Totalitarian systems
NARROWER TERMS
Policy report
Assessing the impact of CCP information operations related to Xinjiang
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using technology to enforce transnational digital repression and influence unwitting audiences beyond China’s territory. The impact of these operations isn’t widely understood, and the international community has failed to adequately respond to the global challenges posed by the CCP’s...
Policy report
The architecture of repression: unpacking Xinjiang’s governance
This project maps and analyses the governance mechanisms employed by the Chinese Communist Party-state in Xinjiang from 2014 to 2021 within the context of the region’s ongoing human rights crisis. For policy-makers, this report will provide an evidence base to inform policy responses including possible...
Report
Xi dreams of 100 more glorious years for the Party: might China awake?
The Chinese Communist Party is at the peak of its power as it enters its second century. This paper examines its evolution over the last 100 years, before turning to its centenary celebrations in July 2021, with Xi Jinping at the helm.
Book
China Story yearbook 2020: crisis
The 2020 edition of the China Story yearbook examines the downward-spiralling Sino-Australian relationship, the difficult ‘co-morbidities’ of China’s relations with the US, the end of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ in Hong Kong, the simmering border conflict with India, and the rise of pandemic-related anti-Chinese racism.
Report
Strange bedfellows on Xinjiang: the CCP, fringe media and US social media platforms
This report explores how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), fringe media and pro-CCP online actors seek to shape and influence international perceptions of the Chinese Government’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, including through the amplification of disinformation.
Report
Trigger warning: the CCP’s coordinated information effort to discredit the BBC
This report provides a snapshot of the Chinese Communist Party's coordinated response targeting the BBC, and also analyses some of the secondary effects of this propaganda effort by exploring the mobilisation of a pro-CCP Twitter network.
Policy report
The influence environment
This report is based on detailed research into 24 Chinese-language media organisations operating in Australia, analysis of their coverage of events, and investigations into the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) efforts to influence media in this country.
Report
The elite embrace
This paper traces the elitist evolution of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under leader, Xi Jinping, before examining the gap between Party elites and the masses. The author then outlines how China courts foreign elites, arguing that many Australian corporate, university, state and local government...
Report
Digital authoritarianism, China and COVID
This paper argues that the onus is on democracies to do more to counter the harmful aspects of China’s global technology agenda, and to find ways to harness technology, including artificial intelligence, for the global public good, while preserving hard-won democratic rights and liberties.
Report
Xi’s UN speech: when rhetoric did not meet reality
General Secretary Xi Jinping’s speech on the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations is a classic example of the Chinese Communist Party’s doublespeak. Almost every statement was hypocritical when examined in light of such CCP actions as the suppression...
Policy report
Cultural erasure: tracing the destruction of Uyghur and Islamic spaces in Xinjiang
The Chinese state has long sought to ‘transform’ and ‘civilise’ Xinjiang, but Xi Jinping and his lieutenants bring a new sense of urgency to this colonialist project. Under the guise of combating perceived ‘religious extremism’ and promoting ‘inter-ethnic mingling’, Chinese officials are slowly but systematically...
Report
Out of control: failing EU laws for digital surveillance export
This report gives evidence of the gaps in the current European Union (EU) export regulation framework for digital surveillance technologies and provides the EU institutions and its member states with actionable recommendations to improve the protections of human rights.
Report
China’s deep state: the Communist Party and the coronavirus
As this paper argues, China’s failures in the early stages of the crisis, and in the overseas propaganda campaign it later mounted, were baked into the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) system. So too was the extraordinary mobilisation of the country’s resources to enforce lockdowns and...
Policy report
Genomic surveillance: inside China’s DNA dragnet
The Chinese Government is building the world’s largest police-run DNA database in close cooperation with key industry partners across the globe. Yet, unlike the managers of other forensic databases, Chinese authorities are deliberately enrolling tens of millions of people who have no history of serious...
Policy report
Retweeting through the great firewall
This report analyses a persistent, large-scale influence campaign linked to Chinese state actors on Twitter and Facebook. This activity largely targeted Chinese-speaking audiences outside of the Chinese mainland (where Twitter is blocked) with the intention of influencing perceptions on key issues, including the Hong Kong...
Policy report
The party speaks for you
This paper dissects the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP's) united front system and its role in foreign interference. It describes the broad range of agencies and goals of the united front system, rather than focusing only on the United Front Work Department (UFWD).
Book
The AI powered state: China's approach to public sector innovation
This collection of essays aim to give policymakers a deeper understanding of how China is innovating with artificial intelligence (AI) in public services, challenging current misconceptions and illuminating nuances in the debate.
Report
How Xi Jinping’s “New Era” should have ended U.S. debate on Beijing’s ambitions
What kind of global power does China want to be? Communist Party leader Xi Jinping's 2017 speech to the 19th Party Congress should have ended the debate about Beijing’s ambitions, argues Freeman Chair Senior Associate Daniel Tobin.
Discussion paper
Demonising China during COVID-19
This papers argues that much of the corona virus ‘blame game’, including the Australian government’s call for an international independent inquiry into China’s actions, is misguided and self-interested.
Policy report
Uyghurs for sale
China has attracted international condemnation for its network of extrajudicial ‘re-education camps’ in Xinjiang. This report exposes a new phase in China’s social re-engineering campaign targeting minority citizens, revealing new evidence that some factories across China are using forced Uyghur labour under a state-sponsored labour...
Policy report
A new Sino-Russian high-tech partnership
This paper is intended to start an initial mapping and exploration of the expanding cooperative ecosystem involving Moscow and Beijing. It will be important to track the trajectory and assess the implications of these Sino-Russian technological collaborations, given the risks and threats that could result...
Policy report
Engineering global consent: the Chinese Communist Party’s data-driven power expansion
This report provides analysis of the global operations of Chinese company, Global Tone Communications Technology Co. Ltd (GTCOM), which is a subsidiary of an SOE supervised directly by China’s Central Propaganda Department. GTCOM is responsible for identifying 'risks to state security' - a concept that...
Policy report
Mind your tongue
As Australia is compelled to engage with a more confrontational China, there’s a risk that political commentary and media reporting on Chinese influence and interference operations in Australia could affect Chinese-Australian communities adversely. This briefing paper offers some constructive suggestions to address the issue.
Briefing paper
Democratic crisis in Hong Kong: recommendations for policymakers
Millions of people in Hong Kong are protesting democratic deterioration and rights violations, amid increasing police brutality and other violence against them. This paper argues that the United States and other democracies must take strong, immediate action to stand with the people of Hong Kong...
Report
The China challenge
The rise of China has helped make Australia rich, but it is also posing challenges to its values, interests, alliances and thus its identity. This paper argues that Australia's approach should include a shift towards a much better understanding of contemporary China, as well as...