China denies entry to Liberal MPs Andrew Hastie and James Paterson

Liberal MPs Andrew Hastie and James Paterson say the Chinese government has rejected their plans to visit the country on a study tour next month because of objections about their “frankness about the Chinese Communist party”.

The two government MPs issued a short statement on Friday night saying the planned visit was off, and the organisers of the trip, China Matters, issued a separate statement confirming the Chinese embassy had informed them “that at this time Mr Hastie and Senator Paterson are not welcome on a China Matters study tour to Beijing”.

China Matters, a thinktank established to promote positive relations between Canberra and Beijing, suggested pre-publicity about the study tour was a contributing factor to the Chinese government pulling the plug on the visit.

“It is most unfortunate that the names of the politicians who had accepted our invitation to join the study tour in December became public in advance,” a statement issued by the institute said.

“We believe that these politicians accepted our invitation in good faith with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding of the People’s Republic of China and of sharing their views with PRC interlocutors”.

“Disappointingly, the media attention that ensued created an environment which was no longer conducive to our goal of facilitating low-key discussions and exchanging differing points of view behind closed doors. A guiding principle of these study tours has been that one publicly shares one’s study tour experiences upon return to Australia”.

Hastie and Paterson have both been publicly critical about the Chinese regime, flagging human rights abuses against Uighurs in Xinjiang province and attempts to exert soft power in Australian universities.

Hastie, a former SAS officer, is currently the chair of federal parliament’s intelligence and security committee. In a widely publicised opinion piece for Nine newspapers published in August, Hastie accused China of trying to supplant the United States as the dominant power in the Indo-Pacific region.

He argued that Australia needed to balance its security interests with the US and trade interests with China but suggested remaining “true to our democratic convictions” and “resetting the terms of engagement with China to preserve our sovereignty” as the most important goals of foreign policy.

Australia suffered from an “intellectual failure [that] makes us institutionally weak”, Hastie said, warning that its sovereignty and freedom would be diminished if it did not confront the challenge of a rising China.

“The West once believed that economic liberalisation would naturally lead to democratisation in China,” he wrote. “This was our Maginot Line. It would keep us safe, just as the French believed their series of steel and concrete forts would guard them against the German advance in 1940. But their thinking failed catastrophically.

“The French had failed to appreciate the evolution of mobile warfare. Like the French, Australia has failed to see how mobile our authoritarian neighbour has become.”

China responded forcefully to Hastie’s arguments. In a statement following publication of the piece the Chinese embassy said: “We strongly deplore the Australian federal MP Andrew Hastie’s rhetoric on ‘China threat’ which lays bare his Cold-War mentality and ideological bias.

“We urge certain Australian politicians to take off their ‘colored lens’ and view China’s development path in an objective and rational way. They should make efforts to promote mutual trust between China and Australia, instead of doing the opposite.”

Cancellation of the visit comes amid rising tensions in Hong Kong. Both the foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, and the shadow foreign minister Penny Wong have expressed concerns about the escalating violence in the city, and have urged de-escalation.