The former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd has accused members of the Liberal party of fomenting national hysteria and “going all hairy-chested” over China.

In an interview at the National Press Club on Friday, Rudd condemned Liberal backbencher Andrew Hastie, the chair of parliament’s intelligence and security committee, who compared western tolerance of Chinese expansionism with the appeasement of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

“The Liberal party has a very bad history of using core foreign policy questions for domestic political gain or internal party management,” Rudd said.

“If I look at young Hastie ... I’m always cautious about post-pubescent politicians who decide – or pre-pubescent in his case, I’m not sure – the best way to make a name for yourself within the raging beast of Australian conservatism is to whack the Chinese on the head again every second Thursday.”

Rudd, a former diplomat in Australia’s Beijing embassy, also accused former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull of going “all hairy-chested” on China, a tactic Hastie had followed.

“There is a more balanced and rational way through managing what is a difficult relationship, a complex relationship, rather than turning it into a page-one headline,” he said.

Rudd, as prime minister and foreign affairs minister, had a complex and shifting relationship with China. A Sinologist who majored in Chinese language and Chinese history at university, he was Australia’s first Mandarin-speaking prime minister but was also heard at a climate change summit in Copenhagen in 2009 saying that “those Chinese ratfuckers are trying to ratfuck us”, when China was widely perceived to be deliberately derailing a global climate agreement.

Leaked cables revealed that Rudd described himself as a “brutal realist on China” in a 2010 private meeting with the then US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, recommending the US prepare “to deploy force if everything goes wrong” with China’s rise.

On Friday, Rudd said he believed Scott Morrison understood the need to develop a nuanced and balanced relationship with China.

“There are number of things he has said, a number of things that he has done, which to me suggests that is what he is trying to do,” Rudd said. “Consistent with that, he is seeking also to bolster Australian bilateral relationships in south-east Asia.”

The prime minister is currently on an official visit to Vietnam where he took a veiled but clear swipe at perceived Chinese adventurism in south-east Asia and the Pacific.

Speaking in Hanoi, where tensions have been rising over allegations of repeated Chinese incursions into Vietnamese-controlled waters, Morrison emphasised the importance of an “open, inclusive and prosperous Indo-Pacific neighbourhood”.

“An Indo-Pacific where we respect each other’s sovereignty and independence, because if we allow the sovereignty or independence of any of our neighbours to suffer coercion, then we are all diminished,” he said. “We share a deep interest in the stability and prosperity of our region.”

China’s foreign ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, this week criticised Australia for acting like a “condescending master” towards Pacific countries, insulting climate-vulnerable nations and “spreading the China threat fallacy among island countries”.

Geng accused Australian leaders of a cold war mentality towards China.