China’s Australia Youth Exchange Programs Targets Future Alliance Builders

Chi­na’s Aus­tralia youth exchange pro­grams have emerged as Bei­jing’s lat­est soft pow­er strat­e­gy to cul­ti­vate good­will among young Aus­tralians as part of a coor­di­nat­ed influ­ence cam­paign tar­get­ing future alliance-builders. On 22 July 2025, ABC News report­ed that fol­low­ing Pre­mier Li Qiang’s meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Antho­ny Albanese, both sides agreed to wel­come more young Aus­tralians to Chi­na through Bei­jing’s state-spon­sored pro­grams, extend­ing the mod­el already launched with the Unit­ed States to bring 50,000 Amer­i­cans to Chi­na over five years. The arti­cle begins:

Bei­jing is launch­ing a charm offen­sive aimed at the younger gen­er­a­tion of Aus­tralians because shap­ing minds today means shap­ing alliances tomor­row. Chi­na wants to be seen dif­fer­ent­ly on the glob­al stage: more open, more mod­ern and less threat­en­ing. For Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping, chang­ing how the world sees Chi­na is now a nation­al pri­or­i­ty. And in a new phase of China–Australia diplo­ma­cy, he’s tar­get­ing young peo­ple — includ­ing teenagers and uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents — to help achieve it. In a joint state­ment fol­low­ing Chi­nese Pre­mier Li Qiang’s bilat­er­al meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Antho­ny Albanese in the Great Hall of the Peo­ple last week, both sides agreed to “wel­come more young Aus­tralians trav­el­ling to Chi­na” through Bei­jing’s youth exchange programs.

          Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025–07-23/youth-students-uni-exchange-china-strategy-australia/105559530

Key Points

• Chi­na’s Young Envoys Schol­ar­ship pro­gram with the US aims to bring 50,000 young Amer­i­cans to Chi­na over five years, with the gov­ern­ment cov­er­ing all expens­es, includ­ing flights and accommodation
• The pro­grams are run under super­vi­sion of the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty’s Inter­na­tion­al Liai­son Depart­ment, the same agency respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing for­eign polit­i­cal relationships
• Crit­ics report par­tic­i­pants being steered away from polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive top­ics, warned about social media posts, and shown script­ed ver­sions of Chi­nese life rather than authen­tic experiences
• Aus­tralia has delib­er­ate­ly avoid­ed com­mit­ting to a 50,000-person quo­ta like the US, pro­ceed­ing with cau­tion amid con­cerns about for­eign inter­fer­ence and polit­i­cal backlash

China’s Influence Operations & Interference in Australia

Chi­na’s influ­ence oper­a­tions in Aus­tralia employ a sophis­ti­cat­ed and per­sis­tent array of tac­tics aimed at shap­ing pub­lic dis­course and polit­i­cal out­comes. These efforts include cul­ti­vat­ing pro-Bei­jing voic­es in elite cir­cles, con­trol­ling Chi­nese-lan­guage media, and using social media plat­forms like WeChat for pro­pa­gan­da and to harass dis­si­dents. The Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty (CCP) also lever­ages reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions, with Aus­tralian Bud­dhist groups tied to the CCP and Taoist net­works oper­at­ing as CCP tools, pro­vid­ing plat­forms to engage with Aus­tralian politi­cians.

In response, Aus­tralia passed the For­eign Influ­ence Trans­paren­cy Scheme in 2018; how­ev­er, these influ­ence oper­a­tions remain bla­tant, rais­ing ques­tions about the law’s enforce­ment. The chal­lenge is com­pound­ed by the use of advanced dig­i­tal strate­gies, includ­ing AI-dri­ven dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns designed to poi­son AI sys­tems with pro­pa­gan­da and inter­fere in elec­tions. Despite these pres­sures, legal actions are being tak­en, result­ing in a his­toric con­vic­tion for a for­eign influ­ence plot under the coun­try’s nation­al secu­ri­ty laws.

Exter­nal References:

1. Coun­ter­ing Chi­na’s Influ­ence Oper­a­tions: Lessons from Australia

2. Chi­na’s Influ­ence Efforts Are Expanding—But They Also Often Are Failing

3. Mak­ing Aus­trali­a’s for­eign influ­ence laws work

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.