from Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org to world@lemmy.world on 23 Feb 07:30
https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51296074
cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/51295702
The alleged plot has echoes of a Cold War-era spy novel. A hesitant young woman is directed by her security agency handler to “infiltrate the enemy’s inner circle”, using a false identity to burrow deep for secrets she can dispatch back to senior officers.
But the scene is not set in the atmospheric mists of Prague’s Charles Bridge or the hectic bustle of Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar. Instead, it takes place in the sleepy suburbs of Australia’s Bush Capital, where a 37-year-old Chinese woman and her two co-defendants have been charged with “reckless foreign interference” for allegedly spying on an unassuming Buddhist association.
Documents released this week by Canberra’s Magistrates Court reveal how the unusual alleged surveillance mission unfolded over three years before it was abruptly interrupted by the Australian Federal Police, but may also offer an alluring insight into the techniques of suspected Chinese state influence and interference operations now expanding not only in Australia but globally.
The AFP statement of facts from Operation Autumn Shield, led by the Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce, details alleged WeChat messages between “Foreign Official 1” – a member of China’s Public Security Bureau – a woman operating under the pseudonym Thomas Tyler and her co-accused Zheng Siru, 31, and Joseph Vance, 25, also using a pseudonym.
[…]
The court materials show police alleged the defendants gathered information on the Buddhist group and its associated media company from many open sources, including SBS Chinese programs and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
In the messages released by the court, Foreign Official 1 allegedly urges Tyler to “slip in, climb as high as you can” within the ranks of Guan Yin Citta’s Canberra branch, despite her protestation that this “seems to be developing rather quickly … Then you’ll have me arrested.”
The task has a “bit of spy thriller feel to it”, responds the official, encouraging his charge that, “if you climb high enough, you’ll be commended directly to the leaders in Beijing”.
The three accused have been bailed and are expected to plead not guilty when the court resumes the case later this year.
While the targeting of a fringe Buddhist organisation – whose founder once claimed that former prime minister Kevin Rudd was a Chinese man in a past life – may seem strange, close observers of the ruling Chinese Communist Party point to the regime’s deep-seated paranoia about overseas religious and political groups it fears could internally destabilise China.
[…]
A joint February 11 media release from the AFP and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, announcing the charging of the two younger Chinese nationals in the Canberra case, referred to past statements by ASIO chief Mike Burgess, that foreign interference remains one of Australia’s principal security concerns.
“A complex, challenging and changing security environment is becoming more dynamic, diverse and degraded,” Burgess said in his annual threat assessment in 2025.
“Multiple foreign regimes are monitoring, harassing and intimidating members of our diaspora communities. This sort of behaviour is utterly unacceptable and cannot be tolerated,” he said.
[…]
China’s United Front
Under President Xi Jinping, the expansion of Chinese state influence and interference operations globally, and the increased surveillance of diaspora groups and individuals, has been well documented.
It has been carried out in part by the loosely defined and secretive Communist Party agency known as the United Front Work Department.
The UFWD – described by Xi as a “magic weapon” – and the Chinese security agencies operating within its strategy, conducts an opaque mix of intelligence gathering, surveillance of the Chinese diaspora and a campaign to shape the global political environment and narratives in Beijing’s favour.
The agency focuses on the management of potential opposition groups inside China but is also used by the Communist regime to engage in transnational repression and the silencing of critics living abroad.
While declining to comment on the Canberra case, Chris Taylor, the head of the statecraft and intelligence policy centre at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the overseas actions of authoritarian regimes like China, Iran and Cambodia were driven by a sense of vulnerability about their political structures and social systems.
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