We only need defence because of the U.S? What utter rubbish! We need America's defence capability to defend the free world from people who hate us. If it were not America, even under the pathetic leftist, Obama, we would be over-run buy Muslims or the Chinese, and North Korea would be lobbing missiles where it would like to, not just where it can without stirring America, as it us now.

@Waverley, "But I don't want to abandon Australia to the Chinese."

There's no reason to.

re: "You can see just how much freedom they have over there."

People should stop believing (without checking) anything seen or heard on TV and out of the mouths of politicians and shills.

Do these people look like they're suffering and oppressed?
http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/program/if-you-are-the-one

If 1,300 million people are not satisfied with the system they have all the power they need to change it.

The level of thinking and rhetoric about China these days borders on seriously delusional. imho Dastyari actually has it 100% right... it's 'politically correctness' a beat up over nothing.

Meanwhile Howard and Company totally screwed East Timor over "borders". What's the definition of a hypocrite?

The only reason anyone says a word is because WE are being threatened by the USA to kowtow to their madness and self-interests, again.

re: "They stand in front of tanks and get mown down."

Yes that has happened, but not last week. How many innocent people has the US mowed down the last 50 years, in and out of the USA?

Vietnam was 2 million dead, based on a lie. Afghanistan totally incompetent military and political leadership for over 11 years!
Iraq was a war crime and has killed like another half million mowed down for nothing.

The US cares about as much for others democracy and freedom as they do about their unemployed and the poor in their own nation - ziltch.

Kent State students shot dead, lynching for decades nothing done, and others MOWN down on the streets of US cities protesting (violent or not, it still happened). Where was their freedom?

We should treat those 1,300mln via their Government, with the respect and courtesy they deserve and be good honest partners ourselves.

The 1940s have long gone. The USA is a totally different nation now.

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
asked John Maynard Keynes

plantagenet, Saturday, 10 September 2016 11:30:42 AM

"So Pogi and Killarney
Are you two Australians who will celebrate Mao's death?"

I have never had any inclination to celebrate such events. I am an amateur historian who sees such questions as yours as rather trivial and/or irrelevant. I have an abiding interest in learning what comprises actual history, how it is recorded and presented and why it happens. I regard it as incumbent upon myself to be as well informed as my abilities allow and become a slightly better citizen than those who have little interest in understanding and who tend to form opinions dictated to them rather than thinking and researching for themselves.

George Santayana, a significant Spanish-born US philosopher wrote: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." No truer statement has ever been uttered by any philosopher living or dead. We see his dictum verified every day.

Almost paraphrasing Santayana is Albert Einstein when he observed: "The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them."

Great minds throughout history have striven to impart better ways to solve our pressing problems but too often it is the braying of asses we listen to.

Thanks Pogo

You're precious :)

Just stop your vigilance for a minute- the Chinese steamroller will run over you.

Then where will be our freedom of speech and freedom of the press?

China knows what to do with difficult people. The just seem to disappear.

Yes the Chinese Communist Party is really Worst Excesses of 19th Century Robber Baron Capitalism in style. The Party considers "disappearing" democracy advocates without trial as a legitimate role of The Party, The State.

Meanwhile the kids of old Comrades, through nepotism, are now the Billionaire Aristocracy.

Some reading http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/china