Well, that's the commie vote all sealed up

The Prime Minister's own speech went down well. But when Mr Rudd started addressing the leader of one quarter of the world's population, fluently in his own tongue, the effect was stunning. There was an almost audible intake of breath among the scores of Chinese political and business heavyweights in the audience. Many sat bolt upright in their chairs, beaming at Mr Rudd's virtuosity. But it worked so well because Mr Rudd was not acting like a show-off. He spoke at length in English first, displaying a commanding grasp of China's history and development into an economic giant, before seeking his audience's indulgence to welcome President Hu personally in Chinese. He spoke not for a few lines but for a few minutes. Source.

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What he did tell the media was that he'd told the President that he did not agree that Iraq and Afghanistan were both theatres of the same war, and that if Labor were to win the election, Australian combat troops would be out of Iraq by mid next year. But, he said, more troops could be deployed to Afghanistan. He reiterated a Labor government would withdraw Australian troops by mid next year, via a negotiated staged withdrawal. But Afghanistan, which Mr Rudd's dubbed "terror central", is a different matter. Labor has backed that deployment since 2001. Source.

MK - In my view, Kevin Rudd has been a smart politician on this, let me tell you why. He knows very well that he can get on the wrong side of George Bush with little consequence, after all Bush will be gone in 10+ months. The next president could be a Hillary Clinton or some other Democrat, who is left-leaning like him. However, apart from the love that leftists have for communists, if you piss off a Hu Jintao, your ass will have to grovel for a long time, because unlike America, Hu ain’t going anywhere, unless it’s in a box. Look at the way China strong-arms countries into cutting official relations with Taiwan, he knows America won’t do that, even if they do, it’ll only be until some Democrat, who can’t remember what happened last week, gets into power. Besides it’s not like the Democrats can blame Rudd for withdrawing the Aussie troops when they’ve been working so hard to shaft the troops themselves.

That little bit of mandarin has ensured that Kevin Rudd will be in China’s good books for a long time. As a bonus, this will seal support for Kevin Rudd from his loony left base, the more violent, oppressive and brutal a group or country’s rulers are the more attractive they are to the left, so apart from the commie thing, they’d be drawn to the Chinese regime, sorry Tibet & Falun Gong. Incidentally I saw on the evening SBS news that China has thrown a spanner into the works on the subject of climate change; guess who’s getting the blame though, yep you guessed it, Bush and Howard. I don’t know why they even bother. The only fly, apart from John Howard kicking his ass, that might end up in Rudd’s cosy pot of green tea will be if a Republican makes it into the Whitehouse and he hears the words, “Thanks for the well wishes Mr. Rudd, now about that Iraq thing..”