In this abridged submission to the public inquiry into AUKUS, Wanning Sun warns that the pact’s securitisation of China is discouraging Chinese Australians from political participation and constraining academic freedom.
This is an abridged version of a written submission made to the Public Inquiry into AUKUS.
Chinese Australians have remained a largely silent constituency in the public debate over AUKUS, despite being Australian citizens with the same formal democratic rights to participate as any other member of the public. I suggest that this silence should not be interpreted as a lack of interest in Australia’s security or foreign policy. Rather, it reflects the corrosive effects of Sinophobia in Australia’s public discourse and the excessive securitisation of the Australia–China relationship.
Sinophobia and social cohesion
Lowy Institute polls consistently show that around two-thirds of Australians (65 per cent–67 per cent) “somewhat” or “strongly” support the acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines.
In contrast, levels of support for AUKUS among Chinese Australians seem much lower. At a Chinese Australian Forum (CAF) panel discussion in Sydney in 2024, an informal audience poll revealed a stark contrast with broader national sentiment: only 15 per cent of participants supported AUKUS, 22 per cent were undecided, and 63 per cent opposed the pact.
This begs the question as to why there has been very little participation by Chinese Australian individuals and organisations in the public debate surrounding AUKUS.
AUKUS is fundamentally framed as a response to the strategic threat posed by China. The emergence of the current China threat discourse has relied on the convergence of three domains: media, foreign policy and public opinion. Media coverage legitimises foreign policy choices, those choices validate media framing, and shifts in public opinion become both the product and justification of an increasingly securitised policy agenda.
To a considerable extent, this has contributed to an enduring and widespread climate of Sinophobia. While related to anti-Chinese racism, Sinophobia is a more complex and difficult phenomenon to identify. It is also more corrosive to democratic health and social cohesion because it operates not only through explicit racial prejudice, but through the conflation of the actions of the Chinese state with people of Chinese heritage. As Osmond Chiu writes, although there is not yet a widely accepted working definition of the term, in practice it often takes the form of a failure to distinguish legitimate criticism of the PRC and the CCP from rhetoric or practices that unfairly single out, stigmatise or impose exceptional demands on people of Chinese background.
Examples of Sinophobia abound, including treating Chinese Australians as a presumptive security risk, requiring them to demonstrate loyalty in ways not expected of other Australians, or portraying the Chinese diaspora as an extension of the Chinese state.
A key aspect of Sinophobia is the questioning of the political loyalty of Chinese Australian individuals and community organisations, particularly first-generation migrants from the PRC and the organisations they are associated with, within Australian society. To a large extent, this has led to increased distrust towards Chinese Australians. This high level of distrust is evidenced in polling by the Australia–China Relations Institute (ACRI), which consistently shows that four in 10 Australians believe Chinese Australians could be mobilised to act against Australia’s national interests or undermine social cohesion. What is particularly concerning is that this figure has remained more or less unchanged for three consecutive years, despite a change in federal government.
Australia’s national security establishment has repeatedly urged the public to remain vigilant against “adversaries” who use front companies, academic exchanges and face-to-face meetings in third countries to recruit insider sources. These public warnings have heightened fears that Chinese Australians who speak out about AUKUS may be suspected of acting on behalf of a foreign nation or participating in foreign interference activities.
The result is an asymmetry in the costs of political participation. Whereas most Australians can express support for or opposition to AUKUS with little concern that their motives or allegiances will be questioned, Chinese Australians may reasonably anticipate that their views will be interpreted through the prism of ethnicity, loyalty or foreign influence.
AUKUS and the erosion of academic freedom
In strategic and trade policy discussions in an AUKUS context, the “small yard, high fence” approach describes a strategy of protecting critical and sensitive technologies, such as advanced military capabilities or dual-use technologies, by restricting a narrow range of core items through export controls, security measures and alliance rules, while allowing broader trade and cooperation to continue outside this protected space.
In practice, however, due to excessive securitisation, the “small yard” has expanded to such an extent that much research collaboration between Australia and China involving “dual-use” technologies has been suspended or significantly constrained.
Despite the fact that the US and Australia have different national interests, Australia has largely relied on US-defined categories of “critical technologies” and US-generated lists of Chinese entities with alleged military links when assessing both student visa applications from China and security risks arising from government-funded research.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) is now closely involved in assessing national security risks associated with research projects funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC). Although the ARC recommends funding projects based on academic merit through a rigorous and independent peer-review process, the government retains the power to reject recommendations on national security grounds. In the most recent round, 13 grants were vetoed by the Minister for Education, Jason Clare, acting on advice from security agencies.
Australia’s national security agencies have also significantly reshaped research governance in Australian universities. My interviews with 12 senior Chinese-Australian scientists in STEM disciplines found that risk-averse universities have become increasingly cautious, actively discouraging rather than promoting Australia–China science collaboration. Research offices in universities now explicitly advise grant applicants against collaborating with China and require academics to undergo elaborate approval processes for many forms of scholarly exchange, including attending conferences, co-authoring papers and training students.
Chinese-Australian academics in STEM fields are Australian citizens, permanent residents and long-term Chinese-born researchers who have become integral to Australia’s science and technology sector. Last year, one-quarter of the approximately 300 recipients of the prestigious Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher awards affiliated with Australian institutions were of Chinese background.
The 12 senior professors I interviewed acknowledged the importance of managing national security risks in research. However, they argued that current practices have led to over-securitisation. They also expressed concern that the concept of “dual-use” technologies, referring to technologies with both civilian applications and potential defence uses, has been applied too broadly, casting suspicion over a wide range of research areas. They also told me that collaboration between Australian scientists and researchers based in China has become increasingly rare, and in some fields virtually non-existent, since the introduction of the UFIT guidelines.
The perceived over-securitisation of research and the undue suspicion directed towards these scientists because of their Chinese backgrounds are already taking a toll. Those I interviewed reported feeling demoralised despite having made Australia their home for decades and having become deeply embedded in Australian society. Some remain committed to continuing their work in Australia, while others have left Australia.
Wanning Sun is a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Technology, Sydney. She also serves as the deputy director of the UTS Australia-China Relations Institute. She is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a member of the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts (2020-23). She is best known in the field of China studies for her ethnography of rural-to-urban migration and social inequality in contemporary China. She writes about Chinese diaspora, diasporic Chinese media, and Australia-China relations.