My Take | Did China just go after powerful Aussie think tank?
- Hawkish Australian Strategic Policy Institute, whose chief complains about being targeted by state-backed hackers, is prone to exaggerating the ‘China threat’
As a long-time pundit, I am often disappointed that the worst punishment I ever got from the US government was extremely cordial and informative public relations chats with officials from the State Department and the US Agency for Global Media.
Sometimes, I fantasise that Washington would single me out for criticism or even sanctions. That would raise my profile. Alas, I am just a small potato and hardly worth the trouble.
Now Justin Bassi is not a small potato. As the executive director of a well-known think tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), he is more like a middle to moderately large-sized potato.
Maybe that’s why he has been in the cross hairs of Beijing, or so he claims.
Bassi has just written an op-ed in The Canberra Times, complaining that China is taking aim at the ASPI, and that “should be a wake-up call whether you [as an Australian] like, dislike or don’t know ASPI”.
He claims that “China’s main security agency directed state-backed cyberhackers to target [them]”.