Prime minister Albanese just got back from his fourth meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping telling us he’s established a strong personal relationship with China’s leader. His leadership meetings have apparently built mutual respect and trust. But it turns out that this hasn’t stopped Xi Jinping’s security agencies stepping right into the middle of Australian society and trying to monitor and control people living in our free society.
A Chinese national faces up to 15 years jail after being charged by the Federal Police for secretly working on behalf of Beijing’s Public Security Bureau to gather information about a Buddhist association in Canberra. The AFP have searched homes and seized electronic devices for forensic examination as part of the criminal case.
The incident shows a disturbing thing: the Chinese Government wants to not just control and silence dissidents inside China, it can’t tolerate even the idea of a small peaceful religious organisation operating in Australia free of its control. And it’s even more disturbing to find that the Chinese government thinks that it can get away with this kind of surveillance and intimidation of people inside Australia – with Xi Jinping happy to look our prime minister in the face while doing so.
You’d think that religion was a private matter best left to people and their various gods and practices. But in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party, any organisation like a religious or even sporting body is a potential separate source of power and solidarity that can pose a threat to the Party’s authoritarian rule. So they must be silenced, intimidated and coopted.
China’s government is notorious for controlling all aspects of religion inside China, just as it prevents any freedom of speech or political criticism, even debate.
It’s engaged in an arm wrestle with the Dalai Lama because it claims it should choose his successor – to make sure that, unlike the current Dalai, the new one understands the Communist Party is in charge and so he won’t speak up about the government’s abuses. Beijing now selects Catholic bishops in China – in consultation with the Pope. Churches, mosques and other religious centres have been remodelled by the Chinese authorities and must put Xi Jinping’s picture up in a prime spot.
That’s an ugly side of living in authoritarian China. But we cannot allow Beijing to bring this kind of heavy-handed repression of religious freedom and freedom of association into Australia. We’ve heard from ASIO boss Mike Burgess for years now that this type of foreign interference was happening, although he’s been reluctant to name names and we’ve seen very few charges or prosecutions. So it’s refreshing to see the AFP taking this case to court.
The woman who has been charged for working covertly on behalf of Beijing will face her time in court. In a glaring contrast to the Chinese court system, she will have a fair trial in a democratic country, with free courts operating independently of the government of the day. In China, the ruling Party controls the courts, the defence lawyers, the prosecution, the judges and the verdicts.
But the investigation and the charges show one thing very clearly: Australians and our government have to be clear eyed in our dealings with Beijing and understand the differences between an authoritarian country and an open democracy.
These can’t be massaged away by carefully chosen diplomatic words – like the prime minister’s catch all bumper sticker for dealing with China “we agree where we can, disagree where we must but engage always’. The differences get very real when it comes to how we live our lives and run our country.
A version of this article was first published by the Daily Telegraph.