Piers Akerman: Chinese Communist Party a tyrannical bully

More Australians are seeing the Chinese Communist Party for what it is. That’s surely worth celebrating with a bottle of Aussie wine, Piers Akerman writes.

Australians should stop beating themselves up over the current fall-out with the Chinese Communist Party. As a nation, we should be playing a smarter game.

For starters, let’s keep reminding the Chinese people that we don’t ­believe that their 1.4 billion population are unanimous in their support for the current dictator, President Eleven (XI).

They aren’t. The people of Hong Kong and those in Taiwan, which China claims, have never supported the CCP — that’s why they live in Taiwan, their forebears having fled the mainland when the Maoists drove them out on seizing power after World War II.

And just on WWII, let’s remind the Chinese people that the West — particularly the Americans — supported them in their eight-year war against the Japanese which some say began with the Nanking massacre by the ­Imperial Japanese army in 1937, two years before Hitler invaded Poland, or arguably even earlier with the invasion of Manchuria in 1931.

It might be undiplomatic to remind them that it wasn’t the Chinese Communists who led the charge against the ruthless Japanese during this prolonged exercise in unbridled barbarity (which continued with the massacre of much of the Chinese population of Singapore when it fell in 1942) and it wasn’t Chinese Communists who suffered the most during the prolonged conflict.

Chinese leader Mao Zedong circa 1950. Picture: Courtesy of US National Archives

The Chinese Communists kept out of the fighting, reserving their forces to attack the war-weary Nationalists, who under General Chiang Kai-shek, fought long and hard before the back-stabbing Communists led by Mao with Russian support, won the mainland.

Until Chiang Kai-shek was forced into exile, China was our ally. The Communists changed all of that.

Of course, the Fifth Column of China apologists are quick to point out that Communism has lifted millions of Chinese out of poverty.

Absolutely.

But as the Fifth Column largely consists of extremely wealthy Australians who have made their squillions selling vast chunks of Australia or by importing Chinese products, or accommodating armies of Chinese students ill-prepared for places in our universities, the powerful China lobby doesn’t ­mention the estimated 45 million who died under Mao.

Most were peasants, of course, and peasants, like Uyghurs and Tibetans and members of other minorities, don’t count for much in Communist China, but Mao also murdered and forced into re-education camps the intelligentsia, those who had degrees, teachers, doctors, lawyers … just wearing reading glasses was enough to create suspicion of class entitlement.

Our university students, kowtowing to the Beijing-line Confucius Institutes (as so many of their greedy vice-chancellors have done) aren’t taught the ­inhuman realities when they submit to the demands of activists directed by the embassy in Canberra and the state consulates.

When big bucks are on the table, morality goes out the window and the lessons of history are forgotten.

Sunday Telegraph columnist Piers Akerman. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Hitler was beloved of a certain class of Britons and Americans, as was Mussolini, even Joseph Stalin had his ­admirers, and Mao and other Communist murderers are T-shirt heroes.

Last week, I was seated beside an Australian millionaire who until rec­ently lived in Hong Kong but returned when things got too hot.

Like the former Australian ambas­sador Geoff Raby, he defended China and was critical of the Australian government’s attempts to maintain a civil discourse with China.

During our civil discussion he claimed that the US also exercised muscle to support its foreign trade and that there were really few differences between China and America.

I suggested that a million or so ­Uyghurs currently in detention and at risk of having various organs removed and sold by the CCP to wealthy Chinese and foreigners may disagree.

The ABC, as usual, is critical of the Australian government for its inability to establish contact with senior Chinese trade authorities but ignores the fact that the line fault is at the Chinese end — they aren’t picking up their phones when we ring.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese is equally at fault with his mistimed criticism of Prime Minister Scott Morrison or perhaps Mr Albanese would prefer “Shanghai” Sam Dastyari intervenes?

The silver lining in this is clear — more Australians are seeing the CCP for what it is. A tyrannical bully. That’s surely worth celebrating with a bottle of Aussie wine.

We must be principled and refrain from joining the CCP in the gutter.