Chairman Dan Andrews, Respected Comrade and Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Victoria, jetted off to Beijing this week, checking in with his colleagues at the Chinese Communist Party no doubt.

What’s he doing there?

All he told reporters was that he is on a “trade mission” aimed at “strengthening Victoria’s standing among prospective Chinese students”.

He issued a list of five people he planned to meet (including Victoria’s commissioner to China and the Australian ambassador).

But on the list is a bloke named Li Xukui, who is – according to Andrews – the vice president of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries.

Sounds friendly doesn’t it?

Not quite. According to the US Director of National Intelligence, the CCP uses the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries “to directly and malignly influence state and local leaders” to “promote China’s global agenda”.

According to these reports, the CCP-funded organisation was exploiting sister-city relationships to convince “American state and city leaders to soften their stances toward China or embrace Beijing-friendly policies”.

The outfit was cited by the Wall Street Journal in a report in July, 2022, about Beijing’s attempts to escalate influence efforts.

But that’s not quite the story Chairman Dan told to state-owned reporters in China.

【中澳關係緩和後首位澳州長訪華 維州州長：中國故事絕對是維多利亞州故事的核心】澳大利亞維多利亞州州長安德魯斯27日開啟4天訪華之行，他表示，他此行目的就是同中國發展友好關係，並大力推廣維多利亞州的高校教育，希望能吸引更多中國留學生來墨爾本的大學學習。#China #DanielAndrews pic.twitter.com/NMFau0yCiQ

— 鳳凰衛視PhoenixTV (@PhoenixTVHK) March 27, 2023

“Good friends can disagree, but true friends don’t disrespect,” he grovelled, proclaiming that a modern Victoria cannot be “without a Chinese influence”.

He’s right about that!

And he’d know, of course - this is his seventh visit to the country since becoming Premier, and he’s got a history of secret deals with China that the Federal Government needed to step in to cancel because they conflicted with the national interest.

Yet this bloke is still naive enough to meet the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries.

According to InfluenceWatch it “works to fully implement China’s foreign policy through people-to-people diplomacy and is guided by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ‘Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era’.”

Good luck with that, Victoria.