China, June 10:

The Chinese Foreign Ministry slammed an Australian institute for spearheading anti-China forces and fabricating various anti-China issues, after it released a paper claiming that China is strengthening influence over the international community.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) accused China of influencing foreign politicians, universities, multinational companies and overseas Chinese communities to advance China’s interests through collecting intelligence information via different organizations.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said that she did not know the basis of the paper, but she knew that some people from Australia have written articles, revealing that the institute has long received financial support from the US government and arms dealers, and is keen to fabricate and hype up various anti-China issues.

US-based news outlet, the Grayzone, revealed that ASPI is a “right-wing, militaristic” think tank funded by US and Western governments, mega-corporations and an eye-popping array of weapons manufacturers, including Raytheon Australia, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, MBDA Missile Systems, Saab AB and Thales.

Ironically, Australia’s Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme – enacted by the center-right Liberal Party to monitor the alleged threat of “Chinese political interference” in the country – has revealed ASPI’s extensive sources of foreign funding, including the US State Department, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the government of Japan and NATO, according to The Grayzone.

Hua said that with such strong ideological bias, the institute was actually spearheading the anti-China forces and its academic credibility has been seriously questioned.

The institute has fabricated reports on policies in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and its so-called report which was ridiculous and turned black into white, has become the laughing stock of the international community, Hua said.

Former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr has slammed ASPI for pushing a “one-sided, pro-American view of the world”, while former Australian ambassador to China Geoff Raby added that the institute is “the architect of the China threat theory in Australia,” according to The Grayzone.

At a press conference in March, Eljan Anayti, spokesperson of the Xinjiang regional government, rejected an ASPI report as a smear campaign against Xinjiang that is full of suppositions and fabricated stories. ASPI issued a report titled Uygurs for Sale, claiming that 80,000 Uygurs had been transferred to factories across China between 2017 and 2019 to further “control” them.

ASPI distorted the normal aspirations of Southern Xinjiang workers seeking employment in other parts of China to make a better living, calling it “forced labor,” as its aim is to work together with the US in its conspiracy to dis-entitle Xinjiang workers, suppress Chinese enterprises and undermine foreign companies’ confidence in investing in China, Eljan said.

China is committed to developing its relations with other countries on the basis of mutual respect and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. Interfering in other countries’ internal affairs has never been in the DNA of China’s diplomacy, nor is it something we are good at. We hope that external forces will not keep promoting the issue, Hua said.