In March 2023, the Australian Academy of the Humanities sounded the alarm on the decline in our understanding and knowledge of China through a report on “ Australia’s China Knowledge Capability”.

Several other journals, including this one, also expressed dismay at the decline of learning Chinese at Australia’s schools and universities since the first years of the 21st century, when the Howard Government cut off funds earlier allocated to funding Asian languages and studies at primary and secondary level. How could we allow understanding of so important a neighbour decline for so long without effective remedial action?

On 22 September 2025, at the behest of Minister for Education Jason Clare, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education adopted an inquiry into building Asia capability in Australia through the education system and beyond. What this signified is that even the government was concerned that Australia would lack Asia capability, including China capability, in the forthcoming period. The situation has worsened since 2023.

Personally, I hope that this inquiry will yield good results and lead to a regrowth in the number of students with a real knowledge and understanding of Asia, especially China. Unfortunately, I don’t have the answers or the solutions. But here are a few reasons why I’m sceptical about the prospects.

Firstly, the Trump administration has specifically cut off some of the US funds that assist cultural understanding of China and other nations. On 10 October, an article in this journal spoke of a “compact” with universities “in which they would receive priority access to federal funding in exchange for pledging support for aspects of the president’s political agenda". What could be more appalling? We know Trump will not last forever, and Australia is not the US, but I find it frightening that he thinks he has the right to interfere in the curriculum of universities, and that is bound to affect China content. I fear that some of the effects of his second presidency may be permanent.

The AUKUS agreement has, rightly, received a good deal of criticism in Pearls & Irritations and elsewhere. It’s also relevant to the subject of Asian and specifically China studies. That’s because the whole idea of AUKUS symbolises that Australia wants to continue looking to Britain and the US, not to Asia. We are an Anglophone country and that means we hanker after Anglophone cultures. Automatically, that suggests looking to Asia is somehow a bit forced, especially China, which AUKUS by implication frames as an enemy. The implication is that we don’t really want to learn Chinese or about China, or even other some other Asian languages, in school. No wonder people who are learning Chinese are themselves mostly Chinese. Of course, there’s no problem with people of Chinese ethnicity learning Chinese. However, it is critically important that some Australians of non-Chinese heritage also do so.

We should get rid of AUKUS if we can. Let’s hope the Americans reject it following the review they are currently undertaking. That will probably not happen, since they get so much from it and we get so little. We should also reduce our dependence on the US overall.

The AUKUS issue raises the inevitable question of national security. Albanese is proud of having visited China and Xi Jinping, and improved the relationship. He is right to do so. But the fact is that many of his actions in the national security realm suggest that China is an enemy and a threat. AUKUS is clearly aimed against China, traditional allies Britain and the US are going to help Australia against whom? China of course. What about the Quad? That is aimed against China too.

We all know that our universities are becoming very instrumentalist. We haven’t reached the low points experienced in the US, not yet anyway. But languages and cultural studies are on the back-foot. These programs, so many in the mainstream argue, breed left-wing thinking and cost more than they are worth. And a lot of translation can now be done by artificial intelligence. So what’s the point of learning languages, let alone difficult ones like Chinese?

My own view is that a civilised society tries to understand other cultures. That is why I find it very concerning, as relevant reports have pointed out, that the number of people doing honours in Chinese has been dropping, and continues to fall. In the Financial Review of 7 October, Foreign Affairs and Defence Correspondent Michael Read complained that “Fewer than five Australians per year are graduating from honours programs in Chinese studies with language, raising fears the nation is losing the expertise needed to navigate its most complex foreign relationship.” Of course, I agree about the loss of expertise and ability to navigate our most complex, and I would add most important, foreign relationship. However, I also think it is a matter of a decent society. If so few in Australia are prepared to take the trouble to understand China, we face a very bleak future.

Of course, there is the diaspora. The Chinese are a valuable part of our society and politicians care about them, because they vote. In my opinion we should treasure this diaspora and go out of our way to treat it well as part of our community, just as we do, or ought to do, about Jews, Muslims or other specific groups.

But we might also say, the Chinese diaspora understands China, so we don’t need to bother. That would be a very damaging attitude.

Then we know that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade trains its own students. It doesn’t focus specifically on China but on various countries. Its emphasis is diplomacy in general, not diplomacy towards China in particular. What this means is that lack of specific China capability loses significance if it can be compensated by diplomatic skills.

My own view is that the decline of China capability in Australia is not only dangerous, but a disgrace. The first thing we can do to improve the situation is to withdraw from AUKUS and anything that might imply China is an enemy or a threat to Australia. And we should definitely shift our attitude towards other cultures and learn to understand them from an all-round point of view that includes not only modern disciplines like economics, but also language, culture and history.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.