Over the weekend, two fairly large news articles broke here in Australia revealing Chinese acts of interference and subversion here in Australia and abroad.
The first was news of a Chinese spy who defected to Australia and is seeking political asylum.
He revealed covert Chinese operations to infiltrate and subvert the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement, attempts to influence the 2016 Taiwanese elections and plans for the upcoming 2020 ones and the establishment of spy rings in Australia. He also claimed to have been involved in the 2015 kidnapping of 5 Hong Kong booksellers and their rendition to mainland China.
He is certainly a brave man - authoritarian regimes tend to have a habit of going after defectors to make an example of them.
The second, and more serious, article that broke, is a report that ASIO (Australian's version of the CIA) is investigating reports that China groomed a Chinese-Australian business man to run for parliament to act as an agent of foreign influence. The man reported this to ASIO and not long after was found dead in a motel in an apparently suspicious death.
Of late, China's pressure on Australia has become less and less subtle. Not long ago a Chinese official basically told Australia that choosing the US over China would result in all of Asia hating us and previous to that the Australian parliament computer network was hacked by a foreign state actor. Officially it has not been revealed who was behind it but unofficial it is known to have been China.
Australia's problem is that China is our main trade partner. It doesn't want to suffer the economic effects of loosing that trade (though China does kind of rely on Australia's raw materials to power their industries) but it doesn't want to kowtow to China's demands either as that will not play well with the electorate. But as Chinese interference becomes more blatant, something will have to give.
All in all, things are getting a little bit messy here.