Many people still refuse to believe that the Chinese Communist party is engaged in a multifaceted war against the West. The Panda-huggers – the various apologists for the CCP – motivated by financial gain, admiration for the Beijing regime or a mistaken belief that Chinese domination is inevitable and/or benign, continue to ignore or play down the ongoing threats. If more evidence is required, the latest aggression by the People’s Liberation Army against an Australian aircraft in the Yellow Sea is surely enough. There can be no doubt that dropping flares close to an Australian helicopter in international waters was both deliberate and potentially fatal. It is not the first such incident; indeed a pattern of reckless behaviour has been developing over the past few years. Australian planes and ships are not the only targets: vessels and aircraft from other nations have also been targeted. The chances of the PLA damaging or bringing down an aircraft are very real. The incident appears to be yet another retaliation against other nations seeking to counter China’s aggression, in this case the meeting between the United States, Australian, Japanese and Philippine defence ministers in Hawaii a week earlier.

The response of Defence Minister Richard Marles – that the action was ‘unsafe and unprofessional’ – was weak and insufficient. He should have been insisting that it was unacceptably hostile and aggressive behaviour that will not be tolerated. The behaviour by the PLA pilot was potentially fatal. But for the reflexes of the RAAF pilot, the helicopter could have crashed into the ocean. The comment of General Angus Campbell, describing the Chinese behaviour as ‘illegal, coercive, aggressive, and deceptive’, was more appropriate.

How has the government responded? Has Foreign Minister Penny Wong or Richard Marles picked up the phone to their counterpart? Wong had not said a word about the issue days later. Has the government hauled in the Chinese ambassador and made it clear that the action was totally malign and will not be tolerated?

Or will it wait until the Chinese Premier Li visits in June – when it is too late? Is this what the Albanese government describes as ‘normalising relations’? What will the Australian government say and do if an Australian aircraft is forced down or Australian defence personnel injured or killed?

The Prime Minister says the government has used all avenues of protest, but it refuses to say what they were. It has since been reported that the only communication was between bureaucrats. Mr Albanese praises ‘dialogue’ with the CCP, and criticises the former government for undermining it, but fails to use it when required. This is appeasement.

Typically, the CCP blamed Australia for its aggression, despite the incident occurring in international waters and the Chinese action being dangerous and provocative. The suggestion that the Chinese pilot had conducted ‘legitimate, reasonable, professional, and safe operations to expel the helicopter, which fully complied with international law and practice’, is fanciful. If the PLA was trying to alert the Australian aircraft that it was near Chinese territory, it could have done so in various other ways. When the PLA shone a military-grade laser at Australian pilots off the coast of Darwin, it was hardly close to China. A few days after the initial response, the CCP changed its story saying that the Australian helicopter was spying on the Chinese fleet. Anybody with knowledge of the Australian Navy will know that the Seahawk helicopter is not a spy plane. The Chinese can tell bald-faced lies and Australian ministers don’t even pick up the phone to protest!

The CCP is engaged in low-level warfare, believing that its intimidatory actions are not sufficient to spill into actual conflict. But how long will this calculated aggression remain controlled? A tragedy is one miscalculation away.

While these incidents are shocking, the CCP’s offensive cyberwarfare is already diminishing our national defences. Cyber-spying on legislators, defence officials and others is rampant. At least six Australian members of parliament from the major parties have been targeted by Chinese state-sponsored hackers. The common thread is their membership of the Inter Parliamentary Alliance on China – a global network of legislators promoting democracy and addressing threats to the rules-based and human rights systems posed by the rise of China. According to the IPAC, similar attacks have been made against legislators in other countries.

The Director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, has said that a Chinese hacking campaign, known as Volt Typhoon, had penetrated US telecommunications, energy and water systems. The goal, he said, was to give Beijing the ‘ability to physically wreak havoc on our critical infrastructure at a time of its choosing’.

Reports of cyberattacks across Europe follow the same pattern. Legislators, bureaucrats and others have been hacked by Chinese state-sponsored actors, leading UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to insist that he would ‘set out a very robust policy towards China to protect ourselves against the risks that China, and other countries, pose to us’.

The extent of the incursions into our national life were revealed in a recent report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).

The report, Truth and Reality with Chinese Characteristics, examined the CCP’s propaganda campaign. The title of the report is significant: it goes to the essence of ‘truth’ for the Beijing regime. As the authors indicate, ‘On issues of ideology and politics, the party seeks to convince its subjects of its truth as if they, as the subjects, are the owners of those issues. Propaganda work is the central element….’

The report reinforces how information, collected from many sources, including regular commercial channels, is ultimately owned and controlled by the CCP for its propaganda purposes.

The ASPI report reveals that these activities are far more extensive than many believe. It shows how Chinese companies like Temu and Didi are utilised by the CCP for its integrated propaganda efforts.

The CCP unambiguously states that it wants to dominate the global order. It is using every means at its disposal. Xi’s dream is to dominate the world without firing a shot, yet the Australian leaders charged with protecting the nation cannot even protest egregious breaches of international law by the CCP!

It is time to call out the Panda-huggers for the very real dangers their continued appeasement of the CCP involves. China under Xi’s communist party is not a benign state. It never will be.