The Danger Zone (DZ)

In February 2019, a female Chinese born and resident student, attending the Australian National University in Canberra, made a comment in class. To an Australian who heard her comment, they would think nothing of it, the comment she made was just part of the normal exchange of ideas and thoughts that happen all of the time in class and interacting with other students on campus. But that isn’t the end of the story.

It is very common, normal, for students in Australia from China, to monitor each other and to report any conduct by one of their fellow Chinese students that would not be tolerated in China, to the embassy. In recent studies in the United States, professors reported that they assumed that their Chinese students were reporting on each other back to China. It’s a wise student who reports a fellow student who steps out of line. Because if it’s found out that you were aware of the comment, remark, behaviour, and did not report it, then you will fall under suspicion of condoning it. The added bonus of reporting a fellow student is that it is likely to benefit you in your relations with the Chinese Communist Party.

Now back to our Chinese student who made a remark of a kind that she would not have made if she was in China. In under two hours of the remark being made, her parents, in China, received a house visit from the Ministry of State Security. They were warned about their daughter’s behaviour. Such a thing must never happen again – or else. The “or else’s” can come in many forms. The parents might be punished, she might be recalled to China.

Australia is not doing a lot to stop this behaviour in our country by the Chinese Communist Party interfering in our domestic affairs. It’s not only Chinese students visiting Australia from China who are subjected to this intimidation, but potentially anyone of Chinese ancestry who has lived in Australia going back many generations who might find themselves on the receiving end of being punished.

In this programme I’m continuing looking at how the Chinese Communist Party coerces Australians of Chinese ancestry, and Chinese people visiting Australia, to behave the way it demands.

Tag words: Australian National University; ANU; Chinese Communist Party; CCP; Epoch Times; Falun-Gong; Tao Pinru; McMaster University; Three Belief Crises; National Intelligence Law; Global Times; Zhaoi Ziyang; President Xi Jinping; Chen Yonglin;

There are over one million people in Australia of ethnic Chinese descent. World wide there are over 50 million ethnic Chinese, living in countries other than China.

The earliest date when the first Chinese visited Australia isn’t known for sure. But maybe this gives us a clue. In one book by Confucius, in his “Spring and Autumn Annals”, written in 481 BC he recorded that two solar eclipses were observed by Chinese astronomers on 17 April 592 BC. And as best we can reckon, they might have been in Arnhem Land. The problem is that it wasn’t called Arnhem Land then so they could have been anywhere.

Another Chinese book, called “Atlas of Foreign Countries”, written between 265 and 316 AD, described the mountains above Cairns, as being inhabited by a race of one metre tall pygmies. It turns out that this was a reference to the pygmy sized Aboriginals identified by Australian anthropologist Norman B. Tindale in the late 1930s.

The earliest known Chinese immigrant to arrive in Sydney post Invasion Day, I’m not sure whether his arrival constitutes the beginning of a yellow invasion following hard on the heels of the white invasion. It’s highly unlikely that he was a Communist because Karl Marx, lazy sod that he was, well he as a socialist, didn’t get around to writing his book Das Kapital until 1867. Anyway this person, probably not a Communist, is recorded as being a man by the name of Mak Sai Ying. He was born in Guangzhou (Canton) in 1798. He arrived as a free settler in New South Wales in 1818 and purchased land at Parramatta.

In 1829 Mak Sai Ying (who had adopted an English style name, John Shying) was granted the licence for The Lion, a public house at Parramatta. I guess this shows that racism hadn’t been invented by white people back in those days. His descendants became cabinet-makers and undertakers in Sydney. Packing death.

Between 1849 and 1887, China, particularly in the south of China, suffered from foreign invasions, rebellions, severe flooding and famines. Since China wasn’t then the nice place to live that it has become under Xi Jinping, and the gold had just been discovered in Australia, a lot more Chinese were encouraged to come here.

Many of the people living in Australia today, of Chinese ethnic descent, are therefore very dinkum di Aussies.

There are also many more recent Chinese arrivals in Australia and some of those have a dubious connection with this country.

Bob Hawke was the Australian prime minister at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 the man who famously said on the day that Australia won the America’s Cup, that “any boss who sacks someone for celebrating Australia II's America's Cup victory is a bum” and he always a man who carried his heart on his sleeve. After the massacre, Tiananmen Square, not the whipping that Australia gave the Americans in 1983, Bob Hawke generously gave 42,000 Chinese who were in Australia at the time permanent resident rights – and the same to their close family members – making a total of about 100,000 Chinese. It was a big hearted gesture. It was to help Chinese dissidents by not forcing them to return to an unpleasant reception when they got back to China. But it was a really dumb gesture. No one from China could visit a foreign country like Australia unless they were trusted by the Chinese Communist Party. No dissidents allowed. This gesture by Bob Hawke was against the wise advice by public servants who told him not to do it.

Tag words: Confucius; Atlas of Foreign Countries; Norman B. Tindale; Karl Marx; Mak Sai Ying; John Shying; Xi Jinping; Bob Hawke; Tiananmen Square massacre; Overseas Chinese Affairs Office; He Yafei; Chinese Communist Party; CCP; qiaowu; Clive Hamilton; Silent Invasion; xenophobia; racism; Marxist-Leninist; Uigher people; The Red Detachment of Women; Carillo Gantner; Sidney Myer Fund; Jung Chang; Wild Swans; Mao Zedong; People’s Liberation Army; Australian Eighth Corps; The East is Red; Premier Li Keqiang;

Myths and legends. It’s funny how some ideas get a hold on your head and you either never realise it, or it’s just so against what you know that you just refuse to believe it.

I’ll give you a for example. A lot of people think that the ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, is a body funded by the Australian government, independent with its own charter, that provides a neutral, even handed, balanced view of the news that matters, and even a lot of news that doesn’t matter, fearlessly to Australia and the rest of the world.

It’s funny how we get these ideas. What if I told you that the ABC is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Bureau, which has the role of spreading the their propaganda and disinformation that the Chinese Communist Party wants so very much, the rest of the world to believe is the truth.

You don’t believe me? Well let me tell you something you didn’t know.

Tag words: ABC; the Australian Broadcasting Corporation; Chinese Communist Party; Chairman Mao; Bamboo Curtain; Stalin; Xi Jinping; Great Firewall of China; Shanghai Media Group; Tiananmen Square massacre; Professor John Fitzgerald; Joseph Goebbels; Lynley Marshall; South China Seas; UN World Heritage Committee;

People have wandered the earth over many many centuries predicting the end of the world – the climate alarmists continue this ancient tradition. So far no one has gotten that right – not even close.

But something remarkable, although not as remarkable as the end of the world, happened in 1948. In that year a country of 9.6 million square kilometres ceased to exist. What replaced it is something very scary. That’s what I’m going to be talking about in this programme. If you want to find out what on earth I’m talking about I’ll tell you.

Tag words: Chinese Communist Party; Mao Zedong; Chiang Kia-shek; Taiwan; Clive Hamilton; Silent Invasion – China’s Influence in Australia; Mareike Ohlberg; Allen & Unwin; Linda Mottram; Professor Rory Medcalf; National Security College; Tiananmen Square Massacre ; Tibet; Falun Gong; Sandy Grant; Hardie Grant; Xi Jinping; Scientific American; Nature; Springer Nature; Brill; Frontiers of Literary Studies in China; Jin Liu; Xudong Zhang; South China Seas; Amber Jun Xie; Iu Ting Xie; Tony Cullen;

It’s 30 January 1933 and we’re in Berlin.

Well I can’t believe what I’ve been seeing happen. It’s beginning to look a lot like Adolf Hitler is going to become the new Chancellor of Germany. Incredible!

If Hitler isn’t made the Chancellor today, and soon, the rumour is that the Army’s going to stage a coup – and that’s for sure and certain. Then they’ll put von Schleicher back in charge. Everyone agrees that Germany could suffer no worse fate.

So I’m going to pop over to von Papen’s apartments where everything is happening. I have to say thank goodness for von Papen.

Tag words: Steel Helmets; Nazi Stormtroopers; Theodor Duesterberg; Franz Seldte; Franz von Papen; Stahelm; DNVP Party; Alfred Hugenberg; Kurt von Schleicher; President Hindenburg; Herman Göring; Adolf Hitler; Joseph Goebbels; Otto Meissner; Constantin von Neurath; Graf Schwerin von Krosigk; Kaiserhof Hotel; Ernst Röhm; Christopher Isherwood; Joachim von Ribentrop; Heinrich Himmler; Völkischer Beobachter; Bella Fromm; Mein Kampf; Abraham Plotkin; Magda Goebbels; Claus von Stauffenberg; Gregor Strasser; Oskar von Hindenburg; Eva Braun;

Thank God it’s Sunday. The shabat, the sabbath, but of course it’s Sunday 29thJanuary 1933, so not the Jewish sabbath but the Christian one. And the less I say about anything Jewish in a nice way the better. Anti-Semitism is pretty much a thing today.

The cold bite that has been freezing Germany for a few days now still isn’t really let up. Grey, overcast day. I don’t think it’s going to get any brighter. In a lot of ways maybe.

Today, at this minute, Germany is leaderless. Well Schleicher’s still technically the Chancellor but he’s just keeping the seat warm for the real chancellor who will be ….. – Franz von Papen perhaps. Perhaps even that man who was looking like a rank outsider just a few weeks, even a few days ago, Adolf Hitler.

This Sunday there’s no time for President Hindenburg to attend church as he usually does. He’s in his study and it’s only 10 o’clock in the morning. Right now, as I’m watching him, he’s telling his aide, Otto Meissner, to send an urgent telegram to General Blomberg. Blomberg’s in Geneva attending the armaments talks. About cutting Germany a bit of slack from all of the restrictions imposed on her at the end of World War I. Hindenburg’s telegram is telling Blomberg to return immediately to Berlin and report to the President. Wonder what that’s all about?

While he’s at it, Hindenburg is sending another telegram. This one to Schleicher, also summoning him to the President. Thanks to all of Schleicher’s spies, still working for him as the Minister of Defence, he’s just hearing that General Blomberg will be returning to Berlin – summoned by the President. Schleicher’s opinion. Blomberg’s not a man to think for himself. Schleicher’s wondering why he’s being summoned. Blomberg’s certainly not a man of my outstanding qualities – Schleicher thinks to himself.

I wonder what this is all about.

Tag words: Reichsbanner; Federation of German Trade Unions; the Workers’ Gymnastics and Sports Federation; General Federation of Salaried

It’s Friday 27 January 1933. The weekend is coming. Everyone knows that Chancellor Schleicher is going to be kicked out but who is going to take his place. No-one in the know, knows.

André François-Poncet, the French ambassador, who always knows what is happening on the political scene in Berlin – doesn’t know. He’s heard rumours that Schleicher, the Chancellor, will soon be going. He’s sent that news to Paris but he doesn’t know anything beyond that. He doesn’t know the answer to the big question.

Joachim von Ribbentrop is visiting Hitler and Göring at Göring’s apartment. “What’s happening?” asks the Führer. Ribbentrop answers: “I don’t know. Hindenburg is still saying he is not going to make you the Chancellor.”

But Ribbentrop has an idea. “The National Front – do a deal with Hugenberg. I’ll organise another meeting at my place at 10 tonight with von Papen. We can try to find a way through”.

The big news just out, not the biggest news that everyone is waiting for, is that the body that decides when the parliament is to sit again, the Council of Elders, has announced that parliament, the Reichstag, will sit next on 31 January. Wow! That is wow! Schleicher will resign before then if he’s smart – unless he can turn Hindenburg around – which is not likely. IResigning will be better for him than having a vote of no confidence passed against him – how humiliating would that be!

But right now a meeting is just about to take place at Göring’s apartment. Hitler, Göring and Frick (the head of the Nazis in the parliament, the Reichstag) are here for the Nazis and Hugenberg, and the head of the parliamentary DNVP Party, Otto Schmidt-Hannover are on the other side. Looks like Hitler took Ribbentrop up on his idea. I wonder how this is going to work out.

Both sides are as subtle as flying mallets. Hitler says “I will be the new Chancellor and my men will hold the cabinet positions of the Interior Ministries of Prussia and the whole of Germany” (that’s the police forces – very important offices – as I suspect we would soon see if Hitler ever gets his way).

But the pig-headed Hugenberg is not taking any scheiße from Hitler. “The office of Chancellor will be a member of my party and so will the cabinet press officer. You are not getting the Interior Ministries either.”

Complete stalemate – I told you Hitler is not getting the top job – no way, no how. Complete balls up by Hitler.

Tag words: Von Papen; Kaiserhof Hotel; Kurt von Schleicher; Schwerin von Krosig; Franz Schäffer; BVP Catholic Party; Bella Fromm; Herman Göring; Baron von Richtoffen; Red Baron; Joseph Goebbels; President Hindenburg;

Hi, today’s Thursday 26 January 1933 and here’s the weather report. A powerful anti-cyclone has settled over Europe, driving cold air from the Baltic and northern Russia towards Germany. The nights will be clear and icy. In East Prussia and Pomerania the temperatures are going to plummet to -28 degrees. The Rhine River is freezing over and drifts of ice are making for difficult and dangerous conditions for shipping. It’s expected that soon all shipping movements on the Rhine are going to be ordered to be halted.

Here in Berlin the temperatures are expected to reach -20 degrees. It looks like the political commentators are right. Hell will freeze over before Adolf Hitler comes to power. I wonder how’s his manoeuvres to get to be the Chancellor are going? Time to check in.

Tag words: Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach; Kaiser Wilhelm II; Treaty of Versailles; Great Depression; Alfred Hugenberg; Adolf Hitler; Otto Braun; Social Democrat; President Hindenburg; von Papen; Erwin Planck; Schleicher; Schwerin von Krosig; SA; Ernst Röhm; Nazi Party; Communist Party; André François-Poncet; Harry Kessler; Kaiserhof Hotel; Brüning; Abraham Plotkin; Herbert Kline; General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord; Otto Meissner;

It’s still Thursday 19 January 1933. Chancellor Schleicher has an entirely unexpected visitor. It’s Ernst Torgler, the head of the parliamentary Communist Party. An unlikely visitor to the conservative, army officer, Chancellor. The’s here because the Nazi brownshirts are going to march outside the Communist Party’s headquarters in Berlin – Karl Liebknecht House – on Sunday 22 January 1933. The Nazis had done the same thing last summer in Hamburg. Then 18 people had died in the violent clashes that had followed. But then again maybe that sort of bad behaviour by the Nazis is what Schleicher is hoping for to make sure that Hindenburg will never entertain having Hitler as Chancellor. Such devious times we’re living in.

Friday 20 January 1933 with some familiar news. Parts of Germany are in the grip of a flu epidemic. Schools in Brunswick and Göttingen have had to be closed. In Hamburg hundreds of new cases are being admitted to the hospitals every day. Berlin, for some reason, is immune to this epidemic. Go figure!

Papen is hitting a brick wall with trying to get von Schleicher kicked out of the Chancellor’s office. He turns to Hindenburg’s top people to help get this happening – Hindenburg’s son, Oskar von Hindenburg, and Hindenburg’s top public service adviser, Otto Meissner. They both agree that they want to have Schleicher removed as chancellor as their first priority, even if that means having von Papen share power with Hitler. Ewwww.

That night von Papen tells Joachim von Ribbentrop that Oskar von Hindenburg and Otto Meissner are agreeing to meeting with Hitler. This is a huge concession on their part. Could things be looking up for Herr Hitler? I have to say that I doubt it.

Tag words: Joseph Goebbels; Magda Goebbels; Adolf Hitler; President Hindenurg; Papen; Herman Göring; Joachim von Ribbentrop; Nazis; Gregor Strasser; Pepper Mill; Bonbonière; Neue Zürcher Zeitung; Communists; Wagner; Das Liebesverbot; Henkell champagne; Chancellor Schleicher; Kaiserhof Hotel; Alfred Kleiforth; Wilhelm Stegmann; Nazi Party; SA; Ernst Röhm; Alfred Hugenberg; Reinhold Quaartz; Gregor Strasser; Social Democrats; Rudolf Hilferding; Heinrich Brüning; Harry Kessler;