By Stella Qiu
SYDNEY (Reuters) – When the Labor Party’s Jerome Laxale won the Sydney seat of Bennelong from the Liberals at the 2022 election, votes from Chinese Australians angry about then-prime minister Scott Morrison’s spat with Beijing were instrumental in his victory.
Now Laxale and other politicians are using social media including Xiaohongshu, a Chinese lifestyle app also called RedNote, and other campaign strategies to appeal to Chinese communities who will again be a crucial bloc in the upcoming election.
“If you want to communicate with your electorate, you need to go where your electorate are and some of them are on Xiaohongshu,” said Laxale, who has handed out 30,000 red envelopes with QR codes to his personal accounts on Xiaohongshu and another Chinese app, WeChat.
“Labor has only ever won Bennelong twice,” added Laxale, who took the Chinese-heavy seat by a margin of just 1% in 2022. “We’ve never held onto it. If Bennelong do choose me, it’d be history.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, battling a plunge in popularity and polls showing a neck-and-neck race, will be counting on holding seats like Bennelong at the May 3 election.
But opposition leader Peter Dutton is also pushing to secure the support of Chinese Australians, many of whom abandoned the Liberal-led conservative coalition government in 2022 over Morrison’s strident criticism of China during the COVID pandemic.
The rupture in bilateral ties – with Beijing imposing trade sanctions on A$20 billion ($13 billion) worth of Australian goods – has been largely repaired by Labor, with trade now flowing unrestricted.
But with cost of living pressures biting and the economy growing at a crawl, that may not be enough to save Albanese.
CHINESE SWING
Dutton launched his unofficial election campaign this year in the seat of Chisholm in Victoria, which has the highest proportion of residents with Chinese ancestry nationwide at 28.9%. Bennelong has the second-highest.
A Liberal Party review of its failed 2022 campaign showed rebuilding relationships with the Chinese communities was a priority, given the swing against the party was 6.6% in the top 15 seats by Chinese ancestry, compared to a 3.7% swing in other seats.
Most of the top 15 Chinese-heavy seats are considered marginal, won by 6% or less.
“Dutton has been making a concerted effort to demonstrate to those communities that the Liberal Party has shared values with them,” said Tony Barry, a director at polling firm Redbridge.
“Certainly he has advanced the Liberal Party’s vote share in those communities since the last election undoubtedly. Whether it’s enough or not, time will tell.”
WHAT SECURITY RISKS?
Australian politicians are no stranger to Chinese apps, having used WeChat in previous elections to woo Chinese voters. But Xiaohongshu, an app mostly used to share lifestyle content and product reviews, has become the new favourite.
A Reuters tally shows at least 21 politicians are on the app, with some boasting thousands of followers.
Keith Wolahan, the Liberal MP for Menzies in Victoria, has almost 7,800 followers on Xiaohongshu, comfortably topping his 2,600 followers on X and 900 on TikTok.
The app’s growing popularity is partly because Xiaohongshu is not banned on government devices, unlike other China-linked tech including TikTok and AI app DeepSeek.
But there are still security concerns and all MPs interviewed by Reuters say they don’t use it on government devices.
Meanwhile, Xiaohongshu appears to have put its own checks on political content. Searches of all Australian politicians on the app returned no direct result of their accounts and their posts were not recommended to users that are not following them. Xiaohongshu did not respond to a Reuters’ request for comment.
“Even though you’re just uploading a video of you going to Chinatown, maybe the Chinese platform would say we don’t want too many politicians on the platform because it might get politically sensitive,” said Wanning Sun, a professor at UTS.
Politicians’ profiles can still be found via QR codes and sharing links, a reason why Laxale is handing out the red envelopes to local residents with QR codes during Lunar New Year celebrations.
COMMON PROBLEMS
Like many voters, Chinese-Australians are expected to back leaders with the most convincing plans to ease pressures of rising costs, high interest rates and the continuing housing crisis.
The Labor Party is hoping Chinese Australians will appreciate the fact that relationship with Beijing is now back to normal, while the Liberal Party, which has softened its hawkish view on China, now says it wants bilateral trade to grow further and will support small businesses.
“There’s a higher percentage of small business owners in the Chinese diaspora, and they have been particularly sensitive to the higher interest rates, higher inflation and for us here in Victoria, the higher taxes,” said Wolahan, the Liberal MP for Menzies.
Frank Guo, a mortgage broker in the seat of Bennelong, agrees. He voted for Labor in 2022 for the first time since becoming an Australian citizen in 2010, seeking to oust the Liberals over their anti-China rhetoric.
“I will probably vote for Liberal this time,” he said. “After all, the party represents the interest of my class.”
($1 = 1.5775 Australian dollars)
(Editing by Praveen Menon and Lincoln Feast.)
