An interesting, thought-provoking, comment appeared yesterday afternoon, in response to Thursday’s post prompted by the Prime Minister’s claims (reported here, with a link to the original radio interview) that New Zealand was free of foreign interference (particularly from the People’s Republic of China).   The comment was from Peter Jennings, head of the think-tank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.  Jennings was previously a senior Australian defence and national security official.   This was the text of his comment.

I listened to Jacinda Ardern’s Radio NZ interview and in fairness to her, she does say that the issue of Chinese interference is ‘a live item for me’ that ‘we’re never not looking’ and that ‘constant vigilance’ is being applied.

I take that to mean that the NZ national security establishment and intelligence services are indeed doing their job. The problem is that NZ politicians have no appetite to tell their voters what is really going on.

Contrast that to the very active political debate in Australia and even more strident comments by US Vice President Mike Pence in a speech to the Hudson Institute earlier this month (which I write about here: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-us-shift-on-china-australias-options-narrow/.)

New Zealand’s allies are showing increasing alarm about China’s disruptive role in regional security, their industrial scale use of cyber and human intelligence to steal intellectual property and their active promotion of United Front organisations and political donations to ‘influence’ local politics.

NZ political and media sensitivities being what they are, I’m loath as an Australian to offer any advice, but it must surely be a worry to some in Wellington that NZ’s closest partners are taking a radically different approach to dealing with China. How will this impact on Wellington’s relations with Canberra and Washington DC?

You will know of Hugh White book, The China Choice, which argued that Australia’s ‘ultimate’ choice was between siding with the US or with China as the two countries contested for primacy in the Asia-Pacific. If New Zealand has a China choice it is surely between Canberra and Beijing. So what Australia thinks about China should matter to New Zealand.

Does what New Zealand’s leaders think about China matter to Australia? Most certainly. I regret that Canberra doesn’t pay as much attention to NZ as the relationship really deserves, but the current passivity among NZ’s leadership towards Beijing’s influencing of your own political system is most certainly being watched with concern in Canberra. I ask a genuinely open question: does NZ still value the defence and intelligence relationship it has with Australia?

On the first paragraph, I think that is probably a fair summary.    We can reasonably conclude that the intelligence services are probably doing their job, and the Prime Minister explicitly referred to espionage and telecommunications laws.   This is also consistent with what (little) was released of the intelligence agencies’ post-election briefings last year, and to what I heard at this session earlier in the year, attended by people in a position to know.

Speakers were keen to convince us that officialdom was right up with the play (the issue being “owned” overall by DPMC), and working hand in hand with our Five Eyes partners,  They weren’t, we were told, “naive and unprepared” but rather actively engaged in “detecting and countering interference” –  apparently some overseas partners are even envious of some of the telecommunications legislation implemented here a few years ago (an observation that should probably leave New Zealanders a bit nervous).  Any suggestion of a threat to our membership of Five Eyes is, we were told, “spurious”.  I presume that means “false”.

I guess I came away with the impression that officials think they are more or less on top of the outright illegal stuff.   One hopes they are correct.

But that stuff wasn’t really the focus of the interviewer’s question earlier in the week to the Prime Minister.

It was the other stuff, mostly (perhaps all) legal, that was where the concerns were being raised, and the questions posed to the Prime Minister.    And there I don’t think the issue is just (in Jennings’ words) that

The problem is that NZ politicians have no appetite to tell their voters what is really going on.

It is worse than that.  By her own behaviour –  mostly by neither doing nor saying anything, just letting things be – the Prime Minister demonstrates that she does not believe there is a problem at all, or that if there is stuff going on, it just doesn’t matter. (The Opposition is at least as bad, but they aren’t now in government.   Things like

• she is content to have (well, she appointed him) Raymond Huo, reportedly heavily involved in various United Front groups, chairing a major parliamentary committee,
• she is content to have Labour campaign among the Chinese community using a Xi Jinping slogan,
• she is content to have her party president praise Xi and the regime  (although it was marginally encouraging to read this story this morning and see that Nigel Haworth had declined to become an honorary president of one of Yikun Zhang’s activities –  unlike Peter Goodfellow, Jian Yang, and Raymond Huo.)
• she was content to honour Yikun Zhang,
• she has expressed no discontent at the large mainland donations her predecessor Phil Goff used to fund his mayoral campaign (or initiated any law changes to close that loophole in future),
• she is content not to call out the Jian Yang situation as unacceptable,
• she seems content with the dominance of the local Chinese-language media by interests sympathetic to Beijing, and PRC news sources.
• she seems content with Confucius Institutes –  funded from Beijing –  in our universities and schools,
• she is apparently content with public universities forming close commercial and research partnerships with PRC universities, themselves increasingly under the thumb of the regime (in the last few days a former security official was appointed head of Peking University) and with
• the increasing reliance of our universities on (the income from) students from the PRC.
• and despite her calls for “kindness” to be some sort of watchword guide to policy, she is apparently content with the way no one in the New Zealand political system –  her party or others –  ever says a word of criticism of Beijing, despite the growing internal repression and the external expansionism.

Either she is blind, or she simply doesn’t care about this quasi-vassalage and the debauchment of our political system.   I’m not sure which would be worse.   Just possibly, she isn’t that comfortable with the situation personally but….she isn’t just any citizen, she is the Prime Minister.

Jennings goes on to note how the approach of the New Zealand political establishment (National and Labour, New Zealand First and Greens) seems increasingly out of step with that of our “closest partners” –  he mentions the US and Australia, but there is also increasing sign of the UK taking the issues more seriously, including having ships assert freedom of navigation rights in the South China Sea.  He wonders “how will this impact on Wellington’s relations with Canberra and Washington DC?” and goes on to note, and pose a question, as follows

….the current passivity among NZ’s leadership towards Beijing’s influencing of your own political system is most certainly being watched with concern in Canberra. I ask a genuinely open question: does NZ still value the defence and intelligence relationship it has with Australia? 

One of the interesting things about the Australian situation –  where former Labor Foreign Minister Bob Carr is a vocal defender of Beijing and suggests there are few/no issues for Australia –  is that the leaders of the two main parties seem fairly united in treating the issues as serious, including in passing the recent new legislation.  No one can seriously suggest that Australia has dealt with all the issues –  only yesterday the PRC successfully managed to go behind the Federal government’s back and get Victoria to sign up to the Belt and Road Initiative –  but they seem in a much better place than the New Zealand situation, where the leaders of all the parties (especially the two main ones) seem united in an unspoken agreement not to call out any behaviour.  Australian Labor got rid of Senator Sam Dastyari; New Zealand Labour won’t even criticise the presence in our Parliament (on the other side) of a former PRC intelligence official, one who acknowledges deliberately misrepresenting his past to get into New Zealand.

But Jennings’s question is an interesting one?  Does “New Zealand” still value the defence and intelligence relationship it has with Australia (or the United States)?   I presume the answer depends on who you are talking about, and perhaps there are parallels to the rupture with the US – which also put us offside with Australia –  in 1985?  Back then, the defence and intelligence hierarchy probably put a great deal of weight on those relationships.  But in the end it didn’t matter.  Probably not many politicians really wanted to break with the US even then, but no one was willing to pay the price –  perhaps small internationally but substantial in terms of internal party politics – to avoid it.   The New Zealand public had probably never been that consistently keen on the US relationship –  it had been a relatively new thing after all, mostly post-Suez –  and there was enough angst and disapproval of Ronald Reagan, and reaction post-Muldoon, that an isolated little country was willing to step off the playing field.

I wonder how different it is now.    (Probably like most Australians) most New Zealanders are strongly anti-Trump (and instinctively Democrats), and if anything the fact that Trump and Mike Pence are talking about issues around China, including domestic political interference, probably inclines many New Zealanders to downplay the issue further.  As for Australia, (justifiably or not –  I think mostly not) there is a widespread disapproval here around the treatment of illegal migrants, asylum seekers (“boat people”) by Australia (easy for New Zealanders, when we are so far from the immediate risk), and a resentment among many about Australia’s deportations of some of the shady New Zealand citizens who’ve fallen foul of Australian law.  New Zealand governments have, over the years, become mendicants, begging on behalf of their “guest workers” in Australia, and it doesn’t automatically foster attitudes of trust or camaraderie as regards Australian governments.  I’m not defending these attitudes in New Zealand – mostly I don’t share them –  just attempting to describe them.

And, of course, as in most countries most citizens most of the time don’t give much attention to defence or foreign policy, let alone the subtleties of the activities here of a regime like the PRC.  And with no moral leadership from the heads of our political parties, no real leaders calling out the nature of the risks/threats, it is hard to imagine that the mass of New Zealanders would be unduly bothered if at some point in the next few years New Zealand were eased (or booted) out of the Five Eyes grouping.  Many –  that strange mentality that seems to value “independence” for its own sake, regardless of the rights and wrongs of the alternative sides (and how much “whatabout-ism” do we hear, suggesting that somehow US “interference” here is a thing –  let alone a thing on a par with the PRC) –  might well wear it as a badge of pride, as (in different circumstances) so many did in the mid-80s.   At least the 80s stance had an (arguable) moral dimension, but whatever moral clothes people attempted to wrap around an opting out now, they would be threadbare at best, given the nature of the PRC regime, and the threat it poses now here, and abroad, let alone to its own people.

Of course, it is worth noting that the government did announce a few months ago the purchase of the P8 aircraft.   That suggests some value being put on maintaining the US and Australian relationships.  Still, one has to wonder whether a Labour/Greens government –  feasible if last week’s poll numbers carried into an election –  would have been willing to have paid that price.    And that price didn’t involve making any calls that, at least directly, upset Beijing.  But when a few weeks later the government released a defence policy paper, with a few mild remarks about the PRC, (a) the Prime Minister never associated herself with that stance, and (b) the leader of the National Party took the opportunity to warn the government not to upset Beijing.

So there is no political leadership apparently willing to take any stands, and without it probably few New Zealanders will much care that our traditional partners and allies are taking a different stance.  Many would probably wear it as a badge of pride.   Perhaps it would be different if the White House changes hands in 2021, or when (as seems most probable) Labor takes office in Australia next year, but I rather doubt it –  and it is worth remembering that Labor was in power in Australia in 1985.

I’m not sure what the circuitbreaker could be, what might shift politics and political debate to a more serious and self-respecting plane.  More likely, as with the continued failure to do anything about decades of relative economic decline, the established political parties just will keep on together, debauching our system and society, too craven ever to make any sort of stand, somehow persusaded that on the one hand Beijing holds the whip hand (it doesn’t) and on the other, that it really doesn’t matter much and no one cares.   If so, the sad and shameful degradation of New Zealand will continue.

Meanwhile, anyone interested in yet more on the evil way in which Beijing treats its own people –  while our government (and most others) say nothing –  might consider reading this article, detailing how the regime simply (compulsorily) moves its agents (a million of them reportedly) into the houses of Uighur people in Xinjiang province –  those not already in concentration camps – to live alongside them.  The agents are supposed to chivy people into conformity and report any deviations –  diet, ideology, religion, or whatever –  to the authorities.   And this is the regime our political “leaders” provide cover for.  They court –  and even honour – its agents and supporters, take their money, recruit them into Parlisment, act as honorary patrons to their organisation, and seem to care not a jot what the regime does here, at home, or anywhere in between.

Even fewer people than usual probably watched TVNZ’s Q&A programme on the Sunday evening of a long weekend (I didn’t either), but I hope many take the opportunity to download and watch the interview with Professor Anne-Marie Brady about Yikun Zhang –  initiator/organiser (or whatever) of the $100000 donation to the National Party –  the Chinese party-state’s United Front Work programme, and what New Zealand could or should do in response.   Perhaps equally worth watching –  for altogether different reasons – is the subsequent panel discussion.  I’ll come back to that.

Professor Brady was asked first about whether there was any evidence that Yikun Zhang is involved in United Front activities.  She was clear that his active involvement, both in the PRC and in New Zealand, is very well-documented in Chinese language sources (I touched on this last week, but for anyone who hasn’t read it I can also recommend this article by Branko Marcetic on The Spinoff,  which is full of useful links).  She was also careful to distinguish between welcoming, even encouraging, participation of new citizens, of whatever origin, in our political processes, and drawing a line when those activities are led by people with close ties to foreign governments, especially ones with deliberate and active strategies to exert influence over, or in, other countries.   She argued that we need to set boundaries around “inappropriate behaviour”.

Reprising arguments she has made consistently in public over the last year or so she highlighted two strands of the PRC’s United Front activities in countries like New Zealand:

• neutralising the Chinese diaspora, including the Chinese language media and community associations, and
• winning support, or acquiescence, for the PRC’s foreign policy agenda, including the place of the Belt and Road Initiative (ill-defined as it is), in the pursuit of a China-centred global order.

Asked what we could, or should do, Professor Brady listed these items:

• a careful official investigation of the extent and nature of PRC influence activities in New Zealand (“as Australia, the US, and now the UK have done”)
• “obviously” reform our election finance laws,
• stand down periods for former MPs and minister (before taking up roles which might be seen as being in the gift of PRC entities –  or, presumably, other foreign powers),
• look more carefully at whether MPs can lawfully be members of foreign political parties (the strong suggestion being that Jian Yang in still a member of the CCP),
• take steps to help restore the autonomy of the New Zealand Chinese community, protect their freedoms, and promote (the restoration  of) an indigenous and diverse Chinese language media here.

She noted that the Five Eyes grouping had recently agreed on a programme to counter foreign influence, suggesting that our authorities will be doing something already.  (The article at that link is interesting reading, but when I read it last week my reaction was to be sceptical it meant anything much in the New Zealand context –  nothing suggesting any change of emphasis having been heard from the mouths of any New Zealand ministers or officials.)

Professor Brady noted that the political “bloodbath” we saw last week was an opportunity for the major parties to come together –  since they are being targeted by the PRC –  and devise better ways to build a constructive, but bounded, relationship with the PRC.

In concluding the interview, Brady was asked whether she had any concerns herself about speaking out.  She noted that it was, in law, her duty as an academic to do so, and noted that although there was some personal cost, to her and her family, she saw these issues as so important, to the integrity of our system, that she is willing to stand up and speak out, expressing the wish that more people would do so.   The still unsolved burglary of her house and office wasn’t explicitly referred to, but was a clear subtext.

The contrast between Professor Brady and most of her academic colleagues is pretty striking.  Our multi-university Contemporary China Research Centre –  chaired by Tony Browne (of the Confucius Institutes and other institutional arrangements with the Chinese Communist Party), and with representatives of MFAT, MBIE, NZTE etc on its Advisory Board – seems, from its website, more focused on dialogues with official visitors from the PRC  and the forthcoming year of Chinese tourism.  Not one of its key people has been heard from in the media and public debate on these issues, whether last week or in recent months.  In many respects, they seem little better than our politicians –  scared of their own shadows and reluctant to say anything lest visas, access, (New Zealand government) funding or whatever are jeopardised.   Any sense of that “critic and conscience” role, that the Education Act rather grandiloquently talks of for academics, seems dulled at best, or lost altogether.

But what of the panel discussion?  There was Bryce Edwards the political scientist, and three old tuskers from the big parties: former National Party president Michelle Boag, former National Party minister Wayne Mapp, and former Labour party president Mike Williams.

Bryce Edwards argued that out of last week’s maelstrom the Chinese influence/donations issue was the one that had attracted the least attention so far, and needed to have more.  The interviewer suggested something like a select committee inquiry, which Edwards seemed to think had merit, adding that there was no chance of any party in Parliament now picking up the issue.

And as if to prove him right, the old guard  – the other panellists –  rushed in to play down the issue.   Wayne Mapp went first, denying that there is any PRC influence in New Zealand politics, noting that he had never seen any evidence, and suggesting that having been Minister of Defence he would have seen it if it was there (he went on to suggest that the PRC issue was mostly one about the great powers, and the extent to which we were in some sense caught between them).   Michelle Boag chipped in to suggest that if there was a PRC influence strategy it would have to be counted a miserable failure –  there was, after all, only one “Chinese MP” (as if the fact that that one MP was a former PRC intelligence official, Communist Party member, actively associated with the PRC Embassy, and never ever heard to say anything critical about the PRC wasn’t in its own small way evidence of influence).  Mike Williams declared that he mostly “agreed with Wayne”.

It was sad, but it was worse than that.   People who are smart enough to know better, playing distraction (totally ignoring, for example, the way in which PRC activities and attitudes are compromising the rights and freedoms of ethnic Chinese New Zealanders who aren’t at all sympathetic to Beijing and its agenda) in defence of what has become the established way of doing things in New Zealand (both main parties).   It trivialises a serious domestic issue –  including the utter reluctance of any of our senior politicians to say anything that might possible disconcert Beijing and the willingness to court, and take money from, people who closely associate with one of the more evil regimes on the planet – ignores the international nature and reach of the PRC programme, completely discounts the threats to other peaceful and democratic countries in east Asia, let alone the growing repression of many of the PRC’s own populations.   People like those three know better, but choose not to see, or to care.  They actively choose to turn a blind eye to the character of the regime and its activities –  whether here, at home, or in the rest of the world.  Rather like their own current party leaders –  Nigel Haworth and Peter Goodfellow (united in perhaps nothing else but (a) the defence of the way things are done and (b) the celebration of Xi Jinping), Jacinda Ardern and Simon Bridges (and John Key, Bill English, Phil Goff and Andrew Little before them).

And this, of course, is where I part company to some extent from Anne-Marie Brady. At least in her public comments she seems to assume that our political leaders have an interest in doing the right thing, and only need to have specific suggestions made to them.  I see zero evidence of that.  I’m quite prepared to believe that both parties value the defence and intelligence relationship with the US and Australia, and will do the minimum to maintain it – and the rest of Five Eyes will cut us lots of slack, because it would be a PR coup for Beijing if it were ever to come about that we –  small as we are –  were no longer part of that partnership.

But there is no sign of any interest in doing anything about the domestic situation –  whether as regards party donations, a willingness to speak openly against external aggression or domestic human rights abuses, or about the situation of the ethnic Chinese New Zealanders who want to be free of Beijing and its abuses.  No sign last year (all parties kept quiet about Jian Yang), no sign this year (National and Labour combine to honour Yikun Zhang for what appears to be, in effect, services to the PRC), and no sign now.   This isn’t a case of good men and women being misled, and people like Professor Brady drawing things to their attention for the first time.  It is a system run by people who have allowed it, knowingly (but probably gradually and subtly), to be corrupted.    Labour and National (and ACT) seem as bad as each other, two sides the same coin.  New Zealand First is arguably worse, because it occasionally talks a good talk in Opposition, but then gets into government and just goes along.  And as for the Greens –  who don’t seemed to be reliant on donations from these sources –  and who sometimes in past appeared willing to bring a moral dimension to politics, where are they?  In government I guess, and perhaps strongly advised –  directly or indirectly –  by MFAT not to jeopardise the tourism year, or the “FTA” renegotiations.  If you just go along, you make yourself complicit.

(It was hard not to utter a wry chuckle at the suggestion of a select committee inquiry into such matters.  After all, the Justice select committee has its triennial inquiry into the election underway at present. But who chairs the Justice committee?  Why, Labour MP Raymond Huo, who –  as Professor Brady has documented –  is very actively engaged with various United Front organisations, who organised the event at which the very largest mainland donation to Phil Goff’s mayoral campaign was arranged.  If anything is ever going to be done, the stables –  party organisation and Parliament – need cleansing first.)

Wrapping up this post, I would draw your attention to a few things I saw over the weekend.

First, a reader sent me this (translated) extract from an essay/article by Auckland-based Chinese activist and dissident Chen Weijian which “examined how Zhang Yikun achieved his political promotion in three years in China and in the international Chinese community as well as his business achievements in NZ”.

The photo below was taken in Beijing on 30 Aug 2018 where Zhikun Zhang visited the Chaoshan (TeoChew or Chaozhou) Association  of Beijing along with the heads of other Chaoshan associations of the USA, Canada, Thailand etc.

The poster on the wall they are reading is titled of ” Always go with the Party (the Communist Party).

Zhikun Zhang who joined the PLA in 1990,  the next year after the CCP sent troops to shoot unarmed Chinese young students in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989.

 After 29 years, on the same day of 4 June, the former PLA member was awarded of MNZM, an award to a person who ” in any field of endeavour, have rendered meritorious service to the Crown and nation or who have become distinguished by their eminence, talents, contributions or other merits”,^[1] to recognise outstanding service to the Crown and people of New Zealand in a civil or military capacity.

 

Within only three months after receiving this honor, he was recognized by the CCP for his devotion to this most evilest political Party: always go with the party.

And then there are the Xinjiang concentration camps, that (all) our politicians are studiedly silent on.  I thought this thread was pretty telling (drawing on the point I’ve made here previously that in many important respects the PRC party-state is the late 1930s party-state Germany of our era)

This is regime Yikun Zhang associates with and supports.

Does this stuff not bother Jacinda Ardern or Simon Bridges at all?

Another reader sent me this over the weekend.

PRESS RELEASE – Tuesday 16 October 2018, London, UK.
Independent people’s tribunal is established to investigate forced organ harvesting
in China.

An independent tribunal to inquire into forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China has been established as an initiative of the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC).

The Tribunal will investigate if any criminal offences have been committed by state or state-approved bodies / organisations in China concerning forced organ harvesting.

You can read (a lot) more about this here and (more generally) here.   For any sceptical that there is an issue here, I’d suggest listening to this two-part BBC World Service investigation, in which they walk carefully through the reasons to strongly suspect that the PRC is killing prisoners of conscience (probably mostly Falun Gong, but not exclusively) to be able to undertake the huge number of transplants occurring in China –  for Chinese and foreigners, pretty much on demand (subject to payment) –  each year, in a culture averse to voluntary organ donation.

This is the regime Yikun Zhang associates with and supports.

While our politicians do and say nothing.

And finally, the Herald ran this cartoon on Saturday

It is good that they are airing the issue.  But it still puts the responsibility on Beijing, and not where it actually lies, with our political leaders and heads of political parties.  Beijing does not force them to do or say (or not say) anything. They are moral agents, and they freely choose to allow the interests of New Zealand and New Zealanders to be compromised by their willing pursuit of, and association with, money rather strongly tinged with PRC political agendas and interests.

I was dipping into the famous Francis Fukayama book The End of History and the Last Man yesterday.   In his introduction he includes this line

For democracy to work, citizens need to develop an irrational pride in their own democratic institutions

That sounds generally right –  the fierce attachment that creates a willingness to defend something when it is threatened.  Given the way our political leaders are debauching New Zealand institutions at present, any such pride almost has to be irrational.  But perhaps there is a potential leader somewhere who will help restore our system?  Bob Jones played that role –  as regards the economic mess New Zealand had gotten into – in 1983/84.  The present challenge is greater, because all the main parties are equally compromised.  But so is the need for action.

UPDATE: Late this aftermoon today I was rung by Roy Morgan Research and participated in a quite detailed survey about trade, defence, values etc issues as regards New Zealand and each of Australia, India, Japan, China, and the United States.   Whoever was behind the survey (the Asia NZ Foundation perhaps?) I hope we eventually get to see the results.

What to take from Jami-Lee Ross’s tape of his conversation with his (then) boss?  I’m not interested in Bridges’s vulgar and insulting talk about his own MPs (although being, like him, a child of a Baptist manse, I can only surmise that he wasn’t raised to use that sort of language) or even that interested in the minutiae of whether and how donations are recorded and disclosed, including to the party hierarchy itself (significant as those issues probably are generally).

As compared to the situation a few days ago, we know that there was a $100000 donation to the National Party, initiated apparently (whatever final form the lesser components took) by Auckland businessman Yikun Zhang who (despite apparently coming here as a poor former PLA soldier 18 years ago) doesn’t speak English.   The first person I asked the other day about Yikun Zhang responded along the lines of “bad news”, and the more I read around the various sources which various Chinese speaking commentators have highlighted, the truer that summary description appears to be.

Several things struck me about the Bridges-Ross conversation:

• the first was about how normal both of them  (one the leader, one the 8th ranked front bench MP) seemed to regard this sort of tawdry business.  Sure, fundraising is a vital function of a political party, but it is a far cry from Barry Gustafson’s description in his 50th anniversary history of the National Party: “an unwritten but scrupulously observed rule has always been that no MP should be placed in the position of seeking, receiving, or even being made aware of money collected on behalf of the party” (p201).   Perhaps (although I don’t know) National is no worse on this score than other parties, but it is a pretty bad situation that has been allowed to develop –  or, more to the point, actively fostered.
• the second was about how utterly unbothered they were (leader and no. 8) about the Jian Yang situation.  Sitting in your caucus is a former PLA intelligence official, Communist Party member, close asociate of the PRC Embassy, someone who acknowledges misrepresenting his background when he came to New Zealand, and someone who even a former diplomat –  who knows him well – says he is careful about what he says in front of the man.  As leader, perhaps you are under pressure to defend the man publicly.  But perhaps, a very generous –  naive – observer might have thought, after last year’s fuss had died down, and some face saved, the party would be looking for a way to quietly retire, and replace, Jian Yang going into the next election.    But when Simon Bridges is caught talking about his colleagues, we hear about the unfortunate Maureen Pugh, about those (Finlayson, Wagner and Carter) everyone assumes would go before long,  but the only reference to “Chinese MPs” is to adding another one.  Jian Yang’s continued presence seems just taken for granted: none of that background stuff apparently bothering either of them in the slightest.  Lacking any decency themselves –  and not facing any uproar from other parties –  Jian Yang is presumably much too valuable in tapping the potential donors.
• third was the utterly transactional way in which they approached the donation Yikun Zhang proferred (and presumably arranged) and the bid for another ethnic Chinese National MP.

  Ross: Yeah they’re good people. Now there’s no catch or anything to it. You may recall at the dinner they did discuss candidacy, and another Chinese candidate.

  Bridges: Two MPs, yeah.

  Ross: Colin Zhang? The younger one, he’s put his name in for Candidates’ College and so I assume he’ll get through and we’ll make some decisions as a Party further down the track as to what we want to do with candidates.

  Bridges: I mean, it’s like all these things, it’s bloody hard. You’ve only got so much space. Depends where we’re polling, you know? All that sort of thing…two Chinese would be nice, but would it be one Chinese or one Filipino? What do we do?

  Ross: Two Chinese would be more valuable than two Indians, I have to say.

  It was fine for Ross to say “there’s no catch or anything to it”, but everyone involved knows  how reciprocity works.  It is about an exchange of favours over time.  When, in the same conversation a wealthy businessman talks of a big donation and proposes that one of his staff might get a winnable place on National’s list, and they take the donation anyway, there is a quid pro quo, in expectancy, if not in some written contract.  No sense presumably, either at the earlier function or in this phone call of anything improper or unethical.  It is clearly just the way the National Party now does things.

But bad –  really bad –  as all this is, I think what disgusts me is the utter indifference of either Bridges or Ross (and to the extent there is ongoing silence from elsewhere in the party, or anywhere else in the political spectrum, the rest of our political class) to the character and interests of the man they were dealing with.  Not at a basic interpersonal level –  frankly it sounds hard not to be a nicer person than, say, Jami-Lee Ross –  but as someone actively and on an ongoing basis fully involved with the PRC government and its activities, in China and abroad.   And this seems to be the bit that most of our mainstream media is either missing or downplaying.

If we are going to have private funding of political parties (which I happen still to favour), the issue isn’t whether immigrants of whatever ethnicity or natives (of whatever ethnicity) should be able to donate to political parties.  It is much more specific than that, about whether political parties (openly or secretly) should be taking substantial sums of money –  indeed, actively pursuing it –  from people who they either know, or really should know, are in league with or in active support of hostile or egregiously awful foreign powers.  From people over whom the hostile foreign power has leverage, direct or indirect.  And when the egregiously awful foreign power has a track record of using threats, and economic leverage, to buy silence (or worse).    And with the question in the background: in what ways are we tailoring what we do or say –  party presidents, for example, praising the egregiously awful regime and its leader – to keep that donor flow going.

The issues could arise from somone in league with any egregiously awful foreign power but – not having many North Korean migrants –  the PRC is the one we in New Zealand need to be most worried about right now.  At some other time, it might have been the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, or maybe even apartheid South Africa.  In the 1980s, emigre French business people, with close links to the DSGE, donating large amounts to our politicians, would rightly have attracted extreme disapproval.  There never were such donations, but today both main parties enrich themselves from donors with close ties to Beijing.

I noticed that Stephen Jacobi, the (NZ) taxpayer-funded lobbyist for keeping New Zealanders in line on things Beijing, was out today suggesting that perhaps state funding of political parties might be desirable after all.  His argument was a bit different from most though.

I haven’t seen anyone suggest that Yikun Zhang shouldn’t allowed to donate, or even to talk to politicians.  I have seen, and made, suggestions that our political parties shouldn’t touch his money –  or that channelled through bodies he runs or influences –  with a barge pole.   The suggestion is that the man is being “vilified”, but all I’ve seen so far is straight reportage –  often drawn directly from bodies he is involved on, or the Chinese language media – about his involvements and associations.  At least in Chinese –  he not speaking English –  he seems rather proud of and unapologetic for those involvements.

For those with Financial Times access, there is a nice article here which captures some of his close ongoing official involvement with the PRC government.  In a formal sense, he seems to have much stronger ongoing ties to the regime than (for example) Jian Yang does.   For others, and anyone interested, I suggest keeping an eye on these two Twitter accounts (both have been posting copious snippets of Yikun Zhang’s associations here and in the PRC): @geoff_p-wade and @jichanglulu.    As Wade (an Australian) urges

Reading the local media coverage, it strikes me that most of the local media is still reluctant to engage with the nature of the PRC United Front programme/agenda.   These aren’t just people who happen to have a few incidental ties to the homeland. Their organisations aren’t just neutral bodies.    The PRC is widely recognised as having an active agenda of influence –  and to say so isn’t vilification, but analysis, description, and reading.  As I noted, many of the links aren’t hard to find, at least for those with the language skills (to whom the rest of us can be grateful).   Some of it is even just pictures

This afternoon, for the first time in a while, I went back and read the whole of Anne-Marie Brady’s Magic Weapons paper, which has had so much attention (arguably more abroad than here, given the studied disinterest of our political leadership) since it was released last September.

Here are a few relevant snippets

United Front Work Department personnel often operate under diplomatic cover as members of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, using this role to guide united front activities outside China, working with politicians and other high profile individuals, Chinese community associations, and student associations, and sponsoring Chinese language, media, and cultural activities. The Party has a long tradition of party and government personnel “double-hatting”; holding roles within multiple agencies. 17 Chinese consulates and embassies relay instructions to Chinese community groups and the Chinese language media and they host visits of high-level CCP delegations coming to meet with local overseas Chinese groups. The leaders of the various China-connected overseas Chinese associations in each country are regularly invited to China to update them on current government policies.

Yikun Zhang appears to have been on such missions regularly, and he (and the acolyte he wants to put into Parliament) are apparently in the PRC now (hosting the mayor of Southland).

And this longer piece

1. “Bring together the hearts and the power of the overseas Chinese”  Xi Jinping’s ambitious strategy to harness the overseas Chinese population for the CCP’s current economic and political agenda, builds on existing practices and then takes it to a new level of ambition.

Agencies: State Council Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, CCP United Front Work Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of State Security, PLA Joint Staff Headquarters’ Third Department, and other relevant organs.

Policies:

• Monitor the local long term Chinese community via community organizations (侨务社团工作); establish Overseas Chinese Service Centres (海外华侨华人互助中 心) to coordinate this work, cherry pick which groups to work with.

• Sponsor and support the emergence of new united front organizations to represent the overseas Chinese, recognizing that they are a diverse group and flexibility is required to establish a positive working relationship with them. Avoid directly interfering in overseas Chinese community affairs unless there is a situation that directly affects China’s political interests,….

• Unite the ethnic Chinese communities through nurturing and subsidizing authorized Chinese cultural activities.

• Supervise Chinese students and visiting scholars through the united front organization the Chinese Student and Scholars Association (中国学生学者联合会).

• Encourage influential figures within the overseas Chinese community who are acceptable to the PRC government to become proactive in helping shape ethnic Chinese public opinion on political matters.

• Encourage wealthy overseas Chinese who are politically acceptable to the PRC government to subsidize activities which support China’s political agenda.

• Draw on China’s agents and informers abroad to enhance China’s political influence.

• Encourage political engagement of the overseas Chinese community (华人参 政). This policy encourages overseas Chinese who are acceptable to the PRC government to become involved in politics in their host countries as candidates who, if elected, will be able to act to promote China’s interests abroad; and encourages China’s allies to build relations with non-Chinese pro-CCP government foreign political figures, to offer donations to foreign political parties, and to mobilize public opinion via Chinese language social media; so as to promote the PRC’s economic and political agenda abroad.

It doesn’t seem unreasonable to wonder whether the Chao Shan General Association –  so much in the media in recent days as one of Yikun Zhang’s key involvements –  is not one of those “new United Front organisations”; able to attract many key figures of the New Zealand political establishment to its functions.

Political donations aren’t the whole story by any means.  They are simply the bit brought into focus, almost incidentally, in Jami-Lee Ross’s revelations of the questionable activities he was, apparently, a leading figure in.  The other half of the story is, of course, trade.  The PRC has a now-established track record of using economic coercion to attempt to silence any government that ever takes a stand or utters more than the meekest and mildest concerns.  As I’ve noted here before, most of what New Zealand firms export to the PRC is fairly homogenous commodities which if not sold to China would be sold somewhere else (someone else in turn selling to China).  In other areas –  notably tourism and export education –  there are greatly vulnerabilities. But no doubt representatives of all these industries also bend the ears of our political leaders, providing them another excuse for staying silent –  or worse, gushing in praise –  of one of the more heinous (and getting worse) regimes on the planet.   Perhaps it is really true that even without the donations, the politicians (all of them) would still lack any willingness to speak out, but the donor flow –  whether direct or through charity auctions – seems likely to reinforce the supine shameful state of New Zealand political leaders as regards the PRC.

The situation needs to change, but not one person on the New Zealand political scene offers any hope of making it happen.  Jami-Lee Ross probably only wanted to be at the top table making the “sellout” of New Zealand longer-term interests and values happen his way.  I did a media interview yesterday about some of these issues, and was asked about the potential cost of making a stand –  even just separating ourselves from Beijing-affiliated ethnic Chinese money.  As I noted to the interviewer, the only real test of what you value is what you are willing to sacrifice  –  pay a price –  for.  On the evidence to date, the integrity of our political system –  let alone the freedoms of other democratic states in east Asia –  clearly isn’t one of those things for the current crop of politicians, from any party.

Bernard Hickey has a nice article on some of these issues at Newsroom.  I agree with most of what he says, and commend it to your attention.   Of the Prime Minister’s responsibility he writes

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been conspicuous in her lack of comment on Jian Yang and on the role of Chinese influence in New Zealand politics. She has also not criticised China directly over its South China Sea incursions or the persecution of minorities in China.

She should draw a line under New Zealand’s acquiescence to China and review the transparency of the Electoral Finance Act in relation to overseas influence. She should call for Jian Yang to resign from Parliament at the least, and follow the example of her Australian counterparts by asking for an official inquiry into China’s influence in politics here.

The Prime Minister talked a good game about human rights and sovereignty at the United Nations recently. How serious is she when her own party’s finances may be affected by pushing back against China?

Not talking, as the PRC Embassy reported her recently, of strengthening ties between the Labour Party and Communist Party of China.

And, finally, Anne-Marie Brady has re-linked to a couple of pieces she wrote late last year (here and here) on what can and should be done, including by the new government.  I will always defer to her expertise on the nature of the PRC programmes and interventions, although in thinking about policy responses, she probably put relatively more emphasis on national security issues, (while –  charitably? – presuming governments will want to do something serious), while I tend to emphasise the problems that lie within our own political processes.  In my view, it isn’t that people don’t know what could be done, rather that our politicians simply don’t want to do anything, or be seen to express serious concerns.    In that sense, the bigger problem –  the one we could control but refuse to –  lies here, not in Beijing (evil states will do what evil states do, including suborning the locals, encouraging the mindset of a tributary. Our political processes –  in a state far away from Beijing, and simply not that reliant on them for anything much –  make choices whether to fall into line, or whether to stand up.   Of course, one test may loom quite soon: what, if anything, will our government be prepared to do if is found that PRC agents were responsible for the break-ins at Anne-Marie Brady’s house and office.  Will we even be told?