{"id":23291,"date":"2015-11-09T15:24:07","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T04:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=23291"},"modified":"2015-11-09T15:24:07","modified_gmt":"2015-11-09T04:24:07","slug":"landbridge-darwin-and-the-prc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/landbridge-darwin-and-the-prc\/","title":{"rendered":"Landbridge, Darwin and the PRC"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Amphibious<\/a><\/p>\n

Peter Jennings\u2019 \u2018Darwin: storm in a port<\/a>\u2019 has brought to broader attention<\/a> the apparent nonchalance with which the lease of the port of Darwin by Chinese firm Landbridge \u00a0has been treated by many parts of the Australian Government.<\/p>\n

Landbridge came to Australian public attention in mid-2014 with its share offer and purchase<\/a> of Brisbane-based gas producer Westside Corporation<\/a>. The purchase was celebrated by PRC newsagency Xinhua<\/em><\/a>, and widely by the Australian government<\/a>. The signing of this agreement by Landbridge principal Ye Cheng \u00a0was held at Parliament House in front of Xi Jinping and Tony Abbott<\/a> during Xi\u2019s November visit to Australia.\u00a0 Westside soon set about pursuing Armour Energy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last month, Landbridge agreed to pay $506 million for a 99-year lease<\/a> of the Port of Darwin. Labor has suggested that the deal be scrutinised by the Foreign Investment Review B<\/a>oard and some ADF officials have registered security concerns. However, the long-term ramifications of this century-long deal haven\u2019t even begun to be considered by Australia.<\/p>\n

What then is the nature of Landbridge? Northern Territory Chief Minister<\/a> Adam Giles calls it a \u2018private sector partner\u2019, and both the Australian Financial Review<\/em> <\/a>and the Sydney Morning Herald<\/em><\/a> have adopted the \u2018private enterprise\u2019 description.\u00a0 However, given that ownership of major economic entities in China is always murky, it behoves us to look at this entity a little more closely.<\/p>\n

The company itself asserts that it is a \u2018private\u2019 enterprise<\/a>. Landbridge Chairman Ye Cheng is, however, intimately tied to the PRC party-state as a member of\u00a0 the 12th National CPPCC Committee<\/a>, a PRC united front body, in which he represents the All China Federation of Taiwan Compatriots<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More importantly, the company\u2014like any organisation of influence in China\u2014is guided by a powerful branch of the Communist Party of China<\/a>. This 200-member body takes its orders\u2014through a dendritic structure\u2014from the party central committee and ensures that the company acts in accordance with the party-state\u2019s interests and strategies.<\/p>\n

The Secretary of Landbridge\u2019s CPC branch committee is He Zhaoqing<\/a>, an ex-PLA officer, who has been deputy political commissar of the Public Security office at Shijiu Port, and head of the party committee office of Rizhao Port.\u00a0 He\u2019s now also the general manager<\/a>, a director and party committee member of the Rizhao Port Group<\/a>. It\u2019s thus He Zhaoqing and the CPC who control the port development activities of Landbridge.<\/p>\n

And, as if to underline the party-state links of the company, in August last year, with the support of the People\u2019s Liberation Army, Landbridge established a people\u2019s armed militia<\/a> within the company with He Zhaoqing being appointed to lead it. He Zhaoqing had also been cited by the provincial government in 2013 as one of the ten outstanding figures of Shandong province who have devoted themselves to the building of national defence. In short, Landbridge is a commercial front intimately tied to state-owned operations, the party and the PLA.<\/p>\n

But this should come as a surprise to no-one. Party control within nominally commercial operations is precisely how the PRC ensures that Chinese economic activity abroad is fully in accord with and serves PRC strategic interests. That is obvious from Chinese efforts to develop Sri Lanka\u2019s Hambantota Port<\/a>, Pakistan\u2019s Gwadar Port<\/a> (only a 40-year lease) and the port of Djibouti<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Darwin is intended to be a key link in China\u2019s new 21st Century Maritime Silk Road<\/a>, providing Chinese access to both the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific, as well as to Indonesia and PNG. China\u2019s \u2018sister port\u2019 tie ups with Kuantan<\/a>, Melaka<\/a>, Kedah<\/a> and Port Klang<\/a> in Malaysia\u00a0 and with Townsville Port<\/a> in Queensland are readying further nodes in the network<\/a>. It\u2019s no surprise that Landbridge Infrastructure Australia’s director, Mike Hughes<\/a>, says the Darwin port project aims to \u2018put Darwin on the map for Chinese business<\/em>.\u2019 And even less surprising is it that Landbridge CPC Committee Secretary He spoke to his members of the company\u2019s role in achieving the \u2018dream of a strong nation<\/a>\u2018, the \u2018dream of renaissance.\u2019<\/p>\n

The Maritime Silk Road, along with associated Chinese initiatives such as the $100 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank<\/a>, the $40 billion Silk Road fund<\/a>, as well as offshore infrastructure projects such as ports, dams, farms and industrial zones are intended, through realising regional economic domination<\/a> and subsequent client dependency, to\u00a0 achieve this Chinese renaissance, the \u2018China dream\u2019. This in turn will facilitate contention for regional and then global primacy with the United States. The PLA sees one of its key roles as being to protect these economic initiatives offshore<\/a>. The Darwin deal is thus, among other things, a key element in the PRC\u2019s efforts<\/a> to weaken the Australian alliance with the US. For these reasons there must be great security concerns about the Darwin deal.<\/p>\n

That the Federal Government and the Northern Territory administration should repeatedly claim that Landbridge is a private company and that its investment in Darwin is simply an economic decision suggests either targeted disingenuousness or woeful ignorance. In either case it underlines the urgent need for both much further investigation of the Darwin contract with Landbridge and the creation within Australia of a public database which records and analyses the swiftly-expanding breadth of the interconnected PRC economic, cultural and political activities across Australia, Southeast Asia and Oceania.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter Jennings\u2019 \u2018Darwin: storm in a port\u2019 has brought to broader attention the apparent nonchalance with which the lease of the port of Darwin by Chinese firm Landbridge \u00a0has been treated by many parts of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":175,"featured_media":23292,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[44,52,1006],"class_list":["post-23291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australian-defence-force","tag-china","tag-darwin"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLandbridge, Darwin and the PRC | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/landbridge-darwin-and-the-prc\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Landbridge, Darwin and the PRC | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Peter Jennings\u2019 \u2018Darwin: storm in a port\u2019 has brought to broader attention the apparent nonchalance with which the lease of the port of Darwin by Chinese firm Landbridge \u00a0has been treated by many parts of ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/landbridge-darwin-and-the-prc\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-11-09T04:24:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/8095287463_5cb1894844_z.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"457\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Geoff Wade\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Geoff Wade\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/landbridge-darwin-and-the-prc\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/8095287463_5cb1894844_z.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/8095287463_5cb1894844_z.jpg\",\"width\":640,\"height\":457,\"caption\":\"Amphibious dock landing ship USS Rushmore (LSD 47) prepares to moor in Darwin, Australia for a port visit. 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