China scholar Mark Wang still remembers a time in the 2000s when Australia’s China studies was vibrant and in a leading position in the world. 

“At that time, the student interest, government policy and funding for China studies in Australia were really strong,” said Professor Wang, the director of the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies.

“Australian universities once hired so many China-related experts like myself, researching and teaching specialised knowledge about China.

“I used to [have the funding to] take dozens of students to China every year to visit the cities and villages, meeting a lot of ordinary Chinese people.”

But Professor Wang said China studies in Australia was now in a dire situation. 

In May, 60 China scholars signed an open letter warning the Australian Research Council (ARC), the federal government’s top non-medical research funding body, that the state of Australia’s research on China had hit “crisis point”. 

The letter cited a government-funded report on Australia’s China knowledge capability that found China-related research projects funded by the ARC had been in sharp decline over more than a decade with no projects funded in 2023.  

Funding crisis

Professor Wang, the president of the China Studies Association in Australia (CSAA), said the ARC was “the most important and dominant” source of funding for China researchers, without which large-scale research projects were not possible. 

He said the last ARC funding he received was in 2017 to study China’s water diversion from the wet southern regions to the dry north. 

“That one grant, which was around half a million dollars, made Australia and Melbourne University the central knowledge hub of China’s water management in the world,” he said.

Professor Wang said the study had implications for food security in Australia and helped to understand how the Chinese government functioned.

“Now we can only use small grants provided by the university, doing small-scale projects,” he said.

“Some researchers shifted focus to other regions rather than China.

An ARC spokesperson said that the agency did not recommend or reject research projects based on their topics, or subject country. 

It did not respond to the ABC’s enquiry on why there had been a decline of China-related research funding. 

While China studies in Australia is at a low ebb, Australian studies in China is in a much better position.

According to recent reports, China’s universities and institutes have established nearly 40 Australian studies centres — a greater number than anywhere else in the world, including in Australia itself.

Professor Wang said one “positive sign” was the Australian government’s establishment of the National Foundation for Australia-China relations in 2020, which provided some funds for China studies.

A ‘climate of fear’ over China studies 

David Goodman, the director of the University of Sydney’s China Studies Centre, said China-related research began being viewed through a lens of fear around 2017. 

The Australian Foreign Policy White Paper in 2017 represented a shift in Australia’s attitude to China with a focus on national security risks, and efforts to counter China’s influence in the Asia-Pacific region. 

Australia’s security agencies and senior government ministers became increasingly vocal about the scale of foreign interference by China, including in the university sector.

This was followed by the rapid deterioration of Australia-China relations in 2019.

“Nationalism has replaced the internationalism we had 15 years ago.”

Maggie Ying Jiang, a China scholar in media and communications at the University of Western Australia, said the change in attitude towards China had created a “restrictive environment” in academia. 

“As a China-born Australian, my experience has shown that unless you take an explicitly anti-China stance, there is a tendency for individuals in this field to be unfairly labelled or characterised,” she said.

James Laurenceson, director of the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) at the University of Technology Sydney, said the hostility towards China researchers could be “vicious”. 

“[There is the perception that ] if I’m not super hawkish [towards China], then obviously I’m a traitor,” Professor Laurenceson said.

“I’ve been accused of being a propagandist [and a] China apologist on social media and even by other academics. 

“I’ve even had a death threat.” 

Negative attitudes towards China had also created barriers for researchers to seek alternative funding sources, said Professor Laurenceson.

“Private funding has decreased, because Australian companies don’t want to take the risks [by being associated with China studies],” he said. 

He said 90 per cent of his centre’s funding now came from his university, but many other universities had closed or reduced their China studies centres.

Professor Laurenceson said “things had got off the bottom” as China-Australia relations gradually thawed following the election of the Albanese government in 2022, but the funding situation remained critical.

The recently released Varghese review mentioned the need to address Australia’s “systematic failure” in China expertise.

A national poll this year showed that Australians’ mistrust of China had not changed significantly as bilateral relations improved. 

The poll showed 43 per cent of Australians surveyed believed that Australians of Chinese origin could be mobilised by the Chinese government to undermine Australia’s interests and social cohesion, up from 42 per cent in 2022 and 39 per cent in 2021.

Insufficient university education in China knowledge 

According to the Australia’s China Knowledge Capability report, published by the Australian Academy of Humanities last year, the emphasis on national security risks was a factor in dissuading students, early career researchers and young professionals from further developing their China expertise.

The report also found “critical gaps and serious signs of decline” in Australian universities’ education and training capability on China. 

This included a declining number of honours programs in China studies and a trend away from China-focused subjects to more general subjects, such as international relations. 

There is no publicly available data on the number of students in China-focused courses, but a case study of the University of Melbourne in the report showed an overall declining number of enrolments. 

Professor Laurenceson said he did not think students’ interest in China had decreased.

“It’s more of a ‘pragmatic calculation’,” he said. 

He said he received inquiries every month asking about positions at the ACRI but there was no money. 

“Then, there is also that problem of getting security clearances,” he said.

What does this mean for Australia? 

The scholars who spoke to the ABC agreed the decline in China studies was hurting Australia’s national interest.

Professor Goodman said if it continued, Australia would not have enough people equipped with the knowledge to deal with China’s complexities.

“We used to have a lot of people learning and knowing about China,” he said. 

“Why would we surrender that advantage due to lack of foresight or ideology?

“Don’t think that the Communist Party of China are warm cuddly pandas — because they are not — but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

He said Australia already lacked knowledge of China’s highly varied regions.

Professor Wang said: “Even during the Cold War, the opposing superpowers did not stop funding research on each other.

“Without knowledge about China, there will be a higher risk for policymakers to make stupid or risky decisions,” he said.