'Money or freedom': Is South Korea safe from China's infiltration?

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This article is the last in a three-part series to highlight growing anti-China sentiment in Korea and the current state of relations between the two countries. ― ED

Clive Hamilton shares Australia's lessons from Chinese infiltration, advises South Korea to stand firm against assertive China

By Lee Gyu-lee

In a highly globalized world, cultural, economic and diplomatic interactions between countries are inevitable, especially when a certain country "pays well" with lucrative business opportunities.

But what if doing business with that country requires the counterpart to make considerable concessions in areas regarding key values such as freedom and sovereignty? What if the collision of money and freedom is seen as inevitable as a result of interaction with that country? These are the questions some nations, particularly those in the West, have been grappling with in recent years since they learned that China's rise as the world's second-largest economy has come at the cost of freedom. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has flexed its muscles in every key decision behind the scenes to redirect the global order.

As Australian author Clive Hamilton explains in his best-selling book "Silent Invasion," the CCP has taken multiple approaches to "infiltrate" foreign countries, utilizing party-backed institutions and the Chinese community overseas to spread Beijing's propaganda, lobbying politicians, and making generous donations and investments to get what the country wants.

The West has begun to take actions against this subterfuge.

In the United States, then-President Donald Trump blacklisted China's tech giant Huawei in 2019 and restricted its access to U.S. technologies such as processor chips and Google services, claiming the company was involved in espionage and had ties with the CCP.

Despite being the world's largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer, Huawei's 5G broadband network equipment was also banned in Australia in 2018 and the United Kingdom in 2020, for reasons of national security.

The partially obscured logo of Chinese tech giant Huawei whose 5G network equipment was banned in several countries. Yonhap

To cut the CCP's influence on U.S. campuses, the U.S passed a bill earlier this year that restricts universities hosting CCP-funded Confucius Institutes from receiving any federal funding, unless they agree to give the host university authority over the institute and provisions to grant academic freedom.

In Australia, which has been one of the biggest targets for China's infiltration tactics, the government imposed wide-ranging laws in 2018 to prevent foreign interference in politics and other domestic affairs. The laws required lobbyists working for foreign governments to publically register themselves and expanded the definition of espionage to include industrial espionage and theft of business trade secrets.

Another bill was passed that year to ban foreign donors from paying for political campaigns targeting Australians.

A string of counter-infiltration measures taken by Western countries has raised a key question for South Korea: Is it safe from infiltration by China?

Considering its past experiences and an ever-growing Chinese population in the country, the answer is maybe not.

Chinese nationals, including ethnic Korean Chinese citizens, represent the lion's share of the foreign population in South Korea. The number of Chinese citizens staying in Korea was on the rise before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Data compiled by state-run Statistics Korea showed that the number of Chinese nationals in Korea, including those without visas, was over 894,900 in 2020, roughly 44 percent of all foreign nationals residing in the country.

On South Korean university campuses, Chinese students dominate foreign student numbers, until last year when Vietnamese students took the lead with a slightly higher percentage. According to Statistics Korea, Chinese students accounted for about 76 percent of all foreign students in 2010, but the number slipped little by little to about 40 percent in 2019, then to 34 percent last year.

Professor Clive Hamilton, who is the author of "Silent Invasion" / Courtesy of Clive Hamilton

Based on Australia's experience, Hamilton, who is also a professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, advised South Korea to keep a watchful eye on the Chinese community, noting it is a conduit for the spread of CCP propaganda.

"Beijing weaponizes Chinese students abroad. Universities become afraid of their Chinese students and allow them to undermine academic freedom," he stated in a recent email interview with The Korea Times.

In his book, he delves into several cases where universities in Australia were pressured to avoid teaching anything that defies the CCP's party line and faced a backlash for "upsetting" the Chinese ― some even involved Chinese diplomatic officials. He also goes on to explain how the Australian government came to put in place a set of measures to counter China's infiltration.

"After Beijing had spent many years quietly building a network of influence in Australia, around 2018 the Australian government became alarmed and began to put in place measures to protect Australia's democracy and sovereignty," the professor said.

"(The public) were alerted to the problem mainly by media reports concerning donations by Chinese business people to our political parties, and the way certain politicians began kowtowing."

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South Korea has experienced its own Chinese student-led collective action that pitted Chinese against locals.

Korean students and civic group members protest near the Chinese Embassy, located in central Seoul, in support for the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, in this file photo from November 2019. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk

During the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement in 2019, tensions between Korean students, supporting the Hong Kong protest, and Chinese students led to scuffles at several universities. Chinese students also vandalized school bulletin boards and banners that were expressing solidarity with the movement, despite Koreans' arguing for freedom of speech.

The clash between South Koreans and Chinese students came nearly a decade after the nation was shocked by Chinese students violently assaulting a Korean human rights activists.

During the 2008 Olympic torch relay in Seoul, hundreds of jeering Chinese, mostly overseas students here, came out on the streets throughout the city and attacked small groups of pro-Tibet protesters who were voicing Tibet's right for independence from China's invasion and annexation of the bordering country.

Amid the conflict, the Chinese Embassy in Korea stepped in to express its regret over what was happening on local university campuses.

Anti-China sentiment has been growing here in recent years as South Koreans, particularly younger people, are infuriated with Chinese propaganda and its attempts at cultural appropriation, claiming to be the origin of traditional Korean clothing, hanbok, and the staple Korean fermented dish kimchi.

South Koreans simmering with discontent toward an assertive China took collective action against Gangwon Governor Choi Moon-soon's ambitious drive to create a Chinese cultural town in the province.

Gangwon Province's joint project with the CCP's official People's Daily newspaper and led by the local construction company Kolon Global met with an enormous backlash and a petition, which resulted in its shutdown.

"Kolon Global has internally decided to call off the project. We are aware that they are sorting out joint ventures and are waiting for them to officially announce the cancellation," an official for Gangwon Province told The Korea Times.

However, unlike in the West, incidents like Chinese students' collective actions and the scrapping of Gangwon Province's Chinese cultural town project have not resulted in a policy discourse to address or curb China's influence in South Korea.

Economic retaliation

The country's heavy trade reliance on China is most often mentioned as a key factor that keeps Korean politicians silent on delicate matters.

Over the past decade, the value of Korea's exports to China has averaged about $140 billion annually, according to a report by the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade.

In 2020, Korea's trade volume with China ― combining exports and imports ― was $241.5 billion, about 25 percent of Korea's total trade, and almost double the $131.6 billion with the U.S. and triple the $71.1 billion with Japan.

Such dependence only provides greater leverage for the Chinese government to use against Korea, allowing for threats of economic retaliation from Beijing.

Australia's actions to put up safeguards against China's imperialistic policies also came at a cost, resulting in much-expected economic retaliation from China. Trade tariffs and arbitrary bans were imposed on key Australian exports to China, such as wine, seafood, beef, copper and barley.

"Beijing uses economic coercion quite ruthlessly," Hamilton noted. "Initially, the trade bans caused great consternation. But the government in Canberra made it very clear that Australia would not compromise or sacrifice its fundamental principles and would protect our democratic system from China's interference."

He added, despite the economic pain in some sectors, China's "economic bullying" also helped the Australian government and public to harden their attitude toward the country, and businesses to find new markets.

Hamilton advises countries to "not back down" in fighting China's retaliation, and to retain their independence by forming ties with other countries to avoid Beijing's influence.

"If we back down we will never get our independence back," he said. "It is important to continue to develop closer relations with other countries that want to protect their sovereignty from China's influence, interference, bullying and economic blackmail."

He emphasized that countries should position themselves firmly to respond to Beijing's attempts to manipulate them.

"Countries must ask themselves whether they are willing to pay a price in order to retain their national sovereignty and the democratic rights citizens enjoy," he said. "With an aggressive, authoritarian China threatening these, people must decide ― money or freedom."