Chinese media gives new Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull the nickname 'Sugar Dumpling'
The new Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull is apparently known as "Sugar Dumpling" to the Chinese press in Australia, due to his surname Turnbull sounding a little bit like Tang(sugar/sweet) and Bao (dumpling) in Mandarin Chinese. You decide for yourself, is the Chinese pet name sweet or sickening?
The Australian PM's son told reporters that their family has powerful ties to Beijing through his wife Yvonne Wang, whose father was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and an international law and commerce expert. Now working for Trip Advisor Asia, she grew up in Hong Kong and then later moved to Singapore where “the air quality is better," according to Australian media.
Yvonne Wang's father was a member of the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]
With those impressive connections, maybe he'll be able to get state media to start calling him something a bit more distinguished.
They could have gone with "Mop" (Tuoba), but "Sugar Dumpling" seems to have stuck. The Australian media refers to him as “The Silvertail” and the “Prince of Point Piper”, both of which wouldn't sound quite right in Mandarin.
Feel free to send in any other suggestions. Help a prime minister out!
Is Malcolm Turnbull 'soft' on China because of his family connections?
John Garnaut, Asia-Pacific Editor
Alex Turnbull, son of the new Prime Minister, has knocked down "absurd" claims that intelligence agencies are concerned about the family background of his Chinese-born wife.
The younger Mr Turnbull has told Fairfax Media he cannot make sense of claims reported on Tuesday that Australian and American spies are worried about his father's "soft" China policies and his wife being the "princeling" child of senior Communist Party officials.
"Malcolm has had a healthy scepticism for the intelligence community," wrote Christopher Joye in the Australian Financial Review.
"This is reciprocated in spades with Australian and US spooks insinuating Malcolm is soft on national security and the China threat while noting his Sinophile son is married to the princeling daughter of senior Chinese Communist Party officials."
The author, Mr Joye, is a fund manager who has known the Turnbull family for decades and has written extensively on Western counter-intelligence and Chinese cyber-espionage.
But Mr Joye's claims about senior party ties are "utter rubbish", according to Alex Turnbull.
"It's a pity Chris was so busy he could not be bothered to clear up basic biographical information, especially as he has my phone number," he said.
The AFR removed the word "princeling" from the online story yesterday and Mr Joye declined to comment.
Alex Turnbull, 33, worked at Goldman Sachs before joining a private equity firm in Singapore. In 2012 he married Yvonne Wang, or Wang Yi Wen, who works as a public relations adviser for Trip Advisor.
They had their first child, Isla, in May.
Her parents were well-connected in cosmopolitan Shanghai and were known to be on good terms with former president Jiang Zemin. But they did not hold any senior party or military rank.
Ms Wang's mother, Tu Chongling, was a Canadian music graduate who died in July, aged 78. Ms Wang's father, Wang Chunming, was an international relations scholar.
He was born into a "capitalist" family in Ningbo, Zhejiang, and fled to the United States before being chased back again by McCarthyism in the 1950s.
Mr Wang returned to China to spend the better part of a decade tending pigs in the Cultural Revolution, and then worked with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Mr Wang is 91 years old and in poor health.
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