February 11, 2023
Singapore: China’s Foreign Ministry has accused the Australian government of abusing state power after it ordered the removal of security cameras linked to Chinese companies from government offices.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Friday she had asked her department to speed up the replacement of the cameras despite having minimal security concerns about their operation in sensitive areas such as defence and foreign affairs.
Liberal senator James Paterson revealed this week an audit had found 913 cameras and intercoms made by Chinese state-linked companies Hikvision and Dahua across Australian government offices.
“The advice to me is [that] they don’t have security concerns because they’re not connected to the internet, and they’re not connected to our own system,” Wong told the ABC on Friday. “But obviously, there was a decision made to remove them, and I’ve asked that be accelerated.”
China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning accused the Australian government of discriminating against Chinese products.
“We oppose erroneous practices of over-stretching the concept of national security and abusing state power to discriminate against and suppress Chinese companies,” she said.
The comments follow months of negotiations between the Labor government and Beijing over trade sanctions, human rights, and the arbitrary detention of Australians in China.
The first shipment of Australian coal since more than $20 billion in trade strikes was launched at the height of the pandemic arrived in China on Thursday. The import is the first practical sign that relations may be improving after months of rhetoric. Lobster farmers are also reporting that they have been allowed to apply for import licences to China for the first time in years and government ministers are optimistic that Australian wine could soon be back on the shelves in Beijing bottle shops.
“I think with every day, we see another step forward in stabilising this relationship, and that’s nothing but good news for Australian agriculture,” Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said on Friday.
But Beijing has also made clear it was targeting concessions in return for stabilising the relationship. Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao told Trade Minister Don Farrell on Monday that China wanted more opportunities for Chinese businesses in Australia after multiple applications were blocked under the previous government.
In one case, the $600 million takeover of Lion Dairy by China Mengniu Dairy was abandoned after an intervention by then-treasurer Josh Frydenberg in August 2020. Frydenberg said the takeover was contrary to the national interest but did not elaborate on how it might be a risk to national security. There was no agricultural land involved in the deal and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Foreign Investment Review Board and Treasury all approved the sale.
Mao on Friday called on the Australian government to do more to contribute to “mutual trust and cooperation” between the two countries.
“We hope the Australian side will provide a fair, just, and non-discriminatory environment for the normal operation of Chinese companies,” she said.
That nascent discussions between Canberra and Beijing have been further stretched by the Chinese government balloon that was shot down over the United States on Saturday. The FBI has been pulling apart the balloon in a laboratory in Virginia as they look to establish proof of surveillance and espionage by Beijing, which has claimed the balloon was a civilian weather device blown off course.
US State Department officials said on Friday that the balloon was part of a Chinese military-linked aerial surveillance program that targeted more than 40 countries. The officials said they were contacting countries that had been affected.
A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs said officials had remained in close contact with their US counterparts since the detection of the high-altitude balloon over the continental US.
Wong said on Friday that she did not have any advice on whether Chinese government-linked balloons had flown over Australia, but added that if one was detected “the Australian government would always act to ensure we protect our sovereignty”.
The Department of Defence was contacted for comment.
