Quarterly Essay: Red Flag

CCP ideology and organs

China Dream: “rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation”; middle-income by 2021 and high-income by 2049; recovered Taiwan and Hong Kong by 2049.
Xi’s “seven taboos” to resist, from (secret) Communique on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere: Western constitutional democracy (including independent judiciaries and armed forces), universal values, civil society organisations, neoliberal market forces, journalism and free press, “historical nihilism”, and questioning of CCP’s current approaches to economic reform.
Xi: “the eventual demise of capitalism and the ultimate victory of socialism must be a long historical process”; “conscientiously prepare for all aspects of long-term cooperation and struggle between the two social systems”.
United Front stems from Mao’s time (one of “three magic weapons” along with party-building and armed struggle); priority focus on overseas Chinese students, individuals in new media, and young entrepreneurs/businesspeople.

Country	Year	Trigger	Pressure	Response
France	2008	President met with Dalai Lama	Suspended Airbus order, cancelled trade delegations	None immediately, but no further meetings
Japan	2010	Fishing captain arrested near Senkakus	Cut exports of rare earth metals	Japan invested in other mines; no further arrests
Norway	2010	Nobel Peace Prize awarded to dissident Liu Xiaobo	Froze diplomatic contacts and trade negotiations, cut salmon imports	PM and FM made pro-China statements
Philippines	2012	South China Sea territorial dispute	Cut imports of bananas	President backed away from US alliance and visited Beijing
UK	2012	PM met with Dalai Lama	High-level contact frozen	PM declared opposition to Tibetan independence and welcomed Chinese investment
Taiwan	2016	Elected pro-democracy president	Tourism cuts, political freeze, military exercises	None
Mongolia	2016	Dalai Lama visited	Tariffs on mining exports, loan negotiation freeze	Govt apologised and committed not to repeat
Australia	2016	Labor (opposition) support for freedom-of-navigation in South China Sea	Offered large political donation to reverse position	None
South Korea	2017	Planned for US-made missile defence system	Tourism cut by 60%, sanctions on Korean business	Pro-China opposition candidate elected
Palau	2017	Continued to recognise Taiwan	Tourism cut by 30%	None
Australia	2017	Labor (opposition) against extradition treaty	Threat to create political opposition to Labor among ethnic Chinese	None
Canada	2018	Arrested Huawei CFO on US fraud charge	Arrested two Canadians, agricultural import cuts	None
Australia	2019	Unclear, possibly Huawei/ZTE ban	Restrictions on thermal coal imports	None

Often the trigger is implicit rather than explicit. “Beijing uses uncertainty over the reason for punishment to train countries into anticipating its wishes and fearing its wrath.”

Belt and Road

“Community of common destiny” connected to the idea of tianxia, “all under heaven”
$440 billion spent by mid-2019, 3x cost of Marshall Plan
Not just infrastructure: also policy coordination, unimpeded trade, financial integration, people-to-people communication
“String of pearls” ports for Indian Ocean connectivity to oil supply; Indian “chain of flowers” in response
Pakistan is China’s only “all-weather strategic cooperative partner”

Hybrid war

“We believe that some morning people will awake to discover with surprise that quite a few gentle and kind things have begun to have offensive and lethal characteristics.” - from Unrestricted Warfare, a 1999 book by two PLA colonels. (Also, “the first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden”.)
Asymmetric weapons - hypersonic anti-ship missiles to prevent carrier operations, rather than seeking carrier parity.
Metaphor from NSA cyber advisor: Russia is the hurricane, “comes in fast and hard”; China is climate change, “long, slow, pervasive”.

Political interference in Australia

FITS Act requires foreign lobbying organisations and individuals to register, but not enforced well - many obvious organisations have not registered.
Politicisation - PM called investigation of Liberal MP Gladys Liu “racist”, but was fine with investigation of Labor MP Ernest Wong.