Quick take on Stuff Circuit's 'The Long Game'
A new Stuff Circuit documentary - The Long Game - was released today, and one I watched with keen interest. It's available for anyone to watch online, from anywhere, for free. The documentary's lead researcher, and reporter is the award-winning New Zealand journalist, Paula Penfold. The one-hour twenty-minute long film's producer, and Penfold's co-researcher is Louisa Cleave. There's also an excellent write-up complementing the film, and what it is about, by the producers.
'The Long Game' worryingly locates in New Zealand what seven years ago, when I first entered the country, I naively thought I had left behind in Sri Lanka. I had studied the Chinese technology investments in, and IT-related 'gifts' to Sri Lanka for a very long time, including the surveillance this infrastructure enabled, augmenting social media influence operations. To find these cancerous, and coercive pathologies in other Western, and European countries may not be surprising in 2024. But many years ago, I thought the West's, and New Zealand's comparably more robust democratic institutions would be better able to guard against the worst of what I had studied happen in Sri Lanka through compromised political elites, and a captive media.
Penfold's sobering film renders the threat to democracy China poses globally, as one that's present domestically, and has been for a while. It follows very serious cybersecurity incidents that New Zealand, joining the US, and UK, accused China this year of spearheading against its parliament, and MPs in 2021.
In her take on the film, former NZ PM Helen Clark tweeted "The Stuff content ranges from much ado about nothing to outright McCarthyism. All great & emerging powers seek influence; to deny that is naive. But we are not facing a national security emergency!"
I did not see the same film. Neither the film nor Penfold are remotely Sinophobic. The film's focus is clearly defined, and not wildly speculative or in any way conspiratorial. There's no attempt to suggest New Zealand's facing an imminent threat from the CCP, leading to some catastrophe. The film's tone, and focus is best captured by what Australian Senator James Paterson, who is the Co-Chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, notes at the end of it, that China's influence operations impact everyone, and not just those from the mainland or of Chinese descent. He correctly stresses that,
"It is our shared institutions that are under attack. It's our parliaments, it's our courts, it's our democracy, it's our voting, it's our media. And if those are undermined successfully from the outside, it's not just one part of our community that suffers, it's the whole community that suffers. And it's ultimately our right to choose our own destiny for ourselves, our own future for ourselves, which is under attack."
This is what the film more generally is about. It covers, amongst other things,
If there was one flaw in the documentary (which I feel may have provided the space for the former PM's critique), it's the absence of any relevant research, and context from other countries, also dealing with malign CCP influence, in order to better locate what's presented in the film as impacting New Zealand.
For example, 'The Long Game' identifies, by name, influential individuals in United Front operations in New Zealand, including through political donations, and access to politicians. This matches a memo by the US Select Committee on the CCP, which also flags how the United Front seeks to influence civic groups, prominent individuals, and leading institutions to shape the political environment. The documentary examines cultural associations like the Huaqing Arts Troupe, which Penfold reveals is backed by the United Front Work Department. This parallels the US State Department's analysis of how the United Front uses front organisations like Chinese Students and Scholars Associations to advance its agenda abroad. The censorship and pro-CCP narratives promoted in Chinese language media in New Zealand also reflect the US State Department's description of how the CCP exerts pressure globally to suppress criticism and positively shape messaging. This particular aspect is something I've published significant research on as well. The alleged 2004 and 2005 kidnapping attempts of Chinese dissidents align with the Canadian government's warning that China conducts foreign interference by targeting members of the Chinese diaspora seen as threats. The documentary's overarching concern, that CCP operations pose a threat to New Zealand's democratic institutions reflects the core thesis of Ryan Fedasiuk's article on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) website - that democratic countries need heightened vigilance against the United Front's attempts to stifle criticism and infiltrate political parties, diaspora communities and civil society organisations. The film also identified examples of content-sharing agreements between Chinese state media, and local Chinese-language media in New Zealand alongside coercive practices. This tracks with what Freedom House in 'Beijing's Global Media Influence 2022' reporting established in many countries around the world (including my home country, Sri Lanka).
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Furthermore, in September 2023, the UK's PM at the time Rishi Sunak said he is "acutely aware of the particular threat to our open and democratic way of life" posed by China's Communist regime. The UK's 200+ page Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament report on China is in the public domain - the release of which was what prompted this statement by the British PM. As the BBC report noted,
The ISC had warned that China's ruling Communist Party used its "size, ambition and capability" to "successfully penetrate every sector of the UK's economy". The cross-party committee of Parliamentarians added that "while seeking to exert influence is a legitimate course of action, China oversteps the boundary, and crosses the line into interference". "China has been particularly effective at using its money and influence to penetrate or buy academia in order to ensure that its international narrative is advanced and criticism of China suppressed."
The UK ISC report highlights concerns about Chinese state-linked actors donating funds to UK political parties and politicians in an attempt to gain influence. This aligns with the 'The Long Game's critical capture of political donations, and influence operations targeting politicians. As flagged in the US State Department report, the UK's ISC report notes the role of Confucius Institutes and cultural organisations in advancing pro-Beijing narratives and stifling debate on sensitive topics, which maps on to what I noted earlier as well is Penfold's capture of the Huaqing Arts Troupe, and related cultural activities. Both the ISC report and Stuff Circuit's documentary flag efforts by Chinese government-affiliated entities like Chinese Students and Scholars Associations to monitor and influence the activities and speech of Chinese diaspora communities and students.
All of this could have been stressed far more in the film - to help viewers in New Zealand better appreciate the gravity of what's presented as not some isolated incident or occasional tactic, but a decades-old, highly perfected, extremely motivated, global strategy by the CCP to undermine democracy.
In my reading of Penfold's film, there's also a critique around a lack of a coherent, agile, fit-for-purpose, all-of-government approach to combat foreign influence operations, including those architected by China. Tellingly, the ISC report is also very critical of the UK government's previously fragmented response to the threat posed by China, noting that the government was failing to deploy a coherent, "whole-of-government" approach to counter China's "whole-of-state" strategy. The ISC report suggests that individual government departments were trying to tackle different aspects of the Chinese threat in isolation, without effective coordination from the centre, leading to an inadequate and disjointed response to the multifaceted challenge presented by China's growing influence and interference activities.
I couldn't help but think the same of New Zealand's response after seeing 'The Long Game'.
As someone whose work involves the deep study of disinformation, and foreign malign influence operations, Penfold, and Cleave's considered, grounded, well-researched presentation is a gift to New Zealanders. When Sri Lanka was first captured by the CCP's long game decades ago, and later as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), we didn't get to see this sort of production. In fact, we've not seen anything remotely comparable to date. I am envious of New Zealanders, who now have a documentary that can help them have informed conversations we never did back home, and can't imagine having even now.
This sort of public documentation, and journalism is extremely rare (even though New Zealanders may take it for granted!).
For this reason alone, I am glad Paula, Cleave, and the Stuff Circuit team produced 'The Long Game' - for it is precisely that. The prescience of the producers may only be fully appreciated years or even decades hence, but till then, there's much the country should do to guard itself against the CCP's evolving threats to democracy already deeply entrenched elsewhere, including amongst close allies.