A Chinese Ghost in the Machine

Israel’s brilliant strategy of inflicting explosive justice on Hezbollah’s weird beards  with booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies has been praised by those who believe the world is better off with them dead or reduced to blind and limping cripples. The wokies, who aren’t troubled by making common cause with violent, Koran-quoting misogynists, think it’s a terrible thing and rattle off by rote all their standard lines about the evil Zionist Entity. Pavlov was on to something when he realised that the simplest of aural cues can prompt an immediate slobbering response.

Me? Let it be stated for the record that while no terrorist, I am just as wary of modern electronics as any terrorist now getting around with a white cane. We have already seen a spate of  explosions and fires with many appliances, including household storage batteries, electric bikes, scooters and electric vehicles. In New York City alone such blasts and resulting fires killed 17 people in 2023 alone, while fires aboard several cargo ships transporting electric have proven almost impossible to extinguish. No blame accrues to Israel for these often tragic mishaps, of course, but China, well that’s another matter altogether.

What might happen, I wonder, if an enemy staged a mass attack by manipulating the devices on which modern life depends in much the same way Israel has shown it can be done? Don’t laugh and accuse me of suffering from terminal paranoia. Surely you’ve read how Chinese-made surveillance cameras have been identified as security risks and ripped out of Parliament House and TikTok spies on users as part of Beijing’s global intelligence-gathering. What’s more, don’t forget that China has perpetrated unprompted acts of aggression in open waters and air space, including the release of aluminium foil by a fighter jet in the path of a RAAF plane, plus sonic booms which damaged the ears of our Navy divers.

Defence analysts have pointed out that in a new era of warfare, a nation like ours could be crippled and dominated by an aggressor without troops actually setting foot on our soil. It’s no longer the realms of science fiction or fantasy. Scary stuff, which hopefully will never happen. But here’s the thing, it could happen and my own experience with Chinese-manufactured goods offers little comfort. Let’s  ride the mind’s Tardis for a trip back to an era when AI was still a pipe dream, Spotify hadn’t replaced CDs, and sat-navs were in their infancy. Fantasy, mind over matter, paranormal, coincidence … you be the judge, but I swear every word is true about what I dubbed the China Curse sabotaging my life.

Scoff if you will, but it all started years ago with something as simple as a shopping trip. It wasn’t until I got back home and tried on the new shirts with the Bundy Rum Bear and Pink Floyd logos in my regular ‘L’ size and found neither was a fit. So back to the shop to exchange for ‘XL.’ It was not that I’d grown, the sizing had obviously shrunk. The tag revealed all: Made in China.

As a freelance journalist and columnist, I was inspired to fire a few salvos at our growing dependence on China at the cost of local manufacturing and jobs. “Are we becoming a Chinese satellite state by stealth?” I wrote, wondering in print how many Australian jobs have been lost because of cheap imports flooding our markets and our homes? China is an important trading partner for our resources industries, but maybe we are taking things too far by allowing their electrical, clothing and food items an open door to compete against Australian-made items. The local products have to comply with more stringent controls and higher wages. They are not often subject to the safety recalls we have seen for various Chinese goods including toys, textiles and dairy products.

Call it coincidence, but over the weeks that followed my column’s criticism, fittings and appliances which had worked perfectly quite suddenly started to fail completely or tease me with their own version of  ‘Now you see me, now you don’t’.

The TV only turned on when it wanted to, the electric hot water system stayed cold for a week, the near-new DVD player and the home computer refused to work  on demand. And yes, all those things carried the ubiquitous “Made in China” tag. I had to write my next newspaper column by hand! But it didn’t end there. The curse stayed with me and the poltergeist obviously had a wicked sense of humour.

Take the day my wife, Cathy, chose to invite her welfare agency work colleagues and their families around for a Christmas barbecue. Any other day over the past three months or three years would have been fine (literally), but she chose the one day when Noah would have realised he hadn’t been slaving in vain in the causeof God’s secret plan.

Fortunately we remained high and dry near the beach despite the eight-inch deluge and gale force winds which didn’t deter the guests, whose ages ranged from about four to 74, with a couple of well-behaved teenagers as well. In fact, everything was going swimmingly until I attempted to play some music to liven the party – insert the disc, wait a few seconds and then … the sounds of silence.

I’m not talking about the Simon and Garfunkel classic, just the sound that didn’t come from the hi-fi speakers. So I take out the disc, wipe it on my shirt and try again. Nothing. So I try poking the player in the laser “eye” with a cotton bud, while a female guest asks, “Is that the latest gadget to be hit by the China Curse, John?”

I tell her the damn thing worked fine earlier, and it must be the humidity.

“This modern stuff is crap,” I rant. “You don’t get things fixed anymore, it’s cheaper to toss them out and buy a new one.”

I’m sitting back enjoying another beer when out of the blue the stereo comes to life and Stevie Ray Vaughan starts belting out the guitar blues as only he could. The lyrics to “Texas Flood” drown out the rain on the roof.  “It’s flooding down in Texas, all the telephone lines are down …” Stevie laments. Couldn’t be more apt, but if any of the guests thought I’d orchestrated the whole thing, no, it was done by a force outside my control.

A few weeks later I had an appointment with a skin specialist on the Sunshine Coast and the promised benefit of a new sat-nav to make sure I found the right place. So we travel through the round-about world capital of Noosa, then with our destination entered on the touch screen the pleasant female voice tells me, “Turn right, 100 metres…”

We make it around a few corners with her help but when I miss one by paying more attention to the traffic than to her, things start to get more complicated.

“Do a U-turn at 50 metres,” she commands.

Sorry, but there is no way I can do a U turn, there’s a concrete strip and heavy traffic. Just when the heart rate is starting to settle down, she once more commands, “Do a U-turn”.

No traffic or other restrictions now, so I swing the car around, which brings me right back to the spot with the traffic island and that annoyingly sweet, cruel female voice again tells me, “Do a U-turn”.

I choose to ignore the nagging sat-nav girl, while Cathy reaches out and switches her off, adding, “Why don’t you just let me drive?”

“I want to see what she tells me next, “  I replied, switching her back on, just in time for her to tell me, “Turn right at 50 metres.”

I take the turn off the busy road and it takes me up a hill to a beautiful lookout overlooking the Noosa River and blue Pacific. Is she trying to get further instructions from the satellite, or just trying to calm our jangled nerves?

Doesn’t help, and I re-enter our destination at Minyama, near Maroochydore, only to be told in that bloody calm, smug voice, “Minyama is not accessible by road.”

Then I see the small encryption below the screen. Made in China. We are still laughing as we finally arrive there without needing a boat. How could she not know about the four-lane motorway and big, high bridge spanning the Maroochy River?

The skin man checks me over and then tries to enter my details in his computer, which suddenly crashes at the first keystroke below my name. Why am I not surprised at the sight of this specialist, who probably earns more in an hour than I do in a week, crawling about under his desk unplugging cables and eventually muttering, “That’s just a new computer, but fortunately I kept the old one as a back-up”.

Why am I not surprised when the back-up fires up momentarily, then dies. I feel sorry, as I know he’s in for a bad day.

Honestly, could I make this stuff up? Truth can be stranger than fiction. But somewhere up there, Bruce Lee and his son, Brandon, who know all about Chinese curses, must be laughing … Eventually we moved to the Sunshine Coast and maybe the poltergeist remained in the house, or perhaps he decided we had suffered enough.

In relating my China-tech torments am I tempting fate again?

John Mikkelsen is a former editor of three Queensland regional newspapers, columnist,  freelance writer and author of the Amazon Books memoir, Don’t Call Me Nev.