Doug Dingwall, The Sydney Morning Herald
Image from article, with caption: Australia's Foreign Affairs department should use Weibo to engage more with its users in China, the author of a new report says.
The Foreign Affairs department is avoiding rocking the boat in posts on a leading Chinese social media website, despite Australia's commitment to promote liberal values, a defence think tank says.
A foreign policy paper released on Tuesday says embassies in China are self-censoring and failing to speak up when Weibo, which has more than 500 million users, censors messages posted to the platform.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has urged the Foreign Affairs department to devote more resources to speaking directly to China's web users through Weibo, and said Australia should create new, dedicated accounts for its prime minister and foreign minister to reach Chinese audiences.
Author of the think tank paper, Fergus Ryan, said it was "worrying" the Foreign Affairs department was apparently trying not to "rock the boat too much" on Chinese social media.
He found three occasions over three months when Weibo censored posts from the Australian embassy in China, but said finding examples of self-censorship was harder.
The website disabled comments in one post commending Chinese leaders, including president Xi Jinping, for the number of times they had visited Australia, as well as one that referred to a strategic partnership formalised when President Xi visited in 2014. It also barred comments on a post describing a meeting between Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Chinese premier Li Keqiang.
However, Australia would have been censored on more occasions if it wanted to pursue a 2017 foreign policy White Paper statement that it would advocate "liberal institutions, universal values and human rights", Mr Ryan said.
"When it comes to Australia, we as a country have stated in our White Paper that these are our values and we will be determined advocates for them," he said.
"If we wanted to action that policy and stand up for those values, then it would show up in those censorship statistics."
The Foreign Affairs department said its Australian embassy Weibo account's purpose was to promote constructive relations and highlight areas of cooperation between Australia and China, focusing on posts that appealed to younger Chinese audiences.
"All foreign embassies operate within China’s legal framework," it said.
The federal government "makes representations as appropriate" to the Chinese authorities about censorship of websites, a spokeswoman said.
It was estimated China was spending $10 billion a year on external propaganda, but was trying to limit the reach of foreign countries inside its own borders, the strategic policy institute's report said.
Australia and other "like-minded" governments should publish reports revealing the extent to which their legitimate online public diplomacy [JB emphasis] was censored in China, and should duplicate Weibo posts on Twitter to show any incidences of censorship and give alternative access to embassy messages.
Foreign govenments should also publish clear terms of use for their social media accounts in China to avoid self-censorship, the report said.
Weibo censored 28 posts from the United States' embassy in some form from November to January. In more than half of the cases, censorship involved disabling comments immediately, and in 7 per cent of cases Weibo deleted posts.
In one example during December, the US embassy was censored after it sent a post on Weibo linking to a US–German embassy joint statement about the sentencing of activist Wu Gan and his lawyer, Xie Yang.
Four posts from the US embassy relating to North Korea were also deleted in a move Mr Ryan said suggested Beijing during the Korean peninsula nuclear crisis was "trying to regain control of the narrative in its own information space".
Mr Ryan said Australia should not necessarily follow the US approach to Chinese social media, which saw its embassy post a statement accusing China of "Orwellian nonsense" and of imposing its views on Americans after the Chinese Civil Aviation Administration called for foreign airlines to use Beijing's preferred terms for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.
Other embassies had posted harmless but relatively unread posts.
"In between those two extremes, there's enormous space for foreign embassies and foreign governments to play endlessly," Mr Ryan said.
Australia's Foreign Affairs department should direct more resources to Weibo as other countries, including Israel, posted videos to the website that engaged better with China's culture and people.
Weibo accounts for the prime minister and foreign minister would also act as another diplomatic tool, he said.
The Foreign Affairs department will consider the think tank's recommendations.
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