Andrew Bolt: Paul Keating’s defence of totalitarian China depraved

How can former prime minister Paul Keating have faith that the Chinese dictatorship threatening war and grabbing control of much of the world will soon play nice?

Dear God, as if Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull weren’t enough, cheering on France as it attacked Australia.

Now comes a third bitter ex-Prime Minister, Paul Keating, telling us and the US to “accommodate” ourselves to the Chinese dictatorship, and not resist its growing aggression.

Keating gave a talk at the National Press Club that was depraved in its apologetics for a totalitarian and genocidal regime – and also absurdly self-contradictory. In Keating’s world, “China does not represent a contiguous threat to Australia”.

Is that why it bans our trade, blitzes us with cyber attacks, organises protests on our soil and slanders our soldiers as child-killers, while demanding we stop talking about human rights or defending our infrastructure from Chinese infiltration?

Paul Keating’s talk at the National Press Club was depraved in its apologetics for a totalitarian and genocidal regime. Picture: Gary Ramage

In Keating’s world, China also does not threaten its neighbour’s territory. But didn’t China recently steal the South China Sea from its neighbours? So what, responded Keating: “Big powers are rude”.

Hasn’t China also threatened Japan and the Philippines, had deadly border skirmishes with India, and used hostage diplomacy against Canada?

Relax, says Keating: “The Chinese are in their rude phase, they’re in the adolescent phase of their diplomacy, they’ve got testosterone running everywhere.”

Isn’t China practising an invasion of Taiwan, on Tuesday sending another six war planes to challenge Taiwan’s air defences?

Don’t worry! If Taiwan behaved itself, the two countries “will come to terms with each other”.

Hadn’t China just crushed free speech and democracy in Hong Kong? Keating deflected: “Look what India’s done in Kashmir.”

But how can Keating have faith that China, growing much more authoritarian, will soon play nice?

Isn’t China’s President, Xi Jinping, now a dictator for life? Picture: AFP

He scoffed: “It will be a more civil society than the United States”.

Wasn’t China’s president now a dictator for life?

“It’s a good way to stay in power,” guffawed Keating, and Xi Jinping had corrupt enemies who could threaten his life.

But again, Keating’s Freudian slips gave him away, betraying his sick fancy that China was no threat. The freedom of Taiwan was “fundamentally a civil war matter, civil matter, not civil war, with the Chinese,” Keating fumbled. And “China will control – not control, control is not the right word – through the Belt and Road (program) and capital programs … The Chinese will be the major influence on everything between Wuhan and Istanbul … partly to increase their strategic power.”

Right the first time, both times, Paul. So why defend a dictatorship threatening war and grabbing control of so much of the world?