The CCP trade war on Australia is such a wonderful development I don’t know where to look half of the time. So far it has delivered Australia a reinvigorated ANZUS and US First Fleet deployment; an income boom, and the very accelerated export decoupling that we need but can’t do owing to CCP corruption of the locals. Plus, it has exposed the CCP’s real agenda for Australia in the 14 conditions for a relationship that ends democracy.
Today we get more great news with Beijing identifying the collapse of Australian pedagogical standards driven by international students. This is something that local politicians refer to occasionally before immediately trying to make it even worse with restored international student flows. At Murdoch:
- The Chinese Ministry of Education has complained that Aussie universities are delivering sub-standard courses in China JVs.
- According to CME, universities have under-invested and failed to deliver quality Australian staff numbers. Though given CCP hostage diplomacy can you blame them?
- An audit of the courses is now expected.
- The Chinese courses are often part of package degrees that brings the kids to Australia for a few years as well.
- The universities deny it all, as usual.
It is not too long a bow to intepret this as a shot across the bows for Chinese students attending Australian universities at home as well. The Global Times warned last week that Chinese kiddies face the risk of violent attacks Downunder.
It has been my base for six months now that the CCP would do this. We should welcome it. Excessive numbers of Chinese kiddies in our universities have perverted the ethos of knowledge and learning so far that:
- We have now had repeated scandals in which free speech has been violently suppressed, even when it is only trying to defend itself.
- Universities are aiding and abetting CCP persecution via intellectual property deals.
- Academics are being captured via “global talent” schemes that double their incomes.
- Student unions have all but been turned into Chinese lobbies and Confucious Institutes pump straight propaganda into coursework.
- Pedagogical standards have been smashed in order to teach and pass sub-standard, non-English speakers.
This is disastrous for the long term productivity and prosperity of Australia which hangs, perhaps more than anything else, upon quality education.
Nor does this fully capture the negatives. Wider externalities include the crush-loading of infrastructure, the crushing of wages growth and rising property prices.
In sum, having too many foreign students, especially Chinese, is a net negative for wider living standards (though that is no fault of the individuals).
That the CCP has identified and is acting upon Australian pedagogical decline, in place of our corrupt leadership, is another of those delightful ironies of the great Chinese decoupling that will hopefully run and run.
