Once-upon-a-time Labor star Jason Yat-sen Li appears on the hustings today to argue for more Chinese students:
- Foreign students are crucial to diversification from resources.
- Chinese students are the richest and largest group.
- Ditto tourists.
- “The consequences are profound and depressing: the long-term destruction of powerhouse Australian industries, relationships and trust built over decades, and devastation to Australian institutions, employees and their families.”
- This does not defend our sovereignty because it weakens the economy.
- Chinese kids fund research.
- We are leading a pushback against the PRC to no good purpose.
Fair enough. Though Jason might also have recounted the costs of the Chinese student trade which include:
- Mass corruption of pedagogical quality and values.
- The spread of anti-free speech attitudes.
- The rise of greedy chancellories with no care for the above.
- The teaching of Xi Jinping thought Downunder.
- Research collaborations with SOEs and others engaged in genocide.
- A fat conduit for CCP influence into the cradle of Australian politics.
- Not to mention, further influence peddling into and growing of, the Chinese diaspora.
To be honest, I can think of no better way to lift Australia’s economic prospects over the long term than to end this trade.
Good education is the number one driver of productivity and prosperity in any economy. It needs to be honest, liberal and robustly free (in intellectual and cost terms).
Funding issues will resolve as universities consolidate fat bureaucracies built up to service Chinese kids (not spent on academic expansion at all). Public funding will have to rise as well if it comes to that.
And, if the collapse of the trade is large enough to cause macroeconomic harm, then the Australian dollar will fall and education exports to other countries will rise with competitiveness. Including from many other Asian nations. And along with all other tradeables.
The end of the Chinese student trade is not the end of Australia’s Asian or global engagement. Nor is it the end of Australia’s competitive edge, even if that is the case for Jason Yat-sen Li.
