Following a second investigation into subsidies and a separate “anti-dumping” enquiry which were announced in August, the Chinese commerce ministry said last week that it would impose taxes on Australian wine of up to 200%, starting today. This hostile act of unconventional statecraft on the part of the Chinese state comes after various retaliatory actions that targeted Australian products, which include slapping 80% tariffs on Australian barley exports and restrictions on imports of Australian beef. The relations between Australia and China have, in recent months, been unravelling at an unprecedented pace. Two months ago, Cheng Lei, an Australian citizen and a host for China’s English-language broadcaster CGTN, was detained on suspicion of endangering national security. Soon after, two Australian journalists, ABC’s Bill Birtles and Australian Financial Review’s Michael Smith, were “called on” by seven Chinese police officers in the middle of the night shortly before their planned departures from China on the advice of the Australian foreign office.

The catalyst to the mistrust and hostility between the two countries happened in 2017, when the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) warned of growing Chinese attempts at influencing decision-making in Canberra through political donations. In December that year, in the wake of the revelation that Huang Xiangmo – a Chinese billionaire property developer who, since his arrival in Australia in 2011, had assiduously cultivated influence with both sides of Australian politics – had been involved in a donation scandal in which Sam Dastyari, a Labor senator, allegedly solicited thousands of dollars from businesses affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced a wide-ranging crackdown on foreign interference in political activity which includes offences that target foreign interference in domestic politics and economic espionage and an outright ban on foreign donations in Australian political campaigns. Beijing responded to the crackdown by freezing diplomatic visits. Soon after the Australian parliament passed the foreign interference laws in 2018, Australia announced that it would ban the Chinese tech giant Huawei altogether from being involved in the construction of its 5G network.

The last straw on the camel’s back was Australia calling for an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, which was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The call infuriated China, which has led up to the Chinese slapping sanctions on Australian barley, wine, coal, and several other exports. Earlier this week, the foreign policy disputes between the two countries took a nasty turn when Zhao Lijian, spokesperson and deputy director general for the Chinese foreign ministry’s information department, tweeted a photoshopped image of an Australian soldier slitting the throat of an Afghan child – ostensibly in response to the Brereton report, which reveals that 39 Afghans were allegedly murdered by Australian special forces in 23 incidents.

Insofar as China is concerned, one might regard Australia as a reliable seer that has the ability to foretell what is about to befall the west. Australia had, until recently, been sleepwalking into a precarious position of being subjugated under Chinese influence, both politically and economically. For the past two decades, China has been attempting to cultivate influence in foreign states; being in relative close proximity to China geographically, Australia has always been first on the list when it comes to China’s concerted effort in infiltrating and meddling in foreign politics, which is part of the “United Front” project, China’s grand plan to expand its influence across the world as has been revealed by Professor Anne-Marie Brady, an academic from New Zealand, in her paper “Magic Weapons: China’s political influence activities under Xi Jinping”. The shocking revelation of the donation scandal of Huang Xiangmo and Sam Dastyari demonstrated the extent to which Chinese infiltration in Australian politics had managed to achieve: China had not merely succeeded in gaining access to and exerting influence on high-ranking politicians, it had turned some of them into loyal marionettes, speaking and acting first and foremost for the interests of the Chinese state. The strategy that the Beijing employs is one of endoparasitic infiltration, which was dubbed “Termite Policy” in the sixties by Zhou Enlai, Mao’s Premier. The Chinese Communist Party, through bribery, coercion and implanting fifth columnists, would surreptitiously and gradually take over institutions in democratic countries so that they serve the interests of the Chinese authorities – the method is comparable to that of termite infestation, in that termites usually consume wood from the inside out, leaving a thin veneer of timber which often allows the infestation to go underway unnoticed for years.

The growing reliance of the Australian economy on the Chinese market also leaves Australia susceptible to Chinese intervention. China, being Australia’s largest trading market – accounting for 32.6% of the value of all national exports, could easily manipulate its economic leverage on Australia to fulfill its political agenda. In order to counter the leverage, the free world must work together to ensure that no free country should be quelled from calling out China over Covid or its human rights violations in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, and that no country should have to put up with such authoritarian bullying. The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which has a membership of 200 MPs from 19 countries, is both right and ingenious to organize the “democracy wine” campaign that ask people all around the world to buy Australian wine in demonstration of solidarity with Canberra. Following Australia’s example, the free world should also be constantly alert to China’s “Termite” foreign policies and, if necessary, make arrangements for a comprehensive crackdown on China’s endoparasitic infestation through legislation and debarment. The next step that free countries should do would be to strengthen their economic positions through co-operation and advocating multilateral trade among the bloc, in preference especially to authoritarian regimes such as China.

(Joseph Long is a London-based writer and linguist from Hong Kong. He is a Philosophy graduate of King’s College London and a member of the Society of Authors in the United Kingdom.)

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