The coercion category

The definitive text on Beijing’s overseas influence operations isQiaowu:Extra-Territorial Policies for the Overseas Chinese by China expert James To. Citing primary documents,To concludes the policies are designed to “legitimise and protect the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power” and maintain influence over critical “social,economic and political resources”.

Those already amenable to Beijing,such as many student group members,are “guided” – often by Chinese embassy officials – and given various benefits as a means of “behavioural control and manipulation,” To says.

Those regarded as hostile,such as Tony Chang,are subjected to “techniques of inclusion or coercion.”

Australian academic Dr Feng Chongyi is another who falls into the “coercion” category. In March,Feng travelled to China to engage in what he calls the “sensitive work” of interviewing human rights lawyers and scholars across China.

Feng expected to be closely watched and harassed when he arrived in Beijing but accepted it simply as an irritating feature of his job.

“It’s an open secret that our telephone is tapped,we are followed everywhere.”

“But that is a little thing that we have to accept if we want to work in China,” the University of Technology Sydney China scholar and democracy activist tells Fairfax Media andFour Corners.

Feng is a small,energetic man who has retained his Communist Party membership in the hope that he will live long enough to see some results from what has become his life’s mission:democratising China.

But he is also a realist,which meant he was initially unconcerned when,on March 20 and after he’d arrived in the city of Kunming,he was approached by agents from the Ministry of State Security. Feng was driven to a hotel three hours away to be questioned.

He expected the matter to end there but,a day later,he realised he was being followed by security agents to the sprawling port city of Guangzhou. There he was told his interrogation would continue.

“That’s the time when I really realised something serious is happening,” he recalls.

Big trouble

In a Guangzhou hotel room,the security agents subjected Dr Feng to daily six-hour questioning sessions,all of it video-taped.

Many of the questions were about his activities in Sydney,including the content of his lectures at UTS,the people in his Australian network of Communist Party critics,and his successful efforts to stop a concert glorifying the Communist Party founder Chairman Mao Zedong.

Then the agents turned their attention to Feng’s family,asking him specific questions to show him that his wife and daughter were also being closely watched. He describes this change in tactics as a means of getting him to fully submit to his inquisitors’ demands. It is the only part of his story that the wily academic hesitates to recall,as if emotion might overtake him.

“I can suffer this or that but I’ll not allow … my wife and my daughter and my other family members[to] suffer from my activities,” he says.

“That is the thing that’s quite fearful in my mind.”

When his inquisitors demanded Feng take a lie detector test on March 23,he called his wife who told him to make a run for it.

A few hours later,after midnight,Feng crept out of his hotel,hoping to board a 4am flight. But as he sought to check in,an airport official told him he could not leave China because he was suspected of endangering state security.

“At that point,my wife told my daughter that I was in deep trouble,” says Feng. Feng’s daughter immediately called a foreign affairs specialist in the Australian government and asked for help.

Feng’s questioning continued for six more days until his daughter was contacted by an Australian government official and told Feng would be permitted to board a flight back to Australia.

In his final interrogation session,the MSS agents presented Feng with a document to sign that forbade him from publicly discussing his ordeal. But by then,his detention had already been covered by several Australian media outlets. When Feng landed at Sydney airport on April 1,a small group of supporters was waiting for him with banners.

Feng believes his treatment in China was designed to send other academics,along with his supporters in the Chinese Australian community,a message to “stay away from sensitive issues or sensitive topics”.

“Otherwise they can get you into big trouble,detention or other punishment.”

Campus patriots

One student involved in an Australian CSSA explains to Fairfax Media and Four Corners how Chinese embassy officials played an active role in organising a large student rally to welcome Premier Li Keqiang when he visited Australia in March. On the day,the rally had two shifts,the first starting at 5am.

The CSSA insider insists it was students rather than the embassy calling the shots.

“I wouldn’t really call it helping,” the student says of the embassy’s role,while confirming it provided flags,transport,food,a lawyer and certificates for students that would help them find jobs back in China.

“It’s more sponsoring.”

Whoever was really pulling the strings did so effectively. Students were willing to assemble at 5am to welcome Premier Li. Their motivations were mixed. Some,says the student,were proud of China’s economic rise. Other factors that helped mobilise the students are an early education system that extols the virtues of the Communist Party and the reality that positive connections with the government— the embassy promised rally participants a certificate — can help a person land a job in China.

Federal police officers still describe with awe events in 2008 at the Olympic torch rally,when hundreds of chartered buses entered Canberra from NSW and Victoria,delivering 10,000 Chinese university students “to protect the torch”.

“If the Aussie embassy in London issued a similar call to arms to Australian students in London,there would be two students and a dog,” an officer says.

There was another means to inspire students to assemble before dawn:a CSSA member stressed the importance of blocking out anti-communist protesters.

Would the CSSA member who spoke to Fairfax Media and the ABC go so far as to alert the embassy if a human rights protest was being organised by dissident Chinese students?

“I would,definitely,just to keep all the students safe,” the student says. “And to do it for China as well.”

Going viral

The extent to which this student nationalism is directed and monitored from Beijing,and what this means for academic freedoms,is uncertain.

Former China ambassador Geoff Raby plays it down,saying Australian universities “are pretty much aware this activity goes on”.

But last year,ANU Emeritus Professor and the founding director of the Australian centre on China in the World,Geremie Barme,was so concernedhe wrote a lengthy letter to Chancellor Gareth Evans.

Barme’s fears were sparked by aseries of viral nationalistic videos created and posted by a Chinese ANU student,Lei Xiying. One of Lei’s videos,“If you want to change China,you’ll have to get through me first”,attracted more than 15 million hits.

“I would opine that Mr Lei is an agent for government opinion carving out a career in China’s repressive media environment for political gain,” wrote Barme.

The ANU defended the student’s activities on free speech grounds,but Barme said the university was ignoring Lei’s likely sponsorship by an authoritarian government that routinely threatens scholars and journalists.

“Make no mistake,it is officially sanctioned propaganda,” Barme said. He urged the university to confront the issue by debating it openly.

His supporters say that request was ignored.