Andrew Bolt: Anthony Albanese just took a b**ch slap from China. Now we must prepare for war.

After boasting so often he was “stabilising” our relationship with the communist dictatorship, Albanese didn’t want to admit he’d actually been played like a trout when three Chinese warships turned up in our waters.

China has just bitch-slapped Anthony “Handsome Boy” Albanese – and Australians must scramble to prepare for war.

The shame of it! The Prime Minister on Saturday was still trying to play down China sending three warships off the NSW coast, where they started a live-fire exercise.

After boasting so often he was “stabilising” our relationship with the communist dictatorship, Albanese didn’t want to admit he’d been actually played like a trout.

The worst he said of this provocation and threat was: “I think they could have given notice.”

Er, prime minister, China just did. It gave you notice – a hard slap of your face – to show who’s boss. And you just took it, proving it’s right.

How weak this man is. Exactly what does Albanese think these three Chinese ships were up to, firing guns off our coast?

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he should have been notified by China about its three warships off the NSW coast. Picture: NewsWire

They were bored? They suddenly needed practice, and had to come here for it?

Be serious. The rest of us, at least, must get the message China has now sent three times in two weeks: that Australia counts for nothing, and must shut up as China gets ready for a war in our region.

The timeline is so revealing of just what China really thinks of this prime minister it’s flattered as “Handsome Boy”, and who dictator Xi Jinping last year praised for being “on the right path of improvement and development” of relations with his regime.

On February 11, a Chinese warplane dropped flares just 30m in front of an RAAF surveillance plane in international waters in the South China Sea, which China is trying to steal.

Albanese said our diplomats protested to Beijing, but China just told him to get stuffed. Australia was “the villain” and had “provoked China”.

To rub it in, China sent a frigate, cruiser and replenishment vessel to sail around our northern coast and then to within 150 nautical miles of Sydney, in our exclusive economic zone.

Three Chinese warships were spotted sailing off the country's east coast but our nation’s leader had no idea. Picture: Australian Defence Force

On Friday, the ships – then in international waters in the Tasman Sea, 640km off Eden – held a live-fire exercise with no official warning, forcing three Qantas, Virgin and Air New Zealand jets already in flight to detour.

That’s what Albanese on Saturday mildly deplored as not following “best practice”. But Foreign Minister Penny Wong was alarmed enough to complain directly to her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, late on Friday at the G20 meeting in Johannesburg.

Yet China just slapped Albanese again. The next day, its three ships repeated the insult by holding another live-fire exercise on Saturday afternoon, again with minimal warning.

How much clearer could China be? Albanese’s complaints mean nothing, and this was meant to prove it.

Oh, and another reminder of our weakness: Albanese reassured us the Chinese ships were being shadowed by the navy.

But, er, not by our navy. Do we even have a seaworthy ship in the area?

No, the Chinese warships were being followed by a lone New Zealand frigate – one eighth of what’s left of its navy since the ninth ship sank last year.

So here’s the big picture.

Albanese fell completely for the naive idea that he could make friends with China. Picture: Australian Defence Force

First, Albanese fell completely for the naive idea that he could make friends with China, an aggressive dictatorship.

But China wants only vassals. President Xi Jinping plans to have China replace the US as the world’s superpower, and said taking over democratic Taiwan is “essential” by 2049.

To do that, he’s repeatedly ordered China’s military to prepare for war, and will take heart in seeing Donald Trump apparently seem – for now – reluctant to defend even Ukraine from Russia.

Second, Albanese thought there were votes in fixing what the previous Coalition governments supposedly “broke” – the trade bans China imposed on us as punishment for criticising its attacks on freedom.

Albanese shut up and was rewarded with restored trade – but he’s just made us even more economically dependent on China, now taking more than 32 per cent of all our exports.

He should instead have found new markets to guarantee our freedom to act and speak.

His silence has a price. Australians have not been warned and prepared to make the sacrifices needed to pay for an armed force with enough teeth to make China think twice about, say, cutting all our sea lanes and starving us of petrol, medicines and machinery.

And China this weekend sent a warning: don’t even think about it, Handsome Boy.

But how much longer can he stay silent before we’ve run out of time to prepare for the worst?

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Anthony Albanese just took a b**ch slap from China. Now we must prepare for war.