Whether one ought to ever worry at all is a broad and deep question,
but if one is to worry about anything, then the expansionist trait of communist China should definitely be on their list.

Individual Hong Kong protesters are fighting for freedom
They risk everything for it
Not even a chance they can win in the long run, but they have every right to try
Taiwan too is under pressure and the same fate awaits them
When China focuses on us, will you claim we are undisciplined

Is this becoming a new cold war? - Absolutely.

China is becoming more authoritarian and controlling to the point where the amount of money its spends monitoring the minutest details of every person's life is 1.3 x as much as it spends on its military.

China is becoming more aggressive and interfering in other countries, and this needs to be countered.

Another pointless question. Of course we have to worry about China!

Dear ttbn,

Can you elaborate instead of leaving us in the dark trying to put together the ending for ourselves?

A week ago we had the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
visiting us and China was on the agenda. The big story
was about us having missiles in Darwin. There were messages
about the preparedness of the US to escalate strategic
tensions in the Asia Pacific region and the
willingness to drop Australia right into the
heightened diplomatic tensions with
Beijing by clearly exhorting Australia to back Washington's
stance against China.

Then we all read about the alarming China related stories
erupting the upgrading of US/China trade-tensions into a
currency war and on top of that an increasingly ugly
situation in Hong Kong - with an escalation of aggressive
warnings to protestors this week by Beijing.
Which seems to make the prospect of a significant
crackdown there now very likely.

We now appear to be facing a very real increase in strategic
and economic tensions with events unfolding.

Does Australia have an independent view?

What role does Chinese money and Australia's security play in
all of this?