The question is, rather, to what extent does the crackdown on foreign influence, and the media blitz surrounding it, needlessly alienate the Chinese-Australian community, and prepare the ground for a possible resurgence of actual anti-Chinese racism? In raising these questions, people have naturally pointed to Australia’s history of suspicions and scare campaigns towards immigrants from China.

Clive Hamilton, well known for his books on global warming, has tackled a different topic in Silent Invasion: China’s influence in Australia. He claims that China’s Communist Party has gained so much influence in Australia that it’s ‘taking over’. The book is worth reading for one reason at least: the light that it sheds on the beliefs, goals and methods of John Hu’s ‘Australian Values Alliance’.

The site’s slick GIFs and lack of advertisements tells visitors that this is Serious Journalism. Why, then, does the investigation rely upon the tired tropes of ‘Reds under the Beds’ and the ‘Yellow Peril’ to sow fear regarding the influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Australia?

Though the last two decades have seen several important legal milestones for LGBT rights – including the 1997 rescinding of the ‘hooliganism’ charge often used against sexual minorities, the depathologization of the ‘mental disorder’ of homosexuality in 2001, and quietly progressive court rulings on homophobic textbooks – most advocates estimate marriage equality is still many years away.

Whereas the West sees the emergence of an Asian superpower as something unprecedented and potentially destabilising, China views her rise as a return to the natural order of things – to a time when she’s, once again, the world’s leading economic, technological and intellectual power.