Five Eyes Beef Up Their Defences In Beijing Economic War
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Australia and the other members of the intelligence alliance signed an agreement which empowers countries to prevent hostile business operations of the Chinese regime.
Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States have signed a new agreement which would extend their cooperation beyond the sharing of the intelligence collected from the electronic sources, on broad information related to criminal and civil operations in business and finance.
The most powerful economies that share political and defence intelligence within the Five Eyes alliance signed Multilateral Mutual Assistance and Cooperation Framework for Competition Authorities.
The agreement enhances powers of the US Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and business security agencies removing legal and institutional barriers in Australia Canada, New Zealand, and the UK that prevented sharing information, experience and conduct joined investigations into business activities.
In Australia, Chairman Mr Rod Sims of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission signed the agreement.
“The Framework sets a new standard for enforcement cooperation, strengthening our tools for international assistance and evidence gathering in the increasingly digital and global economy,” said in the statement US Assistant Attorney General Delrahim.
The agreement will help to detect and stop hostile investments of Communist China and other unfriendly foreign powers in the Western economies.
It will also strengthen Canberra's ability to prevent state and university deals with Communist China that pose an existential threat for Australia.
To avoid hostile business transactions
In Australia, both parties are struggling to build momentum for a bipartisan effort to repurchase, the strategically important for the defence of Australia, Port of Darwin from Communist China's company Landbridge, which has links to Communist China's military, according to Member of Parliament Hon. George Christensen.
In the United States, most recently, the investigators discovered that California's state retirement pension funds invested $3.1 billion worth of shares of 172 different companies linked to the Chinese Communist Party. The firms' holdings include Chinese military contractors such as China Shipbuilding Industry Corp. and companies currently sanctioned by the Commerce Department for building surveillance and internment camps in Xinjiang, such as Hikvision.
Last month US President Donald Trump halted the further investment of the United States Federal Retirement Thrift Investment into the market indexes, to which Communist China has access. With an Executive Decision Mr Trump stopped shift of almost $50 billion of U.S. government pensions to mirror the MSCI All Country World Index Ex-U.S reversing the decision of the Board from 2017.
Last year U.S. Senator Democrat Jeanne Shaheen and Republican Senator Rubio launched a bipartisan effort to pressure the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, which manages pension assets for federal employees, to “reverse a decision that is set to channel billions of US dollars into funding Chinese companies that they say support Beijing’s military, espionage and domestic security efforts.”