “alarmist and racist sentiments”, but argues this is an inevitable side effect of having a debate in the first place.

Perhaps we could at least agree that the prevalence of racism and alarmism on the fringes of a debate depends significantly on the language used by those in the mainstream debate.

If so, this would narrow the disagreement down to whether or not the costs of using inaccurate and inflammatory language such as “Chinese”, “invasion”, “infiltration”, and “penetration” are acceptable.

The meaning of sovereignty

The first letter argues there’s no evidence that the PRC’s activities are aimed at challenging Australia’s sovereignty. The second letter, by contrast, advocates action to counter “threats to sovereignty”.

Each appears to have a different notion of sovereignty in mind.

If the word means, narrowly, paramount legal authority within territorial limits, then a PRC challenge to Australia’s sovereignty implies that it seeks to lay claim to parts of the Australian landmass, or reduce its polity to a tributary “vassal”. But as the first letter pointed out, there is to date no credible evidence of this.

On the other hand, there have been clear instances of PRC violations of Australian sovereignty in recent years. In 2015, for example, Chinese undercover police pursued a fugitive on Australian territory. Importantly, in that case, Beijing admitted its wrongdoing.

Interference with the political freedoms of residents of Australia, such as intimidation of dissidents’ families in China, also arguably violate Australia’s sovereignty in a broad sense.

Neither letter defines sovereignty, but both invoke the word’s emotive power. Those of us speaking of a CCP threat to Australian sovereignty (or absence thereof) might be able to agree on more if we specify in what sense this is (not) the case.

Threats to democratic politics in Australia

Whereas the second letter emphasises the threats that CCP activities pose to democracy and free speech, the earlier letter suggests the sweeping proposed national security laws and alarmist public discourse were creating an even more immediate threat to democratic political rights.

It is hardly in doubt that the CCP’s activities undermine the political values of democracy, liberalism and openness. It is openly hostile to them.

But there are well-documented cases of self-censorship resulting from the alarmist tone in Australia’s public discourse on the issue, with reports of some Chinese-Australian politicians growing afraid of associating with CCP-linked community figures.

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Read more:
Australians working in China should expect fallout over questions of political interference

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The second letter affirms that all residents of Australia “should be able to express their point of view free of fear or censorship, whether from forces foreign or domestic”.

This suggests, once again, that there is significant overlap among China scholars even within this ostensible area of disagreement. Specifically, both seem to recognise that threats to democratic rights exist inside Australia as well as outside.

A risk-management approach

Where to from here? In an upcoming report, I argue that if Australia wants to maintain a broad engagement with a powerful, increasingly dictatorial Leninist party-state ruling a billion-plus people while maintaining a liberal democracy, it will require careful understanding and management of the risks involved.

It will not be possible to simply disallow all CCP “operations of influence” without impinging on the very democratic rights the CCP threatens.

Conflating distinct issues (for example, espionage, lobbying, Chinese-language media, student activism) under single sweeping labels (such as “influence” or “operations”) that imply they’re all part of one Beijing-orchestrated campaign of subversion is also not helpful in developing methodical, systematic responses.

Policymakers in Beijing may dream of coordinating a vast conspiracy involving ethnic Chinese all over the world advancing the CCP’s interests, but that does not make it a reality.

Australia’s approach, I argue, should be to carefully disaggregate the various problems under discussion in this debate and risk-manage them individually, rather than grasping for some kind of resolution that will free Australia of “CCP influence”.

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This article has been amended. The line that originally read: Yet, I’m not aware of a single person who signed both has been changed to Yet, I’m aware of only one person who signed both.

Andrew Chubb, Postdoctoral Fellow, Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program, Princeton University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.