Former West German chancellor Willy Brandt once said, ‘Foreign policy is too important to be left to governments alone.’ While governments must show leadership, foreign policy is a national endeavour in which civil society shares responsibility. This may have been less obvious during the Cold War, but it’s as clear as day in the current era of global competition and conflict in which distrust of government is a dominant feature.
Australia urgently needs to develop critical China hubs to play a role in informing society of the challenges China presents to the country and region. Called ‘critical’ because, unlike the government and universities, they would be unhindered in publicly critiquing the Chinese party-state, these hubs would play a supplementary role to official agencies. They’d publicly collect, analyse and disseminate information on China’s economic statecraft, United Front activities, educational influence, cyber and critical infrastructure challenges, regional aims and international influence operations.
Such hubs, bringing together China skills in the national interest, are already playing a positive role in other parts of the world.
The most prominent is the US Congressional House Select Committee on China. On 1 October, US Congressman John Moolenaar, chairman of the Select Committee, wrote to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth calling for more than 100 Chinese institutes and programs to be added to a list of entities of national security concern.
The list, established under section 1286 of the National Defense Authorization Act, is an important research security tool. An entity’s inclusion can directly affect whether researchers funded by the Department of Defense may have a relationship with that entity.
The committee’s push to expand restrictions on engagement with Chinese research entities reflects a growing concern in the United States and globally that China is presenting even more intense challenges to democratic societies through interference in educational systems, technological appropriation and espionage.
Such restrictions should be replicated in Australia, but it is the full breadth of the US select committee that Canberra should learn from and follow in setting the terms of an existing or new parliamentary committee. The US select committee holds hearings and compiles reports on a wide range of China issues including economic aggression, United Front activities, cyber and critical infrastructure threats, internal repression and international influence operations, transnational challenges, and threats to Taiwan.
It’s one of the few national-level bodies that educate a public audience on the threats and challenges posed by the Chinese Communist Party. This is a globally significant endeavour. Most states choose to keep their concerns about the CCP hidden within their defence, security or diplomatic administrations.
While we may see occasional public reference to aspects of China’s global activities by security services such as the Australian Signals Directorate, the FBI, MI5 and the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, there is little open and critical engagement about the systemic challenges the CCP poses to all countries, democratic or otherwise.
Governments and civil society should support global education hubs on China’s activities. Some small efforts at public education and policy proposals on global CCP challenges have emerged. Czechia is an outsized leader on this. The Sinopsis group and European Values Center, both based in Prague, are key avenues for informing European (and now Pacific) publics about the scope and methods of Chinese influence operations within those societies. Spain-based Safeguard Defenders is a non-governmental organisation which engages with CCP transgressions globally. The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, headquartered in Britain, is an international, cross-party alliance of parliamentarians, mostly from liberal democratic countries, who work together to reform how democratic nations approach and respond to CCP actions.
The UK-China Transparency organisation was established in 2023 to ‘promote public access to clear, reliable information on UK-China ties’. Meanwhile, the China-Mediterranean project, developed out of the University of Turin, monitors China’s activities in the Mediterranean region, and The Bureau, run by Canadian journalist Sam Cooper, reports on a wide range of challenges that China presents. In Taiwan, Doublethink Lab works on a single premise – that ‘democracies cannot defend against what they cannot see’ – and operates to promote transparency, primarily into Chinese autocracy. The California-based SeaLight Foundation aims primarily to shine a light on China’s maritime and grey-zone activities.
All these entities are under-resourced and face China’s coercive power. Details of the activities of China-linked entities and United Front bodies globally appear almost entirely in Chinese, often obstructing research efforts and western media reporting. For Australia, the growing complexity of China’s activities in our region – some covert, others ignored because of financial motives – has also made it profoundly more difficult for legislators, policy bodies, government agencies, journalists and the public to remain informed on the details of foreign influence bodies and their changing relationships with Australians. This hinders Australia’s ability to formulate and implement policies to address the challenges posed by an increasingly aspirational China.
Despite the power discrepancy, all the China-watcher organisations noted above share a capacity to research using Chinese-language materials and a desire to educate the public on the challenges all global societies are facing with the burgeoning of CCP power. Australia needs to build its own critical China hubs to play such a role for Australia and the region.
This cannot be done by a government service. It needs a combination of parliamentary committee and civil society. Few universities would put up a hand to host such a body, since so many of them are tightly tied financially to China. The few China studies programs in Australian universities have neither the will nor the capacity to pursue such an agenda.
Still, there are several ways that Australia could approach this task.
First, we should follow the United States and establish a parliamentary committee dedicated to identifying and addressing China challenges.
Second, think tanks could also host Australia’s critical China hubs. ASPI is one of the few entities with a dedicated team of China watchers. There should be more such teams in more think tanks.
Third, philanthropic bodies could support these efforts by investing in think tanks specifically for the mission of analysing China or by funding the establishment of a new academy focused on critical China studies.
It is not a matter of closing our doors to China. But our eyes must be open. When legislators, governments, the public service and society are more educated on CCP agendas and activities, we will be much better equipped to respond to and interact with China more securely.
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