Under the bamboo curtain and into Vanstone Limbo

The Australian newspaper published an opinion piece by Sinologist Geremie Barmé about the Chinese diplomat who has been trying to get asylum in Australia. Barmé's compares the current case with a diplomat defector he knew in the 1980s, who left the warm embrace of the motherland in the last year of that decade. The piece ends in a reflection not about China, but about Australia.