Mr McGowan was taking up the cudgels for a number of high-profile Western Australian businessmen who have been very publicly on the same bandwagon. And whether he knew it or not, the pressure the Premier was exerting on the PM and Foreign Minister was playing into Beijing's hands. An academic who specialises in the regime's influence operations in Australia said it looked like Mr McGowan had been persuaded by Perth's "China Club" of high-profile Beijing sympathisers. In fact, the relationship between Perth politicians, business leaders and the Communist Party of China (CPC) is now in the sights of Australia's intelligence and security community. Clive Hamilton, the professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University who has been drawn into a controversy about his book on Chinese influence in Australia, is concerned about a network of business people and political leaders "who think that the future of WA is determined in China".

This 'Perth China Club' is the result of a highly successful campaign waged by China’s regime to make its strategic ambitions more palatable in the west. "It's in the interests of the state and in their interests as well to do whatever's possible to cosy up to the Chinese Communist Party, its agents and agents of influence," Professor Hamilton said. Professor of public ethics Clive Hamilton says a group of WA business leaders and politicians, which he has dubbed "Perth's China Club", was the result of a campaign waged by Beijing to make its strategic ambitions more palatable. Credit:Rohan Thomson "I noticed as I was researching and writing my book, Silent Invasion, that Western Australia seemed to be particularly prone to political influence through the business community and through political leaders who've been cultivated over many years." Professor Hamilton said the CPC targeted regions feeling hard done by or which struggled economically to gain political influence.

"In Australia we've seen that particularly in Western Australia and Tasmania,” he said. Ross Babbage is the former Head of Strategic Analysis for the Office of National Assessments, the intelligence agency responsible for advising the Prime Minister and Cabinet's National Security Committee. Now a senior fellow at Washington D.C.'s Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, he is warning politicians and business leaders of the risks of dealing with Beijing. "I think it's really interesting that senior members of the state government go to China at all, frankly," he said. "And then when they express those views, I start wondering about whether they are really well informed, whether they've done their homework.

"It's so incredibly frustrating that people … are operating as though China is somehow like the UK, or Germany or Japan. It isn't." WA a target for 'political warfare' and the subtle art of influence Western Australian MP Andrew Hastie, a former SAS officer and chairman of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, called the kinds of influence foreign states are seeking to exert in WA "political warfare". He told parliament in June, without naming the countries involved, that "authoritarian states are using political warfare to undermine the legitimacy of Western democracies by targeting our media, political processes, financial networks and personal data". "These authoritarian states view political warfare as a standard instrument of statecraft rather than a specialised tool," he said.

"Their centralised regimes can leverage all elements of their national power towards their strategic objectives." And those strategic objectives include Western Australia. Ross Babbage, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (Washington) and chief executive of the Strategic Forum. Credit:Christian S. Eskelund/US Naval War College Mr Hastie told WAtoday our resource-rich state is "certainly a target" for our strategic competitors. He said they are "wanting to know what our business leaders are thinking, what our political leaders are thinking, what sort of decisions might be around the corner".

And the aim of these intelligence operations is to leverage influence. Mr Hastie said the methods used by these states are more subtle than the cloak and dagger of traditional espionage. "There are inducements offered to our political and business leadership to get them to support the interests of another country, for example," he said. There is no suggestion any inducements were offered to Mr McGowan. Cyber-attacks on the nation's data and communications networks are also tools of the trade.

Professor Hamilton said the CPC had spent decades developing an arsenal of "sophisticated and subtle techniques for influencing foreigners by developing warm personal relationships" to bring people around to seeing the world the same way as Beijing's regime does. "There are manuals to train the Communist Party cadre in these techniques; it's what they do and they're very good at it," he said. "It really is painful to see Australia's political leaders continue to travel to China and come back to Australia and start mouthing world views that reflect Beijing's interests. "I think the Labor party has a particular problem with this." In relation to Mr McGowan's comments criticising the Australian Government's China strategy, Dr Hamilton said it seemed the Premier had been influenced in that way.

Mr Hastie pointed to a recent $136 million deal struck by the state government with Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei to build a network of mobile towers along Perth’s rail corridors for rail communications. The deal was recently thrust into the spotlight after WAtoday revealed the company paid for a delegation of five WA state politicians – including the minister responsible for the tender – to tour China and gave the MPs mobile phones. Liberal MP Andrew Hastie has negotiated cross-party support for foreign influence laws in the Federal Parliament. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Mr Hastie said the Huawei trip and the gift of phones to the MPs from the company "had a very fishy smell about it" and was the kind of activity through which foreign powers attempted to influence Australia. "Certainly, I would've liked to have known about that before the decision was made," he said.

Mr Hastie said his committee recommended a foreign influence transparency scheme for the Federal Parliament which included a register of interests for MPs to declare gifts. But aren't close ties to China the future for WA? Mr McGowan said his criticism of the Australian Government was about keeping in Beijing's good books because the state's economy depends on it. He said wherever he goes and whoever he talks to, his priority is to act in the best interests of the state. "Chinese investment in WA creates thousands of jobs for Western Australians, which is why it is important that we maintain a strong trade relationship," the Premier told WAtoday.

"During my recent trip to China, in virtually every meeting, I pointed out that the relationship between the Federal Government and China is improving. "I called on the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister to visit China, and I stand by that view." Mr McGowan's official trips to China were paid for by the state government. But Dr Babbage said although WA doesn't want to walk away from "big bags of gold", he questions the emphasis placed on the Chinese economy by our political leaders. "My attitude is, when you look at the economic relationship between Australia and China and here's an obvious myth you see repeated often, where they say China is Australia's most important economic partner, that simply is not true," he said.

"If you actually do the sums, we sell a lot of stuff to China, we don't invest regularly there. They sell a lot of stuff to us and they don't invest very heavily here despite the controversies." He said there was "too much loose thinking" about the relationship with Beijing, especially because of the ageing of the Chinese population, the rapidly changing structure of its economy, and its rapidly falling growth rate. Premier Mark McGowan celebrates the 30th anniversary of the WA-Zhejiang sister-state relationship with Province Communist Party of China Secretary Che Jun on November 10, 2017. Credit:Twitter/@MarkMcGowanMP Mr Hastie said politicians especially had to be more transparent about their dealings with foreign governments and their agents when fostering closer diplomatic and economic ties. "We welcome foreign influence in our democratic system," he said.

"That’s a good thing, we have lots of allies through the region and through the world. "They have views they want to put and that’s fine, we just ask that they do so in a transparent manner. "But where foreign governments seek to disguise their influence, then that’s a problem." Better education, more transparency According to many in Australia's community of intelligence officials, there is a lack of understanding about the risks of dealing with Beijing.

"What we're talking about here is a completely different sort of regime," Dr Babbage said. "And these people are coming back from visits there as though it's just a visit to Japan. It's breathtaking, almost." He pointed to ASIO director general Duncan Lewis who said recently there were more espionage agents operating in Australia now than at the height of the Cold War. "And yet you have these people going to China and coming back and giving the impression that it's all sweetness and light and that these are our friends that we can deal with forever," Dr Babbage said. Professor Hamilton said Australian political leaders were succumbing to bullying from Beijing.

"Australian political leaders have been intimidated out of defending basic Australian values," he said. Politicians needed to be more transparent about the influence that China is bringing to bear on them. Loading "I think we need all the transparency we can get because so much of this influence activity goes on in private, we don't see it, we don't hear about it, all we see is political and business leaders suddenly start to repeat what is basically Beijing propaganda," he said. "The more important thing here is for the Australian public to be alert to what is going on and to insist that their political leaders continue to represent Australia's interests rather than being won over to a Beijing point of view."

There is a high-level attempt by Australia's intelligence community to school WA's politicians and business leaders about Beijing's influence operations. "There is a deeper issue here, I think there is a real need, and I've been quietly encouraging officials to do this and there is some of it happening. There needs to be a better communication flow from the official community and from people in the know to everybody else," Dr Babbage said. "I think it makes a lot of sense for there to be a closed session of COAG and a briefing that's not the highest level of security, but reasonably high, of premiers, and they should be told pretty bluntly what the facts of life are." But Dr Babbage said the news wasn't all bleak. "There have been occasions when I've been asked to brief business groups and others, and when I do nearly everybody says, 'We had no idea'," he said.