His experience reflects the price paid by many CCP critics who, in exercising their democratic rights in Australia, cannot escape the long arm of the Chinese government – particularly on university campuses.

A 2021 Human Rights Watch report compiled one of the most comprehensive accounts to date of CCP influence stifling free speech on Australian campuses. It found that Chinese students would often self-censor comments critical of the Chinese government for fear they would be reported to authorities or harassed by their pro-Beijing peers.

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Universities, in collaboration with Australia’s security agencies, have since beefed up foreign interference guidelines aimed at countering CCP influence on campuses, and have adopted free speech charters – though some have been more proactive than others in tackling on-campus intimidation.

The surveillance of Chinese international students in Australia is part of the broader picture of what Amnesty International has called “transnational repression”.

In a report released this week, the organisation detailed a pattern of Chinese students at universities in western Europe, Canada and the US being monitored and intimidated by Chinese authorities or their agents, including photographing them at protests and pressuring their families back home in China.

“The Chinese authorities have honed a strategy to curb students’ human rights wherever they are in the world,” Sarah Brooks, China director of Amnesty International, said.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman dismissed Amnesty’s report as “smear and vilification”, saying “the vast majority of Chinese nationals overseas are proud of the development achievements of their home country”.

Amnesty’s report also contained accounts of politically active students being harassed by other Chinese students with pro-government views, bearing a similarity with the abuse Aaron says he encountered during his protest outside Sydney University last year.

During one altercation, he says his sunglasses were snatched from his face, thrown on the ground and kicked, causing them to break. In another incident, he says he was assaulted after he followed a group of student-age Chinese nationals, who had been harassing him, onto a nearby bus. At the next stop, he claims he was repeatedly kicked in the chest by one man with such force that his Apple watch falsely detected he had been in a car crash.

He reported the abuse to NSW Police, which launched an investigation but was ultimately unable to identify those responsible. “The investigation is currently suspended pending further information,” a police spokesperson said.

Sydney University also investigated a complaint Aaron made through its channels and identified one student involved in destroying his posters. The university informed him in a written response to his complaint that it had no jurisdiction to act because the posters were affixed to a bus stop outside the campus grounds. It nonetheless sent a caution letter to the student warning him that such actions, if repeated on campus, could breach the university’s free speech charter.

The university declined to comment on Aaron’s case citing privacy concerns, but said it routinely provided support for students to peacefully protest on campus.

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“When we are aware a student may be at risk, we work to provide appropriate support and assistance – and if we find members of our community have violated our codes of conduct, we don’t hesitate to take disciplinary action in line with our policies,” a spokesperson said.

Several months after his university protest, CCP authorities tightened the screws on Aaron again, banning the social media accounts he used to communicate with friends and family back home, severing a key link to his life back in China. This, too, is a common tactic in the arsenal of the Chinese state in its efforts to silence dissent abroad.

“I am socially dead to people in my past,” he said. “I lost all of my contacts with my friends and classmates. I had no preparation; they were all gone in the one day.”

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