Two Chinese nationals allegedly recruited by Beijing to spy on a Buddhist group in Canberra have been bailed after a magistrate compared their intelligence gathering to a student researching a school assignment.
Zheng Siru, 31, and a 25-year-old man, who cannot be named because the court suppressed his identity, fronted the ACT Magistrates Court on Thursday on charges of reckless foreign interference.
The pair, who pleaded not guilty, were allegedly working with a Chinese woman and an Australian permanent resident who was arrested in August over allegations of covertly gathering information on a Canberra chapter of the Buddhist association Guan Yin Citta. The Chinese Communist Party has persecuted fringe religious groups, including Falun Gong, labelling them as cults.
Alleged foreign interference has strained the Australia-China relationship, with Beijing’s top spy agency accusing Australian intelligence agencies of fabricating a “Chinese espionage threat”.
In assessing the pair’s bail applications on Thursday, Magistrate Glenn Theakston said the charges sounded more serious than the alleged conduct.
Theakston said Zheng had in 2022 allegedly planned to call Guan Yin Citta to find out if a particular branch was still operational, and to ask whether she could join. But he said the only evidence the call had been made was a message from Zheng saying no one had picked up the phone.
“I’m having trouble seeing where the offending is,” Theakston said, adding that a charge of reckless foreign interference required covert deception. He said there was “scant evidence” of such conduct, except for the phone call “which did not connect”.
“It’s an offence that could have happened,” he said.
Theakston said most of the information the pair gathered was discoverable through a Google search or on social media, with one exception of a search of corporate regulator records. He said the research was similar to what a school student might do for an assignment.
He noted the duo had gone further by downloading information. A police informant, identified only as AFP Officer 1, said electronic devices seized during a search warrant turned up 23.7 terabytes of data.
AFP Officer 1 said there had been no evidence of any further alleged offending in the three and a half years since the initial alleged offending in 2022.
The prosecution told the court on Thursday that the pair were a flight risk because China might issue them with new travel documents after the Australian Federal Police confiscated their passports.
Theakston granted bail, saying he did not think they were likely to abscond because of their ties to the ACT, and he could not detain them based on speculation. The court heard Zheng lived with a spouse and dependents, was a permanent resident, ran a business and owned property in Australia, and there was no evidence she had left the country since 2022.
The pair were released on bail with conditions including not contacting Chinese embassies or government officials, with an exception for family because Zheng’s father is a senior civil servant in the Chinese government.
Brittany Busch is a federal politics reporter for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.