How appropriate it was that the first guest to stay at the monument to Ireland's crass extravagance was a representative of a regime that is itself a representative of a crass oppressive oligarchy that has intimidated the world into treating it as legitimate.
Had Zhu Rongji been a Serbian or an Iraqi he might well have been behind bars in The Hague instead of being behind barbed wire at Farmleigh. But did this bother our leaders? Not a bit, not a tiny bit. Just as the extravagance of Farmleigh did not pinch their sensibilities a tiny bit.
A house once owned by the Guinness family, offered for sale at £13 million, bought at a knock-up price of £22 million by our economics-savvy Government and then renovated, bringing the total bill to £40 million, and given over to one of the leaders of the regime that oppresses more people than any other.
And not a cheep of protest, except from the Greens, which doesn't rate on the Richter scale of protest even as a cheep. And, oh yes, there was Ruairi Quinn . . .
The Guinness family made a vast fortune over the years. And from what? From alcohol, that's what. Alcohol kills more people directly each year than illegal drug abuse has done. We fulminate against drug barons, bend our laws, our police and our judicial procedures to secure their convictions and imprison them on ludicrously long sentences.
And the producers of alcohol? We honour and eulogise them, and we insist on paying them almost twice the money they ask for when they want to sell their lavish mansions. Stark, raving bonkers? You're dead right.
We are asked to believe that Bertie Ahern stood up to the Premier of the world's most populous nation - and soon to become the world's new superpower - and challenged him about China's sordid human rights record. Bertie, who couldn't ask Ray Burke a few straightforward questions about money he got from JMSE before he appointed him minister for foreign affairs a few years ago? Bertie, who couldn't ask Charlie Haughey what the blank cheques he was asked to sign would be used for? Who abandons his own colleague, Noel Dempsey, on the say-so of Jackie Healy-Rae.
AND if he stood up to him so much in private, how come not a word in public? In his speech at Dublin Castle on Monday night, lots of "greatly-honoured-by-your-presence" stuff about a "positive-step-and-a-pleasure-to-meet you", guff about friendly relations and mutual understanding, but not a word about human rights. Can you imagine Bertie, amid the piles of soft cushions and deep carpets at Farmleigh, giving a reading from the latest Amnesty International report on China?
Last year saw continued repression of peaceful dissent throughout China. There was no sign of any relaxation of the 1999 crackdown on fundamental freedoms.
Thousands of people were arbitrarily detained for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association or religion. Some were sentenced to long prison terms after unfair trials under national security legislation: others were detained without trial and assigned to up to three years re-education through labour.
Torture and ill-treatment of prisoners continued to be widespread. The limited and incomplete records available showed that at least 1,151 people were sentenced to death and 1,000 executed; the true figures were believed to be far higher.
In the autonomous regions of Xinjiang and Tibet, religious freedom continued to be severely restricted, and people suspected of nationalist activities or sympathies were subjected to particularly harsh repression.
There might have been an embarrassing moment had Zhu Rongji read from Amnesty's report on human rights abuses in Ireland, or had otherwise acquainted himself with the special courts to try ordinary offences, appalling treatment of Travellers and refugees, police malpractices that go entirely unaccounted for.
But at least we have the semblance of a democracy here and a semblance of the rule of law, which China does not. Neither are we straining to build a vast nuclear arsenal, as China is (now encouraged by the Americans in return for Chinese support for the US abrogating the Anti-Ballistic Treaty).
Anyway, who is this fellow Zhu Rongji? What conceivable legitimacy has he to be calling himself premier of anywhere? He has as much legitimacy as premier as Cathal Goulding would have had had he seized power here in the late 1960s and 1970s on the basis of no popular support outside the "stickie" element that infected the trade unions, RTE and The Irish Times at the time (and they haven't gone away, you know). How would we have felt had Goulding gone around the world calling himself prime minister of Ireland?
I am not suggesting we should not have dealings with this fellow or with the regime in China and I hope he has a lovely time in Killarney. But we do not have to pretend to be all friendly and folksy to him, and did he really have to be put up in Farmleigh House. Is that place not offensive enough?
vbrowne@irish-times.ie