From beauty pageant queen to king of the deal: How glamorous Chinese diplomat who helped strike controversial agreement between Victoria and Beijing rose to the top

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A Chinese consultant who advised Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews on his controversial Belt and Road deal with China rose to prominence after winning a beauty pageant.

Jean Dong, 33, runs a company which was paid $36,850 of taxpayer cash to consult Mr Andrews before he signed the October 2019 deal without approval from the federal government. 

The Belt and Road Initiative is a Chinese government strategy to build infrastructure and invest abroad, with deals signed all over the world.

As trade tensions with China mount, Mr Andrews has been urged to scrap the agreement, which he claims creates jobs for Victorians.

Federal Liberal MP Andrew Hastie told Daily Mail Australia that Mr Andrews had 'gone off the reservation by conducting his own foreign policy with China'. 

In a series of reports by The Australian, it has been revealed that Ms Dong was a key figure behind the controversial deal - and she has an interesting backstory.

Ms Dong studied commerce at Adelaide University before joining consultancy giant PwC as an ambitious 21-year-old.

Chinese consultant Jean Dong (centre) who advised Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews on his controversial Belt and Road deal with China rose to prominence after winning a beauty pageant

The Belt and Road Imitative has been criticised by Western governments as a stealthy expansion of Chinese influence. Pictured: Chinese President Xi Jinping

In 2011, aged 24, she won the Australian branch of the Miss Chinese Cosmos Pageant, a global beauty competition for women of Chinese heritage.

She returned the following year to present the crown to her successor at Melbourne's Crown Casino, reportedly watched by a host of influential Chinese business-people and political figures including Mike Yang and Gladys Liu. 

Mr Yang was an adviser to then opposition leader Mr Andrews while Ms Liu, now a federal MP, was an adviser to Liberal Premier Ted Baillieu.  

Ms Dong then set up several consulting companies and in 2014 claimed in an online profile that she was 'heavily involved in advising Victorian state government on ­Australian-Chinese engagement'. 

In 2015, aged 28, she set up her Australia-China Belt and Road Initiative company, which later consulted the Andrews government.

The glamorous businesswoman, who has a background in connecting China with the rest of the world, boasted about her political influence in a YouTube video titled 'Journey of influence'. 

The video includes photographs of her with former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull (pictured), then Tasmanian Liberal premier Will Hodgman and former Labor foreign minister Bob Carr

Pictured: Jean Dong, left, with former foreign minister Bob Carr and his wife, Helena

The footage provides a look into Ms Dong's life, from her early days as a student journalist in Beijing to rubbing shoulders with political leaders, including former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and prominent Labor figure Bob Carr.

The footage begins with Ms Dong standing on a hill with the Melbourne skyline behind her as she speaks about the people who have inspired her before she talks of her own success.

The video includes photographs of her with Mr Turnbull, Mr Carr and the then Tasmanian Liberal premier Will Hodgman. 

The former Chinese television journalist moved to Australia to study at the University of Adelaide. After graduating in 2009 she moved to Melbourne to study international law before taking on a consulting position at PwC. 

'At the age of 21 I presented and convinced the PwC Australian leadership to consider Asia growth as a priority strategy and to achieve a clear advantage over its competitors,' she says in the YouTube video.

'At the age of 26 I successfully facilitated a mutual and long-term economic collaboration agreement through China-Australia free-trade agreement for both countries.'   

Calls are growing for Victoria's labor premier Daniel Andrews (pictured in China's Tiananmen Square) to review his controversial Belt and Road agreement with Beijing

The video was filmed while she was working as the managing director of Spark Corporation Group, The Australian reported.

The company focused on Chinese investment in Australian agriculture and resources.

Ms Dong described it as 'expansion of Australian businesses into Chinese markets through strategic partnerships'.

Mr Andrews is believed to have first become connected with Ms Dong through his former adviser, Mike Yang.

Mr Yang and Ms Dong both attended a youth delegation to China in 2014. There were only 30 delegates to the Beijing conference.

The well-connected Labor Party operative is believed to be the reason behind Mr Andrews' strong relationship with China's communist government. 

Ms Dong was later tasked with promoting the Belt and Road Initiative to Mr Andrews. 

During that time her pro-Chinese company was also paid to provide advice on the deal.

The company was awarded two taxpayer-funded contracts advising on China's global commercial play in 2017-18 and 2019-20 worth $36,850 in total, The Australian reported.   

The Andrews government did not immediately disclose the information, which it blamed on an administrative error.

'The advice from ACBRI provided valuable insights into opportunities for Victoria arising from the BRI,' a government spokesman told the publication. 

'An administrative error led to the first of the engagements not being published in the relevant department's 2017-18 annual ­report. The second of the engagements will be reported… as scheduled.'

 The glamorous businesswoman with a background in connecting China with the rest of the world boasted about her political influence in a YouTube video, titled: 'Journey of influence'

Premier Daniel Andrews signed up to the controversial Belt and Road Initiative that provides loans and investment in infrastructure projects

Ms Dong has praised leader Xi Jinping for his handling of COVID-19. 

She was interviewed by the Chin­ese Communist Party's official newspaper, Guangming Daily, on March 27, and described Mr Xi s a 'global saviour' in his response to the coronavirus pandemic, The Australian reported.

She praised him for 'providing confidence and directions for the global fight over the epidemic and economic growth'.   

Ms Dong said the Chinese president had taken the lead in the fight to get the pandemic under control. 

According to Ms Dong, other nations are turning to China to imitate their handling of the virus. 

'China is the first major country to constrain the epidemic and resume work smoothly, therefore the Australian friends around me paid special attention to President Xi's speech at the G20 leaders video conference,' she said.  

What is the Belt and Road Initiative?

Unveiled in 2013 in Kazakhstan and Indonesia by Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Belt and Road Initiative is the most ambitious infrastructure project in modern world history.

The multitrillion-dollar initiative involves hundreds of projects, most of them built by Chinese contractors and financed by loans from Chinese state-owned banks, across an arc of 65 countries from the South Pacific through Asia to Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping put their palms on a screen during a gas pipeline launching ceremony in Astana in 2013

The Belt and Road Initiative, essentially a Modern Silk Road, is made up of a 'belt' of six overland corridors that direct trade to and from China and a maritime 'road' of shipping routes and seaports from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean.

The initiative countries account for 40 per cent of global gross domestic product growth and 44 per cent of the world's population, according to an analysis from Morgan Stanley.

As of July 2018, more than 100 countries and international organisations had signed Belt and Road cooperation documents with China, extending the initiative's scope from the Eurasian continent to Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the South Pacific region. 

The Chinese government calls the initiative 'a bid to enhance regional connectivity and embrace a brighter future'.

Other observes and critics, however, see it as a push for the country's position as a global economic power with a China-centered trading network while burying some countries under massive debt.