Hampered by an underwhelming election campaign — where the Labor/LNP “uniparty” faces the harsh reality that the punters don’t think China is about to invade Australia — Murdoch media is going all out to put those commie bastards front and centre. There’s the inconvenient truth that the Australian military is gearing up to hit China with a barrage of US-made missiles; the Chinese Communist Party is meddling in the affairs of the Catholic Church; and a 60 Minutes report tells us Barbie has fallen victim to the Chinese.

Dutton opens the war chest…

Former Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison perfected the art of the “media drop”, Peter Dutton is just carrying on the family tradition. For the uninitiated, a media drop is when a story (usually from a politician) is handed to a journalist in the guise of it being an exclusive which gets them first to press and leaves their media competitors in a race to catch up and advance the story. It’s a great way of keeping your media friends happy while dangling a thinly veiled carrot in front of the rest, letting them know their own “exclusives” are on the way should they play ball.

Morrison worked out it’s a lot more efficient to give every media outlet the “drop” the night before an announcement; that way, when Australians arose from their slumber, they knew what ScoMo was going to say before he, in fact, said it. This approach almost completely eliminates analysis and lets politicians control the media narrative.

The Albanese Government uses the media drop every bit as fervently as its predecessors.

Dutton’s big drop this week was strategic and calculated. As he fronted up to face Albanese at the third leaders’ debate on 22 April, the political and defence writers at all the major mainstream outlets had already been tipped off about an announcement about pumping an extra $21 billion into Australia’s defence budget. It’s a great headline, but not something Dutton or his minders would feel comfortable being grilled about in a debate with Albanese. The media acquiesced and kept it mum until after Dutton and Albanese were tucked away in bed.

The other acquiescence was when the stories appeared on 23 April morning; there was no mention from scribes of the political class that China is the adversary prompting the proposed military build-up.

Nine News (23 April) reported that Dutton ducked questions on China as he announced the policy at a Perth news conference with his Defence spokesperson Andrew Hastie – the China-bashing former SAS officer who still thinks women should be limited to minor roles in the defence force.

On 23 April, the ABC duly covered the announcement with nary a reference to China, it didn’t rate a mention in The Australian, Nine Newspapers which decided to publish the story online a couple of hours after the debate, mentioned China once in the context of a Trump administration comment that Australia needs to spend more on defence.

All in all, not a bad result for Dutton, who’s been racing around electorates with large Chinese-Australian populations — often with Tony Abbott and John Howard in tow — telling ethnically Chinese voters he’s got their back.

…but just whose military is chasing who?

Meanwhile The Australian slipped in a report (22 April) on Australian military forces joining the US for live-fire exercise in the South China Sea, with missiles nicknamed “Ship Killers” being the headline act in the war games. At an opening ceremony for the games in Manila, US Marine Corps Lieutenant General James Glynn said, “Nothing builds bonds more quickly than shared adversity.”

Australian troops joined the war games, which began on Easter Monday, along with the Philippines. They are ideally placed to watch our coal and iron ore ships headed to the mainland, collect billions of dollars to be pumped into our economy and return via the same shipping lanes where our defence forces will be refining the art of blowing up Chinese ships.

Yes, indeed, the US Marine Corps commander is right, it’s a relationship of “shared adversity” that bonds us with China.

The Defence Department, which is usually pretty good at being upfront about what our military is doing overseas, had nothing to report on its media page. One wonders if this was an election-time directive from their political masters?

The obvious point is that amidst the Chinese navy and spy ships stories, reported extensively in this column, there’s barely a mention in the media that Australia is engaged in far more provocative acts against China within sight of their international boundaries.

Commie-loving pope meets his maker

Only Murdoch mouthpieces could even consider conflating the death of Pope Francis with the evils of Chinese communism. Within two hours of news of the pontiff’s death breaking, there was The Australian’s Greg Sheridan telling Sky News host Andrew Bolt (21 April) that the pope had played into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party by allowing the Chinese Government to vet the Vatican’s picks for Chinese bishops.

With the blessing of Murdoch Media, we sent Cardinal George Pell to Rome. Refer to the gospel of Matthew, Chapter 7, Verse 3: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”

It surely escaped the notice of Sky viewers but why does this hardline communist dictatorship (according to Sheridan’s characterisation) actually allow Catholics to practise their faith? Theological website, Asia Harvest, estimates there are as many as 100 million practising Christians in China, which is roughly the same number of members of the Chinese Communist Party… but that’s not something which with Bolt and Sheridan should trouble viewers.

To construct a nexus with the “evils” of Chinese communism and the death of the pope is just miserable banter between a couple of far-right ideological dinosaurs.

Barbie’s Chinese whispers arrive six months late 

As reported in the last Anti-China Media Watch column, ABC’s Four Corners dredged up a five month old PBS Frontline documentary about Chinese President Xi Jinping and tried to pass it of as a current report. We questioned the timing of this China hit job in the middle of an election campaign.

On 20 April, Nine’s 60 Minutes set itself apart from the national broadcaster by running a hit piece on the Chinese factory making Barbie dolls for US giant Mattel. The 60 Minutes story had run more than six months earlier on Britain’s Channel Four.

It is hard to believe that the enthusiastically anti-China forces at Nine didn’t deliberately pop this in the middle of an election campaign in which the conservatives are running tough on national security. Not that Chinese-made Barbies will be coming over the trenches, but it’s a bad China story in the midst of a campaign with an undercurrent that China is our enemy.

Channel Four “investigative reporter”, Isobel Yeung went undercover for the assignment, telling viewers she was extremely nervous and “sweaty palmed” about this harrowing attempt to organise the first camera to infiltrate a Chinese factory.

According to the story, the “undercover” journalist, working for Channel Four literally shows up unannounced on the doorstep of the Mattel factory in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan and gets a job on the spot. Really?

Yeung’s voiceover tells viewers the journalist poses as a “migrant worker” and “she’s hired on the spot”. But the camera audio is that of a man’s voice introducing themselves to the recruiter. Later vision shows “her” (according to the documentary’s description) handling parts for dolls in the factory — those hands were indeed very large for a woman. It’s plausible that a female reporter had gone undercover. However, there was no explanation as to why a disguised voice has such a deep tone as to be male in its characteristics.

Says the program, after being hired “she” is quickly shoved into a CCP-like indoctrination process, where the sketchy hidden camera footage shows workers being forced to sit through a company video instructing them on their obligations to the ogres who are about to exploit them.

Herein lies the second major problem with the story. The company executive in the indoctrination video is speaking English. Further, the person is speaking in what is likely a Singaporean accent (or perhaps Malaysian); mainland Chinese do not respond kindly to overseas Chinese telling them what to do.

The report says workers are paid above minimum wages; but when adding in paid overtime these are not poverty-level wages. Yes, by Western standards, the money they are making is comparatively less, but they are process workers in a Chinese factory. Not mentioned is that fact that Chinese factory workers are provided with accommodation and all meals.

At one point the undercover worker stands in front of a mirror, filming themselves on an iPhone talking about the appalling conditions they are subjected to. Based on what the report says are their wages, an iPhone would cost more than two months’ pay. If conditions at the Mattel factory are as strict as made out, an impoverished worker brandishing an iPhone would surely raise alarm bells.

I spent more than a decade travelling around China, photographing ordinary people, exhibiting my works and having them published in a book; I absolutely empathise with them. Life is tough for many in China, I am acutely aware of this, and I have witnessed it firsthand – and, yes, I have been inside quite a few Chinese factories.

The Western media painting of China as a nation of misery is nothing more than a miserable attempt to vilify an economy and a people as they rise above poverty to become an economic superpower that will soon leave the US behind.