Peter Hartcher, International Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, joins Michael for a discussion of China and its relation to Australia.

While most Australians are reasonably comfortable with a Japanese company owning some Australian food labels, they’re uncomfortable with a Chinese company doing the same.

People are rightly concerned about Chinese companies & Chinese institutions buying into Australian assets, because they are very different from Canadian companies, American pension funds or British companies or German conglomerates. 

Those institutions have a very obvious separation from the state.  In China, the government seems to penetrate everything… and this makes people understandably uncomfortable. 

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