Foreign news

Clive Hamilton’s Anti-China Claims Riddled With Deceit

Published

4 years ago

October 23, 2020

Australian “ethics” professor Clive Hamilton popularised anti-China paranoia through his two books, Silent Invasion, and Hidden Hand. To support many of the claims in these books he resorts to manipulated quotes and misrepresented statistics, which can only be described as intentionally deceitful.

In a 7 August 2020 opinion in Pearls and Irritations, Professor Jocelyn Chey, a former senior diplomat specializing in Australia-China relations, declared Hamilton’s second antiChina book, Hidden Hand (2020), co-authored with German Mareike Ohlberg, a “diatribe”. “We do not need this hysteria”, she said, referring to Hamilton’s “emotive language” and “rather basic lack of understanding of China’s political structures”. Chey believes Hidden Hand “should not be taken seriously because it is biased, and therefore bad scholarship.”

MISREPRESENTED STATISTICS

Hamilton’s anti-China “evidence” falls apart under scrutiny. Hidden Hand describes increased cyberattacks on “the medical records of current and future political, military and public service leaders”. It alleges these medical records “are likely now in the hands of China’s intelligence services and could be used to identify their weaknesses to be exploited for influence or for blackmail”. (Emphasis added.)

Yet the references Hamilton provides in Hidden Hand do not support these scary allegations. He claimed: “In August 2018 it was reported that 1.5 million medical records had been stolen from the Singapore government’s health database, in attack experts believe came from state-based hackers in China.” Not true—the reference makes no mention of China, and these were non-medical records. Another claim: “The Singapore theft followed a massive hack in the USA in 2014 that sucked up the records of 4.5 million patients across 206 hospitals, and another in 2015 that saw up to 80 million records stolen from a health insurer.” Again, this is a misrepresentation—the reference shows these were non-medical records.

He added: “The year 2014 also saw the theft of 4.5 million health records from a Tennessee-based hospital chain, in an attack again attributed by experts to state-backed hackers in China.” The reference also shows these were non-medical records; moreover, Hamilton was boosting his numbers by rewording the previously-mentioned 2014 hack and pretending this was a separate incident.

Finally, he claimed: “That same year, the medical records of an unspecified number of Australian soldiers, including special forces operating overseas, were sent to China by a health contractor that also has facilities in Guangdong.” According to the reference, the medical records were sent to other countries as well as China; such details don’t assist Hamilton’s narrative, however.

TWISTING PEACEFUL TRADE INTO SUSPICION

When he was a government official in 1985, China’s President Xi Jinping traveled with a trade delegation to the US state of Iowa visiting farmers. Hamilton sneers: “Xi came back in 2012, [and] praised his ‘old friends’ in Iowa for their ‘agrarian common sense, family values and hospitality’. Having built on these early links, a network of prominent [Iowan] businessmen refer to themselves in Beijing as the ‘Iowa mafia’. They are backing Xi’s Belt and Road as a way of getting more Chinese investment in Iowa.”

As the 9 November 2017 Des Moines Register reveals, however, the term “Iowa mafia” is actually only a friendly joke. The Iowa-China relationship has been built over decades, through “modest citizen diplomacy by farmers”. Although the 1985 Xi visit to Iowa is now historic, at the time it was “just one of many examples of how the two cultures ever so gradually intertwined at a grassroots level”. The Register reported that American businessmen wanted to participate in the “huge opportunity” of the One Belt One Road initiative, “in which China plans to spend billions of dollars on international infrastructure to develop modern trade routes”. Hamilton has intentionally twisted a decadeslong relationship of mutual respect and peaceful trade into an object of suspicion and derision.

DODGY SOURCES

Hamilton claims the Chinese government “undertakes extensive intelligence-gathering and espionage”, citing estimates that the Chinese military has “30,000-50,000 plants in organizations around the world”. Bizarrely, Hamilton admits these figures aren’t supported, but cites them anyway! The reference for this alarming claim is a 2016 booklet, China’s Espionage Dynasty, co-authored by “cybersecurity expert” James Scott, the co-founder of a Washington DC think tank called the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT). The impressive name belies the farcical truth. In 2018, Scott was exposed as a “bogus expert”, outed for running fake social-media campaigns to boost his profile and operating under a false name, whose only “expertise” in cybersecurity was a series of self-published books on the topic. Today, Scott sells a line of hacker-themed clothing inspired by his now-suspended Twitter handle, but thanks to him thousands of Hamilton’s readers believe Chinese spies have infiltrated everywhere.

MANIPULATED QUOTES

Hamilton criticizes Michael Schaefer, Germany’s former ambassador to China, for praising “China’s ‘enormous progress’ in social and economic rights” and for arguing that “freedom of expression and freedom of the press ‘hardly play a role’ in countries like China”. Consistent with his pattern, however, Hamilton deliberately cherry-picked from Schaefer’s full interview to imply Schaefer is improperly influenced by Beijing.

Schaefer did indeed praise China’s continuing progress in economic and social rights, noting that in reality, “a full rice bowl, a roof over my head, internal and external security” is more important to people living in poverty than freedom of the press. He was clear, however, that the German government regularly addresses freedom of expression and human rights issues with the Chinese government. Schaefer stated that “internet censorship is certainly not acceptable”, but noted that overall, “China will not be able to prevent the freedom of the network because China depends on the internet for its further economic development”.

Hamilton deliberately twists any gesture of friendship, respect or mutually beneficial cooperation with China. His poisonous intention is evident: to deceive Australians into a New Cold War with China.

By Melissa Harrison, Australian Alert Service, 30 September 2020

Share on Facebook

Foreign news

French Envoy Seeks Collaboration With NAN To Boost Seamless Relationship

Published

5 mins ago

February 5, 2025

The Gleamer

The new French envoy to Nigeria, Marc Fonbaustier, on Wednesday called for collaboration with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) toward strengthening the mutually beneficial relationship between the two countries.

Fonbaustier, who is the French ambassador to Nigeria and the ECOWAS, made the call when he paid a courtesy visit to Malam Ali Muhammad Ali, NAN’s Managing Director, in Abuja.
The ambassador said that his purpose of visiting was to pay tribute to the MD, and to seek collaboration in three areas with a view to promoting stronger, seamless and fruitful partnership between both countries.

He added that Nigeria and its people were hospitable, especially to the foreigners and ambassadors alike.

He added that Nigeria was a country with so much energy, strength, stamina and so many talents.

In Nigeria, with the population of this size, it is inevitable that the elites of the country are very outstanding, “and there may be a Franco/Nigeria moments now”, he jokes.

According to him, France and Nigeria can collaborate more and learn from each other.
“I could feel it particularly during the state visit of President Bola Tinubu which took place in November 2024.

“I was there and I could see the intensity, the strength and the scope of the partnership, and I am here to scale up that partnership in all sectors.

“I am coming here for three reasons, first, to pay a tribute to the NAN MD and his team for the quality of this agency. We can testify that the contents that you publish are very factual, and also very well set up and structured.

“You do fact checking and you really do try to provide the community with quality information. I think, as a French ambassador, I can recognise that as part of a living democracy,” he said.

The French ambassador said the second reason for the visit was to intimate the NAN MD of France’s eagerness to go on partnership with NAN saying he hoped for assurance of a seamless, fluid and easy relationship.

He said that his third reason stemmed from his observation that NAN recently signed some partnership framework agreements with Egypt and China, saying “it may be time to think of balancing this partnership with others”.

“Especially with French, and to talk with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to see if there’s ground for a closer relationship between NAN and AFP.

“Which is also a recognised agency like yours, and I bet you the sky will be the limit to the collaboration, ’’he said.

Responding, the NAN MD informed the envoy that the agency was African’s biggest news content provider on account of its size.

Ali gave the envoy a little details of the agency’s operation and its outreach, saying “as our continent’s biggest news content provider, we have offices nationwide and in selected African countries.

“We have offices in countries such as South Africa, Cote d’ivoire, Addis Ababa, and then we have offices also beyond the shores of Africa. We have in New York and we are the only resident wire service in the United Nations.

“At a time in the past, the agency had 11 foreign offices, including Moscow, and presently, we are trying to re-open some of our shut offices, especially in London.
“We value partnership and understanding that we have with similar news organisation such as Reuters and, incidentally, we have a long standing relationship with AFP which you just raised.
“I know for years we have exchange of news between NAN and AFP but it’s a cooperation that we will like to strengthen and with your greater involvement,’’ he said.

The MD commended the ambassador for reaching out and engaging with some Nigerians communities to douse the tension of the allegation made by the Nigeriens.

He also lauded the envoy’s leadership and visibility to Nigeria and the ECOWAS, “which has helped to douse the perception and misconceptions about France, especially in the Sahel”.
“I think you have helped to reverse some of this perceptions. I thank you for the kind words that you said about the agency and about our management.

“We also see partnership as an important tool in checking the spread of fake news.
“We’ve seen instances where fake news has done great deal of damage, and with the coming of social media it has done even greater damage.

“Our country is facing a lot of challenges, one of which is the increasing insecurity, and the social media has been used by those who do not want to see our country to prosper,” Ali said.
He further said that NAN was a credible news agency that always fact check to correct the wrong narratives by those who are in the business of causing troubles.

He also told the envoy that the agency has its content in the Nigerian indigenous languages, starting with Hausa and it would proceed to Yoruba and Igbo languages later, “then later in future to French.

Share on Facebook