And did anyone in Canberra get the chance to tell Peter Dutton and Christian Porter that raiding some Chinese journalists, hardly deep-cover agents, might invite retaliation in kind? Was the lure of building an ALP-linked Chinese influence case, with Professor Chen Hong’s earlier work for Bob Hawke thrown in, simply too much to resist?
Correspondents in from the cold
So the cold war is setting in, after the ABC’s Bill Birtles and the Australian Financial Review’s Michael Smith, the last two Australian reporters in China, took flight home after the shock of a midnight call at their homes by the Ministry of State Security and a summons for interview.
The federal press gallery, as is its wont, rushed to Peter Jennings of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Rory Medcalf of the National Security College for comment. Commentators reached into the spy-thriller canon. SBS went for the UTS academic Feng Chongyi, a critic of Beijing, and Clive Hamilton, author of two books raising a shrill alarm about Chinese influence.
For others, the spy-thriller canon was irresistible. Stepping aside from the on-going News Corp attack on Victorian premier Dan Andrews, now routinely cartooned in Mao-era uniform, The Australian’s foreign editor Greg Sheridan evoked the atmosphere of Berlin circa 1960:
That Australian journalists and diplomats in China have been reduced to acting out a John le Carre cum James Bond series of late night emergency pick-ups by embassy cars, days of uncertain shelter in the fragile security of diplomatic compounds, tense and secret negotiations over an exit path, ritual interrogations and finally diplomat-supervised flight from China is evidence — more dramatic than anything else we have seen — of the profound crisis that confronts Australia/China relations.
This sequence of events is unprecedented, bizarre, ominous and a pointer to an immediate future likely to become more fraught, and more dangerous. It indicates a new level of crisis between Canberra and Beijing. It also indicates an extreme bullying attitude by China towards all foreign nations, with the partial exception of the US, which Beijing still fears. And worst of all, it almost certainly indicates a further shift towards the practice of brutal hostage diplomacy by Beijing.
The Chinese were not taking this lying down. Within a day of Birtles and Smith landing back and the news coming out, the Global Times and Xinhua revealed that four Chinese journalists in Australia had been subjected to ASIO dawn raids at their homes on June 26, and their electronic devices confiscated – even their children’s tablets and smart toys. In addition, two well-known Chinese academic specialists in Australian history and literature, Chen Hong and Li Jianjun, later had their visas to visit Australia cancelled. It was all yěmán wúlǐ xíngjìng or “barbaric and unreasonable behaviour,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry later summed up.
ASIO was not saying anything: “As is long-standing practice, ASIO does not comment on intelligence matters.” But the spooks and their political masters were talking on background. It was all linked to the raids on NSW upper house MP Shaoquett Moselmane and his part-time staffer John Zhang the same day, June 26. The journalists, the academics and Zhang had been part of a conversation circle on the Chinese messaging and e-commerce app WeChat, pushing the influence of State Security and the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department into the NSW Parliament.
An account by The Sydney Morning Herald’s Anthony Galloway and Eryk Bagshaw on September 9 was studded by attributions to “senior Australian security sources” . “Sources close to the investigation, who declined to be identified because inquiries are ongoing” and “Senior Australian government sources.”
Trading castles for pawns
The narrative needs some examination.
Take the line that Birtles and Smith were “forced” to flee. Would State Security have mounted the midnight visits on September 3-4 if the ABC had not booked Birtles a flight out of China on September 4?
Would the secret police and external intelligence agency have been content with just calling them in for an interview about what they knew of Cheng Lei, the Australian veteran with China state television’s English-language business program, who had been arrested two weeks earlier?
This is just what State Security wanted and got, before letting them leave China in a deal deftly handled by the Australian ambassador, Graham Fletcher.
Any foreign correspondent assigned to China has the experience of being arrested, interrogated and sometimes searched by Chinese police and paramilitaries, usually on trips outside Beijing and usually for a few hours before being run out of town. In my case, it was three times. You quickly learnt to hit town, get your pre-arranged interviews, and get out ahead of the posse.
As Tony Walker, twice posted there for The Age and the Financial Times, told me this week: “You are always walking on eggshells, and if you are an experienced correspondent, you know where the boundaries are.”
A midnight door-knock, by State Security not the regular Public Security police, is a step up from this periodic event and extra scary. Birtles and Smith were not being arrested and taken away. They were “persons of interest” in the Cheng Lei case; both of them say they hardly knew her. Hardly reassuring from an agency that can construct national security offences from very little or nothing. But should the correspondents have stayed on?
What caused the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to advise the ABC and AFR to get their correspondents out, and tell The Australian not to return its correspondent, Will Glasgow?
Was a sense that the disappearance and then confirmed arrest of the China state television host Cheng Lei in mid-August was only the start of things? Was there a hint from China’s Foreign Ministry that it was being pushed aside from the handling of foreign correspondents by State Security?
No wonder, when the guarded overtures extended by China’s deputy ambassador Wang Xining at the National Press Club on August 26 were followed a day later by Scott Morrison’s announcement that DFAT would be using the constitution’s external affairs power to monitor all foreign relationships of states, local councils and public universities, and veto them if the foreign minister deemed them against the national interest.(see articles by Graeme Orr and Melissa Conley Tyler on why this is a thoroughly dumb idea: https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/swallowing-a-huge-spider-to-catch-foreign-relations-flies/ https://theconversation.com/morrisons-foreign-relations-bill-should-not-pass-parliament-heres-why-145615)
And did anyone in Canberra get the chance to tell Peter Dutton and Christian Porter that raiding some Chinese journalists, hardly deep-cover agents, might invite retaliation in kind? Was the lure of building an ALP-linked Chinese influence case, with Professor Chen Hong’s earlier work for Bob Hawke thrown in, simply too much to resist?
As Sydney University’s David Brophy put it in a tweet: “If that’s what’s going on here, it’s not hard to see how dangerous it is. The security agencies can provoke responses that will be written up as inexplicable Chinese aggression, and drive Australia-China relations into a ditch, while we have no idea what our side is doing.”
But yes, the SMH informs us today, that Morrison, foreign minister Marise Payne and the whole National Security Committee of cabinet was informed that “ASIO was executing the warrants to question the Chinese journalists, which was standard practice. One source said the government weighed up all the risks of the operation, including the foreign policy implications, but pointed out it was important to let ASIO do its job.” So the practise, it seems, is to stand aside and not raise any objection to ASIO. Likewise, the withdrawal of visas for professors Chen and Li was on ASIO advice. The two say the suspect WeChat group was just innocuous badinage, named FD for “Fair Dinkum.”
The result is that for the first time since 1973, Australian media has no correspondents in China. As put by Richard McGregor, formerly in China for The Australian and the Financial Times and now at the Lowy Institute, we’ve sacrificed two rooks for four pawns. Or, as Jennifer Hewett put it in the AFR yesterday, business fear Morrison has kicked another own goal.China’s Foreign Ministry is now saying the Australian embassy and consulate exceeded diplomatic protocol by sheltering Birtles and Smith, which might be prelude to some expulsions of diplomats.
Our Man in…
With the clouds of Chinese suspicion about to burst on Birtles and Smith, it was perhaps an unfortunate time for the last Weekend AFR to run a piece asking whether the ABC’s “greatest foreign correspondent” had been a spy for the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.
The very long article, nearly 4,000 words, by Aaron Patrick was an extended obituary for Peter Barnett, who had died a month earlier aged 90. By the end of the article, Patrick had pretty well answered the question in the negative, though it was an entertaining wander through a long-ago era of journalism and intelligence-gathering.
The main suspicion came because his brother, Harvey Barnett, was a career ASIS officer rising to deputy director before transferring to ASIO as deputy director-general in 1976 and director-general from 1981. As Peter Barnett himself wrote late in life, he stayed with his older brother in Singapore in 1961 while looking for a reporting post in Asia. At times, Peter was banished from the house while Harvey entertained his field agents.
Peter soon jumped into correspondent positions with the ABC in Asia and then Washington. “For almost two decades, Peter Barnett covered international affairs with an effortless authority and access to power that made him a role model for a generation of broadcast journalists who followed,” Patrick wrote.
The assertion has drawn horse-laughs from many successor correspondents. To them, Barnett was emblematic of an era when foreign correspondents were ambassadorial figures granted deferential and polite interviews with foreign leaders, rather than ferreting out their dirty secrets.
With war experience as soldiers and correspondents, figures like Denis Warner and Peter Hastings were sought after for their insights when back in Australia. For those “declared” by having reliable views on national security, anti-communism and secrets, there were invitations to come in and swap notes at “Central Planning,” as the ASIS headquarters in the St Kilda barracks was name-plated. The Australian media then followed the D-Notice system, which included any mention of things like signals intelligence and the whereabouts of the Petrovs, the Soviet defectors given new identities.
That cosiness dissipated after Whitlam took power in 1972 and exposés around that time in Washington about the CIA’s support for oppressive regimes and the support role by ASIS. Correspondents in Asia generally knew who were the spooks in the embassy, and they knew we knew, but it was not done to mention it. Recent laws have made it illegal to name present and past ASIS personnel, except for its directors-general.
A more interesting tangent Patrick could have followed was his mention of Peter Barnett’s conversation to Islam in 1994, at age 64, his marriage in 1970 to Radio Australia announcer and poet Siti Nuraini Jatim, born in Indonesia, and his authorship of a book on Said Nursi, the Kurdish theologian who founded a widely-followed school of modernist Islam. For that matter, he could have mentioned that Harvey Barnett, like some other ASIS and MI6 officers in Jakarta, became a followed of the spiritual sect Subud, founded by the late Javanese mystic Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo.
Now that’s foreign influence, which might not go down too well these days.
Hamish McDonald has been a correspondent in Jakarta, Tokyo, New Delhi and Beijing, and was Regional Editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong and Foreign Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. He has won two Walkley Awards for reporting from Asia and was made an Inaugural Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs.
Comments
33 responses to “Media in the Asian Century. Tit for tat for journalists.”
There is a major typo in this article. Please be aware that the following paragraph was written by Greg Sheridan as part of Hamish McDonald’s quote of TheAustralian article. Readers familiar with Hamish would undoubtedly have picked up the error.
“This sequence of events is unprecedented, bizarre, ominous and a pointer to an immediate future likely to become more fraught, and more dangerous. It indicates a new level of crisis between Canberra and Beijing. It also indicates an extreme bullying attitude by China towards all foreign nations, with the partial exception of the US, which Beijing still fears. And worst of all, it almost certainly indicates a further shift towards the practice of brutal hostage diplomacy by Beijing.“
It seems to me that any stimulus for the Australian government to take on China to damage the ALP is very much incidental to Australia’s compliance with US foreign policy. Domestic politics is not reason enough to wilfully seek the destruction of trading and cultural ties that have taken decades to build. Given that Australia is highly unlikely to come out of this as top dog, what exactly is the deal with the US that has led to the current debacle? And is the US likely to keep it?
Important to recognise that journalists left because of advice/pressure from Australian Govt to do so.
We don’t know what facts/events or thinking on the part of Aus Govt and its Intel Service underlies that advice.
Once that decision had been made, Chinese authorities denied their departure until what appears rather innocuous questioning was carried out.
Did Australian authorities amplify the theatrics by protecting the journalists within their embassy.
Geoff Raby in AFR
“the buffoonery is but one of the unexplained aspects of these events. But it would seem a highly publicised “escape” from China was the intention. We can only speculate as to why”
Our state affiliated national broadcaster was not alone in milking this for all it was worth, insinuating that only by protecting themselves within their embassy were Australian journalists able to escape the clutches of the Chinese, when clearly this was not the case.
The decision to leave had already been made.
Why ?
Govt quoted as “important to let ASIO do its job”
It seems on the face of it that “its job” includes damaging our trade relationship with China.
Why ?
Sir,
We have been having diplomatic relations and trade with China since Whitlam’s prime ministership i.e. for more than 3 1/2 decades. Between that initial exchange and now, there has been no hysterical condemnation of China’s disposition towards other countries. Now, nothing that they do seems to be right. The fact is that they aren’t any more different now than what they were before. Suddenly, they all seem so ugly. Everything they do is wrong. And so we seem so righteous in standing up and complaining about their “bad” behaviour. Such criticisms have the futility of complaining that the gorilla has too much hair! Looking back, it seems incontrovertible that it all started with Donald Trump’s economic war with China. Now our relationship with the US appears to be at that point in time reminiscent of what Phillip Adam said of John Howard; that before the Americans could say “Jump!”, our erstwhile PM would say “How high?” Don’t Australians have that sharp mind and sense of humour that the Americans could only dream of? Need we emulate everything that they do if we have others like Paul Keating?
Let’s not forget that Australia established diplomatic relationship with China in 1972 while the US did it six years later in 1979. We were trailblazers, and yet we choose to turn back to follow the turtle!
Sincerely,
Teow loon Ti
Dear Teow loon Ti. I disagree with the the statement that “they aren’t any more different than what they were before”. I think the fact that they are so different bears some responsibility for the collapsing relationship. I believe the evidence shows China has become much more assertive recently and much more imperious. The popular term for this is wolf diplomacy, and Xi is supposed to very much encourage it. Thus we have had bellicose statements against not only Australia but many other countries. I think this has been unwise by China because it has played into Trump’s hands in trying to make China a key election issue, leading to all sorts of aggressive behaviour by the US.
Mr Zwartz,
When I said they are not any different than what they were, I was referring to their form of government. As for “assertiveness” and “imperial” behaviour, those are character judgements which I will not go into either against China or any other people around the world. They are a trap for acrimonious arguments.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
A trap for acrimonious arguments? My dear friend, that’s what the Web is for!
One of my favourite cartoons was years ago. A man is sitting at his computer. A voice floats across the room, “Darling, come to bed.” He replies: “I can’t. Someone on the Internet is wrong.” It really tickled me – isn’t it true of most of us?
Given the United States penchant for threatening, embargoing, invading, and bombing foreign countries, what behavior of China’s deserves to be called “extreme bullying”?
Greg Clark explains why foreign correspondents assigned to China have had the experience of being arrested, interrogated and sometimes searched by Chinese police: “Working as a correspondent in Japan the smell of spy involvement was over-powering at times. The US makes little effort to hide its spies using journalistic cover; one US journalist used to boast openly of his CIA contacts. The British and Soviets were more subtle; their Embassy press person would invite you to write a well-compensated research piece on your area of interest, and then gradually pull you into deeper exploits. Australia was the crudest. My estimate is that at least half of Australian journalists working or about to work in Japan are studied for recruitment. Half those studied are approached. Lacking both Japanese and contacts most are happy to cooperate. They are rewarded with Embassy and other news tip offs – information that fell off the back of a truck as one put it. Back in Australia some continue to cooperate. One Fairfax type, another non-Japanese speaker, has somehow been able to use his weak Japan experience to emerge as cheer-leader for the anti-China push.”
As one who has followed Australian correspondents in China for 60 years, it will be a relief to be spared their endless fabrications, deliberate misunderstandings, and flat-out lies that have contributed so much to the current situation and, probably, to an Australian decade of economic recession.
I find the MSM usually leaves me with the question “What’s really going on here?” Best chance of an answer is to take a look at P&I with pieces like this. Thanks Hamish and John.
Great article Hamish. Your depth of knowledge provides perspective to the many knee-jerk responses to the incidents. Memories too of Murray Clapham.
Just a small fact check: Subud is a spiritual practice, not an ideology, so it is not possible to become a ‘follower’ of Subud, since there really is nothing to follow. In fact ‘following Subud’ would be discouraged, since members go to some lengths to avoid any ideological process. It is more like a yogic practice than a religious belief.
You can shout, scream and cry until the cows come home but sadly, no one is listening. We are heading in one direction like a stampede which can be described as an uncontrolled concerted running as an act of mass impulse among herd animals or a crowd of people in which the group collectively begins running, often in an attempt to escape a perceived threat. This is how I see the current asymmetric circumstances.
In times of need, military assistance from the US has a better chance than economic assistance in trade as the latter gives the US a chance to gazump us in agricultural products. On these odds, I rather have neither and peace is a better proposition for a better life style for Australians.
The Morrison government is clearly not up to the challenge when it comes to handling our relationship with China. Whether intentionally, or because of incompetence, everything they do makes matters worse. This is becoming a fortnight ly occurrence and may be a deliberate distraction motivated partly by the pressure Morrison is under regarding his part in the sports rorts and poor handling of aged care. Irregardless, the only (small) hope for improved relations is a change of government. That means a lot of China bashing between now and the next election. Better get used to it.
Could we now have this intelligent article front page in the mainstream print media and the TV news presentations to-morrow? Please! Can we have Morrison and Payne/Reynolds/Dutton and ASIO properly spotlighted? And an end to the anti-Chinese hysteria/paranoia…
“Foreign influence” is the paranoid nationalist term for “globalisation”. Another two terms for the same thing, but with different rhetorical meaning, are “democracy” when you like it and “populism” when you don’t.
Serving Donald or their supporters? When will the corporate world react to the government fouling the nest that is their relationship with their biggest customer?
Having said that, it would be much better for everyone if there was more transparency in their respective activities. Secrecy is not a good way to garner support.
I too have been wondering what has happened to the backbone of those Liberal-National Party backers whose companies are about to go broke as a result of the collapse of the Australia-China trading relationship. I’m beginning to wonder if they care, and if Australian corporate leaders are like Captain Schettino of the Costa Concordia.
You have also got to like how the mainstream media (MSM) informed us about journalists like Birtles being under pressure in China and feeling the need to escape well before they told us about the raids on Chinese journalists and academics in Australia way back in June. In some cases they still only say it was one Chinese journalist, but as you say the Global Times reported it had been four. Although the Global Times is considered as CCP propaganda in Australia, it often has a far more muted in its response to Australian government’s ploys and nothing like the anti-Chinese – pro-US propaganda passing as diatribe that comes out in our MSM.
I asked questions a long time ago in readers comments in MSM concerning just how it was that so many Australian journalists could be living in China yet writing permanently negative reviews of anything the country does if the Chinese government was so intolerant? Of course in places like the SMH or Murdoch’s Liberal Party newspapers you don’t get printed for asking such questions, but honestly they have been running a campaign of negative smear against China for years, and particularly since Turnbull came to office. It’s become even worse under Morrison.
China has been the target of berating for about 250 years from the West. I think they have had a gut full now, and I don’t blame them.
Are you sure the mainstream media knew of the raids on the Chinese journalists? I understood it was revealed only by the Global Times. In which case it does not support your usual narrative of fake news and irresponsible anti-China media. They can’t report what they don’t know. I’ll tell you this: if I were an Australian journalist representing Australian media and resident in China, I would be extremely eager to leave. Only one side practises hostage diplomacy.
Also, you seem to have missed this paragraph by Hamish: “This sequence of events is unprecedented, bizarre, ominous and a pointer to an immediate future likely to become more fraught, and more dangerous. It indicates a new level of crisis between Canberra andBeijing. It also indicates an extreme bullying attitude by China towardsall foreign nations, with the partial exception of the US, which
Beijing still fears. And worst of all, it almost certainly indicates afurther shift towards the practice of brutal hostage diplomacy by Beijing.” This claim of “extreme bullying” doesn’t suit the Wendell narrative at all. Poor old Hamish, exposed as part of the neurotic, paranoid, anti-China Western media after all.
You write, ‘Only one side practises hostage diplomacy.’ Perhaps you are referring only to Australia and China, and not China and the west generally. If the latter, surely this current state of affairs began when Trump kidnapped the Chief financial officer of Huawei. Meng Wangzhou, or at least persuaded Canada to do so on his behalf.
Hi Malcolm. You are right, I was thinking only of China and Australia, and you do well do remind me of the Huawei incident.
But Meng Wangzhou was arrested legally on actual charges. She wasn’t just grabbed randomly to put pressure on another government. Her case differs from the two Canadian men, Michael Kovror and Micahel Spavor, who were arrested purely as reprisals (hence the term hostage diplomacy) let alone the two Chinese Australians under vague and unspecified arrest in China right now. This is exacerbated by the typically callous and brutish Chinese behaviour, for example confiscating Kovrig’s reading glasses to stop him ameliorating his imprisonment by reading. China calculates it will get away with any thuggish behaviour it chooses, and it is almost certainly right.
Though I can be relatively certain that you don’t agree with that summary.
Meng Wanzhoiu was arrested legally on charges, as you say. So I do agree with you on that point. However the charges relate to events that happened in 2009, when she wasnt in her present position, and seeking her extradition was an extreme way of dealing with the issue. Similar charges against others have been dealt with by fines and such penalties, so it seems a bit ‘brutal’ to deal with her in this fashion. And fairly obviously it was done to embarrass and inconvenience China during Trump’s trade war dispute over the past couple of years. So, in my judgement she was effectively grabbed to put pressure on another government.
I cant comment on the petty or brutal tactics used by Beijing is retaliation, but I’m sure I abhor such behaviour, as I do when I watch how the British authorities treat Assange. I dont like how these agencies behave in any country, including Australia.
Yes, there we agree. And, as I’ve said many times, don’t conflate my criticism of China with support of the US, particularly the worst and most loathsome President in its history.
It seems to me Barney that while you claim to be equally critical of the US, and particularly under Trump, I never see you criticize anyone other than the Chinese – they rate very high on the evil side it appears, while we in Australia are the ones that are honest. A bit James Bond- like black and white thinking don’t you agree? And for my part I have been accused by you before for being an China apologist, or sympathizer, and now a promulgator of fake news.
Personally I don’t really care, because as we have discussed before there is almost a fascist attitude arising in Australia accompanied by bigotry from some that anyone who says a positive word about China is some how un-Australian or a even clearly a Chinese spy. It follows on from the bias of people like Clive Hamilton who reflect similar views.
I will point out to you whether you want to accept it or not that our main stream media is being taken over fully by right wing sources and pro-Liberal government lackies. It’s also pushing the US line on virtually all commentary on China, much of it being hyperbole and diatribe. 9 Entertainment chaired by Peter Costello is now controlling what was once a fairer set of newspapers under Fairfax. Just after 9 bought out Fairfax they held a Liberal party fundraiser at head office, and as crikey.com pointed out (and I have witnessed myself) there has been a migration of News Corp journalists into newspapers like the SMH who write with complete bias in favour of anything the Morrison’s government does. I don’t read THE AGE but I would say the same thing is likely to be happening there. Some of Fairfax’s former best journalists now write independently on smaller websites. Some appear on these pages. Unfettered from working for such propagandist newspapers who edit what they write, they now do their journalism without constraint from right wing senior management, and the change is alarming.
One of the worst things in journalism to do in my view is to omit information for the sake of producing a certain view that aligns with certain political proclivities. We see more and more of this in the media. Now if you think Australian journalists were not aware of these Chinese journalists undergoing raids by the AFP it seems hard to believe given that in the same month the AFP was doing its best to expose in every way possible the Shaoquett Moselmane story, simply because he commended some actions that China has done for its own country. The alliance of the media with the AFP and the government is a well oiled machine. How do you think the media gets there before the police? In my view the government has been using this sort of staged concoction to gain political points way beyond the nature of what they consider to be the crime. Jack Waterford who was once editor of the Canberra Times and knows Canberra and federal politics like few others, explained how the AFP are the ones that usually tip off the media when the inquiry into Michaelia Cash’s office took place after the AWU raids.
I conclude here that I am equally suspicious of anything our main stream media claim on China as you may be of the Global Times. Both are well capable of propaganda and in Australia it is only sites like this one that allow a different story to be told and one that is far better informed.
Australian MSM is probably one of the worst in the world these days given it’s limited views, it’s Murdoch influence, the shift to 9 Entertainment control of the former Fairfax, and the constant attacks on the ABC.
Couple of things George. Perhaps we don’t always read or discuss the same topics, but I have said plenty of things critical of the US, especially its anti-China upsurge. Only yesterday on P&I I called Trump the most loathsome president in US history, which could seem a big claim except that he’s so far ahead in that race it doesn’t matter. And I’m not sure which comment of mine you interpreted as accusing you of fake news. I did note a remark by Hamish that makes a claim you usually deny.
Now one point you make is very important indeed, and that is the importance of what journalists omit as well as what they report. I struggled with this, in good conscience, much of my career – not because I wanted to distort or skew, but because space constraints meant that narratives or responses that provided balance were often truncated. So, of course, were the narratives that sparked the article. There’s never enough space, and if there were you wouldn’t have time to read it all.
We are in lockdown in Melbourne, and I am missing my regular lunches with journalist friends, so I can’t be certain what the AFP released. But I can say this: interviewing Chinese journalists and refusing to renew the visas of two academics would have been a very big story if the media had been aware of it, and I suspect the mainstream media were not aware of it until it was published in the Global Times. But that is based on my 45 years in journalism rather than knowledge of any facts in this case.
And of course the media are there at AFP raids because of tip-offs. It would be scarcely credible to deny that. But all the rest of your allegations don’t follow. I left The Age several years ago after 32 years there, long before it was taken over by Nine. But I attended news conference for years and know very well how the paper operated. And in my last 12 years as a writer, I was never once asked to skew a story. I don’t say that my biases never snuck out, but it was never deliberate.
PS: My reference to Trump as loathsome is on this thread, below, in a discussion with Malcolm Harrison. I agree with much or most of the criticism of the US on this website. I’ve said a few times, and am hardly Robinson Crusoe, that I’d like Canberra to steer its own course independent of both Beijing and Washington.
Barney
Here is a quote from ABC media already appearing on Wednesday 9th September:
The ABC report verifies what the Global Times says, and actually names the four individuals, but they don’t say who their source was. It is clear that it was not China however.
“The ABC has uncovered the identities of senior Chinese journalists and academics who have been drawn into the joint investigation by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).
They include: the Australia bureau chief of China News Service, Tao Shelan; China Radio International’s Sydney bureau chief Li Dayong; prominent Chinese scholar and media commentator Professor Chen Hong; and another leading Australian studies scholar, Li Jianjun.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-09/chinese-scholars-have-visas-revoked-as-diplomatic-crisis-grows/12644022
None of this was mentioned on ABC’s Wednesday evening news, nor has the record been corrected within the MSM as far as I have been able to research from any other newspaper that carried the stories about Bertles. It made it look like this came right out of the blue on the part of the Chinese and was not tit for tat. Let’s remember we are in a trade war.
Here is another account of the story: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/infiltration-plot-wechat-and-the-china-australia-row/1967850
The Chinese claim the raids from the AFP and ASIO all took part on the same day as the raid on Mr Moselmane. He is yet to be charged with anything, and Mr Zhang is challenging the investigation in the High Court.
“”At dawn of June 26 this year, Australian law enforcement officers conducted an unprovoked search on the residences of four journalists from three Chinese media organisations in Australia on the grounds of alleged violations of Australia’s Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act,” China News Service reported.”
So if ABC reports the name of these people and verifies the claims of the number of those raided as 4, as in the Global Times, why should we doubt them on the rest of the story concerning when the event took place?
In my opinion the main dirt file target here was Mr Moselmane, because I will allege that Liberals wanted to try to expose him as having too close of a relationship with China for political reasons. The thing about MSM is that it is always Labor politicians who are susceptible to Chinese influence but Liberals are not. Funny that. The MSM largely promotes the same view on every possible occasion, while Liberals who have had close relations with the Chinese get a free ride.
None of what took place in the raids, nor the assumptions made about the individuals has been proven as far as I can source, and we don’t know what has happened to the others involved. Where they charged with anything? Or just intimidated? The point is that how did the ABC find this out last week, and from who did this information come?
I would allege that ASIO, the AFP, and the government were hopeful that they could get more information to lay charges but they have only have an assumption for what it is – a theory. Perhaps that was part of a plan to hopefully put more media pressure on Moselmane, make him stand out, yet they would look foolish if they found nothing on the others..
I also read that although it was said in MSM, that Bertles was questioned by Chinese authorities before he fled the country (some exaggerate this by saying he was thrown out), it is claimed that he “was not asked anything about his reporting or conduct in China,” with the questions focused on Cheng Lei, an Australian journalist working for Chinese state broadcaster CGTN who has been detained since last month.”
I agree with you that Australia should form its own views on China but I would not trust Morrison when he says we are acting independently. I would say that with him it is “all the way with Donald” who has become his obvious mentor witht he techniques he has copied, and he is putting Australians in jeopardy and at great risk. No one doubts that we could not win a war with China alone, and the US is totally unreliable as an ally if things turn nasty. The Liberals have avoided genuine diplomacy, and are in lock step with the US. Labor is not that much better as far as I am concerned.
You may be right about what happened with the media during the week. What I was originally reacting against was the idea that the mainstream media was in on the interrogations of Chinese journalists at the time of the Moselmane raids, but delayed reporting until now. My argument was that this is a big story, and if they had the information then they would have reported it then. They were alerted to the raids by the AFP, but that was – by and large – the extent of the complicity. Obviously neither of us can know all the details.
For the rest, we have a measure of agreement, George. I too think it was based around Moselmane, and I too think that Morrison is worrisomely hooked into Trump and US policy on China. But that doesn’t mean I think the actions he has taken in Australia are all misguided. And I further don’t think there is a sane individual in the world who believes Australia could win any sort of war at all with China by itself – or, indeed, wants to try. That is a charge I have found on this site from posters, that we are deliberately rushing headlong to war, that I think is fatuous beyond belief.
Australia has work to do to repair the relationship with China, and must do it, but China has work to do as well. It can’t sit back and wait for Canberra to approach on its knees, as so many here want to see.
Well all I can say Barney is that if China and Australia can resolve their differences in the manner that you and I can discuss such matters with respect for each other and willingness to debate fairly, then there should be no problem. We hold many similar views, and so I would rather focus on what we have in common rather than what we do not agree on. You give me an opportunity to question my views, and also defend them.
I may come across as giving China an easy ride but I’m also aware that so much of what comes from Australian MSM concerning opinions on China and its motivations are so frequently negative. There needs to be balance there too. I think China is much more than something to fear, but I do not deny the human rights violations etc and that there is need for further improvement. I think the CCP is quite paranoid about the country’s engagement in the world since Deng Xiaoping opened up the doors, particularly with students, and they are concerned that the essence of Mao’s socialist effort may get lost in corruption, greed, and China literally falling apart, as it has done so many times calling the end to many dynasties. If one positive thing can be said about Mao, it is that he united country after Sun Yatsen’s attempt at establishing democracy. The country became consumed by warlords again and the civil war eventually broke out. Entering the world at such scale is also new to China and so they are also learning here, just as we are learning to work with such a powerful Asian country. All new territory for both sides.
In the West, especially in the anglophone parts of the world, there is another form of paranoia given that this is the first time in history an Asian country of such economic strength challenges more than three hundred years of Western imperialist dominance over the world. Time of great change indeed.
Ultimately I am here because I believe we need to follow the path of peace first through effective diplomacy – so many wars have been caused by breakdowns in diplomacy, far too much chest beating, and misunderstanding another culture rather than trying to understand it. It works both ways.
Thank you George, and yes, I agree. The great value of this website is that it is not merely binary (most of the time), this side good, that side bad and vice versa.. So many intelligent commentators point out the complexities within both China and Australia, with a range of opinions in both countries. Sometimes, when the debate does seem merely binary, that is when I get frustrated, but perhaps I sometimes imperfectly understand as well.
The paragraph containing the “extreme bullying” accusation was written by Greg Sheridan, not Hamish.
Forgive me, but I don’t think that is right. The quote from Sheridan is in italic, whereas the extreme bullying accusation is in the paragraph after that in Roman type. If, however, you are right, that would change things.
The extreme bullying accusation paragraph should have been in italic, it’s a publishing error. I knew Hamish could never have made written that, and it sounded very typical Greg Sheridan. I am a subscriber of The Australian and I have read the Greg Sheridan article, so I knew.
Well, if you remember the article that is pretty categorical. Greg it was.