Is Josh Frydenping the Manchurian Candidate?

Apparently, yes. As he kowtows on WeChat while pretending to be tough on China:

Josh Frydenberg has been running adverts on Chinese social media giant WeChat just weeks after a Liberal senator called for a boycott of the platform on national security grounds.

The site, which has 1.2billion users, features a fawning article about the Treasurer in which he played up his ambitions to be Prime Minister after Scott Morrison.

‘What I don’t want to hide is that I will be running for the premiership at the right time, but I’m not thinking about that right now,’ he said.

…Mr Frydenberg is fighting to retain his leafy southeast Melbourne seat of Kooyong from independent Monique Ryan.

According to the 2016 census, 11.6 per cent of voters in the seat have Chinese ancestry.

Earlier this year Liberal Senator James Paterson called on all politicians to boycott WeChat, which is owned by Chinese giant Tencent.

‘We cannot allow a foreign authoritarian government to interfere in our democracy and set the terms of public debate in Australia,’ he said in January 2022.

Let’s not forget that Scott Morrison’s WeChat account was recently hacked and turned into CCP propaganda.

Nor that Gladys Liu, open CCP baglady, still holds the balance of power in the Morrison Government.

Indeed, one has to wonder if Scott Morrison isn’t the Manchurian Candidate as well. Crikey has done a great job of rounding up the pre-2020 Morrison Government position on China:

The Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda outlet The Global Times has published a series of articles endorsing Liberal Party leader Scott Morrison, Crikey can reveal.

The government-owned publication, which stridently promotes the Chinese Communist Party line, has praised* Morrison’s “deep understanding and unambiguous perception” as well as his “Confucian wisdom”.

Further, the Times has commended** Morrison’s “reason and judgement” in his staunch defence of backbencher Gladys Liu in the face of attacks from “bloodthirsty anti-China hawks”, leaving the Liberal leader open to accusations that Beijing see him as their man in Canberra.

Raising further questions about whether Morrison is a puppet for the regime in Beijing, footage has emerged of the Liberal leader urging a closer relationship between Australian and China.

Giving a speech titled “the beliefs that guide us” at Asia Briefing LIVE in 2018, Morrison enthusiastically promoted Australia’s “vitally important relationship with China”, and, even more ominously, hints that he intends to meet with Communist Party agents:

Trade, tourism and educational exchanges are at record highs. 

Australia values and honours these tens of thousands of daily interactions between our peoples.

We are committed to deepening our Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with China, and I look forward to discussing how we do that with China’s leaders later this month.

The footage is sure to cause further embarrassment to the Liberal Party, emerging within days of their attempts to downplay the historic ties between their party and the leadership in Beijing. Former party leader Tony Abbott — who has lavished Morrison’s leadership with praise — was caught saying “China is a very good friend of Australia and it’s a friendship which is getting stronger all the time,” and, as Crikey revealed earlier this week, even invited Communist Party figures into Parliament. Suggesting possible Chinese influence, Abbott refused to condemn China’s actions in the South China Sea.

*in 2018

**in 2019

That is a healthy reminder that the LNP is also a very recent convert to CCP-skepticism, despite the long-term complaints of hawks such as Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, Andrew Hastie and James Paterson.

I would add that Morrison did not immediately fund and deploy Malcolm Turnbull’s excellent domestic pushback against CCP influence after the Dastayari Affair. We had to wait a whole year after Morrison stole the prime ministership until further spying scandals broke.

Certainly, the LNP turned faster than Labor when Morrison’s mental illness infected the China relationship, and Labor made a terrible blunder in failing to man up when China presented its 14 conditions to end democracy, but there is no doubt that both parties were until very recently the crack whores of CCP bribery.

Labor has questions to answer. But it is also true to say that the Coalition is inhabiting a very fragile glass house.