Fear or greed: what drives the response to Chinese investment in Australia?

By Kelsey Munro
Updated August 22 2016 - 12:43am, first published August 20 2016 - 12:15am
Scott Morrison cited "national security" as the reason to block the Ausgrid deal.  Photo: Bradley Kanaris
Scott Morrison cited "national security" as the reason to block the Ausgrid deal. Photo: Bradley Kanaris
Professor Peter Drysdale of ANU found Australian exports to China will still grow by 28 per cent. Photo: Sasha Woolley
Professor Peter Drysdale of ANU found Australian exports to China will still grow by 28 per cent. Photo: Sasha Woolley

Late on a frigid afternoon two days before Christmas last year, at a power station in western Ukraine, a worker was startled to see his computer's mouse suddenly lurch across the screen of its own accord. As he watched, it clicked through to the controls for the circuit breakers, and shut down one after another of the region's substations, locking him out. The remote intrusion was repeated at two other stations, and light and heat was cut off from hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian homes.