‘Is the decision by Western politicians requiring Covid testing for passengers from China an indication that, at last, they have rethought their naive approach to Beijing? Since Nixon, Kissinger, Whitlam and then Clinton, their approach has been not only to treat a communist dictatorship as if it were just another normal law-abiding government. They have also treated communist leaders, including mass-murderer Mao, with respect and at times even awe.

When Mao left this world, Fraser and Whitlam actually led the House of Representatives in the condolence motion that no one surely, even for a moment, had ever thought appropriate for those other mass-murderers, Stalin and Hitler.

What was it about Mao? It was surely not that he murdered more than anyone else? Was it that big business and its political allies realised that by exploiting the downtrodden Chinese and slave labour, and with a consequently rising domestic market, a fortune was to be made? Losing their manufacturing, handing over intellectual property or even having it stolen, or becoming dependent on the communists was of little concern.

Now the previous LNP government had quite properly called for an investigation into the origin of Covid 19. After all, this seems to have been an experimental virus produced in a Wuhan military laboratory. This was done with the assistance of Dr Anthony Fauci, in gain-of-function research to create experimental viruses, research forbidden in the US by President Obama. Its escape still needs to be investigated, as does the clandestine release of vast numbers of the infected across the world, without any warning to airlines, governments or the WHO.

As argued here, we should have proposed with President Trump not only an international inquiry to find the source of the virus, but also that the inquiry assess the damages incurred. Each state should have then been able to recoup some decent contribution towards the massive damages from controlled assets in its jurisdiction. Of course, the communists would have retaliated, but why should the people of Australia and the world have suffered so terribly from the unilateral actions of the communists?

But now, Albanese seems to have decided to curry favour with the communists. Boasting that Australia and China are ‘talking again’, Albanese said ‘We are undoing so much of the damage done by the LNP government.’

So, is he saying that the opposition is to blame for Covid and the trade boycott or just for the trade boycott? Is he saying they should not have asked for an independent inquiry?

As if we are a Chinese satellite, Albanese preceded this by lining up to shake the dictator’s hand at the G20, and then later showing how elated he was that Minister Wong was actually allowed to go to Beijing to pay her respects to one of the regime’s apparatchiks.

He seems to be waiting now for a summons from Beijing when the communists will possibly abandon some of their illegal sanctions, but only because they have proved counter-productive.

At least Health Minister Butler distanced himself from Albanese in following other Western governments in requiring rapid Covid testing for travellers from China. This was no more than ex abundanti cautela, out of an abundance of caution. This is precisely the way a prudent government should react when dealing with a regime whose trademark is deception.

It was refreshing that other medical experts came out to offer a view different from official advice against even the level of Covid testing prescribed for Chinese travellers by our close allies. From the adverse reaction of so many in the media and political class when they heard the ‘official’ advice, it seems they cling to the fiction, popularised by ‘follow the science’ global warming adherents, that experts decide such questions by consensus. But as any lawyer knows, litigation often involves qualified experts appearing for either side.

(Incidentally, that experts often disagree, and that an opinion is obviously not a fact, seems to have now eluded the self-styled ‘fact-checkers’ on whom social media relied recently to ban a Voice referendum No case advertisement.)

To return to the Beijing communists, a common weakness among Western ruling classes is that they seem to have learnt nothing from Neville Chamberlain. At least Chamberlain soon realised his error. The Western ruling classes are still trying to treat the brutal Beijing dictatorship as a normal government, and they are still letting their countries become dependent on them just as the German ruling class became dependent on Russia for energy, despite President Trump’s warning.

So, how could so many in the West be so gullible as to make us so dependent on the communists? According to some reports, Kissinger actually realised that the communists would turn on the US once they had the economic and military capacity to do so. Whitlam was even more accommodating to the monster, abandoning Taiwan well before the Americans did, at least diplomatically, in 1979.

We saw recently how tenuous is the hold of the dictatorship when the Chinese people revolted against the Maoist lockdown policy copied, unwisely, by Western politicians. At some stage, probably sooner than later, communist China will follow the Soviet Union to oblivion, and the Chinese people will be liberated.

True leadership emerges occasionally in the West where those of the calibre of Churchill, Reagan, Thatcher and yes, Trump not only make the West great, they do not allow dictators to ride roughshod over the West, nor the West to become dependent on them.

The problem for the West is not only hostile foreign powers, it is a political class apparently determined to ensure our decline. Australia has for too long been over-endowed with such a class. The stranglehold the Beijing communists have over us is the direct result of a myopic or even corrupt political class that encouraged the West to become dependent on them.