Australia Defends Port’s Lease to Chinese Company With Military Ties
By MICHAEL FORSYTHE

HONG KONG — A decision by Australia to lease part of a port to a Chinese company became the subject of controversy on Friday after a report by a well-regarded research institute questioned the wisdom of the transaction and highlighted the firm’s links to China’s military.

The Chinese company, Landbridge Group, signed an agreement last month to lease the facilities in Darwin, in the country’s tropical north, for 99 years in a deal worth 506 million Australian dollars, or $361 million. More than 1,000 United States Marines deploy to Darwin each year as part of an initiative announced by the Obama administration in 2011 to shore up America’s presence in the region as China rapidly expands its military power.

On Friday, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which was set up by the Australian government and is led by a former top defense official, published an article saying the Chinese could use the port to spy on the Marines. The organization said the country needed to overhaul the way it evaluated foreign acquisitions of important national assets.

The chief minister in the Northern Territory, where Darwin is the capital, and officials from Landbridge, whose interests include petrochemical operations and real estate, said that the report was misleading and that the lease had been reviewed by Australia’s military, which found no reason to block it.

Geoff Wade, a scholar at Australian National University, had translated a report on Landbridge’s Chinese website that detailed a visit by military officials to the headquarters of the company, which was setting up a paramilitary unit. Mr. Wade posted his translation on a website run by the research institute. The newspaper The Australian cited Mr. Wade’s translation and reported that Landbridge’s Communist Party secretary, He Zhaoqing, was a former military officer.

Company filings show that Mr. He, who will turn 64 this month, was an officer in the branch of the military assigned to the railroads, serving as a chief of staff in one unit. That corps was merged into the Ministry of Railways in 1984. Landbridge’s billionaire owner, Ye Cheng, was named one of the “top 10 individuals caring about the development of national defense” by the government of Shandong Province in 2013, the company’s website says.

“A strong enterprise does not forget to repay the country, while a prosperous enterprise does not forget national defense,” the Landbridge post stated.

Landbridge’s deal with the local government was reviewed by military officials before it was approved. The defense minister, Marise Payne, said in a statement, “Defense does not have security concerns about the lease of the port to Chinese interests.”

But Paul Barnes, an author of the institute’s report, said of the country’s review process, “Given what we know about the rules of engagement and the way in which they analyze the investments, we would have to assume that there could be room for improvement.”

On Friday, Australia’s treasurer, Scott Morrison, who oversees foreign investment, told The Australian Financial Review that the government “is acutely aware of the sensitivities regarding foreign investment in strategic national assets and critical infrastructure.” He added, “The government is assessing options to strengthen the federal government’s ability to protect the national interest in these cases and we will have more to say on this issue in the future.”

The controversy over foreign management of ports is not unique to Australia. In 2006, intense pressure by the United States Congress led a state-owned Dubai company, DP World, to transfer leases in several American ports that it had acquired. Lawmakers, including Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, argued at the time that allowing a company based in Dubai to run some of the country’s biggest ports could leave them more vulnerable to infiltration by terrorists.

One difference between the DP World controversy and the one in Darwin is the American military presence. In October, Dennis Richardson, the secretary of the Australian Defense Department, told an Australian Senate panel that the United States had not been consulted about the Chinese lease of the Darwin port. “If the U.S. has any questions about the sale of the port, then the U.S. can raise them with us,” he said.

A man answering the phone at the Landbridge headquarters in Rizhao, in Shandong Province, said that the company paramilitary unit described on the website was focused on fighting fires, adding that it was more like “an internal team of firefighters.”

Mike Hughes, the managing director of the Australian subsidiary of Landbridge, echoed those comments, saying in a statement that the interpretations of the website were inaccurate and that it depicted the company’s firefighting personnel, not an “armed militia.”

“The material referred to has been misconstrued,” he said.

Adam Giles, chief minister of the Northern Territory, said in a statement that Landbridge had submitted its application to lease the port to the country’s Foreign Investment Review Board and that the research institute, trade unions and the opposition Australian Labor Party were trying to create a “climate of fear” around “growing relations with China” by misinterpreting Landbridge’s Chinese website.

“To suggest these processes were somehow unaware of information on the company’s own website defies belief,” Mr. Giles said. “Yet we have this so-called think tank stirring up anti-China sentiment by misrepresenting the cultural nuances of the literal translation on a website to make a flawed analysis.”

軍港租給中企惹議 澳洲總理滅火

澳洲日前宣布，將把具有重要戰略意義的達爾文港租借給中企，引發不少爭議，總理滕博爾19日發表談話表示，此舉不會影響澳洲軍隊的活動，也不會影響美軍艦在港口的出入。

BBC報導，澳洲北領地政府上個月和中國企業嵐橋集團（Landbridge Group）簽署總值5億600萬澳元（約新台幣120.2億）的租賃協議，將達爾文港碼頭，包括達爾文海上供應基地和福特山等碼頭設施等租賃給被認為和中國政府關係密切的嵐橋集團。

北領地首席部長亞當‧賈爾斯曾表示，這是一個「很棒的結果」。根據簽署的協議，嵐橋集團將持有達爾文港碼頭設施八成股份，而剩下的兩成股份仍由澳方持有，但卻惹來不少批評，因為達爾文是澳洲海岸線的戰略要地，那裡駐紮著近2500名美國海軍陸戰隊士兵。

據報導，美國總統歐巴馬日前參加APEC高峰會議時，曾向滕博爾提到這項交易，有傳聞指出兩人為此產生爭執。滕博爾隨後否認此傳聞，並表示這項交易在去年就公開，他強調不會影響澳洲軍隊的活動，也不會影響美軍艦在港口的出入。

報導指，滕博爾表示，國防官員不擔心這項交易，澳洲也沒有失去對港口的控制，「國防部和聯邦政府可以在必要的情況下，出於國防目的，控制這樣的基礎設施。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/world/australia/darwin-port-australia-chinese-military.html

紐約時報中文網翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/asia-pacific/20151116/c16australia/zh-hant/

2015-11-21 世界日報 編譯中心