On this episode of China Uncensored,
Guys, it supposes to be a silent invasion.
Hi, welcome to China Uncensored, I'm your host, Chris Chappell.
It's one of the most controversial books of the year:
Silent Invasion by Professor Clive Hamilton.
It details how the Chinese Communist Party
is infiltrating Australian society and politics.
I sat down with Prof. Hamilton to discuss
why he refuses to be silent.
about this invasion.
Thank you for joining us today, Professor Hamilton.
It's a pleasure to be here.
So, In Silent Invasion,
you talk about dark money, spies,
and gullible politicians.
Which should we be most terrified of?
Well, it's a constellation.
I'm sorry.
I wish I could pick out one,
but this is the thing about the CCP's influence operations in Australia.
As one intelligence official described it to me,
they call it a "Full Court Press."
I'm sure your American listeners will understand that basketball term.
I had to look it up.
It means an all-out offensive
and so what I describe in my book
is the whole series of operations whereby
the CCP and its agents have influence in Australia
and, from China, have attempted to influence
at times with great success all of Australia's major institutions,
from politics to media to business
and of course, into universities.
Yeah.
Well, I really appreciate the basketball reference.
It sounds like the communist party really scored a touchdown.
So, when you're doing the research for the book,
was there anything that surprised you?
I was constantly surprised...
Nothing is sacred.
No area of Australian society, politics
or culture is free from influence
if there is an opportunity there.
So, as you say, that was one of the
shocking elements that I came across,
the way in which ...
And I don't want to exaggerate this.
My understanding is that this has only happened in a small way so far,
but the way in which agents
of the CCP have made themselves present
in the congregations of Chinese Christian churches in Australia
and of course, the CCP is officially an atheist organization,
so the infiltration is certainly not because the CCP feels as though
it needs to inject a spiritual element into its ideology.
Is the Communist Party's infiltration targeting any particular political party?
They're quite eclectic in their political tastes.
They'll infiltrate anything that they can.
What impact do you hope Silent Invasion will have?
I wrote the book in order to wake up Australians
to what is happening, to give them the full picture
of the nature of these operations
and more particularly why.
Why is the CCP targeting Australia in this way?
So, really, it's to bring about social change,
political change, in response to what I see,
as many others do, as a really big problem in Australia.
How does this affect your average Australian
who might be more concerned about Rugby
or Vegemite or whatever the average Australian is into these days?
when I've been going around the country giving talks,
chatting to people about the book,
is that it seems to me that a very large number of Australians
had a kind of sense that there was something wrong,
that they'd picked up something in the newspapers
or in the local community about some kind of
intrusion from the CCP or a major Chinese corporation
and it worried them.
There's a kind of unease about what's been happening
and therefore,
many non-Chinese-Australians and a lot of Chinese-Australians
have seized upon the book
as a way of explaining more broadly
what has been happening,
this kind of niggling sense that they've had that
there's something odd going on
that's made them feel uneasy.
What was your reaction when your
publisher told you they weren't going to publish
Silent Invasion?
Were you like,
"Wow.
Should I include this story in my book"?
I was deeply shocked.
Allen & Unwin I've worked with for many, many years.
They have been extremely enthusiastic about the book
right up to the day before
I got the phone call and said,
"We're pulling the plug."
And they said subsequently in the phone call
and then in writing subsequently that they did
because they were afraid of retaliation from Beijing
and I thought,
"It's a kind of brilliant but unwelcome vindication
of the essential argument of my book."
So, it really worked out for you.
Well, at one level, it certainly drew a huge amount of publicity
to the book and suddenly,
publication of my book became a free speech issue.
Mind you, it's not a pleasant thing
to spend weeks and weeks feeling,
with good reason,
that the state security apparatus in Beijing
is keeping a very close eye on you.
I mean, am I at any risk,
being here with you right now?
Well, we did have a spy sitting outside of this building
who was carrying with her what,
I was subsequently told,
was probably a sniffer,
which is a device that looked like a mobile phone,
but in fact is a quite sophisticated electronic device
that can pick up all wifi and mobile telephone communication inside a building.
That sounds fun, to be getting that kind of attention.
Well, it does unsettle one and after a while,
you do start to take notice of things around you
that normally you wouldn't bother about...
There's no doubt, based on a vast and from security experts
and the Australian Federal Police,
that the Chinese authorities in Australia are
collecting a dossier on me.
I've been the subject of cyber intrusions.
I've been subjected to a really intense campaign of vilification and bullying
Were you surprised by the controversy the book generated?
You know, I anticipated it,
but in the abstract.
You know, you anticipate something.
I think this is going to be very controversial.
I think I'm going to be accused of racism
and anti-China xenophobia,
but when it actually happened,
it kind of comes on you with an intensity and an
emotional place that is really quite hard to take.
You need to have the skin of a rhino
to not want to crawl into a hole and stay there.
The Chinese Embassy has called,
"Critics of the China
filled with a Cold-War mentality
and anti-China hysteria and paranoia.
Which of those best describes you?"
Well, you know, I grew up in the cold war,
so maybe some of it's still hanging around me somewhere,
but you know, the key point which many of your listeners understand is that
whenever there's any criticism of the communist party,
the communist propaganda efforts work very hard to persuade
the public that, in fact, it's the Chinese people
who are under attack.
It's the only way it can really defend itself from this kind of criticisms.
Is racism a real, potential problem?
On the question of whether the book will stimulate racist elements in our society,
anti-China feeling ...
That was my concern from Day One
I took every measure I could as I researched
and wrote the book to avoid the possibility
that the book could lend any credibility
to those anti-China, racist elements
on the fringe of our society.
I consulted with people in the Chinese-Australian community
and reflected their views in the book
and I think I do that quite effectively.
So, you really have to work quite hard
to draw out of the book anything that can be used to defend
the idea that the book is racist or stimulates racism.
Some people have worked very hard at drawing
that conclusion from the book.
Some of them, I've been quite surprised.
I thought, "Why are you doing that?"
So, one of the fascinating things that I've learned in the last four weeks
is how deeply entrenched in some segments of the political left
is the idea that any criticism of the communist party
is a criticism of Chinese people
and therefore, we must defend this oppressed minority.
Give me a break.
I mean, Chinese-Australians that I spoke to,
many of them, don't feel that way.
You, defenders of multiculturalism,
should go and talk to them,
rather than community leaders
who actually represented United Front organizations
that dance to the Communist Party's tune.
You actually have a lot of connections in the Chinese-Australian community.
What was their reaction to your book?
Well, they welcomed it when I made contact with them initially
and started to talk to them.
We found that last week that a group of Chinese-Australians
was very, very eager to have a launch in Sydney for the book
and I was really blown away by the number of Chinese-Australians
that were packed in that room in Parliament House in Sydney
and gave the book such an extraordinary, enthusiastic launch off into the world.
Why do you think that was?
Well, I think that for the last ten to twenty years,
many Chinese-Australians who are critical of the Communist Party and say,
"We came to Australia to escape from
the clutches of the Communist party,
and now they're following me,"
Their voices have been silenced.
They've been marginalized.
They've been kicked out of the public debate
and the mainstream media and politicians
have been talking to community leaders,
who are, generally,
run United Front organizations.
So, many Chinese-Australians have been extremely grateful
that finally someone in the mainstream
has been taking their complaints seriously
and has written a book about it.
And most important question:
how does this affect America?
Well, it has a huge implication for the United States
and that is because the authorities in the United States
from Congress to the CIA, FBI,
to think tanks inside the Beltway
that take notice of China to a whole lot of scholars across the country,
are watching very, very closely
what is happening in the Australian parliament,
to the debate that we've been discussing today,
with a view to copying the ways in which
Australian governments and Australian society
more broadly pushes back against Beijing's attempts
to interfere with, influence, guide, and ultimately control
what happens in this country.
So in your book, it says, "The communist party is using
democracy to destroy democracy."
What can liberal democracies do to protect ourselves
and our freedoms?
Well, I think liberal democracies need to muscle up.
I mean, here is a serious threat
to the foundational values of liberal democracy
led by very powerful economic incentives
coming from the Peoples' Republic of China
and I think we in the liberal democracies need to
make a really fundamental decision,
one that we haven't been forced to do ...
I'm about to say, "Ever," but certainly for many decades.
And that is to decide: how much is our freedom worth?
Thank you very much for joining us today, Professor Hamilton.
I've enjoyed it.
And I would highly recommend picking up a copy of Silent Invasion.
I've read it myself and you can find a link to
how you can purchase it in the description below.
China Uncensored is supported by viewers like you.
Our trip here to Australia was not funded by the CIA or Taiwan--
but by our amazing supporters on Patreon.
Click here to visit our website on Patreon.com
to see how you can contribute to the show.
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