When do we need to push back on China's interference in our politics? JOHN McCRONE meets the academic willing to speak out.

Canterbury University political science professor, Dr Anne-Marie Brady, is becoming a mite irritated.

Several times now she has said I should have read her 2017 paper – Magic Weapons: China's political influence activities under Xi Jinping. The answers are in there.

I have been pressing for a soundbite summary of what New Zealand is dealing with in a resurgent China.

Yes, we all know China is a proud and touchy nation – a delicate proposition to have as our most significant trading partner.

But Brady is stressing the fact that under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is back in charge. China is again as ideologically motivated as it was under the late Mao Zedong.

So what does that mean for us? Should we be worried? What is the end game here? In a quotable sentence or two, please.

Brady frowns.

Almost by default, she has found herself a world authority on the CCP and its intentions.

Brady says even her academic colleagues and Western diplomats have been looking the other way in recent years because they believed the party to be ancient history – a spent force as China gets on with getting rich.

"There's very few people worldwide who still research the Chinese Communist Party – its institutions and its policies," she says.

• China on the move...
• Why is China on the move in the South Pacific?
• US-China trade deal sparks concerns about impacts on New Zealand
• Why do I think the Endurance 170 LHD is a good choice for the RNZN.

A fluent Mandarin speaker, Brady says the information is there to be found in the primary sources, the texts and speeches via which China's 80 million communist party communicate with each other.

The Chinese pretty much assume foreigners won't be bothered reading it all, she says. And they are right.

"I was frequently the only foreigner at the National Library in China because people thought, oh, it's only old ideology and nobody believes in it anyway."

Which is why her Magic Weapons paper took so many by surprise. And continues to cause ripples.

SOUNDING THE ALERT

We meet first thing at a cafe near Brady's home in Riccarton, a short pedal ride to the university. She arrives in a quilted Chinese jacket, minimal make-up, and has a firm, no nonsense air about her.

If she wasn't before, 52-year-old Brady has learnt to be tough.

Then the family car was tampered with. There were threatening letters and late night phone calls.

Her paper – pushed out as a warning ahead of the 2017 general election – delivered a wake-up call on China's political interference activities in New Zealand, particularly within the Chinese community.

And it triggered a reaction. Both her home and university office were broken into – the office twice. Laptops and mobiles were stolen.

Then the family car was tampered with. There were threatening letters and late night phone calls.

Frightening stuff and plainly an attempt to scare her into silence. "It went on for over a year," she says.

However, news coverage of the harassment had the opposite effect of making people take her CCP research all the more seriously, says Brady.

"I don't think the people who did the burglaries thought it was going to attract the international attention that it did."

What probably upset China was Brady both highlighted a pattern of behaviour and was willing to shame by naming names.

Brady says it is important to understand the steps the CCP is taking to re-establish full control of China's society and economy.

The West was expecting the party structure to fade away after economic liberalisation and the rise of private enterprise. China would become naturally capitalist. However, Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory remains entrenched, Brady says.

"I don't think the people who did the burglaries thought it was going to attract the international attention that it did."

Control did get away from the CCP for a time. But under Xi, it has mandated that corporate bosses must be part of the state system.

"Today, 75 per cent of the CEOs of all the major Chinese companies, and 100 per cent of the ICT companies, are party members. That means they're under party discipline, which is above international law and domestic law."

• Does New Zealand have to choose between China and the United States
• China's activity in South China Sea designed to intimidate, US Navy head says
• NZ dollar rises on improved China trade sentiment

In a crunch, says Brady, they have to obey CCP instructions regardless of other considerations.

For example, Fonterra's Chinese partner, Sanlu, kept quiet about melamine in its milk, a scandal that rebounded in New Zealand. "Their CEO had to follow party discipline above reporting to Fonterra."

So a strict top-down order is once more core to China's politics, says Brady. It is about securing power. That is also reflected in a military build-up under Xi.

And then there is the third leg – the one she writes about – which is about taking active control of international opinion through the operations of the CCP's well-resourced propaganda arm, an organisation called the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee.

HIDDEN INFLUENCERS

Other analysts missed the United Front, Brady says.

It was named by Xi in a 2014 speech – along with the strengthening the party and the People's Liberation Army – as one of the three "magic weapons" of the CCP.

Brady had been following it for years. She stumbled upon a United Front manual when first researching her master's degree in China.

"By chance, in a bookshop in Beijing, I came across this wonderful book which outlined the whole system of political control and how to manage foreigners."

Brady says once you know what to look for, it is easy to spot how the CCP draws others into its quiet web of influence.

Her Magic Weapons paper applied this analysis to New Zealand to give other nations a template of what to expect.

It detailed how over the past decade, New Zealand Chinese associations and friendly organisations – often founded by Taiwanese or other immigrants – have come to be tied to the United Front through "patriotic" leaders drawn from the local business community.

Her Magic Weapons paper applied this analysis to New Zealand to give other nations a template of what to expect.

Likewise, New Zealand's Chinese language media has either changed hands or signed content co-operation agreements with China's state Xinhua News Service.

Brady says the United Front's aim is to promote a self-censoring attitude where ex-pat criticism of the CCP is muted. And the party's control over lucrative trade opportunities provides the necessary levers.

Brady also highlighted how many retired politicians had been popping up on the boards of the New Zealand branches of Chinese banks. Don Brash at the Industrial Bank of China, Ruth Richardson and Chris Tremain at the Bank of China in New Zealand, Jenny Shipley at the China Construction Bank.

Such business ties of course seem normal. But Brady says it is different when dealing with China if such appointments are state-sponsored and systematic.

Then there were the Chinese MPs with troubling connections. Brady cited Labour's Raymond Huo who "works very closely with the People's Republic of China representatives in New Zealand".

Or the one that became the big story – how National MP Jian Yang had been a CCP member and worked as a language teacher at a Chinese spy school.

Brady managed to show how the United Front had a comprehensive approach to its influence building, creating the connections through which the CCP could have a direct voice in New Zealand's domestic political thinking.

WESTIE BEGINNINGS

Since her revelations, Brady has become an international go-to figure on China's political interference tactics.

Last year she gave evidence about the United Front's activities to a Parliamentary select committee. The report – Inquiry into the 2017 General Election and 2016 Local Elections – came out just before Christmas.

Brady has also been consulted by France and Germany, as well as smaller nations like the Czech Republic and Lithuania.

"I've had so many invitations to speak on my message. I've spoken to about 16 different governments in the last two years."

It is all a bit unexpected for a West Auckland girl, from a "not well off" family.. "I had one pair of shoes every year, one skirt every year," she says about her childhood.

Family life was a struggle as her parents were divorcing. Brady says she drifted through school and even university until a course in Chinese philosophy finally piqued her interest.

A flatmate, a China trader, had told her that China was the coming story. She found she was good at Chinese language. And in 1990 – just months after Tiananmen Square – she was in China researching, later moving to teaching at the People's University in Beijing.

Brady met her husband, a painter at Beijing's Old Summer Palace artists' colony, in 1996. They now have twin 16-year-old boys, an 18-year-old daughter, and keep chickens in the backyard.

Brady says Christchurch provides a stable base, even if her research now brings unwelcomed security concerns. "We've been advised we can never risk going back to China."

It required courage to keep at it and become the spokesperson on the subject, she admits. However she feels well supported by the current New Zealand government.

The Magic Weapons paper led to action. Ministers conducted a general legislative review and are making moves like tightening up the Overseas Investment Act.

She is not anti-China, she says, just keen to alert that the CCP has to be watched.

"What New Zealand should do is engage with China as much as we can. But we need to put good boundaries within our domestic system. Which we are now already."

So get back to your office and read the paper if you want to know more, Brady advises. And with that, she straps on her helmet, hops on her bike, and pedals off to get on with the rest of her day.