There were no tearful reunions on the prison steps, no angry claims of injustice.

Instead, Stern Hu faded from obscurity to anonymity, whisked away in secret after nine years behind bars in a Shanghai prison for a crime he may never have committed.

His release last week marked the end of a chapter in Australia-China relations almost everyone would prefer to forget. But it was significant on a number of fronts, not the least of which was that it marked a turning point in our national psyche.

Where once we stood for the rights of the individual, this time we happily offered up one of our own for the good of the collective, just so the multi-billion-dollar trade in iron ore could continue unimpeded.

Hu is an Australian citizen. For the past decade his plight largely was ignored by our political leaders as they happily negotiated trade deals (Tony Abbott asked for clemency in 2014) and was abandoned by his employer Rio Tinto. All in the name of money.

Could it happen again?

The whole tawdry episode occurred during what then was known as the "iron ore wars" when China, desperate to secure cheap supply of Australia's raw materials, was left humiliated on the global stage by Rio Tinto, after it backed out of a multi-billion-dollar deal with a Chinese Government-owned company, Chinalco.

Once again, we find ourselves in conflict with China's leadership; over its incursion into the South China Sea, its shadowy role in Australia's internal politics and controversy over its investment strategies here and in the region.

A fortnight ago, Australia enacted legislation on foreign interference — clearly targeted at Beijing — while debate continues to rage over whether to allow Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei to bid for lucrative 5G contracts here.

It also comes at a time where we could be forced to choose sides between the United States, our traditional ally, as it unleashes a trade war with China, our biggest trading partner.

While desperate political measures last year were deployed successfully to secure the release of three Australian and more than a dozen Chinese Crown employees — who clearly had broken the law — it would be naive in the extreme to imagine that Beijing would never again mete out its special form of justice on Australians.

A nation spurned

A decade ago, Stern Hu was Rio Tinto's main man in Shanghai. He was paid handsomely for his services and lived in an exclusive compound in the city with his wife and two sons.

Back then, iron ore prices were negotiated annually and traditionally had been set by Japanese steel mills. China's rapid industrialisation, however, catapulted it into the world's biggest buyer and its steel makers wanted to slash the price as the global financial crisis took hold.

The negotiations, led by Hu, were tense and ultimately it was a Japanese steel maker that broke the deadlock, which incensed Beijing.

Worse was to come. Rio Tinto, then led by the accident prone Tom Albanese, was in serious trouble, wounded from a debt-fuelled expansion into aluminium.

In desperation, Rio struck a shocking deal with Chinalco, a loss-making operation, that would have ceded control of Australia's biggest and best iron ore fields in West Australia's Pilbara.

A few months later, as commodity prices rebounded, Rio Tinto shareholders were in open revolt and chairman elect Jim Lang quit after just one month.

There was disbelief in Canberra too, as the reality dawned that the Chinese government would control our biggest export industry.

Somehow, a deal was hatched that would provide the perfect escape. Rival miner BHP Billiton — which was alarmed by the prospect that its biggest customer would control the market — offered to joint venture its Australian iron ore fields with Rio Tinto.

Everyone knew the proposition would be rejected by global competition authorities and that it could never be consummated. But it was enough for Rio to tell Beijing that it was pulling out Chinalco's $19.5 billion rescue package.

How China took its revenge

The rejection sent white-hot rage through the halls of power in Beijing. This was to have been China's single biggest foreign investment. It had all been agreed. Now it was off.

Rio executives were acutely aware of the delicate situation and braced for a backlash. Four weeks later, Hu and his three colleagues, all Chinese citizens, were arrested.

Chinalco maintained it played no part in the arrests but its chairman Lu Youqing let his feelings known on the matter. "Rio Tinto has no credibility as a company, it is not unlikely that a few staff are suspected of breaching the law," he said.

It didn't take long for the entire episode to degenerate into farce. Originally, Hu and his team were accused of bribing Chinese steel mill executives and gathering secret information in breach of state security laws.

As the diplomatic row escalated into a potentially explosive international trade spat, Rio tried to smooth the waters. Shortly afterwards, the charges were downgraded and significantly altered.

In fact, they were reversed. Rather than paying bribes to Chinese steel mills for secret information, the four executives instead were accused of accepting bribes and industrial espionage.

That had the effect of limiting culpability higher up the Rio Tinto chain. Had they been paying bribes, the obvious source of the money would have been the company.

The trial lasted just three days and was mostly held in secret. Like almost everyone charged in China, Hu was found guilty. He agreed with the prosecution that he had accepted two payments and his wife gave evidence that he brought more than $1 million home in cash in two separate bundles.

There were reports he pleaded guilty in the belief that he would be deported. There were also mutterings that a plan was put to Rio Tinto's senior management to get him out of China but that it was deemed too risky and possibly a trap.

Rio Tinto instead sacked all four men as soon as they were found guilty and then iron ore boss Sam Walsh denounced their actions as "deplorable".

The four became collateral damage, a speed bump on the economic superhighway between Canberra and Beijing. Hu's release last week came as a jolt, an embarrassing reminder that somewhere along the way, we lost our way. We became more concerned with free trade than freedom.