Chinese background students' national identities in an Australian government's document

Abstract

Over the past two decades, increasing numbers of overseas students have come to Australia. Exporting education has played a major part of Australian services trade. In 2002, there were 273,552 international students enrolled in Australia, but in 2005 the figure has increased to 344,815 almost by average 8% per year (AEI-International Education Network, 2005). In 2005, 9 of the top 10 source countries were in Asia accounting for 68.8% of the total overseas students, in which the students from mainland China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore represented 38.2%. Traditionally, these students are considered the main source of Chinese background students. More surprisingly, among these 10 countries, the number of mainland Chinese students rocketed up. Especially, in 2002, China first surpassed Malaysia in student numbers studying in the Australian tertiary education system (AVCC, 2005) and became the biggest export country of the Australian education sector. In 2004-2005, the number of China’s students even grew by 17.8% (AEI-International Education Network, 2005), with almost 10% above the average. By accepting increasing numbers of overseas students, Australia had become more widely recognised in the arena of international education, and was regarded as a safe, friendly study destination with high quality courses, said by Mr. Alexander Downer, Minister for Foreign Affairs (2005). Then, how does the Australian government look at these students from mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, as four of the big overseas student sources? How does the Australian government identify their national identities? This paper aims to probe for these students' national identities in Australian government's perspective by examining an official DIMIA (Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs) document. This research focuses on an official policy relating to assessment levels in terms of financial proof for the process of overseas student applications for Australian education. The analysis adheres to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), employed by Van Dijk, Fairclough and Foucault et al. The paper is undertaken in two stages. The first, a general characterization of Australian education export discourse, reveals different financial evidence for students from the above four countries and region. The second is followed by a critical analysis of this policy based on its language used and a comparative analysis between this policy and those of other western countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, France and Spain, which surfaces evidence of a bias ideology manifested in the discourse of Australia. The study concludes with a discussion regarding generalization issue in this policy and its implication in a society as a way to unravel the way in which prejudice is still imbricated within friendly educational discourse of Australia.