Xi struck a pose with a hurley, but wields a big stick

WASN’T Xi Jinping great craic altogether when he visited our humble neck of the woods, here in Ireland, in 2012. The man couldn’t have been nicer.

He sampled our food and drink, including a lovely Irish coffee during a visit to a farm in Sixmilebridge. ’Twas lovely entirely.

And he capped the whole thing off at Croke Park where he decided to have a go at a bit of hurling, pictured left. You could see straight away how comfortable he was with a big stick in his hand. Pure natural talent.

Well, as Chinese President for LIfe, Xi has been doing a lot of ground hurling since then. No need at all to tell him to pull on the bloody ball, I can tell you.

He’s stitching it to the other side, right, left and centre.

Countries that have the misfortune to find themselves neighbours to the increasingly bellicose Chinese leader are fast realising the existential threat they now face.

He’s linking up with that other great gangster Vladimir Putin for joint Chinese-Russian military manoeuvres. He’s tooling up his People’s Army (Orwell would feel proud of that title), with an estimated spend this year of well over €150billion.

His forces are encroaching towards Japan and his fighter jet even buzzed a Canadian warship in what the Chinese media called a ‘warm welcome’. His most egregious behaviour has been – as ever with Communist dictatorships – against his own people.

This week, the BBC has been exposing Xi Jinping’s tyranny against Uighur Muslims – with about one million detained in socalled vocational training centres where their own language and customs are forced out of them and where they become good Chinese, speaking mandarin.

Prisoners are subjected to physical and psychological torture and, worst of all, children have been stolen from them without any recourse.

China has become a high technology, super-surveillance, dystopian nightmare for its entire population, with the exception of the ruling Communist Party elites.

And this week, to mark the 70th anniversary of the Communist takeover, Xi Jinping put his military might on display, including previously unseen intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of raining nuclear hell around the world.

Donald Trump is a mere distraction when compared to Chinese hardman Xi Jinping.

The US still has the necessary checks and balances to prevent disaster. But in China, there’s only one voice.

No wonder Hong Kong is in revolt.