The most important thing about Australia having a national China strategy is to have one. At present, we do not. What we have instead is a government with a series of attitudes about China, rather than a coherent policy for dealing with China.

We seem to have a government more interested in fanning public hysteria over ‘‘reds under the beds’’, almost a new yellow peril, all suddenly requiring the Australian people to stand up against the Chinese hordes. It has taken what is a three-out-of-10 challenge to Australian national interests and values and turned it into a nine-out-of-10 existential threat.

Illustration: Simon Letch Credit:

Moreover, it’s an approach driven primarily by the Liberals' domestic political agenda of trying to define the Labor Party as soft on China – rather than a calm, clear-headed, rational analysis of both the challenges and the opportunities we face with China’s rise, America’s response and a region increasingly finding itself in the strategic cross-hairs.

I’m not pretending developing and implementing a comprehensive China strategy is easy. It's not. But the absence of one is deleterious to our enduring national interests, allowing China to become the political plaything of the likes of Andrew ( Churchill on Trainer Wheels) Hastie.