[File photo]

Australia’s security watchdog on Wednesday reportedly named China as the most extreme threat to the Australian national security, a claim denounced by experts on both sides as “groundless.”

During a Canberra hearing examining proposed new laws to crack down on “foreign interference and espionage,” the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) said that Australia is now facing an unprecedented level of foreign interference and espionage, worse than during the Cold War, reported The Australian.

“Espionage and foreign influence is not something we think might happen, or possibly could happen, it is happening now against Australian interests in Australia and Australian interests abroad,” Peter Vickery, deputy director general of ASIO, was quoted as saying by The Australian.

Though Vickery refused to reveal further information or publicly name the countries that pose a threat, Australian media outlets have unearthed that China is listed as an “extreme” threat on a secret country-by-country counter- intelligence index compiled by ASIO.

According to news portal 9news.com, the index has five levels, including negligible, low, medium, high, and extreme, while a government sourced confirmed that China topped the ASIO’s list as the most extreme threat to national security.

The news is an ironic contradiction to Australian authorities’ official announcement just two days ago, in which several political figures have backpedalled on suggestions that China is a threat to Australia’s national security, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull telling reporters, “We don’t see threats from our neighbors in the region.”

“Vickery’s claim is clearly an overreaction toward China’s peaceful rise and development. During the 1990s, Australia bugged the Chinese Embassy, a move that was criticized by even Australian media outlets and public. From the perspective of security, China is the victim,” Yu Lei, a research fellow at the Oceania Research Center of Sun Yat-Sen University, told Global Times.

Australian authorities have long been criticized by media outlets for covering up their own misdeeds while shifting the blame to China. According to Global Times, China’s national security department claimed that Australian secret agents would “get close to Chinese people working or living overseas to collect information or even encourage them to subvert China,” while in the name of avoiding “Chinese spy threats,” Australian intelligence operatives are “closely monitoring Chinese people and the Chinese Embassy in Australia.”

Australian security authorities’ “hysteria” has also been criticized by Australian scholars. In an article published by The Australian on Jan. 30, Graham Richardson, a political commentator, noted that “clearing thinking rather than hysteria helped put the government train back on the rail.”

“For far too long, casting a friendly eye in the direction of China has been a hazardous undertaking in this country,” said Richardson. “We have made a big noise about soft Chinese power in our country in a move that really got under the Chinese skin. All this is to a country that is responsible for 25 percent of all trade, both imports and exports.”

“The Australian authorities, from my perspective, often use China to provoke fear, in an effort to gather public support. It feels like the horrific theory of the ‘Yellow Peril’ is rising again in this country, dampening the two nations’ ties,” Luis Fan, a 32-year-old Chinese Australian, told People’s Daily Online.