When Chinese President Xi Jinping enters the House of Representatives chamber this afternoon to address a joint sitting of the Australian Parliament, many Australians will be wondering why he’s there. This is a chamber in which men and women elected by Australians debate and make decisions about what they believe is best for Australia and for the people who have voted for them. It is a chamber in which, no matter how much we disagree over key public policy issues, those issues are resolved, for better or worse, without bloodshed, violence or persecution.
The President may have difficulty understanding such concepts. The government he leads rules not through democracy but through the power of the Chinese military and a police state controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. Xi’s government continues to detain, imprison and torture those who criticise it. Chinese provincial governments “disappear” lawyers, whistleblowers and complainants for years at a time. There are mass killings of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; in Tibet, hundreds of political prisoners remain behind bars, and unlawful killing by authorities is routine under a system of brutal repression. Across China, there is no rule of law: over 99.9% of people prosecuted end up convicted, and over 2400 people were executed by the state last year. A vast state apparatus imposes blanket censorship and surveillance to support Xi’s regime.
Inevitably today there will be mention of “human rights”. That bland term fails to convey the immense brutality of the Chinese Communist regime directed toward its own people.
We may depend on Chinese demand for much of our national income; we may seek to strengthen and deepen economic ties with China — to do otherwise would be plainly not in our national interest. But like his predecessor Hu Jintao in 2003, no matter what diplomatically nuanced words are uttered, Xi Jinping disgraces our democratic Parliament with his presence.
15 thoughts on “Crikey says: Xi Jinping has no place in our Parliament”
Kevin Korb
November 17, 2014 at 1:44 pmI agree completely, except for one small thing: we live in a world containing China, and we need to talk with China, not just denounce her policies. Talking requires two sides, and we will only have a one-sided conversation if we merely insult China.
paddy
November 17, 2014 at 2:40 pmWell put KK.
Joe Magill
November 17, 2014 at 2:48 pmWow. Not mincing your words are you?
CML
November 17, 2014 at 3:41 pmNow, let me get this straight. American presidents can do most of what you accuse China of doing – Guantanamo anyone? – and invade other peoples’ countries and do it there also – Abu Ghraib in Iraq? – but that’s okay is it???
Didn’t read that you objected to Presidents GW Bush, or Obama ‘disgracing our democratic parliament with their presence’. Human rights abuses, and mans’ inhumanity to man, take many forms. Our own PM and his government ‘disgrace’ our parliament everyday they enter it, or have you forgotten how they treat the so-called boat people?
Wake up! They are all as bad as each other. It is only the ‘spin’ that is different!
James O'Neill
November 17, 2014 at 4:28 pmI agree with CML. Crikey draws a highly selective line. Since WW2 the US has invaded, destabilised, overthrown the governments of, or simply attacked more than 70 nations, and counting. By any measure they are the world’s premier terrorist nation, directly responsible for the deaths of millions of people, by far the largest proportion of which were civilian men, women and children.
When Obama addressed the Australian parliament I don’t recall any criticism from Crikey that the world’s number one dealer in death and destruction was a disgrace to our “democratic” parliament.
Venise Alstergren
November 17, 2014 at 5:26 pmRich humour happened at the G20 talkfest. It was when China’s President Xi Jinping and Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe were forced to shake hands for the media. There was a pause before either of them would do it. Then each man held out a paw with a facial expression of someone being forced to eat a green quince.
James O'Neill
November 17, 2014 at 6:26 pm@VA. Not half as funny as Abbott caught like a rabbit in the headlights over the big boys saying he wasn’t doing enough about climate change. What is diplomatic speak for “scientific neanderthal’?
Rais
November 17, 2014 at 7:45 pmThe Australian parliament is, as you say, a chamber in which men and women elected by Australians debate and make decisions about what they believe is best for Australia and for the people who have voted for them. So why should Xi, Obama, Cameron or anyone else not elected by the Australian people address it?
Ian
November 17, 2014 at 7:46 pmYou got it in one CML. Double standards are rife throughout our politic and media.
Mimi Lina
November 17, 2014 at 9:08 pmSo you think it’s worthwhile punishing the people of a country whose political leadership doesn’t prescribe to democracy? Every country has it’s problems. The politburo of China has to contend not only with ruling the largest country on earth both in terms of population as well as geographical size that covers 52 very different ethnic cultures but also it’s own legacy of cultural, economic and social regression (the cultural revolution that set the country back by 3 decades) plagued by rampant entrenched corruption at all levels of business and government that admittedly would be very difficult to combat by any government as well as a legal system that is based on very outdated laws (by the way the government has committed to completely revamping the country’s legal system in its history’s biggest shakeup in order to better comply with international standards and improve transparency). What I’m trying to say it perhaps with a population over a billion spread out over all that land, the government has little choice in how they go about maintaining social stability while catching up with the rest of the developed world. I think the chinese government is changing and it’s current “communist” – basically china is a capitalist country in all but name – structure is evolving towards something more consistent with international standards, leaving it’s past slowly behind and finding ways to improve. Over the past 20 years I’ve been visiting China it’s vastly changed and I get a sense that the majority of its populace trusts and strongly supports its government, but they all recognise that yes the propaganda machine is a problem, social justice, corporate and government transparency are all issues that need to be dealt with. But the chinese people aren’t some monsters intent on world domination to spread some outdated communist ideology. Don’t hate on them for the mistakes of its government.