For years, a group directed by the Chinese Communist Party has been operating quietly in Manila, part of a global network designed to advance Beijing’s interests by advocating the party’s position on Taiwan under the guise of community engagement.
The organisation is the Philippine Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China (PCPPRC), and its activities have attracted media coverage in the past month, including a report by one of the authors of this article, Ray Powell.
Perhaps this attention will prompt the Philippine government to consider that it has a golden opportunity to respond with some long overdue legislation to counter foreign interference. If so, Australia is well positioned to provide invaluable assistance given its own recent experiences—both positive and negative—in countering Beijing’s political influence machine. Canberra’s own work in identifying the nature of the challenge and then drafting, passing and applying counter-interference law to the PCPPRC’s Australian sister organisation offers Manila a useful case study.
In 2018, Australia passed the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, landmark legislation intended to shine a light on exactly this kind of foreign interference. We were both serving as US officials in Canberra at the time—James Carouso as charge d’affaires and Ray Powell as defence attache. We saw the optimism surrounding the law’s passage, which was considered a robust tool to protect democratic institutions from disruptive foreign interference.
While the law was indeed groundbreaking, an Australian parliamentary committee has indicated that implementation has fallen short of the ambition. Despite early successes in registering responsible and compliant organisations under the scheme, it took more than four years—until February 2023—for the Australian government to compel registration of its first recalcitrant case.
That recalcitrant group happened to be the Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China (ACPPRC), the Australian version of Manila’s PCPPRC.
The delay in Australia reveals how legislative intent can break down upon application by a government bureaucracy dealing with a politically charged action. The ACPPRC is a known quantity; it’s a well-documented node in a global United Front network. Even so, for nearly half a decade it managed to continue its operations without formal registration under the legal scheme designed to capture it.
The eventual listing of the ACPPRC was indeed a victory for transparency, but an alarmingly tardy one. It highlighted one of many flaws that the parliamentary committee review identified in 2024 when it reported the scheme had operated with limited effectiveness, low registration numbers and weak enforcement, allowing many foreign state actors to continue operating unabated.
For Canberra this is a pressing problem requiring new legislative and bureaucratic attention. For the Philippines, however, these are valuable lessons for its own initiatives. The exposure of the PCPPRC provides the political momentum to act, while Australia’s experience provides both a useful conceptual roadmap and pointed warnings to heed.
So what lessons should the Philippines take from Australia’s experience?
First, seize the momentum created by recent events. Australia’s parliament moved in 2018 when a series of interference scandals catalysed public opinion and legislative attention to produce the necessary call to action. The Philippines is facing a similar moment—one that should not be wasted.
Second, legislation is more than bold headlines. Laws without swift and effective enforcement mechanisms run the risk of irrelevance. Australia’s delay allowing the ACPPRC to continue its influence operations unchecked was a problem, but Manila’s civil society is under even greater strain from China’s sophisticated political warfare machine and cannot afford a similar lag.
Third, clear definitions matter. Despite their branding, the ACPPRC and PCPPRC are not standard community groups; they are easily identifiable as state-directed instruments of influence. Philippine legislation must be calibrated to identify and register such entities based on their function and funding, not just their stated mission or nation of origin.
Finally, transparency is a powerful disinfectant, but only if we know where to look. The listing of the ACPPRC, however late, signalled to the Australian public that this was not an ordinary civic group. Note that the Australian legislation did not ban or restrict the ACPPRC but only required transparency about its funding and control. The Philippines has the opportunity to build a system that provides that clarity from day one, but only if it absorbs the lessons—both positive and negative—that Australia is uniquely positioned to pass on.
The threat of foreign interference is not theoretical; it is happening now and the stakes for the Philippines are very high. By learning from Australia’s successes, missteps and corrections, Manila can build a counter-interference regime that is robust, responsive and ready to defend its democracy and its sovereignty.