Australian university leaders have called on their new government to clarify its views on collaborative research with China, amid fears that ethnic Chinese academics are fleeing because they “do not feel welcome”.

University of Technology Sydney (UTS) deputy vice-chancellor Iain Watt said Chinese people remained eager to collaborate notwithstanding the chilly bilateral relationship. He said Australia’s joint publications with Chinese colleagues had doubled over the past five years, compared with increases of less than 50 per cent with collaborators elsewhere.

Speaking at an Australia China Business Council education symposium in Sydney, Mr Watt said 40 per cent of foreign PhD applications to UTS now came from Chinese applicants, up from 30 per cent previously. And the symposium heard that Chinese enrolments across Australian universities had fallen by just 4 per cent during the pandemic, and had increased by about 7 per cent in Group of Eight universities.

“Chinese students, Chinese researchers, Chinese PhD candidates still want to engage with Australia,” Mr Watt said. “They still see us as a desirable place to do their engagement. The real question is whether we in Australia still want to work with them. I’m hoping that the government will make it clear going forward.”

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He said there had been a “complete collapse” in Australian Research Council funding for academic grants involving Chinese collaborators. “Chinese academics in Australia are submitting fewer grant applications [and] feeling that they are discriminated against by the system,” he said.

“They’re wondering, do they still have a career path here in Australia? We at UTS have seen a significant number of our leading Chinese academics decide to go back and re-establish their careers in China because they don’t feel they’ve got the same opportunities as they used to have.”

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Mr Watt blamed the previous government’s attitudes. “[It] seemed to believe that…a research collaboration between an Australian and a Chinese researcher was a one-way transfer of knowledge and skills from Australia to China. There also seemed to be an underlying belief that limiting research collaboration between Australia and China would in some way constrain China’s capacity to project its influence into the region.

“Clearly, none of those things is the case. China is more important to Australia as a source of our top-quality research than it is to our competitors. Decoupling unnecessarily at a faster rate than our competitors makes no sense at all.”

Swinburne University pro vice-chancellor Douglas Proctor said the signs of a strained atmosphere were evident “every day” on his campus. “People [are] stepping back from that engagement with China, when we as a university are trying to step forward,” he said.

University of Newcastle deputy vice-chancellor Kent Anderson said Australia’s collaboration with China owed much to the Chinese diaspora, with some 72 per cent of joint publications between the two countries involving Australians of Chinese heritage.

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“The diaspora is the investment the Australian community has made over 20, 30, 40 years,” Professor Anderson said. “[We] bring people into our researcher community, train them [and] welcome them as colleagues and equals, and then we can use their collaboration and their networks in the future.”

Universities in Australia are often said to “punch above our weight in research”, he added. “That’s thanks to China, and thanks to our research partners.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com