A lot of members here have access to both English media and Chinese media, but I suppose majority of them read more English media than the Chinese ones - my guess and common sense, with no rigorous statistics to back it up.
The impression of Australia among Chinese had been interesting, remote and slightly more positive of all Western countries. Mainland Chinese probably viewed it as a relatively friendly place for travel, study, invest and, indeed, even immigrate.
These have all changed gradually starting a few years ago, when Australia had pushed itself at the forefront of Sino-US conflict, which has been the defining and overriding themes globally and among Chinese community in the last few years. Australian banned Huawei from its National Broadband Network project back in 2012, which started to attract my attention about Australia from a geopolitical standpoint. I had followed Professor on his China focus and the ensuing debates in Australia on the subject on and off over the years. Professor White was prescient, I have to say, to see the quandary that Australia would be put in with the rise of China and its impact on Australia. Australia took the first shot across the bow when it banned Huawei from the 5G participation, the first in the world. Since then, it has taken the lead in both rhetoric and actions against China: from the so-called Chinese influence operations, South China Sea, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and the most indignant of all: calling for an independent inquiry of the origin and mishandling of Covid-19, a clearly politically-motivated call bordering on war crime investigation. The list is too long to list here.
Now, Australia considers itself a western nation even though it is in the Asia-Pacific region, giving its ethnic composition and history. An Anglo-Saxon outpost of sort. It is understandable that it will align with western countries in certain matters, particularly the US due to its security relationship. But what has really enraged China and Chinese people in general is why Australian felt that it had to take the lead in the western crusade against China, positioning itself as the attack dog of the US. China had no quarrel with Australia, unlike, say, Japan which has territorial and historical disputes with China (I'm leaving out the US for obvious reasons). China is no security threat to Australia and doesn't consider Australia a security threat to China or geopolitically important enough to even bother to invest in the so-called political influence operations or large-scale spying operations. Worst of all, China has been Australia's single largest customer, with close to 30% of its export market and has been responsible for Australia's uninterrupted growth over the last quarter century. And what does China get for all these?!
When Global Times called Australia a "paper cat," what it really tried to say is that Australia is feigning like a heavy-weight boxer with all its anti-China blusters. Many Australians were probably offended by GT's characterization that Australia was like "a piece of gum sticking to China's shoes," in other words, a nuisance with its constant harassment against China. But a lot of Chinese were actually humored and humiliated by Australia's accusations that China somehow even bothered to put its resources and reputation at stake to engage in some serious influence or spying operations in Australia. All these nuisance and harassment have been adding up nonstop, and the call for inquiry of Covid became the backstab and the last straw that broke the camel's back. Enough is enough.
That has been my view of Australia's behaviors against China in the last few years. It's been an evolution that gets where we're today. Would be interested in hearing what you and others have to say on the subject. I personally think that deep-seated racialism and strong insecurity about its future in a non-white region increasingly not dominated by the US have caused all the seemingly very irrational behaviors.
This report from New York Times on the latest China-Australia disputes is a good read as a follow-up to the above post.
