Fears of China and WeChat as Australia heads to the polls

As Australia goes to polls and main political parties woo ethnic Chinese voters, concerns are growing over Beijing’s influence on local Chinese-language media

More than half the country’s Mandarin speakers get their election information from WeChat, which has become the focus of campaign controversy in recent weeks

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Many Mandarin-speakers in Australia expected to receive most of their information about the parties’ policies via WeChat. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 7:00am, 16 May 2019Updated: 3:53pm, 16 May 2019

When a Sydney council chose Chinese-language newspaper Vision China Times to sponsor its Lunar New Year celebrations last year, the Chinese consulate in the city warned the inclusion of the “anti-China” newspaper would harm China-Australia relations.

Correspondence seen by Australian media outlets, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, showed a political affairs official had written to the council, which covers Sydney’s southern suburbs, a day before a council official confirmed it would ban the newspaper as a sponsor.

For the newspaper’s owner Vision Times Media, the ban was the latest episode of political pressure for refusing to toe the Chinese Communist Party line. The paper, distributed in major cities and with a readership of 100,000, had published pieces critical of the party.

Maree Ma, general manager of Vision Times Media, said the paper’s advertisers had also faced intimidation. In one incident, state security agents occupied the office of one of its China-based advertisers until he pulled his contract with the paper, while other advertisers had been called into the Chinese consulate in Sydney for a “chat”, Ma said.

Calls to the consulate earlier this week seeking comment for this story went unanswered.

“Australia is a democratic country so anyone is free to be pro-Beijing if they choose but it becomes a problem if Beijing uses this freedom to silence others, especially in the cases of local governments, whose first priority is to be responsible to the local community,” said Ma, who maintained the company was an Australian-owned organisation not affiliated with any political or religious group.