Clive Hamilton has slammed left-wing activists on Australian university campuses as "useful idiots" of the Chinese Communist Party, after a Greens student group belatedly reversed its opposition to a protest against the Confucius Institute's impact on academic freedom.

The outspoken author has also called on intelligence authorities to investigate whether mainland Chinese students who clashed with Hong Kong students at a University of Queensland protest were acting at the behest of the Chinese consulate, in breach of foreign interference laws.

Clive Hamilton says left-wing students are ill-informed about the operations of the Chinese Communist Party in Australia. Credit:Rohan Thomson

Professor Hamilton said Greens and Socialist Alternative students who accused protesters of racism and demanded their event be shut down were "engaged in a kind of performative wokeness" that failed to understand the threat to Australia's democratic freedoms.

"They are naive radicals who are playing with fire, and they will get their fingers badly burned," he told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.