The fact that the WeChat account of opposition leader Anthony Albanese was untouched tells you everything you need to know. China wants Mr Albanese to win the next election and what’s more, it wants everyone to know that Mr Albanese is its preferred candidate. That’s hardly a surprise. China has very warm relations with Labor premiers, particularly Victorian premier Daniel Andrews. No doubt if Mr Albanese were elected, China would hope not only to reinstate its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) agreement with Victoria, but to ink a BRI agreement with Australia’s federal government, just as it has with New Zealand.
Mr Albanese, for his part, used an address at the National Press Club this week to praise China effusively saying it deserved ‘a great deal of credit for lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty’ and claiming that it was ‘an economic achievement, the likes of which we haven’t seen, ever, in human history’. This is absurd, disgraceful stuff. Absurd because the only reason that the Chinese people have suffered such crippling poverty was because of the ruthless and economically bankrupt policies that Chairman Mao pursued in the first place. Once Mao died and China began to partially open its economy, introducing its version of state-sponsored crony capitalism, it embarked on the long process of catching up with the West. Yet even today, China is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with appalling poverty in some regions. Worse, much of its rapid economic growth in recent years has been achieved using forced labour, concentration camps, and most horrific of all, the farming and sale of human organs.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/01/chinese-whispers-3/
Any politician worth his salt (which very few are) should have condemned these tactics but not old Albo.
Brush up on your Mandarin.
