The Philippines will be sending a team to Australia to learn about their efforts to guard against foreign interference, as Manila’s top security adviser admitted that domestic laws are outdated, and do little to protect against malign influence operations and modern-day espionage.
National Security Adviser (NSA) Eduardo Año made the disclosure Tuesday evening, August 13, in a gathering of select news reporters and editors hosted by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict.
As the NSA, Año is co-vice chairperson of the task force, as well as similar task forces such as the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea.
Año confirmed an exclusive Rappler report on a supposed Chinese editor whom intelligence sources confirmed to be a Ministry of State Security (MSS) agent in the Philippines.
Zhang “Steve” Song, who entered Manila as bureau chief or chief correspondent of the Shanghai Wenhui Daily, had allegedly built, since 2021, an influence and espionage network that infiltrated key areas in Philippine government, media, and critical industries like energy and power that, according to intelligence sources, “threatens [the Philippines’] national security, political stability, and sovereignty.”
Año, speaking to the media late August 13, noted that Zhang was an “agent of influence.”
The NSC’s spokesperson, Assistant Director General Jonathan Malaya, had earlier said in an ABS-CBN interview that even as the agency’s intelligence unit was still “verifying” the Rappler report, he was “not surprised if these things are happening.”
“It is part and parcel of Chinese malign influence,” he explained.
Australia is among the handful of countries that the Philippines is strategic partners with. The upgrade in diplomatic ties was preceded by the signing of a military agreement between the two countries.
Manila’s pre-Cold War laws
Philippine laws on national security are outdated — as in, pre-Cold-War-era-old.
Año acknowledged that Philippine provisions on treason and espionage were written at a different time — in the 1930s, to be precise.
The Revised Penal Code defines espionage as unauthorized entry into “a warship, fort, or naval or military establishment or reservation to obtain any information, plans, photographs, or other data of a confidential nature relative to the defense of the Philippine Archipelago,” or disclosing the content of those confidential information to a foreign nation.
Not surprisingly, existing laws do not cover acts that fall under the malign influence or interference operations.
It’s why Philippine security personnel are set to visit Australia to learn from their existing legislation — and how they’re trying to revise it, nearly a decade since it was put in place.
In Australia, foreign interference is defined as acts “carried out by, or on behalf of, a foreign power; which is coercive, deceptive, clandestine or corrupting; and is contrary to Australia’s sovereignty.”
They make a distinction between interference and mere foreign influence activities. Canberra’s Counter Foreign Interference Coordination Centre notes that foreign influence is merely “the routine diplomatic influence practiced by all governments.”
In the case of Zhang, he was in Manila as a journalist but was not registered with the government’s International Press Center (IPC), nor was he a member of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP), an independently-run organization for both Filipino and foreign journalists who work for foreign media organizations in the Philippines.
He was also not part of the Chinese embassy’s roster of diplomats.
What’s in the books in Australia?
In 2018, under former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull approved a package of new laws meant to “[prevent] foreign interference in the country,” according to a BBC report.
The move came as tensions between Beijing and Canberra were at an all-time high.
Turnbull denied the laws were aimed at China then, but would admit in 2023, long after he left the post, that the “key purpose” of those foreign interference laws were to expose the marks that the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department had made in Australia. Turnbull made that belated disclosure as Australia’s parliament was reviewing foreign interference laws to check on their efficacy thus far.
Canberra’s foreign interference laws created, among other things, a public online register for foreign influence, according to an April 2024 report in The Conversation. It also required Australians to register communication activities, as well as lobbying done on behalf of a “foreign principal.”
Macquarie University’s Shireen Morris and Sarah Sorial, writing for The Conversation, said: “But the scheme is not working to increase transparency or prevent foreign interference. The registration site attracts little traffic, and most Australians probably don’t know it exists.”
Both Morris and Sorial also expressed concern that the law would “discourage normal international engagement” among Australians. Academics were among those who expressed alarm.
The two experts added: “The registration scheme is ineffective in its design. Why would any foreign actor who is trying to secretly undermine Australian democracy voluntarily disclose their activities, in compliance with the legal system they seek to subvert?”
Following its review of the 2018 law, Australia’s Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security said in its March 2024 report that “given the significant flaws in the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, substantial reform is required if it is to meet its original intent and justify the compliance burden and resources required to administer it.”
“Mere tinkering will not be sufficient,” it added.
In December 2023 — months after the parliamentary joint committee began its review of the law — a Melbourne businessman and “one-time Liberal Party political candidate and member,” according to Australia-based ABC News, was the first person to be found guilty of violating the country’s foreign interference laws.
A jury found Di Sanh “Sunny” Duong “guilty of trying to secretly influence former federal minister Alan Tudge to advance the aims of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” according to the same ABC News report. – Rappler.com