Is ASPI Picking Flowers and Making Honey?
It certainly looks like one organisation is threatening world peace as well as profiting handsomely while doing so
The video is on Youtube at: https://youtu.be/aCn7s6QXVpc here is the script.
Wherever you are in the world, welcome to another edition of Jerry’s take on China and this one is very special. I’ve sought a lot of advice before making the decision to proceed.
As a result of that advice, I am linking an article in the description which contains links to all the facts, as I usually do, as well as the documentation and the video which I’ll be talking about. But there will be nothing in the video which I post, which could be used to have YouTube remove it for IP violations.
If you find what I’m suggesting hard to believe, hard to accept, or simply want verification, please inform yourself by reading and checking the sources of all my materials. I have downloaded, for my own records, a copy of all the relevant information in case it is removed from the internet at some future date.
In this video, and the accompanying article, I’m going make a suggestion that the best interests of Australia are in dire need of review because of something the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), may have done. This could be confirmed with just one enquiry by someone in an official capacity who could verify that two of ASPI’s corporate sponsors were in discussion with Defence Department officials at the time this happened.
If that’s confirmed, it means the entire process leading to a multi-billion-dollar contract was flawed and the Australian taxpaying public have been deprived of billions of dollars which have gone to two non-Australian companies.
Let’s get into it:
A report called “Picking Flowers and Making Honey” was written for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), in 2018. This reoprt is a classic in that it sets the tone for exactly how ASPI manages to instill fear into the minds of Australians by exaggerating or even creating a threat and then linking it with China.
Although, to this day, there has never been any confirmed case, no charges or any convictions, the report of 2018, suggests Chinese military scientists were coming to Australia to learn military secrets. The author was invited, as a guest onto an ABC show, where he made the claim that these Chinese military scientists were working on quote: “projects like hypersonic missiles” unquote; his example, not mine. I’ve linked that video in my article.
Northop Grumman and Raytheon are currently working on hypersonic missiles in Australia but that contract was signed off in 2020, almost two years after the report and interview which stated these Chinese scientists “could be” stealing technology. Once I saw this, I realised there was some grave concerns about the way in which ASPI works but then, there are also other elements which raise concerns related to the report and subsequent ABC interview:
It appears to have been a clear conflict of interest that those two companies, which are also two of ASPI’s corporate sponsors are almost certain to have been, at that time, involved in discussions with US and Australian governments about hypersonic missile research in Australia. Multi-billion-dollar research projects take years to come to fruition, there’s a link to that information too.
In the interview, ABC’s host, Stan Grant, does not disclose that he is, or most certainly was at that time, a Senior Fellow of ASPI. This matter was brought to public attention in 2020 by APAC News and has still never been disclosed to ABC’s viewers. There’s also link to that.
What was already known, but again not disclosed in the report or the interview, was that both China and Russia are, according to most experts, more advanced than either Australia or the USA in hypersonic technology. And this information has been linked too.
It is known, and has been stated by several leading academic and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Organisation (CSIRO) that Chinese scientists were contributing to Australian research at that time and therefore, highly unlikely they would place themselves at risk of being arrested for spying, stealing or copying military secrets that they already possess. That’s really interesting and wasn’t mentioned in the introduction by ASPI’s report.
In fact, in a completely contrary indication, the US was apparently caught red-handed in 2022, in a well-documented attack on China’s Northwest University, where hypersonic technology is being researched.
Let’s go back to December 2020, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that: “within months Australia would begin testing US hypersonic missiles”. It’s very hard to imagine the example given, of Chinese military scientists potentially stealing hypersonic secrets, is a coincidence, given that, they already had this technology and that it was two of ASPI’s corporate sponsors who ultimately won the contract in that same year that they made donations to ASPI.
Let’s look to the report, which I won’t link here but is linked in the attached article.
As with many ASPI reports, Picking Flowers and Making Honey is littered with statements and opinions which are either unsupported or completely unsupportable.
Proper decisions, especially at government foreign policy level should, as much as possible, be based on facts and certainty. Modality can, and should, be used to establish that certainty and to provide veracity.
Any report, when the writer selects modals of doubt over modals of certainty, must surely then be viewed as no more than opinion. Let me explain…
That something “may…” have occurred 15 times in this report, means the author doesn’t know it did. The author also suggests something “appear (or appears) to…” have happened 12 times in this report.
There are 6 occasions where the reports states something “could…” be happening and none of them provide any evidence they have happened. The words “it is unclear” have been used 4 times.
There are in fact, 37 significant indicators in this report of the presence of doubt.
One paragraph relates to the promotion of a General Yang of the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), without support, states the promotion was “probably also a recognition of the success with which Yan developed NUDT’s international ties” (emphasis added).
The very secretive nature of this implied strategy to steal technology from Australian universities really falls apart when the report, on pages 9 and 10 itemises the fact that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) quite openly states it has set up relationships and recruited foreign teachers. Some of these were English teachers to help students gain IELTS and College English Test (CET) levels to allow them to study overseas.
Another opinion without clear evidence, is that all students who go to Australia in this program appear to be Communist Party (CPC) members.
When the report insinuates the system could “coerce Chinese scholars” or that students “remain under the close watch of the CCP” it raises some questions for me:
Why do they need to be coerced or watched if they are, as also described in the report, “intensively trained”, have their “ideology checked” and are “all members of the party”?
So, this is a report so full of supposition,and doubt and opinion, a clear example to support the lack of facts was definitely needed. So, to provide it, ASPI cites a case, not in Australia but in America, not recent but 18 years old, where a retired, Chinese born US citizen of 40 years, whose parents exiled to Taiwan, was found to have collected confidential documents from his work with Boeing and sold them to people in China.
There were no military secrets involved he wasn’t a student, he wasn’t even connected to the PLA and the theft, took place over a 30-year period. that man, Greg Chung was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for the obscure offense of “economic espionage”. How ASPI links this historical anecdote to an imminent threat of ideological theft by Chinese military scientist is an incredible leap of literary logic.
Perhaps the greatest contradiction of the ASPI report, occurs in the introduction where it glossed over the fact that several academics reported: “some of the greatest scientific achievements of recent times” have come from collaboration with Chinese scientists”. Several universities, including the University of New South Wales, Curtin University and again the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Organisation (CSIRO), are even mentioned as having defended their collaboration as “positive for Australia”.
One has to ask: who is making honey?
The available evidence is that Chinese scientists have helped Australian research, the available evidence proves that China is already far more advanced in hyper-sonic technology; and the available evidence proves that ASPI’s corporate sponsors had much to lose if China were to share that technology, for peaceful purposes, with Australia.
No evidence has ever been presented of any theft of secrets from Australia by a Chinese researcher, Chinese scientist, Chinese student; military or otherwise.
In fact, all the evidence I can see is that bees make honey and are good for humanity, ASPI seems, in this instance to be more like a destructive wasp aiming to destroy the bees and, while they’re at it, a fairly large slice of humanity!
As with everything, please like, share subscribe and feel free to question this. Read the article, look at my sources, question them, it sure looks like ASPI were paid to create a threat by their donors and, having done so their donors have now made billions od dollars, Australia needs to look very closely at this one
