AUCKLAND, New Zealand—After scholar Anne-Marie Brady’s home was burglarized in the wake of a groundbreaking exposé of the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign interference, police were prevented from speaking openly, she says.

In 2017, Brady released a paper titled “Magic Weapons: China’s Political Influence Activities Under Xi Jinping.”

Her home would later be burglarized twice, in December 2017 and on Feb. 14, 2018, and her laptop was stolen. Her car was also tampered with, and she received a written threat.

The professor from the University of Canterbury maintains that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agents or sympathizers were likely involved, and when she complained to police, they were apparently unable to deal with it openly.

“I thought our police were part of that, and then we discovered, ‘Oh my God, they have been infiltrated,’” she said in her address to a symposium titled “Countering Foreign Interference” in Auckland last month.

“I had some good police officers who knew straight away, and they saw what was going on, but they couldn’t, in New Zealand’s situation, say it out loud, and they told me about problems with New Zealand Police that were worrying them terribly.”

Brady said that law enforcement had steadily come to a different understanding of the situation, that they were “reluctantly changing.” Over the past decade, the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and Government Communications Security Bureau have appeared before parliamentary inquiries to address foreign interference from Beijing.

“We’re just gonna keep the pressure on them, because we need them to be what we think that they are, which is defending our interests, and defending our laws,” Brady said.

She said that her country’s intelligence services needed the “public licence” to continue their work in this area.

In 2019, then-Detective Superintendent Stu Allsopp-Smith said there were no further lines of inquiry to pursue in Brady’s case.

“Police have taken these incidents very seriously and a lengthy, detailed and extensive investigation has been conducted,” he said, as reported by Radio New Zealand.

“This has involved all necessary police resources including detailed forensic analysis, interviews and expert advice. The burglaries and other matters reported remain unresolved at this time.”

The New Zealand Police did not respond to a request for comment.

Xi Accelerates Foreign Interference Overseas

Brady’s 2017 paper explored CCP leader Xi Jinping’s decision to accelerate foreign interference activities.

“Even more than his predecessors, Xi Jinping has led a massive expansion of efforts to shape foreign public opinion in order to influence the decision-making of foreign governments and societies,” Brady wrote.

“Xi Jinping’s ambitious strategy to harness the overseas Chinese population for the CCP’s current economic and political agenda, builds on existing practices and then takes it to a new level of ambition.”

Her findings align with a more recent Epoch Times investigation that found that Xi, in October 2022, ordered an increase in transnational repression against the spiritual practice Falun Gong and initiatives that have successfully exposed the CCP’s severe human rights abuses.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. In 1999, the CCP began a nationwide persecution under which millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been arbitrarily detained, tortured, subjected to forced labor, and even killed for their organs to fuel the regime’s lucrative transplantation industry.

Since Xi’s 2022 directive, Falun Gong communities overseas and classical performing arts group Shen Yun have recorded numerous death and bomb threats.

Between March 2024 and November 2025, Shen Yun received 134 threats, and a recent threat forced the evacuation of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese from his official resident.

No actual harm has occurred.

New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service in 2025 publicly recognized the threat of the CCP’s transnational repression.

“The People’s Republic of China’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) is an example of an organisation that engages in foreign interference activities,” the agency wrote in its Annual Threat Assessment 2025.

“The most common type of societal foreign interference that New Zealanders are likely to encounter is transnational repression. Transnational repression is activity on behalf of a foreign state intended to suppress the rights and freedoms of groups or individuals located beyond its borders.”

Former MP Urges Public to Educate MPs

Another speaker at the symposium, Simon O’Connor, a former member of Parliament for the National Party, called on his countrymen to speak out.

“We can do at least two things. We can speak up ... and draw attention to the injustices. The freedom to believe is a foundational human right,” he said.

“Secondly, we must ensure that our freedoms here in New Zealand are protected. ... We must encourage friends and family to express these freedoms as well.”

During this year’s upcoming general election, O’Connor said, there is scope to engage with parliamentarians.

“Invite them to your events, while also warning them of those community associations which have ties to the CCP,” he said.

“As we all know, such groups use MPs to give themselves legitimacy, both as individuals and groups. We know the chilling effect on our local communities when MPs are seen cozying up with CCP-aligned individuals.

“I do want to stress, many MPs, councillors, and mayors do not fully appreciate this. And so each of us has a role to educate them.”

Margo MacVicar contributed to this report.