In China politics is always about business

In order to promote mutual understanding, I am always searching for ways of better explaining China to an Australian audience.

Fortunately, from time to time, the news here at home throws up useful parallels.

One useful way of thinking about the Party in power in Beijing, for example, is to consider it akin to some of Australia's more controversial unions, say, the CFMEU or HSU.

Craig Thomson, Michael Williamson, Ian MacDonald are now household names in Australia. The Chinese Communist Party is filled with hundreds of thousands of similar individuals.

It is uncanny how often newspaper headlines in both countries are remarkably similar: "Leader promises party reform, crack-down on corruption"

It is not just that corruption exists in China – although if there were ever the equivalent of a Royal Commission in to the Chinese Communist Party (and one day there will be) the scale of venality revealed would make Eddy Obeid blush.

The key point is that the political character of the Party has echoes of what we are used to in Australia.

There is the same bogus mythology that officials are selflessly acting in the interests of workers, the same enrichment by shakedown or co-opting private companies, the same cynicism and cronyism, the same ruthlessness if their interests are genuinely threatened.

Yes, many Party officials in China will happily recite Deng Xiaoping's words that "to get rich is glorious" and many a clueless Western businessperson will excitedly exclaim: "Wow, Chinese leaders really get capitalism!"

But being interested in amassing lucre is not the same thing as believing in free and open markets, is it?

Similarly there are limits to how politically liberal you will become simply by becoming more wealthy – which should be an obvious point but stands in contrast to the usual way people talk about the "inevitable" political liberalization of China.

I'm not sure many senior Australian business leaders, or indeed many political leaders on the center-right, fully appreciate that when they sit across the table from officials in China they are often dealing with people that are in many ways very politically familiar.

Instead, there is a tendency to think about the leadership in Beijing in the same way they do when addressing leaders of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce meeting in Sydney. But two are not the same thing – indeed it is insulting to Australian-Chinese to assume they are.

Chinese language and culture are very rewarding things to study - but the reason China is fundamentally different to Japan or South Korea is not really because of a cultural or linguistic misunderstanding. It is because of the difference in political culture.

Thus when people like Geoff Raby, our former Ambassador to China, offer the standard counsel that "Leaders must find ways of using cultural exchanges, education and scientific engagement, and cooperation regionally and globally, to lay a really solid grounds of respect and trust. Only then might we witness the true potential of what a strong China-Australia relationship could bring" they rather miss the point.

All analogies are imperfect and there are, of course, many honorable union officials in Australia, just as there are many people of integrity in China's military, business and bureaucracy – who do the best they can within the system. The trick is finding them and doing what you can to support them.$59:0" /> But as the recent example of Arthur Sinodinos shows, it does not pay to be blasé when dealing with business partners who come from a particular political background. China, after all, can be far less transparent place than even modern day New South Wales.