Children of Marley

If you don’t see the similarities between Chinese international students and Marley-recruited Eldian children, I don’t know what to tell you.

Just last year, as a casual observer I mingled through the crowds of people gathered outside Melbourne’s State Library until eventually I found myself at the front of a protest held to uphold Hong-Kong’s right to democracy. It appeared that a counter-protest had been organized by Chinese nationals. As the night came to a climax, there was a moment where I stood on one side, separated only by empty space, with Chinese teenagers gleefully yelling “廢物! 廢物! 廢物! (meaning something like “fucking trash, fucking trash, fucking trash)” at the side I was occupying at the present time – evidently the crowd supporting democracy for Hong Kong. I said nothing but looked at them. They faltered, yet as if reassuring themselves, launched once again into even louder chants: “廢物! 廢物! 廢物!”

Every day I expect the news to finally report: “hundreds of thousands die in shooting conflicts between ‘BLM protesters’ and ‘white Americans’; both parties carry assault rifles. The United States is tearing itself apart and certain states have ‘gone rogue’ with militias defending their home borders. The White House has been bombed; Donald Trump is wounded but not critical. China has finally made Australia her bitch and all the main city centers are run by corrupt officials who ask ‘你是中國人嗎?’ before anything else. YouTube and Reddit stock prices tumble as millions of top comments are removed after internal sources reveal foreign interference. Putin shrugs at a global conference and says, ‘I don’t see problem’.

Hahahaha we’re all fucked.

The former Chief Secretary of Hong Kong, Anson Chan, explains:

“I don’t think Australians understand the sort of country they’re dealing with. Look at the way they are infiltrating, even in Australia…Australia is a very open society, so it wouldn’t occur to most people the designs of the one-party state. And it wouldn’t have occurred to the people of Hong Kong until we experienced it first-hand. No one should be under any illusions about the objective of the Communist Party leadership: it’s long-term, systematic infiltration of social organisations, media and government. By the time China’s infiltration of Australia is readily apparent, it will be too late.”

– Peter Hartcher, Power and Paranoia: Why the Chinese government aggressively pushes beyond its borders, The Sydney Morning Herald

*The writer meant to post this on the 12th of July, 2020 after a particularly memorable incident, but didn’t have the balls to do so until the publication of this post on the 24th of July, 2020.*

**Edit: Update as of 29th of July, 2020.