Folks, a second Chinese spy allegation has hit the campaign, as reported by Amy earlier.

Yesterday it was Teal MP Monique Ryan, today it’s Labor’s Clare O’Neil who was accused by her opponent to have allied with some organisation with links to the Chinese Communist Party to help out her campaign. Never mind that both Ryan and O’Neil have said that they have not, ultimately, declining the assistance.

Interestingly, the spooky organisation in question in both instances is the Hubei Association (you can find a Chinese language profile of their president here). From what I can tell, it’s an Australia-wide community association for those from the Hubei province, whose capital city is Wuhan… the very place where COVID-19 started. How deep does that rabbit hole go?! Somebody please get our best pundits on the case!

In all seriousness, it’s facile to suggest that the Chinese Australian members of the Hubei Association are spies. All of these sizable diaspora organisations are in touch with various semi-official and official organs in China, including the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Works department. The department has such a wide purview that it’s unlikely to have espionage as a core function – China has an intelligence agency in its own right.

So, are we supposed to believe that these would-be Chinese Australian volunteers (whose involvement in that form was declined by the candidates anyway), somehow exist in a multi-level hive-mind, connected all the way to the Chinese leadership compound in Beijing?

If that’s the case, the whoever in charge of China’s espionage operation in Australia should fire the president of the Hubei Association for his indiscretion, since his ‘operatives’ volunterily revealed to ​social media that he asked/demanded (‘要求’) that people support Monique Ryan.

Or perhaps an over-enthused community leader just acted out of line to promoted his own political preference?