Think tankers against China: the Australian Strategic Policy Institute

Assessments by ASPI have become the stuff of Australia's parliamentary record, notably from the government side. Material and projects are mentioned in parliamentary speeches. In August this year, we saw Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson assail China's Belt and Road Initiative with a perspective that would make any small-minded patriot proud. The words of the institute are cited religiously: "The BRI is a strategic path to assert China's growing power." The Victorian State government comes in for a beating, given its involvement with the BRI scheme. Involving "Chinese companies in Victoria's so-called AU$107 billion infrastructure big build" would take place "at the expense of Victorian jobs and the interests of Australian companies."

Senator Henderson's crude reasoning of build and grab is accompanied by the fear, made clear by ASPI, that the Victorian government would be bringing in "a whole set of Chinese communications control and collection technologies, along with the so-called big build." This presented a "prima facie concern to our national interest and, potentially, to our national security interests."

This is not to say that the Victoria-BRI deal is not problematic. It was made with China's National Development and Reform Commission, the entity responsible for the "social credit" system central to a mass government surveillance program. But it is also worth noting, as Bernard Keane does in Crikey, that the conservative Abbott government, in which Scott Morrison was immigration minister, also had its China deals. The free trade agreement between Beijing and Canberra came with a loosening of strings for the agricultural sector. Chinese workers on temporary contracts were brought in, compromising labour market protections for local workers. The Murdoch press shouted down concerns from the unions with accusations that they were merely being xenophobic.

With ASPI having the ear of Canberra's political gallery, not to mention wallet, Sinophobia has become very fashionable indeed. The Australia/US defence intelligence complex demands it and the moderates have been cast as appeasing heretics.