How embarrassing can former PMs be?

[crashlander]

Not sure we should be allowing the use of the word "Ch..k" on this platform.

Probably right. But sometimes it is not easy to find the exact word that best fits the person involved. I would never use the term 'chink' to a Chinese person, even one to whom I had no respect. But President Xi and others of his ilk, make normal phraseology unsatisfactory.

I had great homes for China a few years ago. The previous Emperor had used his reign to dismantle the things built up by Chairman Mao. Chinese leaders no longer ruled for life. Chinese people were the best off they had been in centuries, if ever. Corruption was down. The 'cult of personality' was on the way out and Chinese people had more political freedoms that they had experienced. They were heading down the road to being the sort of state a person could respect.
What do we have now? The same sort of Imperial Bureaucracy that weighed China down for centuries. Power for life. Granted that power is not inherited, as it was in the days of the Empire, but it is still gifted, nor earnt, to the favourite of the present ruler. The people have been repressed to a level even Chairman Mao could appreciate. China is rattling the sabres and trying to expand at the expense of everybody else. Chinese people have no political freedom. The Chinese security apparatus has taken on the power and significance that the NKVD did under Iosef Stalin. The Chinese economy is going backwards at a rate of knots. and the leader wishes to hide his shortcomings in Nationalist rhetoric and threats.
None of these might be new, not even to China, but they are a serious backwards step. President Xi is single handedly creating the next Cold War.
And Keating appears to admire this bozo! Scott Morrison may be getting flack for his 'spin' (not saying he doesn't deserve it either), but it is nothing compared to President Xi. And Keating passes it all off as being good?