Five decades ago, almost to the day, Gough Whitlam raised a brimming glass to the party chairman Mao Zedong and the Chinese premier Zhou En-lai after delivering a speech at a welcome banquet at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
This story might be new to you, so let’s step through the history. Whitlam went to China in 1971, while he was still opposition leader – ahead of Richard Nixon’s groundbreaking official visit in 1972. Completely unaware of Nixon’s impending diplomatic overture, the then Australian prime minister Bill McMahon puffed up like a cold war warrior. McMahon declared Zhou had played Whitlam “like a trout”.
