Andrew Bolt: Why Xi Jinping’s speech should terrify us all

President Xi Jinping’s talk directly conflicts with his actions but the West has never seemed less keen on defending the very freedoms China threatens.

Let me say it while we dare. China’s dictator, Xi Jinping, this week gave a speech proving he’s a liar as bad as Hitler.

Our schools have taught younger Australians about Hitler, right? And about judging dictators not by what they say, but what they do?

Hitler in January 1939 gave a big speech declaring Germans were a “peace-loving people”, adding: “All the assertions about the intentions of our people to attack foreign peoples are either morbidly hysterical or out of the personal self-preservation addiction of individual politicians.”

Fine words!

But to believe them, you had to ignore Hitler had already overrun Austria and part of Czechoslovakia. He’d already banned democracy and turned Germany into a police state. He’d already formed alliances with other tyrannies — the Soviet Union, fascist Italy and Japan — and created a massive army.

You had to ignore all that, and many did, just as many people now ignore the reality of communist China under Xi.

China's President Xi Jinping’s speech had many of the same themes as Hitler’s. Picture: AFP

Yet just eight months later, Hitler’s “peace-loving” Germany invaded Poland and started World War Two. How long before Xi pushes us into a world war, too? This decade?

Sorry if I sound too gloomy, but Xi’s astonishing speech this week to the World Economic Forum reminded me exactly of Hitler’s 1939 speech.

You see, Xi’s speech had many of the same themes as Hitler’s. His country was the real victim. America should not interfere. He just wanted reunification and peace, blah blah.

And it was just as full of lies. Just as contradicted by Xi’s actions, which are designed to turn communist China into a global power, unchallenged by the democratic and declining West.

Let me show you the difference between Xi’s reassuring talk this week — his lies — and his frightening actions.

What Xi said: “The strong should not bully the weak” or “threaten or intimidate others”.

All Australians must have seen that this is a sick joke.

What else has China done to us but bully, threaten and intimidate? Furious that we won’t let China get its prying hands on our 5G network, China has punished us with bans on $20bn of our exports, and bans on any contact with our ministers to sort it out.

What Xi said: all countries must “follow a path of peaceful coexistence”.

Yet Xi has three times in the past year warned his vastly expanded military to “prepare for war”. Four weeks ago, he ominously added: “At any moment”.

Just last weekend Xi’s air force sent two sorties of bombers over the airspace of Taiwan to test both its air defences and the willingness of new US President Joe Biden’s to protect Taiwan in any confrontation.

Taiwan is most likely the next Poland — where a world war could start. China wants by 2049 to take back control of what’s now a fiercely independent democracy, just like it’s taken back Hong Kong.

What Xi said: “We should uphold the common values of humanity, i.e. peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom.”

China has killed democracy in Hong Kong. But has the world made it pay a price? Picture: Getty Images

But this dictator has meanwhile destroyed any democracy in Hong Kong, this month arresting 55 prominent pro-democracy figures.

Under Xi, China has become even more of a police state, jailing Christians, human rights activists, pesky journalists and up to 1 million Muslims.

China now wants Australia to shut down its own free speech. Its embassy last year issued a list of China’s 14 problems with Australia, which included the “unfriendly or antagonistic report on China by media, poisoning the atmosphere of bilateral relations”. Reports like this.

What Xi said: “We should stay committed to international law.”

But Xi ignores the unanimous ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration that China’s theft of the South China Sea, with all its vital shipping lanes, is illegal.

But you know what really scares me? It’s that the West, now reeling from the virus that started in China, has never seemed less keen on defending the very freedoms that China threatens.

China has killed democracy in Hong Kong. But has the world made it pay a price?

China now threatens to grab free Taiwan. But don’t many of our young say democracy is overrated?

China bullies Australia. Yet many business leaders — even Victorian Labor ministers — say it’s our fault. Don’t risk this Chinese gold!

China tells us to shut up and jails an Australian journalist, Cheng Lei, who criticised its handling of the virus.

But who in Australia’s cancel culture believes in free speech? Or even in Australia?

And how many really remember Hitler?