Toward the end of 2019, an article titled Lessons in how to hate China was published in Pearls and Irritations. Those lessons have been learned and learned well. Three years is a short time but the collective memory is also short. China is now the accepted enemy and the likelihood of war is spoken of more openly.

Those three years have seen a change in the US presidency, and Australia has a new government. The coming to power of Joe Biden saw the US adopt an even more aggressive tone. The Albanese government is just as forthright in its anti-China rhetoric. Australian Defence Minister, Richard Marles, is perfectly in tune with his American counterpart, Lloyd Austin. The only changes have been for the worse.

A year before that article was published, the annual Lowy survey stated that 52 per cent of Australians had a degree of ‘trust’ in our relationship with China. One year later that had dropped to 32 per cent. Today just 12 per cent of Australians have any trust that China will behave ‘responsibly’ in the world. The figures are a tribute to the power of a media that can turn public opinion with supreme ease.