China’s authoritarian regime has resumed its outrageous practice of treating Australian citizens who were born in China with the same extrajudicial disregard as it treats its own citizens, with the effective kidnapping of writer and popular online commentator Yang Hengjun, 53, and his family at Guangzhou airport on January 19 as he tried to board a plane to Shanghai.
While his wife and step-daughter — who are Chinese citizens — were eventually able to continue on the planned journey to Shanghai, Yang remains in what Defence Minister Christopher Pyne, who just happens to be in Beijing at the moment, rather incongruously and erroneously described as “house detention”.
Yang was taken into custody once before — also in Guangzhou — in 2011 when he disappeared in China for a few days. Although he later described this detention as a “misunderstanding” (doubtless as part of the deal for his release).
Canberra has seen this scenario many times, yet done nothing to address it. Yang’s original case was one of a string of cases involving Australian-Chinese people, including Stern Hu who served nine years in a Shanghai jail as part of the Rio Tinto bribery scandal that capped off the iron ore price wars between Australia and China. This was followed by Australian Chinese business people Matthew Ng and Charlotte Chou who were tried and jailed in Guangzhou, shattering their lives and their families.
Feng Chongyi, a Chinese academic at the University of Technology Sydney who has a track record of being a measured critic of the Xi Jingping regime, was held in his hotel on a visit to China in 2016. Indeed, Feng and Yang are friends, and Feng is reported to have warned Yang against travelling to China, but the writer believed that having toned down his anti-Beijing rhetoric in recent years he was safe.
Crikey understands that Yang was detained by the Ministry of Social Security, the nation’s secret police force, rather than the Ministry of Public Security, which is the regular police.
The reality (as Pyne hopefully now knows) is that such detention centres in China are generally at “black sites” or jails. They are now protected under laws passed in 2013. If, as a growing number of people now fear, he is charged with espionage or similar crimes, he could be held and tortured for up to six months, as Amnesty International warns.
The reasons for Yang’s detention remain unclear. In recent months, Australia has at last found its voice on China’s serial and flagrant human rights violations that have escalated sharply under the increasingly repressive Xi regime.
In an uncommonly forthright presentation to the UNHCR’s regular four-and-a-half-yearly review of China, Australia highlighted the plight of up to 2 million Muslim Uighurs from the north-west Xinjiang province, now locked up in so-called re-education camps.
We must assume that this is the work of Foreign Minister Marise Payne who has fast emerged as almost the inverse of her predecessor, Julie Bishop. Payne is a politician who takes her brief seriously and genuinely seems to cares about the people in neighbouring countries being pummeled by authoritarian government.
Still, Payne aside, Yang is facing a potential ordeal that could well see him eventually tossed in jail after a show trial, under a prime minister who has shown little interest in foreign affairs. Another issue stems from Australia’s Ambassador in Beijing, Jan Adams, who is viewed by some in diplomatic circles as a good trade negotiator but who is out of her depth on more complex strategic issues.
The Australian Department of Defence has been on the front foot on China, revealing plans for a military base on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. It is also in the process of the (cack-handed) construction of new submarines, as well as naval vessels designed, primarily, to counter military threats from the Middle Kingdom.
Australia led the world in pushing back against the installation of equipment by Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei Technologies first in benighted National Broadband Network and more recently for Australia’s 5G mobile infrastructure, leading the push by the so-called Five Eyes group of Anglophone countries that has been taken up with gusto by the US.
That resulted in the November 2018 detention of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the company’s founder Ren Zhengfei. She remains marooned in Canada where she was pulled out of an airport on the back of Canada’s extradition treaty with the US, which wants to try her for busting sanctions on Iran.
In all likelihood, we will never know the why and when of Yang’s targeting but it doesn’t look good. If China insists on taking things forward in its opaque way, breaching the human rights of an Australian citizen, then Canberra must face down a reality it has been studiously ignoring for the past decade.
Yes, but what could Australia do – boycott China until it meets Australia’s human rights standards (sic) as it doesn’t boycott Saudi Arabia, Russia, Zimbabwe . . .?
Gavin …Britain, France, Germany, Ukraine, Poland, Spain, United States, Brazil, Argentine, Nigeria, Ghana, Rhuanda etc etc etc.
Is there any country currently recognising human beings as having some “rights?”
Maybe they’re guilty? Certainly guilty of stupidity going going back there.
As for “extrajudicial disregard for citizens”, that’s not as bad as Uncle Sams extrajudicial disregard for non citizens, eg Asange, or Dotcom. Our spineless politicians are as hypocritical as some of our journalists.
Quite agree – that is the price people pay pay for stupidity going back there after being warned not to.
So why blame China it is acting consistently -badly.
It’s also worth noting some of Sainsbury’s other exclusions, applet.
Around 2014, even the likes of the NYT’s bothered to report that Edward Snowden had provided files that showed the extent of the US hacking of Huawei.
Huawei learned from that, went away and sunk $B’s into R & D, and now are the hardest to hack of all.
This Huawei ‘security threat’ schtik is a (5 Eyes) coordinated ruse. The real issue is the big IT monopolies, or near monopolies, of the West have got fat and lazy because of the lack of competition, and are now miles behind the likes of Huawei.
What’s also ignored is the head start provided to US tech companies by DARPA. DARPA provided their base product ideas to the likes of F’book, Google and Apple.
The quid pro quo? Backdoors.
On the Uighur ‘story’, a lot of which is a stock standard NGO ‘industry’ beat up (as in Venezuela, now and since Chavez kicked off what Jimmy Carter called ‘the best democratic process in the world’), when might it be ‘convenient’ for people with access and agency, such as Sainsbury, to mention the 000’s of Uighurs who have made their way to the MENA to ‘fight’ alongside ISIS, ISIL and the various manifestations of Al Qaeda.
Those Uighur contacts with extreme Islamism go back quite. Osama Bin Laden made a number of ‘visits’ to Uighur territory, and they did fight side by side in Afghanistan
…..”back quite a way”.
Yep, right on Dave. Sainsbury echoes other Sinophobes who always get a guernsey from the MSM and, increasingly, the ABC. Like that other egregious lightweight Peter Jennings from some security think tank or other blathering on in much the much the same vein with Patricia Karvelis yesterday. Jennings, most notably, declared the LNP’s stuff up of the on line census earlier in the year, the work of Chinese hackers – wrong, wrong, wrong and he still gets platforms. Karvelis, of course, let it all past. NFI.
Your reference to Assange’s treatment by the U.S. is salutary as media treatment of the current situation in Venezuela but even on Crikey and, especially in The Guardian we get this unsubstantiated dumb drivel about all manner of things. What if the bloke gets out next week Mike? Will we get a revision from you?
Nice post!
Christopher Pyne is there in China… He’ll fix it… He’s a fixer!
Oh dear dear Christopher… that I’m a fixer comment should be on his headstone!
Don’t worry the Australian government is going to pay China to spy on us -through the back door .
To-day’s Story about Australia facing reality on China – Why hasn’t Bernard Keane or any one at Crickey woken up to the fact that Medicare – Australian taxpayer via Medicare levy is about to be diverted to China via the China Jangho Group taking over Primary Health Care company now renamed Healius. Jangho has offered $2 billion take over bid the company. So the income derived by 70 health Centres ,1500 general practitioners, pathology testing , x-rays mainly financed by Medicare will be then entirely funding the Chinese. On top of that the data that is contained health records – including the eHealth the government made opt out the only option will belong to the Chinese legitimately and the computing system for the health data is run by Huawei. –
So Medicare will be financing the Chinese to collect health and other data about the Australian population.
Why isn’t the government treating this as not in the national interest in their takeover panel assessment. It seems the government does not think taxpayers data has nothing to do with the national interest only computing hardware has that status.
There is something circular about this article. We hear of the arrest of an Australian citizen, for no good reason. This forms part of a story of a global (i.e. Anglophone) Australia-led push back against Huawei, which ‘resulted in the November 2018 detention of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the company’s founder Ren Zhengfei’. A Chinese citizen.
I have no idea about Iranian sanction busting (a US imposed set of ‘global rules) nor about the reason for Yang’s detention, though extreme China sceptic Bill Bishop has already warned that the waters might be murkier than at first sight. Surely there needs to be some slight doubt about an article where the arrest of a Chinese citizen is fine, but that of an Australian one not fine.
Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou pursuant to its public extradition treaty with the USA. There was a public bail hearing and she is currently on bail pending an extradition hearing which will also be public and according to the rule of law. This is in stark contrast to China’s detention of Canadian citizens which was secret and arbitrary by a system with no separation of the courts and government.
The US is attempting to extradite Meng for busting sanctions that it imposed, after ripping up an international settlement. It is politically motivated. It will be heard in a court of law, and more transparently than Yang. That is all fine. But not the point that was being made in this article – which is somehow that China is making political arrests when the US clearly is too – nor my comment, which is about the blatant double standards being imposed on China at the moment.
Bang, you pointed out the blatant hypocrisy.
The US abrogated an international treaty and persecuted those who abide by it.
And this country kow-tows.
That distinctive bruise on our forehead is now permanent.
Not, yet, to the Middle Kingdom.