Australia wanted to catch Chinese spies. Is this really who had it in mind?

The police officers asked the man what he meant when he said involving an Australian minister in a charity event could benefit “us Chinese.” Was he talking about mainland China and the Chinese Communist Party, or the local Australian Chinese community? Depending on the answer, he faced a prison sentence of up to ten years.

‘You understand that the Chinese are China. We always say, ‘I’m Chinese,’ which doesn’t mean, ‘I’m from mainland China,'” said the man, Di Sanh “Sunny” Duong, who was brought in for questioning.

The officer persisted, according to a tape played for a jury. Was Mr. Duong effectively building a relationship with the minister, “whom you thought would be the future prime minister, to support the positions of the Chinese?” Another officer asked, “Mainland China?”

When Australia’s foreign interference laws were passed nearly six years ago, amid growing concerns about covert Chinese government interference in Western democracies, they were heralded as groundbreaking by the United States and other countries. Blockbuster prosecutions that exposed sophisticated tactics seemed to be just around the corner.

But the first case, Mr. Duong’s, didn’t go to trial until November, and it was by all accounts a low-stakes case. It involved the Australian government’s pressure on a suburban headstone maker over differing interpretations of two words (“us Chinese”), and a $25,000 donation to a community hospital that – prosecutors said – at one point would have become the basis for a pro-China pitch to a local MP.

In December, a jury found Mr. Duong, 68, guilty of preparing or planning an act of foreign interference. At the end of last month, a judge sentenced him to two years and nine months in prison. He is expected to spend a year behind bars.

Although the case received far less attention from the Australian media than the passage of the interference laws, it has become a cautionary tale for the country’s large diaspora communities – almost a third of the population is foreign-born. In theory, the new laws were an attempt to defend democracy against foreign influence. In practice, they have raised difficult questions about when such intentions can turn into xenophobia or wasteful efforts.

Mr. Duong did not testify at the trial and his lawyers did not call any witnesses. But in his only in-depth interview since his arrest, with The New York Times, he said his patriotism toward China had never conflicted with his loyalty to Australia and its interests. He saw himself as the scapegoat for geopolitical tensions and said his prosecution was intended to send a message: “Don’t get too close to China.”

Some experts say Mr Duong’s case, which began amid a diplomatic freeze between China and Australia and ended as relations thawed, expressed concern that he had actually been found guilty by association. To others, his interactions with Chinese officials were unmistakable evidence that he worked for Beijing.

Mr. Duong had a tendency to talk himself up. He bragged about the mundane, as well as his travels, and boasted of the ties he built with officials in both Australia and China.

Born and raised in Vietnam, he fled in 1979 as one of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Chinese to leave the country. After building a middle-class life in Australia, he often tried to portray himself as a man on the rise. He ran unsuccessfully for the conservative Liberal Party in the 1996 state elections. He rose through the ranks of local Chinese community groups, eventually becoming No. 2 of the Global Federation of Chinese Organizations of Vietnam, Cambodia and India. Laos, an umbrella organization with chapters all over the world, and also chairman of the chapter in Oceania.

The groups, he said, allowed him to make contact with officials in China, and mingle with local Australian politicians and officials at the Chinese consulate in Melbourne, which did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.

More than a year before his arrest, Mr Duong said in another interview that he often told other Chinese-Australian community leaders: “When they talk about spies, they should put me, Di Sanh Duong, in the category of spies. ”

He spoke about his ties with China, including his positions as an overseas adviser to four provincial Chinese agencies. So he said, “Does that make me a lackey of China?”

Unbeknownst to Mr Duong, he was already under investigation by Australian authorities. They viewed some of the groups he was involved with as organizations linked to China’s foreign influence operation. They wanted to know why he often traveled to China, made comments that reflected Beijing’s policies and bragged about his friendship with a Chinese intelligence officer. His interactions with Chinese officials in Australia, including when he sent photos of Falun Gong protesters to a consulate official, also came under scrutiny.

In 2020, Mr Duong was charged under the Foreign Interference Act, which criminalizes any deceptive or covert conduct intended to influence Australian politics or policy on behalf of a foreign government.

Mr Duong’s community group had raised about $25,000 and donated the money to a Melbourne hospital to help treat Covid patients, at a time when anti-China sentiment was high in Australia. Mr Duong had invited Alan Tudge, the then immigration minister, to be present when he handed over the money.

During the trial, which lasted three weeks last year and was partially closed to the public, prosecutors did not dispute that Mr. Duong had good intentions. But they argued — in light of his connections to Beijing and what prosecutors said was his involvement in China’s foreign influence operation — that his ultimate motive was nefarious. He was, a prosecutor said, thinking about how he could influence Mr Tudge in the future to the benefit of “us Chinese”.

Mr Tudge’s office said a background check on Mr Duong did not raise any alarms. But prosecutors argued that Mr. Duong concealed his connections to Chinese officials, even though his business card listed the positions of his provincial advisers.

Before donating the money, prosecutors said Mr. Duong had been in regular contact with Chinese officials. He had tried to enlist their help to buy surgical masks from China, which he wanted to give to the hospital. These interactions, according to the lead prosecutor, Patrick Doyle, meant that Mr. Duong “had a secret connection to the Chinese Communist Party.”

Not that those connections were of any use: Mr. Duong was never able to get the masks from China.

As evidence of Mr. Duong’s intentions toward Mr. Tudge, prosecutors presented a years-old letter he wrote to a state-level Liberal Party official containing policy suggestions that the judge later described as “vague, unenforceable and unlikely to be taken seriously.” .” His main objective was that Australia should regard China as its most important strategic partner, and not the United States. Prosecutors argued that was the kind of approach he might try again.

This was all evidence, the Australian government argued, that Duong had been co-opted by a part of the Chinese influence operation known as the United Front Work Department.

“The way the United Front system works – and Mr Duong’s role reflects this – is that it is much more subtle,” Mr Doyle said. “It is much more nuanced than whether you are a spy or not a spy.”

The case, he said, was not in the realm of “spy novels, James Bond films.”

The United Front system, Mr Doyle told the jury, targets all ethnic Chinese people living abroad, not only to influence their beliefs but also to turn them into agents who can influence others. For the latter, priority is given to specific types of overseas Chinese: those who “have a strong bond with China as a motherland,” and those with influence and power.

Mr. Duong had both, especially the first, Mr. Doyle said. The United Front system ensured that Mr. Duong had become “exactly the kind of patriot” who was able and willing to act in a way, even without explicit instructions, that helped the Chinese government achieve its goals, he said.

Mr Duong’s lawyer, Peter Chadwick, argued that his client simply liked to exaggerate his connections to rich and powerful people. Relationships with Chinese government officials were a necessity for someone doing business in China like Mr. Duong. he argued. This “does not mean that a person or an organization is forever co-opted to do what the Chinese government says,” he said.

Mr. Duong seemed to receive more attention because of his Chinese heritage, Mr. Chadwick said. He added: “I wonder if we would be here if Mr. Duong were someone of Italian descent who repeatedly traveled back to the Italian motherland.”

Mr. Chadwick was reprimanded by the judge for “suggesting there was a racial motivation.”

During the trial, Mr Duong said in the interview that he believed it was in the best interests of both China and Australia to be strategic partners. For someone who saw himself and his community as a bridge between the two countries, there was no such thing as being “too close” to China.

“We hope that the relationship between China and Australia will always be good,” he said.