Fifty years ago, the grainy black and white image of Gough Whitlam with his ear pressed against the listening wall at Beijing’s Temple of Heaven led to the joke: What is being said to Gough? Answer: ‘Mei you!’ – the ubiquitous response by Chinese service staff in restaurants and stores in those days, which loosely means, “don’t have any”.

They were the days of shortage economics. Today, China is a cornucopia of goods and services, and the workshop of the world in so many industries. On Monday, the wall might have said “common prosperity” to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Hardly a wag, but beguiling. That Albanese was prepared to channel Whitlam on his first visit as prime minister to China, marking his predecessor’s visit 50 years ago, is significant.