An Australian man who helped organize the launch of a controversial book about China was denied entry to the country.
But Hugh said he was immediately taken off the flight when it landed in Shanghai and placed on an 11-hour return flight to Australia.
His mother was allowed to enter China without him and is now staying with relatives.
Hugh, who was born in China, said he wasn’t given a specific reason for being denied entry but that a border inspection guard said, “You should know why.”
He said the whole ordeal lasted barely more than an hour before he was flying back to Australia. “They were very efficient,” he said.
Hugh recently helped with the Australian launch of the book “Silent Invasion: Chinese Influence in Australia.” The book by Clive Hamilton, a professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University, details the Chinese Communist Party’s infiltration of Australian political parties and institutions. Hugh was quoted in the book as criticizing the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to limit dissent in both China and Australia.
Hugh was previously allowed entry to China when he visited in 2014, though he faced questioning from Chinese officials in Sydney first. He said he believes that this time the book launch “may have been the final straw.”
“I think it’s maybe revenge,” he said.
Hugh is also a former city councilor from Parramatta in western Sydney. He says his support for a new bill that aims to regulate foreign influence in Australia may have also played a role in his rejection from entering his home country. Hugh moved to Australia from China in 1990.
“As a morally charged voice from the civil libertarian left, Hamilton punctures the lazy myth that concern about China is limited to conservatives or national security types on a ‘China threat roll’ who for some reason feel the need to conjure up new trouble (as if terrorism was not enough to keep them worried, funded and busy),” he wrote.
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