The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maintains a heavy hand on Australian university campuses by controlling Chinese student associations say a number of China observers.
Former Australia Chinese student leader, Yang Jun, said the CCP had made it a priority to infiltrate student organisations in the 1990s and now maintained a strong hold on those organisations.
"The Chinese Communist Party has tight control over overseas Chinese student organisations," he told The Epoch Times.
Mr Yang said that he had personally witnessed the CCP dismantlement of a Chinese student organisation—the Chinese Student Democratic Movement Association (CSDMA), which had at its height, nearly 20,000 members.
"The Chinese Student Democratic Movement Association was the largest student organisation, when it was formed in 1989, in Australia to support the Tiananmen Student Movement in China," said Mr Yang.
However, the organisation's meetings were often disrupted by outsiders who, Mr Yang believed, were sent by the CCP. One particular individual seemed to influence opinion widely within the group, and when Mr Yang was elected as leader this particular Chinese national launched a vicious attack on him, Mr Yang said.
Soon after, and in Mr Yang's absence, the organisation's name was suddenly changed from "Chinese Student Democratic Movement Association" to "Chinese Citizen Union". The organisation also changed its anti-communist stance to a "non-profit, non-political and non-religious" organisation.
Professor C.L. Chiou, a specialist in Asian studies who taught at the University of Queensland, said Chinese Communist Party control over student associations began after the massacre of Chinese students and democracy activists in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Since then Chinese student associations have been dismantled and replaced with CCP approved appointments, he said.
"It is general knowledge that the Chinese student associations are controlled by the Chinese Communist Party," Professor Chiou said adding, however, that evidence of the extent of their activities was hard to obtain.
Kelly Zhang, president of the Falun Dafa Club at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) said club members had experienced considerable interference in their activities but only from one member of the UNSW Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA).
Ms Zhang, who has lived most of her life in Australia, said the then Vice-President of the UNSW CSSA, known as Paul, regularly complained about the club's activities demanding that members take down banners and posters which criticised the Communist regime in China.
Practitioners of Falun Dafa, a spiritual practice based on teachings from both Buddhist and Taoist schools, are detained in China without trial and tortured in an effort to force them to give up their belief.
On one occasion Paul had demanded posters of the global "Quit the CCP" campaign be removed from the club's stall. When club members refused he went to the university's Clubs and Societies Co-ordinator (CSC) who requested they come to the office.
"We had to explain ourselves and in the end the CSC said 'I don't see what is wrong with the posters, they have every right to hang up these posters', so Paul had nothing to say."
Despite witnessing a large banner at a CSSA stall, which boasted that the CSSA was the only Chinese student association directly affiliated with the Chinese Consulate, Ms Zhang said Paul refused to acknowledge any association with the CCP.
What is understood, however, is that the CCP is watching and monitoring very closely what is happening on Australian university campuses.
Yan Yan Che, who was also a student at the University of New South Wales, found out in 2005 that she was being spied upon. ABC TV's "Lateline" reported that information on her activities had been discovered in documents smuggled into Australia by a defecting Chinese state security officer of the 6−10 agency—a secret branch of the Chinese police—that monitors and represses spiritual groups in China.
Yan Yan told "Lateline" one of her friends had confessed that he had been asked to look out for a female Falun Gong practitioner but he had not realised that it was her.
While Yan Yan said her friend had refused to spy on her, the documents indicated someone was detailing her activities.
Chen Yonglin, who defected from the Chinese consulate in Sydney in 2005, said CCP influence outside China was widespread.
"The control of the overseas Chinese community has been a consistent strategy of the Chinese Communist Party and is the result of painstaking planning and management for dozens of years," Mr Chen told The Epoch Times.
"It's not just in Australia. It is done this way in other countries like the US and Canada, too," Mr Chen said.
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