The Australian reliably informs as that in Beijing it’s “all the way with Albo for PM”; the latest Chinese ship in the proximity of Australia’s waters is both an act of aggression and proof positive that New Zealand’s scientists are among the most “clueless” creatures on earth; and Confucius Institutes have to go from Australian university campuses.
It’s not that Australian media reports on China are entirely wrong (though on occasion they are), it’s that facts are gathered, whipped into a story and planted below a headline with the suggestion that those Chinese are again up to no good. A prime example appears in The Australian (02/04/25) under the headline, “Chinese state media accuses Dutton of ‘beating the drums of war’, praises Albanese”.
The story, written by China correspondent Will Glasgow, is more Murdoch media beating of the drums of hysteria. Glasgow slams China’s tabloid Global Times newspaper for, what the headline suggests, is Beijing picking sides in next month’s federal election. That suggestion is rubbish.
So transparent is The Australian’s attempt to “verbal” its fellow tabloid that it sprinkles quotes from the editorial without doing the obvious thing, including a link to the full article. Here is a link to that Global Times story so readers of this journal can decide.
The Chinese tabloid’s editorial was about Australian media reporting on a Chinese “spy vessel” operating close to Australian waters. Though it may well have surveillance capabilities, no Australian media outlet tendered any proof that the Tan Suo Yi Hao (Discovery One) is a spy vessel. The most conclusive and damning proof that the mainstream media and the China bashers could muster is that the ship is Chinese… therefore it has to be spying on Australia.
The context of the “praise” Beijing heaped on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was quoting his words that, “We live in circumstances where just as Australia has vessels in the South China Sea, and vessels in the Taiwan Straits and a range of areas, this vessel is there”. The Global Times injected the commentary: “Albanese spoke the truth”. That was the extent to which it praised Albanese.
Far more importantly, and what this heavily biased Murdoch report ignored, was that Albanese was indeed speaking the truth. Australia constantly has military ships and aircraft operating in the proximity of China’s international boundaries in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.
The headline of the Global Times opinion piece was “Australia’s paranoia over China’s research vessel unfounded, it doesn’t have to be this way”, nothing praising Albanese or taking sides in the federal election. In fact, the editorial was aimed squarely at Murdoch media — The Australian and Sky News — for its biased reporting on the so-called “spy ship” story. It was essentially a hit job on Murdoch reports, more than singling out Peter Dutton or Albanese for criticism or praise.
Glasgow, who in my opinion has fallen in step with the company line on China, is no “wet behind the ears” correspondent. He knows how to craft a headline that keeps the bosses in Holt Street (News Limited’s Australian headquarters) happy, and then cherry pick facts and quotes to write the story.
As to the Global Times’ suggestion that Australian politicians whipping up security issues came after direction from the political masters in Beijing, it was actually derived from an interview with Chinese academic Xu Shanpin, who is an adjunct research fellow at the China University of Mining and Technology.
Here comes the ASPI commentary
What would a Chinese ship story be without The Australian setting sail with an editorial (02/04/25) from former Australian Strategic Policy Institute boss Peter Jennings? (The article was also posted on his website). The celebrated China hawk and Murdoch columnist took a different tack to his stablemates; he raised the under-reported issue that the Tan Suo Yi Hao had first sailed into New Zealand before heading off to waters south of Australia.
New Zealand news website newsroom reported on this more than a week ago (25/03/25) under the very “unsexy” headline “NZ research ties grow with Europe and China but US takes a back seat”, writing, “A Chinese ship and crew took Kiwi scientists to the ocean floor, where they collected the first samples from the base of the Puseygur Trench.” The trench is at a depth of 6300 metres in the Tasman Sea and is formed by the subduction of the Indo-Australian Plate under the Pacific Plate to the south of New Zealand.
Further, as reported by the New Zealand Herald, the Tan Suo Yi Hao set sail on its mission on 25 January, sailing around the Tasman Sea. Murdoch’s newshounds were surely asleep at the helm while all of this was going on.
It gets even worse for Australia’s China bashers as… wait for it… on board the “spy ship” were scientists from China, New Zealand, Malaysia, Denmark, Germany, France, Brazil and India.
Jennings clearly missed out on all those scientists from our allied nations, rather singling out the Kiwis, writing, “There are few creatures on earth more clueless than New Zealand scientists when it comes to defence and security.”
Jennings points out a spokesperson for Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Australia was keeping tabs on the Tan Suo Yi Hao’s movements. He rather flippantly wrote, “Perhaps the spokesman was previously a Kiwi scientist.”
What we do know is that Jennings was previously a chief of staff for then LNP defence minister Robert Hill and later an adviser to prime minister John Howard. He’s certainly got no skin in Murdoch’s game of cheerleading Dutton all the way to the polls on 3 May.
Attack plans in place
The Australian’s Greg Sheridan, in an interview with stablemate Sky News (01/04/25), emphatically states, about the presence of a Chinese research vessel in proximity of our waters, “They are seeing what is the best place for their submarines to sail if they want to come and attack Australia, they’re looking at our submarine cables which they can cut in the event of hostilities.”
No doubt the Chinese would be foolish not to have contingencies in place to deal with a nation such as ours that would be the first to join the US in any future war with Beijing. However, aside from no proof that this is in fact a spy ship in our waters, might we give some currency to the idea that China is now visiting our waters just as we’ve visited theirs for decades?
The ABC’s hawkish defence and foreign affairs correspondents, Andrew Greene and Stephen Dziedzic, advanced the theory that the Chinese vessel was “mapping our submarine cables”. That line came from opposition defence spokesperson Andrew Hastie, who told the national broadcaster, “The prime minister should be standing up for our sovereignty, he’s shown a pattern of weakness with regard to activities in our waters — particularly with the Chinese flotilla.” Albo weak on national security is election rhetoric and the ABC is (once again) giving the LNP a platform to push the party line.
Confucius Institutes on the way out
The ABC reports (01/04/25) that six Confucius Institutes will disappear from Australian university campuses. The online story tells readers, “Six Australian universities have now closed Chinese Government-linked Confucius Institutes on their campuses, two years after the federal government signalled it would not allow any more of the controversial educational centres to open their doors in Australia. The government ramped up scrutiny of the institutes, which critics said had undermined academic freedom and allowed Chinese authorities to exert undue influence over what was taught at universities.”
Just who are these critics? What agendas do they have? And what proof is there that academic freedom has been undermined? Presumably in the rush to meet a deadline, reporters Dziedzic and Conor Duffy missed out on giving readers these answers.
Confucius Institutes are located across the world, typically within universities and higher education institutions, and are public educational and cultural promotion programs of the state of China. The point is that nobody is hiding the fact that they are paid for by the Chinese Government. Though, in some instances, most notably Sydney University’s Confucious Institute, they receive no funding from China.
As to whether they are attached to the tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party? There’s lots of innuendo and suggestions, but no hard proof. It just has to be bad because it’s linked to China.
In fairness to the ABC, it sought comment from an Australian academic on the subject. Dr Jeffrey Gil from Flinders University, who researches Confucius Institutes, did not believe they promoted “Chinese Government propaganda or overtly political narratives of China”.
“Based on my research”, he told the ABC, “Confucius Institutes’ teaching and cultural activities focus on non-political, non-controversial aspects of China and Chinese culture.”
These comments were buried at the bottom of the report, just above a quote from Victorian LNP senator James Paterson.
Marcus Reubenstein is an independent journalist with more than twenty-five years of media experience, having previously been a staffer with a federal Liberal Party senator from 1992 to 1994. He spent five years at Seven News in Sydney and seven years at SBS World News where he was a senior correspondent. As a print journalist he has contributed to most of Australia’s major news outlets. Internationally he has worked on assignments for CNN, Eurosport and the Olympic Games Broadcasting Service. He is the founder and editor of Asian business new website, APAC Business Review.