It's not about face: it's being able to talk the talk I left Europe to come to work in Sydney two months ago. After more than a decade working as a diplomat and then in a think tank there, my expectations of politicians when they came to speak about China had become somewhat basic. The most one could realistically aspire to was that they would say Chinese names right. Seeing even the most practised politicians mangle Hu Jintao's and Wen Jiabao's names on multiple occasions, sometimes even to the leaders' faces, I started to despair. The good news, since my arrival in Australia, is that the standards in this area here are way higher. It seems a trivial thing, but I guess for me it shows that Australian politicians view China, and the Chinese people they deal with, in a more intimate and accessible way than Europeans do. Someone's name is an important thing. Mispronouncing it is not a great thing to do. Most Australian politicians, on my limited experience of the past two months, seem to have got at least that right. Of course, Australia has gone one better, in having in former prime minister Kevin Rudd a leader who was a Mandarin speaker. The best the UK could offer there was former leader of the then marginal Liberal Democrats Paddy Ashdown, who could say some words in Cantonese. Mandarin is gradually becoming popular across Europe, but it seems to be far more an accepted part of the curriculum