China’s Ministry of Education (MOE) issued a notice on Friday (February 5) alerting Chinese students studying in Australia or returning to Australia to “a series of vicious incidents of attacks on our students” that have occurred in Australia recently.
These incidents “pose a serious threat to the personal safety of our students in Australia,” the Chinese Ministry of Education said in its Study Abroad Alert No. 1 for 2021.
The notice reminds study abroad students that the global Epidemic situation remains serious and international travel remains risky, and that they are expected to “carefully choose to study in or return to Australia”.
Hong Kong‘s English-language media, the South China Morning Post, noted in a report issued Friday that the notice from the Chinese Ministry of Education did not mention specific examples of attacks on Chinese students in Australia. The report said the notice from the Chinese Ministry of Education came just days after Chinese official media focused on slamming Australian Prime Minister John Morrison’s recent call to repair Australia-China relations, calling Morrison’s statement “hypocritical.
Morrison said last week that he wanted Australia to start a dialogue with China, saying “the focus of the dialogue is not on concessions, but on areas of mutual benefit. But Chinese official media criticized Morrison as saying that he was asking China to lift economic sanctions against Australia on the condition that the Australian side would not make concessions or admit its mistakes.
Chen Hong, director of the Center for Australian Studies at East China Normal University, said in an interview with a Chinese media outlet on Thursday that Morrison’s hope for “cold political and hot economic relations” between China and Australia would not work. Chen Hong said the failure to warm up the political relationship will eventually lead to a cooling of the economic relationship as well.
The deterioration in Australia-China relations began last April when Morrison called for an independent international investigation into the source of the new crown virus. Beijing was furious with Morrison for doing this, believing Morrison was pushing the international community to hold China accountable for the global spillover of the pandemic. The pandemic first broke out in Wuhan, China. It is widely believed that the Chinese government concealed the epidemic at the beginning of the outbreak and did not respond adequately, resulting in the spread of the epidemic and causing a huge disaster around the world.
Soon after Morrison’s call for an investigation into the source of the virus, China began retaliating against Australia on a number of fronts. In June last year, China’s Ministry of Education and Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a similar notice to Chinese students and Chinese tourists not to rush to study at Australian universities or to travel to Australia. The aim was to reduce revenue for Australian universities and deal a blow to the country’s tourism industry.
In addition, China has successively imposed bans on many of Australia’s major exports, such as barley, seafood, beef, wine and coal, throwing Australia-China trade relations into disarray.
Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng said last week that the current difficult situation in China-Australia relations is not what China wants to see. He said it is in the common interest of both sides to maintain healthy and stable relations between the two countries, and hoped that “the Australian side will do more to facilitate mutual trust and cooperation between China and Australia, and promote China-Australia relations to get back on track as soon as possible”.
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