Introduction

Over the past five years, the relationship between Australia and China has deteriorated markedly. A series of defence, trade and foreign policy disputes have led to what is widely regarded as the lowest point in two countries’ ties in decades (Hatcher 2021). This has disrupted the positive direction into which the relations between China and Australia had been heading over the past three decades, despite occasional hiccups. Since the early 1990s, there had been rapid growth in the movement of people across the two nations, with a significant increase in the number of tourists, international students, and migrants, both transient and permanent. In 2018, there were more than 1.2 million people in Australia identified themselves as having a Chinese background, representing almost 5.5 percent of Australia’s population (abs 2022). Before Covid-19, more than 250,000 Chinese students were enrolled in Australian universities, while over 1 million Chinese tourists visited Australia each year. Growing number of Australian tourists had also begun to visit China. These patterns of increased mobility were an outcome of stronger commercial ties between the two countries. China had become Australia’s leading trade partner, with levels of investment in joint enterprises and ventures continuing to rise at rapid rate (Hatcher 2021).

As the economies of Australia and China became inextricably linked, it was reasonable to expect that the political and cultural relations between the two countries would also become closer and that the historical legacies of distrust and enmity would gradually diminish. To some extent, this was beginning to happen --until recently. Over the past five years, relations between China and Australia have however begun to deteriorate, with a conspicuous degree of antagonism once again characterizing Australia-China relations. The sources of this antagonism are many, and include political developments in both China and Australia, as well as the geopolitical tensions within the Indo-Pacific region. As China has become more assertive within the region, Australia has sided with the United States in expressing its disapproval. Disputes over the origins of Covid-19 have also created a politically turbulent climate, intensifying levels of qualm. While Australia has been critical of what it regards as China’s abuse of human rights, China has pointed to Australia’s attempts to interfere in its internal affairs, pursuing policies that are disrespectful if not hostile.

In this paper, I provide an account of the growing tensions between China and Australia, to show how these tensions are shaped by a complex history of mistrust between the two counties evident most starkly in the colonial representations of the Asian other. In Australia, the orientalist legacy persists and re-remerges regularly under difficult conditions, such as those associated with Covid-19. In contrast, China resents the reluctance of Western countries to respect its traditions, the progress it has made towards modernization over the past four decades, and its attempts to strengthen its geopolitical standing. Of course, while Australia acknowledges the importance of China to Australia’s future, it continues to view it as a threat, rather than a potential friend with a different system of values and interests, which need to be negotiated cautiously and respectfully. In the context of this ambiguity, this paper seeks to examine the impact of recent tensions between China and Australia on the prospects of international education. I suggest that while student mobility and educational exchange between the two countries are expected to endure, the current tensions are likely to undermine the broader potential of international education, such as public diplomacy. To realize this potential, I argue that it is important to consider how internationalization’s moral and political goals of intercultural communication and understanding might be more effectively promoted within the context of persistent geopolitical disputes.

Chequered History of China-Australia Relations

The history of relations between China and Australia has been a chequered one. Since colonization, Australians have approached the Chinese as a major source of threat, on the one hand, and as an opportunity, on the other. During the 19th century, many Chinese settled to Australia, in search of economic opportunities, such as those associated with the Victorian Gold Rush. Between 1848 and 1853, many indentured labourers were brought from Fujian province in China to work for private landowners in Australia, helping them to develop their incipient agricultural enterprises. However, the cheap labour that they represented backfired, escalating into racist opposition towards the Chinese immigrants more generally. Many of these immigrant workers returned to China after finishing their contracts, though some stayed, and started families (Grayson 2018). During the Gold Rush in the latter part of 1850s and 1860s up to 40,000 Chinese immigrants worked in the goldfields of Victoria alone, with the hope of discovering gold to build a better life for themselves and support the families they left behind in China.

Invariably, however, to the white settlers, the Chinese miners, who, at one stage, outnumbered the European miners by at least 3 to 1 at the diggings in Victoria, were both admired for their work ethic but also viewed as competitive threats (Grayson 2018). A climate of distrust regularly resulted in anti-Chinese agitation and racist clashes. While their lives were harsh, many Chinese persisted, and stayed in Australia, often supported by various Chinese societies which helped them to integrate into the colonial society. Gao (2017) has thus challenged the “sojourner” narrative of Chinese migration to Australia for its culturally essentialist assumptions, demonstrating that, in the 19th century, patterns of Chinese migration and integration in Australia were a great deal more varied. Many Chinese were able to retain transnational links through regular visits to their home in China. Bagnell (2011: 66) has similarly shown that despite anti-Chinese racism, many ‘white women and Chinese men came together for reasons of economics, physical security, companionship, love, comfort, sexual fulfilment and the formation of families.’ Numerous examples of interracial relationships, she argues, indicate ‘perhaps surprising frequency, diversity and degree of toleration, such that they formed a substantial part of nineteenth-century Chinese Australian family life’.

Yet, the Victorian government took a dim view of such relationships, and for political purposes perhaps even encouraged anti-Chinese hostility. In 1861, therefore an Act was passed to curb the levels of Chinese migration (Fitzgerald 2007). This did not however, stop the arrival of Chinese to other colonies in Australia. From 1873 to 1877, for example, the goldfields in Queensland attracted more than 20,000 Chinese workers. While most of them returned to China when there was no more gold to mine, many others settled in Australia working in various occupations, including shopkeepers, farmers, cooks, builders and the like (Grayson 2018). Some also worked as clerks and interpreters. The number of Chinese residents in New South Wales also continued to grow and, towards the end of the 19th century, constituted a significant part of the Australian population. However, the growth in their numbers continued to be seen by many as a major threat to the white identity of Australia, leading the Australian federal government to pass in 1901 an Immigration Restriction Act, which was now applied to the entire country and not only to some of the states (Fitzgerald 2007). The Act required new arrivals to undergo a language dictation test, in a clear attempt to stop non-White migration, directed mainly at the Chinese.

Despite the restrictions and anti-Chinese sentiments, the Chinese immigrants continued to make a significant contribution to Australia’s social, economic, and cultural development. Ien Ang (2019) has shown, for example, how the urban economic development in Australia would not have been the same without the Chinese. Her recent research has focused on the development of Chinatowns across Australia as highly productive engines of economic activities. The Chinatowns, she has suggested, offered accommodation to the Chinese communities, becoming spaces where they could feel safe, open new businesses such as eateries, groceries, markets, laundries, and groceries, and retain their cultural traditions. Chinatowns also became a pivotal site from which the Chinese could engage with the rest of the Australian community, becoming suppliers of services and products like tea, furniture, silk, and food. In Australia’s major cities, Chinatowns continue to thrive, even as they have now become tourist destinations and where many international students live (Ang 2019). Historically, though, they point to the ways in which, despite antagonistic public policies, the possibilities of intercultural exchange are entirely eradicated. Nor do patterns of trade and diplomatic relations cease to exist, even if they are filtered through local sentiments hostile to cultural and political links with China.

With respect to foreign relations between China and Australia, the first Chinese consulate in Australia was established in 1909, designed to encourage trade between the two countries. It was not however until 1921 that Australia established its own representation in China through a trade commissioner, an effort that was entirely unsuccessful and disbanded the following year (Grayson 2018). Throughout the 1930s, the dire state of the world economy meant Australia made few attempts to extend its diplomatic relations, with Australia’s first diplomatic mission in China not opening until 1941. With the effects of the Second World War and political turmoil in China, the mission was closed in 1949, following the victory of the Communist Party over the Nationalist Kuomintang and the subsequent creation of the People’s Republic of China (prc). Over the next two decades, the geopolitics of the Cold War and the largely ungrounded and politically-motivated fears of Communism led Australia-China relations to remain frozen (Wang 2012).

Initially, Australia did not recognise either the Communist government of the prc in Peking (Beijing) or the Nationalists in the Republic of China (Taiwan) but in 1966, in a move that was viewed as highly provocative, under Prime Minister Harold Holt, Australia established a diplomatic mission in Taipei. This was regarded as a hostile move by Beijing. Nor was it supported by many politicians in Australia. It was not surprising therefore when, in 1972, the newly elected Labor Government, under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, established diplomatic relations with the prc, closing the Taipei mission and opening an embassy in Beijing (Wang 2012). The conditions for a new positive chapter in China-Australia relations had thus been established, allowing greater possibilities of trade, investment, and the movement of people, creating an appetite in Australia for learning more about Chinese cultural traditions and its political system.

Ambiguities and Uncertainties

For more than two decades after 1972, Australia-China relations grew slowly but surely, in each of the areas of trade, investment and development assistance, as well as politics and culture. Towards the end of 1970s, this growth was further facilitated by China’s decision to strengthen its ties with the West in general, initially to find allies against the Soviet Union and, following policy changes in 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaping, to boost China’s economic growth by opening up to the world economy (Wang 2012). In terms of its economic policy, in the early 1980s, China began to move away from its preoccupation with centralised governance of the economy, allowing Chinese entrepreneurs to develop global links. While it continued to be a one-party centralized state, it loosened policy restrictions and encouraged Chinese participation in the global markets. In this, it was remarkably successful, helping its economy to expand by both attracting investment from around the world and encouraging technical cooperation. Through the course of 1980s, Australia benefitted greatly from this policy change, with China becoming its leading trading partner, as Australia too shifted its focus to the Asia-Pacific (Wang 2012).

By the end of 1980s, China became a major centre for global manufacturing resulting in spectacular rates of economic growth. To support its rapid economic growth, China viewed Australia’s abundant raw materials as important for its development, just as Australia had been seeking new markets for its resources and agricultural sectors (Grayson 2018). In the mid-1980s, as part of an attempt to restructure its economy in line with neoliberal principles, Australia now allowed Chinese government-owned enterprises to invest in many aspects of Australian economy from mining, technology to real estate. Mutual benefits and economic expediency thus characterised Australia’s emerging links with China, even as it remained suspicious of the Communist Party, and even as Sinophobic perceptions persisted among many Australians.

In terms of its foreign policy, major changes also took place in China in the 1980s, as it began to devote more of its attention on regional issues and bilateral economic and political links within the Asia-Pacific region. This too benefited Australia, not least because it meshed with Australia’s own idea of broadening its global connections beyond its colonial links. In the 1980s and 1990s, political ties between the two countries grew rapidly with Australia supporting China’s application for the membership of the World Trade Organization, which was eventually granted in 2000 (Wang 2012). Their diplomatic engagement with each other expanded rapidly, not only through bilateral relations but also multilaterally through numerous organizations such as apec, East Asia Summit and the G20.

However, the ‘special relationship’ between Australia and China to which the Prime Minister Bob Hawke was committed came under pressure abruptly with the events in Beijing in June 1989. Australia’s concerns over human rights abuses in China made the diplomatic relations frosty for more than a year, as Australia put a ban on ministerial visits and allowed many Chinese international students to become permanent residents. However, the strong commercial links that had grown between Australia and China through the 1980s, meant that neither country could afford to return to the kind of hostility that had existed during the pre-1972 period. This meant that trade and investment between the two countries were largely unaffected. Bowing to commercial pressures, in 1991, the Australia Government thus reiterated its commitment to a long-term cooperative relationship with China.

By 1996, all restrictions on official interchange, except in the field of defence, were lifted, in line with the focus of the Keating Government on deepening ties with the countries of Asia (Curran 2021). At the same time, many Australians remained sensitive to the continuing domestic and international concerns about China’s human rights record. The Government therefore characterized Australia’s relationship with China as ‘realistic, business-like’ rather than ‘special’, with an emphasis on trade and investment. With respect to Taiwan, for example, it maintained an approach that is often referred to as ‘strategically ambiguous’ (Eisenberg 2007). With the election of a new conservative government in 1996, this ambiguity was however severely tested, as the Chinese Government objected to Australia’s increasing contacts with Taiwan, a position that it viewed to be more closely aligned to US interests and less friendly to China. The next event that marred Australia-China relations was Australia’s decision to abolish a concessional finance scheme for some developing countries, including China. Although China was not greatly affected by this decision, the Chinese Government maintained that it had not been forewarned. The Chinese objections concerning such a minor matter showed how sensitive Australia-China relations have always been (Wang 2012).

Over the next two decades, Australia-China relations improved markedly, even as concerns over China’s human rights record and its increasing influence in the region and other geopolitical issues remained unresolved. As China’s economy grew at a rapid rate, and as it became a highly influential economic and political player on the global stage, Australia sought to re-imagine its perceptions of China. Under Australia’s conservative Prime Minister John Howard (1996–2007), the relationship between the two countries flourished in most unexpected ways. According to Curran (2021), this relationship was largely predicated on shared commercial interests. He argues that while both China and Australia recognized major differences in culture and civilisation and language, as well as size in terms of population, it was believed that they could nonetheless do business with each other. Both countries accepted that their relationship would thus largely be strategic and instrumental. Through the course of Howard’s period in office between 1996 and 2007, trade between Australia and China grew by a massive 526 per cent (Wang 2012).

The expectation that under a Labor Government (2007–2013), China-Australia relations would become deeper in other respects beyond the economic did not eventuate as envisaged, as numerous commercial disputes undermined attempts to strengthen diplomatic links (Curran 2021). To put the relationship on a stronger footing, in 2012, the Australian Government published a White Paper, Australia in the Asian Century, widely known after its author, Ken Henry, as the Henry Report (2012). The Report stressed the importance of the relationships between Asia and Australia beyond the commercial. It sought to provide ‘a blueprint to navigate the Asian Century – a period of transformative economic, political, strategic and social change’ (Henry Report 2012: 1). It insisted that Australia’s relations with Asian countries needed to be multi-dimensional, focusing on the scale and pace of Asia’s transformation and its implications for Australia, paying particular attention to developments in China.

Fundamental to the Report’s analysis was a conviction that Australia’s integration into Asia was essential for its national prosperity, as well as its social and economic vibrancy and security. It insisted that the economic relationships were not sustainable without equally serious attempts to strengthen political, cultural, and educational ties. It reiterated a message of several previous reports (for example, Garnaut Report 1989; Rudd Report 1994), which had also highlighted the importance of learning an Asian language and developing ‘Asia-relevant capabilities’ necessary for expanding trade links and working in Asia. Repeatedly, the Henry Report asserted its belief that the growing middle class in Asia was creating enormous commercial opportunities for Australia, and for it to take advantage of these opportunities, it needed to develop not only appropriate policy settings with respect to trade, investment and taxation but also policies concerning education, skills formation, and migration. While recognizing that international students from China had become a major source of income for Australia, it emphasised the role internationalization policies must play in public diplomacy, in strengthening bilateral relations through robust and respectful people-to-people links.

International Education and Bilateral Relations

Well before the publication of the Henry Report, a focus on educational links between Australia and China had already become ubiquitous in the discourses of higher education. In Australia, the idea of internationalization of education had become a major policy priority in the strategic plans of not only universities but also many schools. Of course, the idea of internationalization is not new but had previously been couched in colonial terms or in the language of development assistance (Rizvi 2012). In recent years, it has acquired a neoliberal meaning (Rizvi 2022). While the older rationales of foreign aid, public diplomacy and cosmopolitan learning have not entirely vanished, a new understanding of internationalization focuses on student mobility across national borders and is now dominated by commercial concerns. In Australia, student mobility is increasingly viewed as a source of revenue for higher education institutions (hei s). Under fiscal pressures of their own, Australian hei s have developed complex administrative technologies to recruit international students from across Asia, but from China in particular.

In developing their strategies of recruitment of international students, Australian hei s are deeply aware of the rise of a rapidly growing middle class in China which both aspires to and has the financial capacity to purchase education in a global market. According to Kharas (2017), globally, the largest number of new entrants into the middle class are now in China. The numbers alone however do not fully reveal what being middle class in China means qualitatively, in aspirational terms of lifestyles, life chances and life plans. An education abroad continues to be ranked highly among the Chinese middle class, as a source of capital accumulation. Not only is international education assumed to improve life chances, it is also treated as a marker of social status and prestige (Ong 2006). These perceptions of western higher education have given rise to a large industry that is extended throughout China. It includes agents who broker student mobility from a local school in China to a university in the West, as well as preparatory English language schools. In this way, international education is now embedded within a broader market rationality (Rizvi 2022), concerned with revenue generation, building institutional profile and reputation, diversifying the campus, and, in relation to curriculum, developing human resources for a globalizing economy.

Through these efforts, the number of Chinese students attending Australian universities grew rapidly, and by 2018 had reached over 250,000, accounting for some 27% of the total number of international students. This success is based on a great deal of strategic planning, including the development of a recruitment technology with its own rules of operation based on an expertise that incorporates knowledge of market segments and specificities, as well as a symbolic language about the distinctive benefits of internationalization. There are also targeted advertising programs conducted not only through the media, but also through educational expos and market-oriented conferences. While other aspects of internationalization, such as teaching and learning, are not entirely discounted, market concerns disproportionally serve to frame its conceptualization. Beyond the mobility of students from China to Australia, Australian universities have also established in China a vast array of transnational programs. In the image of other service industries, attempts have also been made to develop various franchise arrangements, with varying degrees of success (McBurnie & Ziguras 2006). To extend their market reach, Australian universities have also forged complex articulation and twinning arrangements to ensure a steady flow of students to Australia. Less successful in China have been the attempts to establish branch campuses (Yencken et al. 2021), but this has not been due to the lack of trying.

As dominant as the commercial aspects of international education have become, teaching and research collaborations between Chinese and Australian universities have also grown, often on the sideline (Barlow 2014). In Australia, with support of the Chinese government, several universities have established Confucius Institutes, designed to promote education for students and the public more broadly interested in Chinese language and culture. According to the University of Western Australia, its Confucius Institute ‘teaches Chinese language and provides cultural training, working across community, education and business to increase mutual understanding and recognise the value of multiculturalism.’ The main purpose of these institutes is therefore to strengthen bilateral relations through public diplomacy, ensuring that these relations are not confined to the commercial concerns only. Just as Australia hosts Confucius Institutes, many Chinese universities also teach Australian Studies. They report growing interest among Chinese students and scholars in Australian economy, history, literature, education, and the media. Supported by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and bhp Billiton, these universities are members of a non-profit Foundation for Australian Studies in China (fasic) established to promote better understanding of Australia, with the potential to further grow and strengthen research and teaching alliances and exchanges between Australian and Chinese universities.

Collaborations between China and Australia have not only focused on teaching and information exchange but also on research. An emphasis on research collaborations across national boundaries can now be found in the policy statements of most leading hei s around the world. These statements suggest that a globally distributive system of knowledge development and dissemination demands regularised, on-going, and symmetrical transnational links. Furthermore, they view research collaborations as a way of sharing income, resources, and effort. Yet research collaborations are often tied to national interests, as nations seek to locate the role of higher education within their shifting geopolitical interests. With their widely different interests, the attempts to establish and coordinate collaborative programs of research between China and Australia have not always been easy, even as both Australian and Chinese governments have boldly supported such collaborations through such initiatives as the Australia China Science and Research Fund (acsrf). Over the past four decades, based on a treaty on science and technology cooperation signed in 1980, acsrf has provided financial support of over $50 million for projects in areas as diverse as Offshore Wind and Wave Energy Harnessing; Future Dairy Manufacturing; and Healthy Soils for Sustainable Food Production and Environmental Quality,

Following the publication of the Henry Report, efforts to consolidate and extend educational links between China and Australia were intensified. Many of these efforts were coordinated by the ‘Education and Research Section’ at the Australian Embassy in Beijing, with the aim of improving ‘mutual understanding of policy developments in education and research, and support activities of Australian education and research institutions in China by providing advice and policy briefings on education and research developments in China.’ Australia has continued to offer competitive, merit-based scholarships to Chinese students and has additionally created a New Colombo Plan that has encouraged and funded more Australian students to study in China. In early 2018, the Australian Council for International Education established a China Working Group to provide advice on how to grow educational links between the two countries, considering the political shifts in China and the growing competition for Chinese students within the global educational market. Not published until 2019, the Working Group’s report notes that China is investing heavily in reforming its education sector, and is thus expanding its own capacity to deliver high quality education. It notes however that the demand for internationally recognised, quality education from China’s rising middle class would continue to exceed its expanded capacity. It recommends the ‘diversification and broadening of Australia’s education, research and innovation engagement with China’, increasing engagement with sectors beyond higher education, such as Vocational Education and Training, increasing cooperative innovation partnerships, and extending research collaborations. At the same time, it recognizes that the uncertainties, pressures, and strains surrounding the shifting geopolitical conditions are likely to pose serious challenges to the potential of robust and sustainable educational links between Australia and China.

Deterioration of Relations

Just as the Working Group had forewarned, the relations between China and Australia began to deteriorate markedly in 2018. The reasons for this deterioration have been widely debated in Australia, though most of the accounts have pointed to the growing concerns in Australia about the political influence that China has begun to exercise in various sectors of Australian society including the government, universities, and the media. As the Australian media has become more vociferous about disputes over China’s stance on the South China Sea, the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Western China and its human rights record more generally, the underlying tensions that had always existed between the two countries are now more visible. The Australian Government has also become more strident, reviving some of the older tropes about the Chinese threat. Against the backdrop of a series of high-profile scandals, which involved allegations of Chinese Communist Party’s (ccp) alleged interference in Australian politics, in December 2017, Australia established a ‘Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme’. Though the Scheme is applicable to all countries, it is clear that its main target is China. The was evident in the use by the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, of highly politically charged phrases ‘the Australian people will stand up against threats’ and in his repeated criticisms of ccp’s actions as they affected Australian politics. Fearing the use China’s state-supported technology companies to collect data on Australians, in 2018, the Australian government banned Huawei and zte from participating in building Australia’s 5G networks.

The response by the Chinese Government to actions that it viewed as unfriendly acts could have been anticipated. It targeted trade, viewing it as an area that might have maximum impact, opening an anti-dumping investigation into Australian barley, an export trade, which was worth $1.5 billion in 2018. At the same time, Yang Hengjun, an Australian citizen who once worked for China’s foreign ministry, disappeared soon after landing in China and was later charged with espionage, on a pretext Australia found most suspicious. Around the same time, the Chinese media began to publish a series of unflattering articles, portraying Australia as a stooge of the United States and hostile to China. Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the tensions between the two countries, especially after Australia called for an international, independent inquiry into the origins of the disease, without, from the Chinese point of view, much evidence concerning China’s role. In retaliation, China imposes 80.5% tariff on Australian barley exports, while Australian ships carrying coal exports --amounting to almost 14 billion dollars per year -- began to encounter surreptitious processing difficulties at Chinese ports. The Australian authorities claimed that these regulatory hurdles were applied selectively to Australian imports. With respect to international education, China’s Ministry of Education warned Chinese students that they might face ‘racist incidents’ due to covid-19, advising them against selecting Australia as a study destination.

While Australia regarded these measures as coercive, China was equally upset when in 2021, Australia announced plan to purchase a fleet of powerful American nuclear submarines. Although China was not specifically mentioned in the announcement, it was widely interpreted as unhelpful to Australian-Chinese relationship, as it was linked firmly to American geopolitical interests in the region. China was also unhappy with the formation of a trilateral security pact between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, aukus, clearly designed to curtail China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region. China also viewed as threatening to its regional interests the formation of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a non-binding grouping of Australia, Japan, India, and the United Kingdom. China had been developing its influence in the region through, among other measures, the Belt and Road Initiative. It was therefore not pleased when the Australian Government unilaterally cancelled two Belt and Road deals agreed to by the state government of Victoria in 2018 and 2019. While both deals were simply in the form of broad memoranda of understanding and were legally non-binding, China viewed the symbolism of the action as hostile. In response, in May 2021, China’s National Development and Reform Commission (ndrc) suspended its participation in the China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue indefinitely. For talks to resume, Australia insisted that China must drop its sanctions and punitive trade policies, while China issued a long list of grievances including negative portrayals in the Australia media of Chinese politics and culture.

Numerous scholars have attempted to understand why the relationship between Australia and China has deteriorated so markedly and so quickly after more than two decades of reasonably collaborative links, managing to negotiate successfully major cultural differences, along with divergent economic and political interests. According to Toohey et al. (2022), the sources of antagonism between Australia and China fall into three main categories –fundamental conflicts in values, political differences, and regional geopolitical rivalries. Grievances over trade and investment apply to each of these three categories, but so do the cynical, reactive, and retaliatory mindsets on both sides. While hawkish language attracts headlines in the media and stirs up passions, it is seldom productive. Another source of conflict between China and Australia lies in the absence of effective communication strategies to reconcile their differences in values and interests and to tolerate a large degree of continuity in their respective suites of policies, which are based not only in history but also political ambitions. Hatcher (2021) has insisted that for Australia the tensions are especially acute as it has yet to reconcile its interests in trade and investment with its security concerns – the competing imperatives of the US security guarantee, on the one hand, and the potential benefits from Chinese economic growth, on the other.

At the same time, China needs to re-assess the nature of its links with the countries that might not share its values and interests. It cannot simply impose its political will on countries with radically different traditions, even when the economic advantages of such initiatives as the Belt and Road are assumed to be self-evident. With respect to Australia-China relations, much of the leadership for this re-imagination clearly needs to come from the political class, but equally important are the people-to-people relations across China and Australia, including those enabled by international education. In what follows, I discuss how a reimagined view of international education, beyond its commercial logic, has the potential create conditions for rapprochement.

Role of International Education in Rapprochement

In 2019, more than 250,000 international students from China were enrolled in Australia, of which around 150,000 were enrolled in universities (Statista 2022). As the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Chinese students were asked by Australian universities to return home but continue their studies online. Many did some did not, but most felt unsupported by the Australian Government. Unsurprisingly, the number of Chinese students in Australia has now declined markedly, and it is unclear if it would ever return to its peak of 2019. In 2022, the number of Chinese students enrolled in Australian universities is less than 100,000. The extent to which the tensions between China and Australia have contributed to this decline has not been adequately investigated, though that it has played a role cannot be discounted. Vicki Townsend, the Chief Executive Officer of Universities Australia, has asserted boldly that the deterioration in China-Australia ties has clearly affected the Chinese market in international education (Buckley 2022). She is critical of the ways in which some Australian politicians have politicized few China-related topics, as some Chinese students have been groundlessly deported for concealing military training. Some Australian research institutes have also suspended their collaboration with Chinese organizations. While several Confucius Institutes in Australia are still operating, many are considering closure, lacking the financial and political support they once enjoyed. The number of students going to China under the New Colombo Plan has also declined. While the Federation of Australian Studies in China continues to exist, it does so under highly stained conditions.

What is clear is that many Chinese students are now reluctant to study in Australia assuming it to be a hostile country, while many researchers in both Chinese and Australian universities are weary of initiating new collaborative research projects, uncertain of the legal, political, and cultural conditions under which they might have to work. Clearly, a great deal needs to be done to revive Australia’s reputation in China as a desirable destination for studies and research. To make Australian education attractive again, not only are strategies that reassure students of their safety and wellbeing in Australia necessary, but also needed is some indication of political reproachment between China and Australia. Such an indication has been given by the new Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, who has declared that ‘he would not use national security issues to score political points’; and that ‘he is ready for a resumption of high-level dialogue and contacts befitting the two countries with massive security and economic interests in the region’. (Edwards & Haseltine 2022). The Chinese authorities have also indicated they are ready to work towards reproachment.

In a paper, Edwards and Haseltine (2022) have gathered suggestions from several Australian scholars with deep knowledge of China-Australia relations about the ways in which rapprochement might be attempted. They have reported, for example, the views of David Walker who has argued that a new chapter in China-Australia relations can only be developed by deepening knowledge about China, along with raising awareness of the limitations Australia’s tradition of Sinophobia impose on the relations. David Goodman has suggested reviving Australian universities’ research capacity on China and building mechanisms for ensuring longer term sustainability of this national knowledge asset while also extending opportunities for learning Chinese and about China through all sectors of society. Elina Collinson has stressed the need to learn from other countries in Asia about how to engage with China in ways that are more productive and less contentious. More controversially, Michael Keen has stressed ‘the need to build a new cultural diplomacy strategy that benefits from China’s growing digital ascendency in ai, fin-tech and entertainment while taking into account the cyber-security challenges presented by that ascendency’.

The rebuilding of cordial relations also demands abandoning the dualist thinking that has historically dominated the ways in which Australians and Chinese often represent each other. In Australia, this dualism between ‘us’ from ‘them’ has a long history. It encourages China to be viewed instrumentally – as means to our economic ends. As I have argued elsewhere, (Rizvi 2013: 81), this instrumentalism ‘necessarily invokes conceptions of ‘‘others’’ whose cultures must be understood, whose languages must be learnt, and with whom close relationships must be developed – in order for us to realise our economic and strategic purposes’’. In Australia, not only has such a crude dualism been exploited by right-wing ideologues suspicious of China it has also been a fundamental premise upon which most policies and practices of international education appear to be based.

This instrumentalism has had the effect of trapping discourses of international education within a market logic (Brown 2015), with its broader cultural and educational potential becoming secondary. When students are treated as consumers and education as a commodity, the meaning of internationalization is rearticulated in commercial terms (Rizvi 2020). This meaning has remained unaltered by the pandemic crisis. The income-generating capacity of Chinese students continues to be regarded as a more important aspect of internationalization than its cultural and educative dimensions. Furthermore, the considerable cultural diversity among the Chinese students, who come from different regions and have different political perspectives, is often overlooked. Little effort has gone into thinking about the productive possibilities of cross-border mobility of ideas, knowledge and media, and not merely of physical bodies. Needed therefore is a more complex and refined understanding of international education, beyond the overwhelming focus on its commercial aspects. Such an understanding might view internationalization as a moral and political project.

Over the past three years, it has been widely suggested the experiences of Covid-19 has opened up the possibilities of re-thinking international education. Yet part of this re-thinking has involved the development of new recruitment strategies to recover the numbers of students lost through the Covid-19. New approaches to managing student safety and wellbeing have also been proposed. Beyond these administrative measures, it has been argued that the Covid experience has enabled universities to consider new methods of teaching and learning, including the pedagogic possibilities of online learning, as well as hybrid models that combine classroom and online experiences. Yet even these possibilities have frequently been explored within the assumptions of market rationality, about how online tools can be helpful in recovering market losses, perhaps even at a lower cost. The value of ‘flipped classroom’, for example, has been spoken of in monetary terms, with the assumption that savings can been made when lectures are delivered online, with face-to-face teaching is limited to tutorials and laboratory sessions.

Overlooked has been any consideration of how online pedagogy could ‘help to radically overhaul the nature of student engagement and student-teacher relations, how the processes of knowledge ownership, creation, distribution and utilization might be reimagined, and how the idea of learning itself might be re-conceptualized’ (Rizvi 2019). In a rush to recover financial losses, universities have failed to realize the enormous potential of online tools for establishing robust learning communities across national, cultural, and political differences. Online pedagogies are of course not neutral with respect to the kind of knowledge they privilege. When online tools are used simply to transmit canonical forms of knowledge then internationalization inevitably fails to unsettle the hegemonic colonial modes of thinking, overlooking, for example, non-western knowledge traditions (Stein 2019).

If international education is to be a means of recalibrating Australia-China relations, then its public diplomacy role cannot be ignored. This role should consist in creating new spaces and cultures of reasoning and understanding through which students, both Chinese and Australia, can appreciate the complex history and challenges of bilateral relations. The students should be encouraged to recognize that there will always be differences in the ways in which they view each other, but that these differences need not be a source of antagonism. The differences should instead be viewed as a way of learning about the emerging nature of global interconnectivity and interdependence, as well as an opportunity to examine the complex relationship between knowledge and power. International education thus holds considerable potential to improve Australia-China relations, but this potential can only be realized if its commercial dimensions are not given primary importance and internationalization is instead regarded as a moral and political project.