Beijing has blocked Charles Sturt University professor Clive Hamilton and Alex Joske of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute thinktank from entering China, taking largely symbolic action against two of Australia’s highest-profile critics of the Chinese Communist Party.

The state media announcement of the ban on 24 September called the researchers and their work “anti-China”. The report in the official Global Times also mentioned Australia’s decision earlier this month to revoke visas for two Chinese humanities scholars because of a security agency investigation.

Professor Hamilton, a professor of public ethics, began researching Chinese interference in Australian political and civil life after witnessing Chinese students disrupt a pro-Tibet protest outside Parliament House in 2008. He followed up his influential 2018 book Silent Invasion with this year’s Hidden Hand: Exposing How the CCP is Reshaping the World. 

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