China Refuses Entry to Australian Critic of Communist Party

SYDNEY, Australia — China has denied entry to a Chinese-born Australian who was traveling to Shanghai with his mother to return his father’s ashes to the land of his birth, he said Wednesday.

John Hugh, 51, who has been an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to influence Australian politics, said he was sent back to Sydney soon after his flight landed in Shanghai on Tuesday night.

He said he was met by Chinese officials before disembarking and told that he would be put on the next flight back to Australia.

“I asked what the reason was, and they just said, ‘You should know,'” he said.

Hugh, a former city council member from Parramatta in western Sydney, surmised that he had been refused entry as punishment for his support for a new espionage bill intended to regulate foreign influence in Australia, and for his connection to a new book about the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to infiltrate Australian politics, business and academia.

In the book, “Silent Invasion,” by Clive Hamilton, Hugh is quoted criticizing the party’s efforts to limit dissent, not just in China but in Australia.

“It’s retaliation for what we’ve done — for not cooperating with them, for being an independent voice,” he said Wednesday.

Hugh is the founder of the Embrace Australian Values Alliance, which says it promotes democracy, freedom of speech and rule of law while aiming to counter Communist Party repression.

His brief detention and return to Australia suggest that Chinese officials are paying close attention to Australia’s intensifying debate about China’s influence, and that despite increased scrutiny, they believe they can accept or reject members of the Chinese diaspora as they please.

“It’s deplorable that John Hugh was prevented from entering China, particularly if this was punishment for his political activity in Australia,” said David Brophy, a senior lecturer in Chinese history at the University of Sydney.

“China uses all sorts of techniques, including visa bans and denial of entry, to exclude people from the body politic,” Brophy said.

But he warned that Australia should avoid adopting a similar approach, an idea that he said was floated in “Silent Invasion.”

“What I’m anxious about is that we don’t follow China down the same path,” Brophy said. “In his book, Clive Hamilton proposes denying residency to Chinese immigrants who are identified as actively ‘pro-Beijing.’ That’s the same approach as the PRC — excluding people from our society on the basis of their political opinions,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

Hugh, who moved to Australia from China in 1990, said he had returned many times before without trouble.

He said the officials in Shanghai were generally polite. They allowed his mother to enter the country with his father’s ashes but were firm about his own return to Sydney, he said.

The rejection at the airport was difficult, he said. His father had died with Hugh and his mother on a flight to Los Angeles from Sydney in October, he said, and it had taken months to arrange for his remains to be returned to Australia and to make plans for a family return to China.

He said Chinese officials were using him to send a message to other ethnic Chinese residents of Australia: “You’ll pay the price for not being a Communist voice.”