Transcript

00:00:23:17

REPORTER: Australia’s universities are embroiled in a growing geo-political storm. In recent months, pro and anti-Beijing groups have clashed on campuses and on the streets amid rising concerns over the Chinese government’s expanding power abroad.

00:00:44:03

DAN TEHAN, Minster for Education: Foreign interference is now at unprecedented levels in this country. It's a wake-up call to our university sector, a wake-up call to our business sector, a wake-up call to our government.

00:00:55:20

REPORTER: Universities earn billions of dollars a year from student fees and research collaborations with mainland China. There are growing fears that these lucrative arrangements May be endangering academic independence - and even placing Australia’s security at risk.

00:01:16:18

ALEX JOSKE, Analyst, Australian Strategic Policy Institute: It’s clearly not in Australia’s interest to be recklessly training scientists who will go on to develop technologies that could be used against our military and against our country.

00:01:29:05

REPORTER: The accusations have fed into a deepening political rift between Australia and Beijing.

00:01:35:13

VICKY XU, journalist and former international student: This is like Cold War, you’re either Chinese mouthpiece or an American mouthpiece, there’s no in-between.

00:01:43:16

PROF. CHEN HONG, Director, Australian Studies Centre, East China Normal University: I think it is actually like a witch hunt and is so interrelated to China has been labelled as some kind of threat. It’s no longer Yellow Peril, but it’s Red Peril.

00:01:53:08

REPORTER: Tonight on Four Corners, we investigate the infiltration of Australia’s universities by the Chinese Communist Party through questionable funding deals, student activism and research collaborations that are raising red flags. We reveal why our government and intelligence agencies are intervening amid evidence of Beijing’s involvement in acts of high-tech espionage and research partnerships that could undermine our academic integrity and even our national security.

00:02:27:03

PROF. CLIVE HAMILTON, Author “Silent Invasion”: Australian universities have not been sleepwalking, they've been in a coma. It's astonishing. There is no excuse anymore. Perhaps three of four years ago university vice chancellors could've said, "Oh, well, we didn't know." That is no longer an excuse.

00:03:01:02

REPORTER: One day last November, an executive assistant at the Australian National University in Canberra read an email. It set off a cyber heist like none this country has experienced before.

00:03:17:12

PROF. BRIAN SCHMIDT, Vice-Chancellor, Australian National University: So as near as we can tell, the first thing that our hackers did is they launched a spear phishing attack, but one where you didn't have to actually make a mistake. Normally you have to click on something. That was not the case. So, this was really the A team. They were able to do things that were impressive, and very hard to stop.

00:03:49:06

RECONSTRUCTION: Dear Colleagues, I am a student in the Vice-Chancellor’s student leadership programme. I am currently working on a project that would require your help as a mentor.

00:04:03:05

REPORTER: Over six weeks, the hackers sent a barrage of spear phishing emails, impersonating a student and staff to steal passwords for the universities databases. It wasn’t till six months after the infiltration of the ANU began, that the university discovered that a database containing nearly two decades worth of records of current and former students and staff had been hacked.

00:04:35:08

PROF. BRIAN SCHMIDT, Vice-Chancellor, Australian National University: The database went back 19 years and included several hundred thousand people, and we do not know what data was taken of which person over what time. So, they removed data from essentially the database that contains when you were a student here, your records, passport details, probably bank account details. The evidence shows this to be a highly organised, well-resourced, sophisticated actor. Consistent with a state actor or a well-funded group associated with a state actor.

00:05:14:00

REPORTER: We understand that behind closed doors intelligence agencies say the evidence points to the culprit being

00:05:20:17 China.

ALASTAIR MACGIBBON, Former Head, Australian Cyber Security Centre, Australian Signals Directorate: That may well be the case, but it's not always in the interests of government of course or the Australian people to point a finger at a nation. And it may be that you don’t have the literal smoking gun that you require for that irrefutable evidence publicly to make such an assertion.

00:05:43:08

REPORTER: Senior Australian security officials have told Four Corners they believe the Chinese Government was carrying out a high-tech espionage operation, to collect information that could be used to compromise and blackmail the victims.

00:06:01:10

ALEX JOSKE, Analyst, Australian Strategic Policy Institute: ANU trains thousands of people who end up in the national security community. If ANU has materials on these people that could be used to compromise them, for example, a history of plagiarism or sexual harassment allegations, then this is incredibly concerning and could undermine our national security.

00:06:22:12

REPORTER: ANU graduate and influential China analyst Alex Joske was one of 200-thousand people who was told his personal data may have been stolen. Joske, believes the ANU has left itself wide open.

00:06:38:15

ALEX JOSKE, Analyst, Australian Strategic Policy Institute: ANU is one of the world's leading universities for collaboration with the Chinese military. One example at ANU is that, the ANU trained a scientist who was sent here by the Chinese military as a PhD student working on artificial intelligence and specifically drone swarms, working together with ANU scientists who are receiving defence funding for the exact same research. When he went back to China, he was quickly promoted and is now head of the PLA, the Chinese military's drone swarm programme.

00:07:09:00

REPORTER: We found 30 collaborations between ANU and Chinese Defence universities. Papers on aerial robots and drones, research on video surveillance, and a collaboration on helping stealth fighters hide themselves while communicating with military bases.

00:07:28:05

PROF. BRIAN SCHMIDT, Vice-Chancellor, Australian National University: All of the work that we do is in the public domain. So, it's not secret research, it's not done for dollars, it is there, normally in some form that is much more generic. Now, there are abilities for things to be dual use but we always again look at whether or not we think things are potentially able to do harm.

00:08:00:15

REPORTER: Since 2017, Australia’s security agencies have been warning universities about the risks of foreign interference. Publicly, they don’t name Beijing. Six weeks ago, the Education Minister announced a university foreign interference taskforce.

00:08:22:24

DAN TEHAN, Minister for Education: Foreign interference is now at unprecedented levels in this country. There's been cyber intrusions which have occurred in the last three to four years, which should be a wake-up call to Australia. It's a wake-up call to our university sector, a wake-up call to our business sector, a wake-up call to our government.

00:08:41:06

CATRIONA JACKSON, CEO, Universities Australia and taskforce member: Every single university has discussions with security agencies about foreign interference, about the increased risk of cyber hacking. We’ve seen a particularly large and substantial incident at the ANU recently, so these are conversations that go on between individual institutions and security agencies, government, all the time.

00:09:02:13

DAN TEHAN, Minister for Education: We've got to make sure that our universities understand this threat, understand that they very much could be subject to foreign governments wanting to interfere with the work that they've done. Obviously, our universities hold information, which is incredibly important to our national security, so we've got to make sure we're working with them so that they understand the level of the threat, and what needs to be done.

00:09:31:14

REPORTER: The Chinese government and its supporters deny that China poses a threat.

00:09:37:08

PROF. CHEN HONG, Director, Australian Studies Centre, East China Normal University: We’ve noticed actually the ASIO and other intelligence units in Australia making allegations direct or indirect you know, against China. We think actually these allegations are unfounded and without substantial evidence.

00:10:00:11

REPORTER: Chinese academic Professor Chen Hong was recently brought to Australia as part of a P.R. campaign, and was provided to Four Corners by the Embassy after it declined our request to interview the ambassador.

00:10:17:00

PROF. CHEN HONG, Director, Australian Studies Centre, East China Normal University: I think to-date so far, there has been no clear evidence being produced by ASIO to as I said incriminate China, to be doing anything.

00:10:42:20

REPORTER: Chinese students are caught in the middle of rising fears about the growing might and influence of Beijing’s authoritarian regime. In August, Beijing loyalists came out en masse in Melbourne, clashing with pro-democracy protesters supporting the uprising in Hong Kong. The same weekend, pro-Beijing protesters also hit the streets in Sydney.

00:11:24:11

STUDENT PROTESTOR: If you don’t like Hong Kong, get the hell out of here. If you don’t love China, you are our enemy. Isolate them, get them out.

00:11:43:12

VICKY XU, journalist and former international student: I think even the organisers did not realise how patriotic, how nationalistic the local Chinese community, especially student community, can be. They wanted a platform to be able to have a voice, and I think a lot of people there saw that rally as a platform to have their own voice, to say, you know, "We're proud to be Chinese, and to be from China, and we're proud of the Chinese government”.

00:12:21:16

REPORTER: Vicki Xu came to Australia as an international student in 2014 from China. Her world view transformed as she studied political science at Melbourne University.

 

00:12:36:07

VICKY XU, journalist ormer international student: Growing up, the textbooks are full- on nationalistic. They teach you this narrative that China, you know, in the last a hundred years have been humiliated by the West. And you know, we, there's a very clear notion of China and the West are on opposite sides, and also, in Chinese student handbooks the number one rule would be love the country, love the party.

00:13:11:09

REPORTER: With Chinese student numbers at record highs, Australia’s most respected and prosperous universities are in the midst of a cultural and political transformation.

00:13:24:14

LINDA JAKOBSON, Director, China Matters: Australian universities, especially the G8 universities, are heavily reliant on international students generally, but especially, those from the PRC. The two main universities in Sydney, UNSW and Sydney University, it's nearly two-thirds of international students who come from the PRC. That's a heavy reliance.

00:13:52:14

JACKY HE: We’re standing up for the rights of international students, but we also work for both international and domestic students.

00:13:59:20

REPORTER: At the University of Sydney, one quarter of all students now come from China. Last year, aspiring politician Jackie He became the first Chinese citizen in Australia elected president of a university’s Student Representative Council. Today, he’s campaigning for the re-election of his group called Panda.

00:14:29:13

JACKY HE, President, Student Representative Council, University of Sydney: Many Panda members are pro-China but pro-China does not necessarily mean pro CCP in any kind of way. We act on our own will, we love the country on our own will, we love both Australia and China there’s no dichotomy here where you have to love one country or not and the purpose of us existing is to bridge that gap between international and domestic students so international so international students can have the help to be better involved in the community.

00:15:04:04

REPORTER: An hour before polling closed the Pandas were suspended from campaigning for breaching multiple rules, including campaigning in Mandarin and standing over students who were casting their votes. Last year, Jacky He was invited to give a speech at a competition for emerging Chinese Australian youth leaders.

00:15:28:08

JACKY HE: In Australia everyone has an Australian dream. Owning a quarter acre block of land with a free standing backyard, which means success and security. In China we also have a dream which is the prosperity of China, the rise of the Chinese nation and the security of the Chinese people. No matter the Australian dream or the China dream we cannot fulfil the dream with the power of only one country.

00:16:00:07

REPORTER: In August, he filmed a segment for a Chinese state TV show called the ‘China Dream’ named after President Xi Jinping’s trademark political slogan.

00:16:15:09

JACKY HE, President, Student Representative Council President, University of Sydney: It is essentially, it invited Chinese students from across the world from various different countries like Canada, Romania, America and obviously Australia, to come together and share their love and feelings about China and their stories with Chinese students and with China.

00:16:36:21

REPORTER: Jacky He says Chinese students are being unfairly vilified.

00:16:41:21

JACKY HE, President, Student Representative Council, University of Sydney: Media have been accusing Chinese international students of carrying out spy work in Australia, and I think to accuse these students who are already facing a heavy amount of burden regardless whether it's financial, social, or psychological, to accuse them of carrying out spy work in Australia, I think it's quite absurd. And the purpose of international students isn't here to carry out any spy work for the government in China. At least the vast majority of international students don't have any of this kind of intention at all.

00:17:22:18

REPORTER: At other universities, the rise of pro-Beijing student groups is fueling fears the lucrative international student industry is a gateway for Chinese Communist Party influence on campus. The biggest group is called the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, which has branches on most Australian campuses.

00:17:43:08

REPORTER: Incorporation documents from the ACT branch of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, say its mission is to assist the Chinese embassy, facilitate the connection between the embassy and the Chinese students and scholars, and that the board must communicate regularly with the embassy. The documents say all Chinese students and scholars will automatically become coordinating members.

00:18:11:21

ALEX JOSKE, Analyst, Australian Strategic Policy Institute: I think universities have a really serious issue on their hands. They’ve let groups like the CSSA grow and expand on campuses, build their influence, build their resourcing, and essentially gives the Chinese government a channel straight into the lives of Chinese students even when they’re outside China’s borders.

 

 

00:18:38:23

REPORTER: The University of Queensland has been at the centre of the storm over Chinese political interference on campus. On an orientation day in July, the University was the scene of an ugly confrontation between pro and anti-Beijing demonstrators.

00:19:02:22

DREW PAVLOU, Student activist, University of Queensland: We decided to hold a protest on Market Day surrounding our universities close link to the Chinese state because we decided that would be the best way to get attention to the cause.

00:19:14:21

REPORTER: Student activist Drew Pavlou led a sit-in against Vice Chancellor Peter Hoi over the university’s close connections with the Chinese Government.

00:19:30:15

DREW PAVOU, Student activist, University of Queensland: I led a chant, “hey hey, ho ho, Peter Hoi has got to go”. That was basically calling for Peter Hoi to resign over his links to the Chinese Communist Party while these human rights abuses are being perpetrated. And then I led a chant, “hey hey, ho ho, Xi Jinping has got to go”. It was at that moment that I was attacked.

00:20:09:12

JACK YIU, Student actvist, University of Queensland: I heard noises, like they were singing the national anthem and they were shouting their slogans. We heard them shouting, "China's Hong Kong. Betrayers of China.

00:20:38:00

REPORTER: There were ugly scenes on both sides. There are close to 9000 Chinese students enrolled at the University of Queensland. Their fees contribute a quarter of a billion dollars a year. In the last five years, UQ received 24 million dollars from agreements with Chinese institutions and companies. It also hosts a branch of the Confucius Institute – a language and culture program run by an arm of the Chinese government called Hanban, which gives UQ up to 400 thousand dollars a year.

00:21:31:10

PROF. JOHN FITZGERALD, Former Head of China operations, The Ford Foundation, Beijing: The Hanban answers directly to the state council, which is under the direction of the Chinese Communist Party, to meet the objectives of the Chinese Communist Party, which is stated as to promote, to tell China's story well around the world and that's what Confucius institutes are charged with doing.

00:21:53:09

REPORTER: Last year, the FBI’s Assistant Director for Counter Intelligence warned the U-S Senate about Confucius Institutes.

00:22:01:20

BILL PRIESTAP: The Confucius Institutes in my mind are not strictly a cultural institute. They are ultimately beholden to the Chinese Government. And there have been instances around the world in which those institutes have quashed free speech.

00:22:19:20

PROMOTIONAL VIDEO: The Confucius institute at The University of Melbourne…

00:22:23:07

REPORTER: There are 13 Confucius Institutes in universities across Australia. They run classes on campus and in schools in several states. The UQ’s Confucius Institute’s founding agreement gives Hanban authority over teaching standards.

00:22:45:21

ROSS BABBAGE, Senior security advisor, Australian Government: And so this is a mechanism for ethnic, essentially, Communist Party apparatchiks, or people who are so closely associated with it, to actually get into foreign countries. That's the first thing. Secondly, they, they're used in part to propagate, basically messages from Beijing. Propaganda, if you like. Thirdly, they're used to keep an eye on ethnic Chinese in universities.

00:23:12:17

REPORTER: In August, the NSW Education Department announced it would shut down its Confucius Institute, which is running classrooms in schools, concluding there was a perception of influence from Beijing.

00:23:25:16

PROF CHEN HONG, Director, East China Normal University: I deplore very much the decision made by the New South Wales Government. I think it is actually like a witch hunt, and everything related to China has been labelled as some kind of threat. It’s no longer Yellow Peril, but it’s Red Peril, which is actually really shocking to me.

00:23:43:00

REPORTER: University of Queensland Vice Chancellor Peter Hoj has forged strong links to China. In 2013 he was appointed as an unpaid senior consultant to Hanban and later became member of the council of Confucius Institute Headquarters. Professor Hoj has also received Hanban’s Outstanding Individual of the Year Award. He stood down from Hanban last year after being advised he would need to declare it under Australia’s new Foreign Interference Transparency Scheme.

00:24:19:06

REPORTER: Isn't there a conflict of interest between your commitment to academic independence at UQ with your membership at the Council of the Confucius Institute Headquarters?

00:24:27:19

PROF. PETER HØJ, Vice Chancellor, University of Queensland: I believe not. You know, Australia, like any other country, has foreign service, we always believe that, in order to get the best out of open, collaborations, that you have to engage and influence. And what I've been trying to do is to influence the way that the Chinese see, their relationship with us, rather than being influenced by the Chinese.

00:24:54:13

REPORTER: Are you confident, that the Chinese government, or Chinese Communist Party, hasn't attempted to influence you?

00:25:03:02

PROF. PETER HØJ, Vice Chancellor, University of Queensland: I'm very confident that I haven't been influenced.

00:25:07:01

ALEX JOSKE, Analyst, Australian Strategic Policy Institute: I think it is concerning, especially given what we know about the way the Chinese government sees education. In the Chinese government's eyes, education is a means of propaganda, of brainwashing and controlling the thoughts of people. So, for an Australian university Vice-Chancellor to be advising the Chinese government on education from an optics perspective looks terrible.

00:25:35:01

REPORTER: In July, the University of Queensland made China’s consul general in Brisbane an adjunct professor – the fifth such appointment of a Chinese diplomat. He was nominated by the director of UQ’s Confucius Institute.

00:25:52:00

PROF. PETER HØJ, Vice Chancellor, University of Queensland: The appointment of such people goes through a well defined process at UQ. Anybody can nominate somebody for an affiliate position. Indeed, it’s not unusual. We have 2,500 such positions.

00:26:12:24

REPORTER: After the UQ protest, the consul general put out a statement praising the pro- Beijing protesters for what he described as ‘spontaneous patriotic behaviour’ and condemning what he called the words and deeds of separatist countries.

00:26:33:05

DREW PAVOU, Student activist, University of Queensland: I think it’s quite incredible that a man listed by the university as a professor can seemingly endorse against students protesting and exercising their right to free speech and free assembly and continue to be a professor at the University of Queensland months later.

00:26:48:12

DAN TEHAN, Minister for Education: Well, what it was, was what we thought as a government inappropriate comments and the foreign minister said that. And the foreign minister was quite clear in saying that. And I think that is the most important thing that she was very strong in saying, "Sorry, we do not think that that is acceptable behaviour from the consul general."

00:27:13:23

PROF. PETER HØJ, Vice Chancellor, University of Queensland: I'm not in the issue of debating with diplomats, and, but I made it very clear that, we don't endorse any violent acts in a peaceful demonstrate, and through that you can conclude that I would disagree with somebody who would endorse that type of behaviour.

 

 

00:27:41:00

REPORTER: This year, UQ’s Confucius Institute partnered with the School of Economics to develop a new course, called ‘Understanding China’. The course received funding from the Confucius Institute, and the course director recently received an Understanding China fellowship from Hanban in Beijing.

00:28:01:14

PROF. CLIVE HAMILTON, Author, “Silent Invasion”: Well, it’s very disturbing that the University of Queensland should allow its Confucius Institute to develop a third-year economics course. I mean why would we permit a foreign authoritarian government through a Confucius Institute to play a role in determining the curriculum to be taught on an Australian campus? I mean, I find that bizarre.

00:28:29:08

PROF. PETER HØJ, Vice Chancellor, University of Queensland: China will be the largest economy in the world very soon, the largest trading partner for Australia, an economy upon which our graduates very, very likely will depend for part of their livelihood. So, having courses concerning China is totally appropriate. Is it appropriate that a Confucius Institute devises courses? No, it's not, but they don't. They're not involved in the design of the course. They're not involved in the delivery of the course.

00:29:13:18

ROSS BABBAGE, Senior security advisor, Australian Government: Well look, I think there needs to be a complete review in the University of Queensland. I think that course needs to be reviewed independently, and where the materials have come from, what the content is, what’s there and what isn’t there, and whether it’s appropriate.

00:29:31:20

ALEX JOSKE, Analyst, Australian Strategic Policy Institute: There's been a lot of concerning activity at the University of Queensland. It engages in particularly high levels of collaboration with Chinese partners, some of which has raised serious human rights concerns. One example is that a scientist at UQ, Professor Shen Hengtao, set up a company in China called Koala AI that was commercialising his research and applying it towards monitoring people in the region of Xinjiang.

00:30:03:10

REPORTER: U-Q Professor Shen Hengtao developed cutting edge surveillance technology that is now being used as part of a mass surveillance program in China’s Xinjiang province. Professor Shen has received 2.6 million dollars in grants from the Australian Research Council.

00:30:27:03

PROF. PETER HØJ, Vice Chancellor, University of Queensland: He is no longer a professor at UQ. He stopped being an employee in 2017. I understand that he is back in China. He was an outstanding contributor to development of IT related research at UQ. And that capability is now being deployed for Australia’s benefit. What he goes on to do subsequent to having left UQ is something that we can’t readily control or make judgement about because we are not privy to the details of his activities in China.

00:31:18:01

DR. SAMANTHA HOFFMAN, Analyst, Australia Strategic Policy Institute: If you look at what the Chinese communist party is doing with technology domestically, it's best described as tech enhanced authoritarianism. It's the way that the Chinese communist party is using technology to augment its existing ways of ensuring state security. And to the party, its own political security, its own position and power is at the core of its concept of state security.

00:31:50:15

REPORTER: China analyst Samantha Hoffman has been investigating the Chinese government’s mission to spread its A-I surveillance technologies across the world. Her research has focused on a company called GTCOM - a global data mining operation which is majority owned by the Chinese government.

00:32:17:05

DR. SAMANTHA HOFFMAN, Analyst, Australia Strategic Policy Institute: GTCOM, on the surface, is a company that provides translation services. But actually, they described their activity as cross-language big data collection. And so essentially what they're doing is they're collecting bulk data globally, and then using that data to turn it into information that supports multiple different products. According to their own claims, the data they're collecting supports state security, and so immediately that raises red flags.

00:32:56:13

REPORTER: GTCOM spruiks itself as a pioneer of the technological revolution. GTCOM shares technology and data with China’s tech giants including Huawei which was banned by the Australian Government from the 5G network due to security concerns.

00:33:35:07

DR. SAMANTHA HOFFMAN, Analyst, Australia Strategic Policy Institute: It's also very clear that the company isn't actually focused on the translation services that they're providing, but rather what they can gain through the data that they're collecting through those services. Then it turns into information that is usable in a variety of contexts, whether it's China's social credit system, efforts related to military civil fusion, efforts related to military intelligence collection.

00:34:06:21

REPORTER: In 2017, GTCOM sponsored a summit held in Brisbane by the International Federation of Translators. The University of Queensland was a delegate sponsor. At the summit, GTCOM signed an MOU with the University of New South Wales to test its translation technology.

00:34:34:06

DR. SAMANTHA HOFFMAN, Analyst, Australia Strategic Policy Institute: It appears that GTCOM was using its sponsorship of that event as a way to improve its presence and to create a presence in Australia. They held an event in Sydney afterwards. They claimed to reach some kind of at least verbal agreement with other universities in Australia on potential cooperation in the future. So, essentially they used this particular event which is loosely linked to GTCOM's business model as a way to gain a foothold in Australia.

00:35:09:06

PROF. JOHN FITZGERALD, Former Head of China operations, The Ford Foundation, Beijing: One of the reasons the Australian community, government, perhaps universities should be concerned is that Australia's science and technology priorities are being set by the Chinese government because we enter into collaborations that have really been designed to support China's science and technology goals, not ours. The problem of due diligence spills over there, not just from the question of wasted resources, should we be putting funds into collaboration around achieving somebody else's national strategic objectives, but also because there's a possibility that some of this research will go towards uses which could place Australia at risk.

00:35:58:07

REPORTER: GTCOM also has a strategic partnership with a Chinese company, Haiyun Data, which provides technology for the police surveillance of ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang province.

00:36:15:07

DR. SAMANTHA HOFFMAN, Analyst, Australia Strategic Policy Institute: Haiyun Data, they work on technology to support the ministries of public security, the police across China. So, they work on surveillance related technologies or the visualisation of surveillance data, and they provide that to public security bureaus across the country, including in Xinjiang where we know that that technology is being used in its most coercive forms. They also are developing a lip reading technology to say for instance be able to read lips off of a video where there was no audio recorded, like a surveillance video.

00:36:54:22

REPORTER: In January this year, Chinese media reported the announcement by Haiyun Data of the establishment of a joint artificial intelligence laboratory with the University of Technology, Sydney.

00:37:10:08

DR. SAMANTHA HOFFMAN, Analyst, Australia Strategic Policy Institute: There's very little information about the deal available. It's only available in Chinese language media. But we can see an image of Director at Haiyun Data with an academic at UTS Sydney there’s images of the agreement.

00:37:28:06

REPORTER: The U-T-S academic was associate dean and director of the university’s Centre for artificial intelligence, Professor Jie Lu. Last month, Professor Lu won a three million dollar fellowship from the Australian Research Council, for a project to enable artificial intelligence to learn autonomously from data. Samantha Hoffman is concerned by the UTS Haiyun Data connection.

00:38:04:01

DR. SAMANTHA HOFFMAN, Analyst, Australia Strategic Policy Institute: All you have to do is search a company like Haiyun Data and Chinese on Google and very quickly you'll come up with their relationships to the Ministry of Public Security in particular and ministry of Public Security Colleges. Because as soon as you have a company that's involved in the Ministry of Public Security and one that advertises actually very openly that it is involved in Xinjiang, and that police state, you have to ask why does UTS find that acceptable?

00:38:33:20

REPORTER: UTS has told Four Corners there is no joint lab. But it has confirmed a research project with Haiyun Data to develop technology for handwriting recognition.

00:38:45:22

DR. SAMANTHA HOFFMAN, Analyst, Australia Strategic Policy Institute: It seems as if Haiyun Data has built a relationship with scholars at the university, but we also know that UTS Sydney seems to have signed other agreements that while not technically illegal, raise major red flags.

00:39:01:22

ALASTAIR MACGIBBON, Former Head, Australian Cyber Security Centre, Australian Signals Directorate: We need to ask the social and political consequences of our technology advancement and our adoption of technology. Just very broadly, we need to start understanding the implications. And so if there is a firm that's backed by a regime that doesn't purport to be a liberal Western democracy, and it's engaging in what could be developments that help suppress people, then that's a dangerous thing.

00:39:40:12

REPORTER: In 2017, UTS signed a 10-million-dollar deal with state-owned military company China Electronics Technology Corporation to fund a new high-tech research centre. One of its projects included one focused on public security video analysis. The company, CETC, had earlier developed a mass surveillance app used to monitor Uyghurs in Xinjiang. UTS denies its research contributed to the app. But Four Corners can reveal it’s abandoning the project and two others with CETC because of concerns expressed by Australia’s Defence Department.

00:40:21:04

ALASTAIR MACGIBBON, Former Head, Australian Cyber Security Centre, Australian Signals Directorate: Anyone seeking money needs to quite clearly understand what obligations are associated with that money, and they also need to understand in the case of researchers what the technology they’re researching could be used or misused for. We need to understand that technology can be abused and in a society where technology is ubiquitous and it is now in Australian society, then we’ve got to ask questions about whether or not we’re contributing to something that will end up becoming quite an oppressive thing for us and for other people.

00:40:54:12

REPORTER: Should Australian universities be contributing to Chinese surveillance technology through research partnerships given China's abysmal record on human rights?

00:41:05:14

CATRIONA JACKSON, CEO, Universities Australia and taskforce member: There are a set of rules about what's allowed and what's not allowed in terms of research. The Defence Trade Controls list is a very long list and it's reviewed every single year to keep it really up to date, and universities aren't just diligent, they're incredibly diligent about making sure that their research collaborations are absolutely inside the letter of the law. Apparently universities, as Defence told us recently, over report rather than under reporting.

00:41:35:17

REPORTER: China’s next major research venture in Australia is currently being developed at The University of New South Wales. The Torch Innovation Precinct is the Chinese Science Ministry’s overseas high tech research zone and will host more than 60 companies including Huawei and CETC. Chinese companies have so far committed 47 million dollars to the project.

00:42:01:18

PROF. CLIVE HAMILTON, Author, “Silent Invasion”: I see the Torch Technology Park, which is part of Beijing's technology transfer from the west to China, as the plundering some of Australia's most valuable intellectual property. The university seems oblivious to the risks. I think the University of New South Wales is one of a handful of universities in Australia which is completely in denial about what's going on, but is so tied in over many years to its networks, including its personal networks in Beijing, and China more broadly, that its lost the ability to have some perspective on what the university is doing with its engagement with China.

00:42:56:04

REPORTER: The University of New South Wales says it takes its security and compliance obligations very seriously and is keen to work more closely with the government to ensure its operations are always in line with the national interest.

00:43:12:01

CATRIONA JACKSON, CEO, Universities Australia and taskforce member: It’s a very, very careful balance. It’s absolutely fundamental that the autonomy, and the openness of Australian research and collaborative research is absolutely maintained. We’re a relatively small population country. If we didn’t collaborate on research, we would be in very, very serious trouble. I think the processes, as they are inside Australian universities, are very careful, and any laws, any things that government decides are not on, are absolutely adhered to.

00:43:48:20

REPORTER: Universities are now on the frontline of a clash of political and academic cultures, that’s posing greater challenges to the industry than ever before. Their entanglement with China’s authoritarian regime is putting Australia’s academic integrity, human rights commitments, and national security at stake.

00:44:14:11

DAN TEHAN, Minister for Education: We're all dealing with what is an emerging threat. A threat that has reached levels of unprecedented proportions. So, we want to make sure it's very clear what the responsibilities of universities are when it comes to collaborating with any government, foreign government, because it's incredibly important that we get that collaboration right and that that collaboration is in Australia's interests.

00:44:43:02

PROF. CLIVE HAMILTON, Author “Silent Invasion”: Some universities are starting to get the message. Many universities just have their ears closed, they’re unable to hear the kinds of warnings. There is no excuse anymore. Perhaps three of four years ago university vice chancellors could've said, "Oh, well, we didn't know." That is no longer an excuse. Naivety is no longer an excuse.