Australia and China celebrated the 35th anniversary of official ties between the two countries this month. It was in December 1972 when the government of prime minister Gough Whitlam decided to end Australia's hostility towards communist China - which at the time seemed culturally alien and politically dangerous.
Everyone was talking about Japan and the United States, not China. Many Australians were uneasy that American companies were 'buying up the farm'. US resource and energy companies looked hungrily across the Pacific at Australia's vast, untapped mineral and energy riches and decided they wanted a piece of the action. With the Americans came the Japanese, who brought up huge tracts of coastal land in Australia and large swathes of city downtowns.
Australians liked the foreigners' money and their investments, but they worried that they were repatriating profits offshore. No groups in Australian society were more miffed by US and Japanese investments than the trade union movement and leftist academic writers. In the 1970s and early 1980s, there were scores of books, pamphlets, television and radio debates about the evil of foreign ownership of Australia's economic resources. Politicians eager to placate community unrest on the issue encouraged consumers to support 'Buy Australian' campaigns.
Unease about foreign ownership also manifested itself in Australian popular culture. One of the country's most successful rock bands of the 1970s and 1980s, Cold Chisel, belted out a line about the Japanese, 'buying our beaches; sellin' transistors; them little folk look real big'.
But these days, when Australians discuss Chinese investment, their tone is more relaxed than the strident, edgy discontent that was directed towards the Americans and the Japanese all those years ago. Why?
Well, for one, China might well be Australia's economic protector. Because of China's continuing strong demand for Australian exports, many Australian economists think the local economy will be shielded from an American recession if one eventuates in the new year.
And China is benefitting from the fact that most Australians still view it benignly - Australians rate China a lower threat than the US, according to most polls. The reaction to recent news stories about potential Chinese ownership of Australian assets illustrates this point.