This article just in from the London Financial review
New Zealand should ban foreign donations and vet
parliamentary candidates for political risk to counter the growing risk of
interference from China, a leading academic will tell a parliamentary committee
investigating Beijing’s influence in the country on Thursday. Anne-Marie Brady,
a China expert at the University of Canterbury, will also recommend New Zealand
authorities engage with technology company Tencent, the owner of social media
platform WeChat, to prevent the spread of disinformation on the platform during
elections. “New Zealand is at a pivotal moment as it responds to a complex new
security environment,” says Ms Brady’s submission, which is set to be presented
at a hearing of the parliament’s justice committee.
The submission adds that political parties must do more due
diligence on all funding, with contributions from non-permanent residents or
citizens of New Zealand prohibited and a maximum cap put on all donations. “New
Zealand should follow international best practice and limit voting in elections
to citizens,” she writes.
The parliamentary hearings reflect growing unease among
western governments about Beijing’s efforts to influence politics through
donations, funding of pro-Chinese think-tanks and supporting candidates of
Chinese descent who may have links to the Chinese Communist party.Last year,
New Zealand was engulfed in controversy over donations made by Zhang Yikun, a
Chinese businessman with links to the Communist party, to the opposition
National party. Simon Bridges, the party’s leader, denied allegations he had
attempted to conceal a NZ$100,000 ($66,000) donation from Mr Zhang when a
secretly recorded telephone conversation about the gift and the possibility of
recruiting more Chinese election candidates was leaked to the media.
New Zealand, a member of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing
network with the US, UK, Canada and Australia, has been criticised by security
analysts and China experts for not acknowledging that people and organisations
with links to the Communist party have sought to influence domestic politics.
Peter Mattis, a former CIA analyst, has told a US Congressional commission that
New Zealand’s participation in the Five Eyes should be reconsidered due to its
close links with Beijing. Winston Peters, the country’s deputy prime minister,
told the Financial Times this year that Wellington was considering laws to curb
foreign influence ahead of next year’s general election.
Another academic scheduled to give evidence to the justice
committee this month, Tom Sear, an industry fellow at the University New South
Wales Canberra Cyber centre, will tell the committee Beijing may have exploited
the Christchurch terrorist attacks for its own propaganda purposes. Mr Sear
will say that Chinese censors did not make strong efforts to block or remove
livestream videos of the mass shootings from WeChat or Sina Weibo, another
Chinese social media site, because it was seen as an opportunity to remind its
citizens of how safe their own country was in comparison to New Zealand. New
Zealand’s probe comes after Australia last year passed a number of foreign
interference laws, which included the banning of foreign donations, following a
scandal involving a rich Chinese businessman.
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