China has been riding roughshod over Australia for years | Caleb Bond

Let’s not kid ourselves that being friendly to the grizzly bear will save us when it decides we look tasty, writes Caleb Bond.

Penny Wong may as well have given Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi the keys to the country when he visited this week.

The kowtowing has been extraordinary.

Trade Minister Don Farrell claiming in the Senate that he was “not sure” if the United States was our closest ally – instead arguing that New Zealand took that title – was bizarre.

If we’re talking about geography then sure, New Zealand is closer.

But to start ranking allies is unbelievable – except when you consider that it was said in the same week as Wang’s visit.

Could it have been a subtle message to China that we’re a little more sympathetic to them and we don’t always move in lock-step with big bad America?

Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese meets with China's Foreign Minister and Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs Wang Yi at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Likewise last week when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ruled out an Australian ban on TikTok despite the US House of Representatives passing a bill that would force the social media platform’s Chinese parent company to divest the app if it’s to continue operating there.

Last Friday, ahead of Wang’s trip, Industry Minister Ed Husic quietly dropped anti-dumping action against the importation of cheap Chinese wind turbines.

And don’t forget that the federal government last year confirmed the Port of Darwin would remain in Chinese hands by dropping a four-month-old report on a Friday afternoon – a month before Albanese visited China.

This kid-glove approach to China, particularly after it flagged lifting tariffs on Australian wine, is so transparent.

Yes, China is an important trading partner.

But let’s not kid ourselves that being friendly to the grizzly bear will save us when it decides we look tasty.

We are being manipulated and the government is taking the bait.

China is not our friend. It doesn’t matter how hard we suck up, they will ride roughshod whenever they like.

They’ve been doing it covertly for years.

TikTok, for instance, is little more than a weapon designed to rot impressionable western brains.

The Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, offers a child-friendly version that shows science experiments, educational content, the arts and patriotic videos.

It restricts underage users to 40 minutes of scrolling per day.

A huge iron ore shipment out of Port of Darwin.

Meanwhile, the western version has no such child-friendly app.

It serves up short and addictive hits of dopamine that keep kids scrolling through mindless content for hours on end.

A 2019 survey commissioned by Lego found astronaut was the most popular job choice for Chinese children – but social media influencer took top spot in the US and UK.

As Centre for Human Technology director Tristan Harris told the US edition of 60 Minutes: “You allow those two societies to play out for a few generations, I can tell you what your world is going to look like”.

None of this is a coincidence.

China has a direct line to western children – and eroding their ambition to further the interests of the western world directly benefits China.

Yet we pretend they’re our friends.

Originally published as China has been riding roughshod over Australia for years | Caleb Bond