Andrew Bolt: Premier must wake up to China’s worrying behaviour
The world is finally waking up to the threat of China. Yet in Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews is still siding with the dictatorship and we should be worried, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
Don't miss out on the headlines from Andrew Bolt. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Does China remind you of any other dictatorship since, say, 1939? I know the first person to say “Nazi” loses the argument, but let’s just do a checklist.
It hates democracy and free speech. Check.
It’s rapidly built up its military.
It’s jailed a despised ethnic group (Uyghurs, in China’s case).
It’s ultranationalist and wants to reconquer territory (Taiwan, South China Sea) that it claims belongs to the fatherland.
It even has its Poland — Hong Kong.
China was last year humiliated when more than a million Hong Kong citizens protested to preserve their freedoms from the regime, which took back the British colony in 1997.
Now China is striking back, proposing this week to unilaterally ram through a new security law for Hong Kong that could eventually let police charge protesters with treason and sedition.
Australia, the US and Canada last week protested, but China’s Communist Party is desperate to amp up the nationalism.
It needs to give its people some excuse in a recession to back a government it never voted for. “Standing up for China” against a wicked West is that excuse — and a lethally dangerous one.
No wonder the world is finally waking up to China. And worrying.
Britain last week reversed its dumb decision to let China’s state-owned Huawei company help build its 5G network, which the US and Australia had warned could let China disrupt or spy on communications.
Germany last month agreed to tighten rules to protect its companies from hostile takeovers by non-European investors — meaning mainland Chinese.
And the US is trying to make American companies far less reliant on China suppliers.
Well, actually, not quite the whole world has woken up.
Victoria’s government still sides with the dictatorship, and Premier Dan Andrews on Sunday said he backed his Treasurer’s claim that Australia’s “inelegant language” was to blame for China cutting our exports of beef and barley.
Andrews also defended signing Victoria on to the Belt and Road Initiative, a Chinese scheme to provide foreign ports and supplies that Andrews claims means more Victorian jobs.
But the Morrison Government refuses to join, and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Victoria on Sunday that this initiative increased communist China’s ability to do “harm”.
Still, if the Soviets in 1939 could work with Germany, why not Victoria with China?
What could possibly go wrong? Right?