When he was mayor of Shanghai in the 1980s, Jiang Zemin discussed Chinese—Australian relations with me on many occasions. Shanghai is a great centre for steel and wool textiles and he recognised the quality of Australian services, so we had a lot to talk about. Over dinner we would move on to the respective contributions of American presidents to their country and to the world. When I joined Jiang in reciting the Gettysburg Address with the fruit at the end of a meal, he kept us going when a word slipped my mind.

Back in Beijing, at the beginning of the 1990s, China's recently appointed president invited me to call in. Democracy sounded good in theory, he told me, but it didn't work in practice. You had to be rich to reach the top of the political system, he said. Money bought policy. In China under the leadership of the Communist Party, government could make decisions in the national interest and enforce them in the national interest.

I responded that it wasn't at all like that in Australia. I explained the autonomy of Australian political leaders, and the role of independent perceptions of the national interest in big Australian policy decisions.

Twenty years later, a different Chinese president and the premier met Prime Minister Gillard on a Chinese visit in April 2011. Jiang would have received a report from all of the meetings of the Australian delegation, and I hope that he saw the evidence on my side of our old argument.