Offending China: After All, Who Doesn't Want To Be Noticed and Liked?
"[I've received] more requests to speak around the world than I could fulfill in a lifetime."
"[The government's silence was] starting to look like procrastination."
"[The government of New Zealand needs to reach] a level of respect [in its relations with China] where we can point out things we don't like."
"Breaking New Zealand out of these military groupings and away from its traditional partners, or at the very least, getting New Zealand to agree to stop spying on China for the Five Eyes, would be a major coup for China’s strategic goal of becoming a global great power."
Professor Anne-Marie Brady, China specialist, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
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| New Zealand academic Anne-Marie Brady has faced burglaries and threats after releasing a report critical of China’s activities in the South Pacific. Photo: Youtube |
"[The involvement of Interpol as well a local security service indicates the burglary and break-in perpetrators] are abroad at this moment, or are agents of a foreign entity."New Zealand is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partnership that includes Canada, the United States, Britain and Australia. There is now a raised question whether it is allowing itself to become too vulnerable to Chinese influence as a Western country. Professor Hamilton had authored a book on the influence that China was asserting in Australia. Australia, cognizant of suspicion among its Western partners introduced national security legislation in June, banning foreign interference in their politics.
"Everything in the New Zealand government's response points to a state, a state-sponsored entity, or a foreign criminal organization being involved with this."
Paul Buchanan, (former) Pentagon analyst, director, 36th Parallel Assessments, Auckland, New Zealand
"[Should evidence emerge that Chinese agents were involved in the office break-ins and burglary it should act as] a cattle prod to the New Zealand body politic [about its relationship with Beijing]."
"People advising me on my security have been quite alarmed. If China is targeting her, there's a good chance they're targeting me."
Clive Hamilton, professor, Charles Sturt University, Canberra
Another academic, Professor Anne-Marie Brady, has achieved a high profile through her investigation of Chinese intelligence working in New Zealand. Last September she published a paper, Magic Weapons, identifying categories of political-influence activities in Western democracies on China's part. Describing what she identified as the Chinese Communist Party's blueprint to conduct activities worldwide meant to infiltrate and influence the West. She specifically focused on New Zealand as a case study, highlighting Chinese influence across spheres of public life.
The result has been a series of events which have been interpreted by a former CIA analyst, Peter Mattis, now a China Program fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, as a signal for her to cease and desist. There were several break-ins at her office at the university, and more latterly her home was burglarized. Items of value, including cash, were left undisturbed. But whoever it was that had invaded her home, had disturbed bed covers, left papers strewn about, and absconded with what she described as an "old, broken" laptop and a "cheap" cellphone.
The laptop had been used for her most recent research while the cellphone had been used on her travels to China. Her husband's laptop was untouched. There was "only one likely culprit for this", stated Peter Mattis. And the break-ins had a purpose: "intimidating her into silence would in a sense be a major win" for China, he explained. As for Professor Brady herself, she interprets those disturbing events as a "psychological operation" targeting her over her work.
During her China trip her computer's hard drive had been tampered with. In addition, she had learned that people she had interviewed had been questioned later by Communist Party officials. She had been in receipt of a letter meant to warn her of an impending attack on her. Her last paper had been published coincidentally when a New Zealand lawmakers, Jian Yang, had denied he was a spy for China. He had simply taught English to spies in China, he explained. And he remains in Parliament.
Political leaders in New Zealand have been unimpressed with Brady's assertions. Unlike the impression they have had globally where her paper was cited in the United States in government committee hearings and her claims appear to have influenced Australia to take that step of banning foreign interference in their politics. New Zealand police responded to the break-ins, indicating that Interpol was aiding them, along with the country's Security Intelligence Service which had swept her office for the presence of listening devices.
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| China's Premier Li Keqiang (L) is welcomed to New Zealand's Government House by a Maori elder during a welcome ceremony in Wellington on March 27, 2017. Photo: AFP/ Marty Melville |
Labels: China, Influence, New Zealand
posted by Pieface @ Monday, September 24, 2018
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