The Influence of the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Party in Aus­tralia Universities

"Aus­tralian uni­ver­sities have be­come in­creas­ingly re­liant on rev­enue from for­eign stu­dents, many of whom are Chi­nese. Crit­ics say that re­liance has made them es­pe­cially vul­ner­a­ble to Chi­na’s at­tempts at soft power in­fluence, as ad­min­is­tra­t ors seek to curry fa­vor with Bei­jing and at­tract Chi­nese stu­dents.

"I think that the top lev­els of the uni­ver­sity [of Queens-land] have es­sen­tially been groomed by Chi­nese Com­munist Party agents over the years and they’ve come to be­lieve that their first ob­jec­tive is to keep Bei­jing happy. They’ve for­got­ten what a West­ern uni­ver­sity should stand for,” said Clive Hamil­ton, a pro­fes­sor at Charles Sturt Uni­ver­sity in Can­berra and au­thor of the book "Silent In­va­sion” about the in­flu­ence of the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Party in Aus­tralia. "The level of con­tact be­tween the two is at a min­i­mum un­seemly, and re­ally quite im­proper,” he said.

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