Australia’s booming pre-COVID international education industry was built on the back of Chinese students:
![Australian international student exports](https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Capture-335.png)
China was Australia’s most lucrative student market.
Now Beijing has dropped the hammer on Australia’s international student trade, freezing out our universities from setting up joint courses with Chinese universities which, before the pandemic, were a popular route for Chinese students to study in Australia: