"It should not be taken lightly," she said. Ms Dong pointed to the Zhejiang region, south of Shanghai, as a source of "huge potential" for WA, if we could "establish closer and stronger ties". She quoted China's president-for-life Xi Jinping: "The Chinese market is such a big one that you should all come and see what it has to offer." Ms Dong spent more than a few words in both op-eds talking up the Chinese economy. She said WA accounted for 58 per cent of Australia's total exports to China and "more and more Chinese enterprises will invest outside China". Although the consul-general, who has been in the job for about six months, admits the Australia relationship will set the tone for WA's relationship with our northern neighbour, she argues "both sides" need to do more to "stretch out and communicate and have a better understanding of how each other's systems work".

Strategic Forum chief executive Ross Babbage, a former head of strategic analysis for the intelligence agency responsible for advising the Prime Minister and Cabinet's National Security Committee, told WAtoday Ms Dong overlooked key facts about China. He said the consul-general's opinion editorial failed to detail any of the difficulties in the relationship caused by Beijing's conduct and "turns a blind eye to the realities". Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video "She makes no mention at all of the range of very intrusive operations the Chinese have been conducting against Australia, influence and coercive operations, cyber operations, cyber infiltrations, etc," Dr Babbage said. "None of that is mentioned here.

"It's as though everything is fine, let's just not be disturbed in our relationship by anyone who raises uncomfortable things." Dr Babbage said Ms Dong's article could be seen as part of an attempt to separate the state government and the West Australian business community from Canberra's China policy. "This is a sort of, hey, you guys in the west understand it, we can get on and do great things, forget about those guys in the east," he said. "We can still do deals, and let's turn a blind eye to everything else, not just what they're doing here, but the human rights abuses and what they're doing in other countries, etc, etc, and even what they're doing in the South China Sea, which are not exactly trivial issues. "The point is, don't talk about us, talk about you and what we can do together and it's all smiling."

Dr Babbage said West Australians needed to do their homework in relation in the state's dealings with Beijing and conduct thorough risk assessments, especially when making decisions that depend on the Chinese economy. He said Ms Dong was "frankly disingenuous about what's actually happening in the Chinese economy". "You would think reading this that all it's all sweetness and light, China continues to charge ahead with higher rates of growth, there's no problem, we're investing yet more in infrastructure," he said. "In fact, even if you took the official figures, the current growth rate in China is about 6.1 per cent, even if you accept that, which virtually no one does, that this is less than half the growth rate of 12 years ago."

"That is markedly different to the picture being portrayed here." Dr Babbage said China's growth rate was closer to 3 per cent, debt had climbed above 300 per cent of GDP and the country didn't have the cash reserves many assumed. "On top of all that, they're starting to run into demographic headwinds from the old one child policy and other things and the very, very low fertility rate so the population is ageing rapidly," he said. "So the scale of the workforce has been going backwards since 2014 and that's starting to bite. "In fact, the party is worried about this deeply."

Dr Babbage said China's leader Xi Jinping had reacted to the concerns by further tightening up security to prevent dissent spreading from Hong Kong and "artificially priming the pump" to kickstart the economy. Loading "Now none of that is reflected in what you see in this article," he said. "It's a false narrative, it's got holes all through it, and what they're feeding off, to be brutally frank, they're feeding off the fact that the story about what's really going on in China is not being told well in this country." The WA government's relationship with Beijing has been the spotlight after Premier Mark McGowan refused to criticise China in an interview with the ABC published on Sunday.