Australian international education ‘has failed soft power test’

In an apparent failure of international education as an instrument of soft power, Chinese students seem to have become more sympathetic to authoritarian government during their time in Australia.

A survey by the Lowy Institute thinktank has found that 43 per cent of Chinese Australians – compared with just 5 per cent of the broader Australian population – are more favourably disposed towards China’s system of government because of Beijing’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The trend is particularly pronounced among permanent residents, visa holders and people who arrived in Australia after 2009.

The findings suggest that governments’ handling of the crisis has influenced people’s views in paradoxical ways. The report notes that China’s “relative success” and the US’ failure in managing Covid-19 have been portrayed as “an example of the limitations of democracy”, even though Australia’s, Taiwan’s and New Zealand’s efforts “provide evidence of the opposite”.

The survey also found that Chinese Australians were only half as likely as the broader population to consider democracy “preferable to any other kind of government”, and two and a half times as inclined to consider non-democratic governments preferable in some circumstances.

The findings come from a survey of more than 1,000 people in Australia who identified as having Chinese heritage, including 13 per cent on student visas, and a parallel study of more than 3,000 Australians.

The results highlighted the alienation experienced by Chinese people in Australia, with 24 per cent – and 35 per cent of long-term visa holders such as students – saying they did not generally feel accepted as part of Australian society. Thirty-one per cent reported having been called offensive names because of their Chinese heritage, with 18 per cent saying they had been threatened or attacked.

The report was released a month after China’s Ministry of Education issued its latest safety warning about study in Australia, saying overseas students had been “attacked in many places” – claims emphatically rejected by federal education minister Alan Tudge.

“Australia is…one of the most tolerant, welcoming, multicultural places in the world,” Mr Tudge told the Sydney Today news site. “We work very hard to stamp [racism] out. I don’t get the same representations any more that I certainly did maybe six months ago, when there were a couple of higher profile incidents.”

Angela Lehmann, head of research with the Lygon Group consultancy, said the Lowy findings suggested that racism worried Chinese students. She said their increasingly sympathetic view of Beijing indicated that “these kinds of warnings are now likely to be taken on board more readily”.

“We need to ask ourselves why people including students are more favourable to China’s system of government than they were before Covid. When students come here, they want to experience different systems of government and different ways of organising public life. The Lowy data is suggesting that we’ve failed this soft power test.”

Dr Lehmann said students’ unsympathetic treatment by Canberra during the crisis may have been a contributing factor. “If so, are we handing the Chinese government something on a platter?”

This year’s State of Southeast Asia report found that Australia had slipped from third to fifth as the most desirable tertiary education destination for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The survey by Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute found that Australia was favoured by just 12 per cent of respondents, down from 21 per cent in 2019.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com