The term “useful idiot” is frequently attributed to the Bolshevik Vladimir Lenin who became the first totalitarian dictator of the Soviet Union. I have never been able to source this quote and it does not appear in Lenin’s written work. However, it’s possible that he said this in private company since it was not likely that he would want useful idiots to know about what he thought of them.

I am not of the view that Dan Andrews (the former Labor Party premier of Victoria) and Bob Carr (the former Labor Party premier of NSW) are idiots. Quite the contrary. But they are particularly useful to China’s President Xi Jinping due to their participation in what China’s State Council Information Office called China’s V-Day commemorations.

Of the Australian duo, Carr would probably have been Xi’s most welcome guest due to his previous role as Australia’s minister for foreign affairs. But Andrews is also significant since he – among all Australian political leaders at the time – was the only one to embrace Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative.

He did so in Beijing in October 2019 when he used the occasion to criticise Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison. As I wrote in these pages on October 26, 2019, “it’s impossible to imagine a provincial leader of the Communist Party of China criticising President Xi Jinping’s foreign policy while on an official visit to, say, Canberra”.

It would appear that circa 2019 Andrews believed that the state of Victoria could run its own foreign policy. He was soon disabused of this view when Morrison intervened in December 2020 and any Australian role in the BRI was junked.

Former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews has defended his controversial trip to Beijing, following criticism over his attendance at China’s national military parade.In a statement, Mr Andrews said it is in Australia’s “national interest” to have a “constructive” relationship with China.The former Victorian premier also reaffirmed his position on the war in Ukraine, saying he has condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin and his “illegal war”.

It seems that Andrews has illusions about his political importance. How else to explain his lining up in China’s Tiananmen Square on Wednesday to meet President Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan. Andrews soon took to the rear as Xi led the party – accompanied in the front row by Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un.

Included in the procession was Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. What a quartet. Three communist dictators and one head of a brutal theocracy which punishes women for defying the dress code. Plus one Western politician.

On August 20, Carr wrote an opinion piece in Nine Newspapers titled “A commemoration in Beijing I will be honoured to attend”. His column commenced: “When Australian radios heard of China’s victory over Japan in 1945, they knew this was the victory of an ally. World War II had started with the Rape of Nanjing in 1937 and the Chinese lost 20 million people resisting the invasion.”

In fact, Australia’s Victory in the Pacific or VP Day is celebrated on August 15. It is also called Victory over Japan (VJ) Day. Sure, Australians would have been pleased to know that China had prevailed over Japan. But, to Australians, the Pacific War ended with Japan’s informal surrender on August 15 – not long after the United States dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima and then, Nagasaki.

The formal surrender to the US took place on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.

It is appropriate to commemorate the end of the China-Japan war. But the Communist Party of China had little to do with it.

As Miles Yu wrote in these pages on September 2, “from 1937 to 1945, it was the Nationalist government, under Chiang Kai-shek, that bore the brunt of Japan’s military assault”.

He pointed out that Chinese “Nationalist forces, not the Chinese communists, fought nearly every major battle”. While the CCP under the leadership of Mao Zedong was “holed up in its Yan’an stronghold” and “sustained minuscule losses”. China’s Nationalist Party was sometimes referred to as the Kuo-Min Tang.

The Soviet Union, from which Russia emerged in 1991, took virtually no active part in the Pacific War. Between August 1939 and June 1941, Stalin’s Soviet Union was an ally of Nazi Germany under what was termed the Nazi Soviet Pact. On April 13, 1941 the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact was entered into under which the Soviet Union effectively protected Japan. The Soviet Union did not declare war on Japan until August 5, 1945 – just weeks before the conflict ended.

Former foreign minister Bob Carr has defended his presence in Beijing for China’s military parade, even though he didn’t attend it.Speaking to the ABC, Mr Carr said his visit to Beijing is to recognise the commemoration itself.He added that his visit is not an endorsement of China’s military show of force.

So there you have it. The communist leader Xi and his communist friend Putin led the commemorations in Beijing. This despite the fact that their predecessors, Mao and Stalin, played little role in the defeat of Japan. As to Korea – it was occupied by Japan from 1931 to 1945. However, the non-communist Korean provisional government, based in China, committed forces to the war against Japan.

It was the US which defeated Imperial Japan – with the help of its allies, including Australia. But the US was not at the V-Day commemorations in China, and Australia did not send its ambassador. Andrews and Carr were invited by Chinese officials in Australia.

Chinese President Xi Jinping warned the world was facing a choice between peace or war at a massive military parade in Beijing on Wednesday (September 3), flanked by Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in an unprecedented show of force. Gabe Singer reports.

Interviewed on ABC 7.30 on Wednesday, Carr said that he “wasn’t there for the (military) parade” but for “the commemoration of China’s enormously historically significant victory over the Japanese aggressor” and for some “terrific meetings” which were arranged for him by the Chinese embassy in Canberra.

Maybe. In which case Carr is somewhat naive. Sally Sara interviewed Chatham House senior research fellow Yu Jie on September 4. Sara asked Yu “what message is Beijing trying to send internationally with such a large military display”? Yu replied that China’s “very clear message (is) basically to deter America’s allies in the region” and to demonstrate how the “world order should be organised”.

Namely that “it should largely be multi-polar but led by China with a diminishing leadership role for the West”.

Intentionally or otherwise, Andrews and Carr contributed to President Xi’s big day out. Particularly Andrews who posed for a school class, or sporting group, photo and shook hands with Xi. But Carr contributed as well because he gave intellectual weight to the occasion.

I was critical of Donald Trump’s decision to welcome Putin to the US state of Alaska with a clap and red carpet. But Trump is unpredictable and not an advocate for contemporary China. Unlike Andrews and Carr, he is not necessarily useful to the CCP.