Fairfax correspondent John Garnaut wrote that detained Australian businessman Stern Hu is 'widely known in China and at Rio Tinto for his integrity and quietly spoken good judgment'. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said he was 'perplexed' by Hu's arrest by officials at China's Ministry of State Security.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry official said on Thursday that authorities had the evidence needed to prove that the Rio executive stole state secrets, and that he had 'caused huge loss to China's economic interest and security'.
Unfortunately not all reaction to the arrest has been as circumspect as that of Foreign Minister Smith. In fact there's more than a touch of arrogance in much of the comment. Australians have rushed to the assumption that the arrest is payback for Rio's rejection of the Chinese Government-owned Chinalco's $A24.7 billion bailout deal, after it was no longer needed to keep the company out of financial trouble.
Soon after news of Hu's arrest, Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce issued a statement that declared: 'Chinalco's failure to buy an 18 per cent ownership of Rio would appear to have inspired Mr Hu's arrest and that of three other Rio workers.'
Pride in our nation and a desire to protect its interests can easily cloud our perceptions of other countries' legal systems. It may even cause us to assume that if one of our nationals gets caught on the wrong side of the law in a foreign country, they are innocent just because they're Australian.
We only need to remind ourselves of the widespread and confident declarations of Schapelle Corby's innocence in the face of her prosecution and sentencing for smuggling drugs into Indonesia in 2004. These have been anything but vindicated in the five years since Corby's arrest.
There are many manifestations of national pride and the arrogance and irrationality that often come with it. In the lead up to Kevin Rudd's meeting with Pope Benedict XVI last week, Shadow Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Tony Abbott was warning that it would be inappropriate for Rudd to lobby the Pope for the canonisation of Blessed Mary MacKillop. According to Abbott, he would disturb the purity of the canonisation process. It's just not done, he said. An announcement coinciding with the centenary of MacKillop's death on 8
August would indeed be a proud moment for Australia. But appropriate expressions of pride
must come after a process, not before it is complete.
In the case of Stern Hu, Rudd's yielding to calls from political rivals including Malcolm Turnbull and Bob Brown to lobby China on behalf of Stern Hu could prevent Chinese justice from taking its natural course. Interest in the case from Australia should be focused by a desire to see China uphold its own laws and protocols without fear or favour. Australians' opinion about the circumstances of the arrest, and his innocence or guilt, is a separate and secondary matter that we should keep to ourselves.
There is a sense in which those who pomote the view that Hu's arrest is an act of retribution from China are doing him a disservice. They could be treating Hu as a political pawn in a manner that does little or nothing to protect his rights as a detained foreign national. The best thing that can be done for him as a person is to ensure he gets fair treatment from China's legal system (and to be fair, that is partly the object the lobbying calls). Similarly Mary MacKillop's sainthood will be more authentic if it is the result of a correctly administered canonisation process not impeded by the lobbying of a political leader bent on demonstrating the greatness of his country.

Michael Mullins is editor of Eureka Street.