As I warned yesterday, China is luring a starry-eyed and greed-blinded Jacinda Ardern into a debt trap that threatens New Zealand’s very sovereignty. Across the world, the CCP regime is using the “Belt and Road Initiative” to bring naïve and greedy governments under its heel.
But it’s not just the BRI and it’s not just national governments who are being made China’s pawns. Avaricious sub-national governments and corporations are also grasping at Beijing’s gold with no regard for their country’s security and sovereignty.
Here in Australia, we’ve got plenty of both. Most notable was the Victorian Andrews government, which signed up to the BRI in direct defiance of both the Federal government and security agencies.
The Morrison government has passed laws which place Chinese deals under intense scrutiny. Under these laws, Victoria’s BRI deal was torn up – sending Beijing into fresh apoplexies.
Some other state governments aren’t too happy at the prospect of being dragged squealing from the Chinese trough, either.
Queensland and Western Australia say their ties to China must continue unimpeded to secure billions of dollars’ worth of trade and thousands of jobs, as the resource states’ deals with the Asian superpower come under the scrutiny of the Morrison government.
These are not just resources states. As it happens, both are run, like Victoria, by Labor state governments.
Months after cancelling the controversial Belt and Road Agreement between China and the Andrews government in Victoria, Foreign Minister Marise Payne is set to decide whether to allow nearly 50 deals between Chinese entities and other state governments.
While many of the deals with China are likely to survive, the Queensland government warned Canberra on Monday that its agreements with the communist nation were helping to preserve government-to-government contact in the midst of a low point in bilateral relations.
And the West Australian government said it was vital it keep its ties with China to support $110bn worth of trade[…]
The NSW Department of Education has also handed over half a dozen “sister school” deals it has struck between its public colleges and primary and high schools in China to assess whether they are still in the national interest.
NSW, it might be noted, is not run by Labor.
But it’s not just Labor state governments kicking and screaming.
More than 6000 university deals with foreign powers have been submitted to the foreign deals scheme for scrutiny, amid higher education sector claims that overseas partners had begun to withdraw from research due to the legislation.
We also know that, under its “Thousand Talents” program, the Chinese Communist Party has been stealing billions of dollars worth of intellectual property from the West every year. Most of it by Chinese national academics and scientists.
As well, CCP interference on campuses has threatened not just Chinese national students, but Australian citizens as well.
West Australian Premier Mark McGowan has called on Canberra to repair its relationship with China and labelled recent comments of senior Canberra officials on China as “insane”.
Note how McGowan is dutifully parroting Beijing’s propaganda. These are the precise words of Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin, who called it “insane” and lectured it to “correct its mistakes”.
Could WA’s Quisling premier make it any clearer that he is doing the bidding of a foreign dictatorship?
Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings said[…]“It’s absurd that Queensland has four offices in the People’s Republic of China. It has no business in foreign affairs and it shows our investment in China.”
The Australian
These hucksters would sell their grandmothers to a Xinjiang labour camp for their 30 pieces of Yuan.
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