Australia’s elite class really learned nothing from the pandemic years – least of all about China. Whether or not China engineered the virus, and whether or not it was deliberately released or leaked, the fact that China’s months of lies and cover-ups meant that the pandemic was far worse than it might otherwise have been.
China’s behaviour even when the virus was out of the bag was little better: secretively buying up stockpiles of medical gear from around the world for its own use, then flooding the world with shoddy replacements in return. Not to mention its brutal bullying against Australia, for daring to question its lies.
Yet, the instant China took its bootheel off just the slightest, the same cavalcade of cronies, useful idiots and the unconscionably greedy, lined straight back up, with their hands out.
China also got its money’s worth for the rivers of gold it poured into Labor’s election coffers.
Anthony Albanese’s push to stabilise relations with China is facing its biggest test yet as calls grow for the prime minister to withdraw from a planned trip to Beijing this year unless China removes bounties on Hong Kong activists living in Australia.
Digest that: a foreign government, a genocidal communist dictatorship no less, is placing bounties on Australian citizens – and our political leaders are scurrying to take the knee.
Hong Kong has offered $HK$1 million ($192,000) bounties for information leading to the arrest of eight pro-democracy activists including Australian citizen Kevin Yam and Ted Hui, a former Hong Kong legislator who now lives in Adelaide […]
The bounty saga has also led to renewed pressure on Australia’s top legal representatives remaining in Hong Kong – including three former High Court justices – to resign from its court of appeal.
And what’s Albo’s response?
Albanese confirmed last month he had been invited to Beijing and said he would “finalise the date at an appropriate time”.
A spokesman for the prime minister declined to comment on Wednesday when asked whether he still planned to make the trip.
The trip has long been expected to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Gough Whitlam’s first visit to China as prime minister in October 1973.
A trip made, it should be remembered, while the Cultural Revolution, which claimed millions of lives and destroyed most China’s cultural heritage, was in full swing. Kow-towing to murderous communists just seems to be in Labor’s DNA.
The opposition’s acting foreign affairs spokesman, James Paterson, said China had committed an “extraordinary overreach” by issuing the bounties.
He said he was concerned by the prospect of Albanese “smiling and shaking hands” with Chinese President Xi Jinping as if nothing had happened.
Two Australians, journalist Cheng Lei and writer Yang Hengjun, remain behind bars in Beijing on vague national security charges.
“The Chinese government should withdraw the bounties before he [Albanese] goes,” said Paterson, who is regarded as one of the strongest China hawks in parliament. “Kevin Yam is an Australian citizen engaging in political debate in Australia and now he has a bounty on his head.
“They are reaching into our democracy to try to shut down someone who is writing op-eds against the Communist Party of China.”
Yam, a Melbourne-based lawyer who previously lived in Hong Kong, said: “I don’t see any reason why Albanese shouldn’t go to Beijing as long as he stands firm and doesn’t give ground on fundamental red lines on human rights.”
Yeah, fat chance of that, mate.
Albanese said on Wednesday the government was concerned about the bounties, describing them as “just unacceptable”.
“We will continue to co-operate with China where we can, but we will disagree where we must,” he told Channel Nine.
The Age
In other words, he’ll shut up and smile gormlessly while he bends the knee to Emperor Xi, and holds out his hand for more cash.