The spy agency Asio says it has disrupted a plot by China’s intelligence services to “infiltrate a prestigious Australian research institution” with officials forcing an academic to leave the country before any harm was done.
The Asio chief, Mike Burgess, provided broad details of the alleged plot while also accusing China of engaging in “the most sustained, scaled and sophisticated theft of intellectual property and expertise in human history”.
“It is unprecedented and unacceptable,” Burgess said during a press conference in California on Wednesday alongside counterparts from the US, the UK, Canada and New Zealand.
Burgess acknowledged that “all nations spy” and “all nations seek strategic advantage” but he said China’s behaviour went “well beyond traditional espionage” and became “a ruthless business model aimed at seizing commercial advantage”.
He disclosed that in September, Asio detected and disrupted a plot to infiltrate a prestigious Australian research institution – without naming any entities or individuals.
Burgess alleged that the plot involved a visiting professor who had been recruited by Chinese intelligence.
“Their spymaster gave them money and a shopping list of intelligence requirements and sent them to Australia,” he said. “The academic even set his Australian PhD students research assignments in line with his intelligence requirements.”
Burgess said Asio had worked with the research institution and “intervened and removed that academic from our country before the harm could be done”.
“This sort of thing is happening every day in Australia as it is in the countries here,” he said at the Five Eyes gathering.
“We will meet and defeat this threat because we have a weapon that others don’t: the power of partnerships.”
When asked whether his forthright comments might disrupt the diplomatic thaw between Australia and China, its biggest trading partner, Burgess said he had “some latitude in saying what I need to say as part of my job”.
The Asio chief cited the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, who has said Australia would cooperate with China where it could and disagree where it must.
“This is one example where we’re calling out something where we must disagree,” Burgess said. “But it doesn’t stop the ongoing engagement. China’s success has been of great benefit to Australia.”
The comments coincided with fresh efforts by the trade minister, Don Farrell, to end Beijing’s tariffs on Australian wine, proposing the same sort of deal that led to the resumption of barley exports.
Farrell said the Albanese government was prepared to pause the wine dispute at the World Trade Organization if Beijing agreed to a fast-tracked review of the wine duties.
Speaking at an Australia-China Business Council event in Canberra, Farrell said he would “prefer to resolve all of our trade issues with China through discussion and dialogue”.
A ruling in the WTO wine case is believed to be imminent, meaning there is a short window to reach a direct breakthrough.
Farrell also said he was “optimistic that the technical issues affecting live lobster and red meat exports can be resolved soon”.
The Australian government played down the potential diplomatic fallout from the Asio chief’s comments.
The home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, said on Wednesday that Burgess was an “independent appointment” and he was allowed to comment on national security issues “factually”.
“I support him in doing so,” O’Neil told reporters in Canberra.
The Coalition’s home affairs spokesperson, James Paterson, said it was “not often that the Asio director general directly calls out by name China as a perpetrator of national security threats to Australia”.
Paterson said it was important to call out “malign behaviour”. He said if the comments did any damage to the bilateral relationship that would be the Chinese government’s responsibility.
Comment has been sought from the Chinese embassy in Canberra but Beijing has previously accused western security agencies of hypocrisy.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told reporters in May it was “widely known that the Five Eyes is the world’s biggest intelligence association”.
