Decoding Australia’s 'China threat': Geopolitics, knowledge formation, and public opinion

share_windows This article was published in the Journal of Contemporary Asia on January 8 2026.

Note: An earlier version of this Commentary was delivered as a keynote speech to the Chinese Studies Association of Australia’s (CSAA) 2025 Conference, University of Melbourne, November 29-December 4 2025.

ABSTRACT

Over the past decade, in Australia as well as in many other liberal democracies, a “China threat” narrative has become the dominant framework for talking about China. Focusing on the role of media and academia in the production of knowledge about China, this Commentary aims to examine how the discursive category of threat is established, what gives it legitimacy, and what impact it has on public opinion. It argues that while “China threat” as a concept can be understood as a set of concerns or perceived dangers associated with the rise of China as a global power, the discourse is much more complex, entailing a system of knowledge production, the contestation of expertise, and a coalition of securitisation involving the media, politics, and the security establishment.

In 2012, the government led by Australian Labor Party (ALP) Prime Minister Julia Gillard released a White Paper that declared that “the Asian Century is an opportunity for Australia” (Australian Government 2012, 1). In 2014, conservative Liberal Party Prime Minister Tony Abbott, made a speech at the Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan, declaring that “Australia is not in China to do a deal, but to be a friend” (ABC News, April 10, 2014). Soon after, Chinese leader Xi Jinping addressed the Australian Parliament. Fast forward to the present, when the National Foundation for Australia–China Relations – funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade – now brackets “engagement with China” with warnings that engagement must be “risk-informed” and “in Australia’s national interest,” and Defence Minister Richard Marles, also from the ALP, argues that Australia needs to purchase submarines from the USA to deter threats posed by China (cited in Reuters, November 3, 2025).

Significant transformations on China have also occurred in the Australian media. In 2016, Sky News Australia, associated with the Right in Australian politics, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the online arm of China’s People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the mainstream Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) was paid to publish content from the China Daily, the state-owned, official English-language newspaper of the CCP, in the form of a fortnightly lift-out. Seven years later, SMH mostly publishes stories warning of Chinese influence, and Sky News Australia broadcasts numerous programmes – including one discussed later in this Commentary – speculating about a potential Chinese attack on Australia.

Why, then, did the Australian perception of China shift from being regarded as a friend and an opportunity to being cast as an adversary and a threat in less than a decade? And how did this transformation occur?

Motivated by these questions, this article aims to do four things: first, to review the geo-political context from which a taxonomy of “China threat” discourse has emerged; second, to outline the key forces that shape these discourses, with close attention to the relationship between media and security agencies; third, to examine the dynamics of contestation over China expertise; and finally, to illustrate the securitisation of China narratives – and the marginalisation of China Studies scholarship in Australia – by analysing one prominent trope within China threat discourse: the prospect of a likely war with China.

Bilateral relationship

What has caused the dramatic transformation in Australia–China relations over the past decade? Many observers trace the early signs of change to the period shortly after Xi Jinping’s visit in 2014. By 2016, the conservative Liberal Party-led government had grown increasingly concerned about China’s military build-up in the South China Sea and chose to support the 2016 ruling by the arbitral tribunal constituted under the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which rejected China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea.

Then, in 2017, a series of allegations surfaced regarding CCP activities in Australia: political donations, cyber-espionage, concerns about Chinese-language media and Chinese communities, attempts by the Party’s United Front to shape Australia’s China policy through figures such as Senator Sam Dastyari, and fears of intellectual property theft through research collaborations with Chinese universities. In December that year, the Liberal Party-led Turnbull Government introduced foreign-interference legislation, citing evidence of foreign – particularly Chinese – activities. In 2018, Australia banned Huawei on national-security grounds. Tensions escalated again in 2020 when Liberal Party Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an independent international inquiry into the origins of COVID-19, prompting Beijing to retaliate with tariffs and trade restrictions.

In April 2021, the Morrison federal government cancelled Victoria’s ALP government’s Memorandum of Understanding with China on the Belt and Road Initiative. In September 2021, the Morrison Government announced the AUKUS pact – a trilateral security partnership between Australia, the UK, and the USA designed to deepen defence co-operation in the Indo-Pacific, including the joint development and acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines for Australia. This arrangement, which required a huge increase in Australian defence spending, was clearly motivated by concerns regarding China’s growing military power. During this period, Australia continued to voice concerns about human rights issues in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, as well as China’s detention of Australian citizens Yang Hengjun and Cheng Lei.

Those familiar with the bilateral relationship will recognise that this list is not exhaustive; it merely highlights several pivotal moments that have shaped the trajectory of Australia–China relations.

In 2022, the ALP again won government and in contrast with the previous Liberal-led coalition government, adopted a more pragmatic approach to China, aimed at stabilising ties. However, Albanese’s government has remained committed to AUKUS. In addition, Australian government agencies continue to raise concerns about Chinese naval activity near its waters, alleged espionage operations, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has maintained firm rhetoric on Taiwan. For the government, balancing economic interdependence with defence priorities – and managing the complexities of the bilateral relationship – has become one of the central challenges it faces.

The developments outlined above reflect a pattern of Australian government responses to China and its actions, responses that sit within what can broadly be described as a “China threat” discourse. This discourse typically centres on tropes of ideological influence, political interference, economic coercion, and military aggression. In this sense, the “China threat” can be understood as a set of concerns or perceived dangers associated with the rise of China as a global power – an understanding widely shared among the USA and its allies. As current Prime Minister Albanese has put it: China has changed, and Australia’s response must change accordingly (cited in The West Australian, January 26, 2022).

Yet it is important to move beyond the common questions of what the China threat is, or whether a China threat exists. Rather, this Commentary asks: What is the China threat discourse, and what does it do? How did it emerge, and how has this way of seeing China become naturalised and taken for granted? Who shapes and drives it, and what grants it legitimacy? What impact does it have on public opinion – and with what consequences?

From China reporting to China threat reporting 

No discussion of Australia–China relations can bypass the 2017 Four Corners programme “Power and Influence,” a joint production between the public broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), and the then Fairfax Media-owned newspapers including the SMH. The episode alleged a range of CCP-linked interference activities in Australia. Reporter Nick McKenzie opened with the claim: “The defence and intelligence community believes that attempts by the Chinese Communist Party to exert its influence in Australia pose a direct threat to our nation’s liberties and its sovereignty” (McKenzie and Uhlmann 2017).

This Four Corners programme marked a defining moment in Australia’s China narrative. China scholars David Brophy (2021) and Andrew Chubb (2022) both describe it as “agenda-setting,” and once that agenda was in place, much of the rest of the media followed.

Consider the SMH. As noted already, as recently as 2016, its owners were comfortable partnering with Chinese state media. By 2019, however, and now owned by the sprawling media company Nine Entertainment, editorial policy had pivoted sharply, promising its readers that it would use “hard news to expose the CCP’s soft power” and that it would “do whatever it takes to break the stories,” and established a web- based page dedicated to exposing “China’s growing influence” (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2019).

Since the Four Corners episode, Australia has witnessed a shift from China reporting to China threat reporting. To be clear, “China threat” is not new; it has long existed as an enduring trope. But over time, the threat narrative has increasingly crowded out other perspectives, becoming the dominant – often exclusive – frame through which China is discussed.

One widely cited explanation for the deterioration of China coverage is Beijing’s reluctance to allow foreign correspondents and its tendency to make reporting from within China difficult. This is valid, but it does not capture the full picture. The landscape of China reporting has changed dramatically over the past decade. In the past, major media outlets invested in language training, sent correspondents to Beijing, and expected them to report on events within China. Today, although major Australian media outlets still send correspondents to China, “China coverage” has largely been replaced by “China-related reporting” – much of it produced by onshore journalists with limited knowledge of Mandarin and no lived experience in China. This reporting spans a broad set of themes: Australia–China relations, Chinese political influence, foreign interference, and Chinese military aggression.

Writing in 2023, James Curran, professor of modern history at the University of Sydney, observed that the China threat discourse had hardened into a “dogma” (Curran 2023). More recently, he noted that the China threat narrative has “dusted off and redeployed familiar tropes from the Cold War” (Curran 2025). As a popular meme on Chinese social media platform WeChat puts it: “Monday, Wednesday and Friday, it’s China threat; Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, it’s China collapse; Sunday, everyone has a rest” (一三五中国威胁, 二四六中国崩溃, 星期天休息).

Coalition of securitisers

Reflecting on the role of the 2017 Four Corners episode, Chubb (2022, 19) argues: “Once convinced of the threat, they [journalists] became active securitizers, driving threat perceptions downward and outward to mass audiences.” He identifies the programme as a turning point for three reasons. First, it injected security concerns squarely into public consciousness. Second, it normalised the rhetoric of securitisation. Third, it inaugurated what Chubb calls a “securitising coalition” involving security officials, politicians, and journalists.

Indeed, Four Corners helped accelerate a shift in Australian newsrooms from a normative, public-interest model of reporting on China toward a “national interest” and “national security” framework. This shift also explains interesting double standards. When the ABC was raided by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) in 2019 to allegedly “secure” leaked documents, the media sector expressed collective outrage. Yet when ASIO raided the homes of four Chinese state media correspondents in Australia in June 2020 over allegations of “China influence,” the media reported it uncritically and without objection.

The Four Corners episode exemplifies what American journalist Seymour Hersh calls “access journalism,” which relies heavily on unnamed official sources and allegations requiring no verifiable evidence (Manning 2018). This style of reporting resulted in two Chinese Australians suing the ABC for defamation. Dr Chau Chak Wing contended that the 2017 Four Corners conveyed imputations that he was linked to the CCP, that he had sought political influence through donations, and had been involved in bribery (Chau v Australian Broadcasting Corporation (No 3) [2021] FCA 44). Chinese student Lupin Lu took legal action over the same episode, contending that the editing and portrayal of her interview in the episod implied she was a spy or informant providing intelligence to the Chinese embassy (The Australian, March 10, 2019). While both Chau and Lu had successful legal outcomes, the damage to their reputations – and to the Chinese Australian community in general – was already done.

The risks of access journalism become clearer still in cases such as the self- proclaimed “Chinese spy” Wang Liqiang, whose claims dominated Nine Entertainment newspapers and other outlets before he was revealed to be a “spy- wannabe” apparently using media attention to expedite his visa application. The failure of the mainstream media on this episode prompted Brophy (2021, 229) to point to a lack of accountability “when China-related stories like this come unstuck.”

Sometimes access journalism takes the form of journalists being tipped off by security agencies. For example, on June 26, 2020, ASIO raided the home of NSW ALP MP Shaoquett Moselmane, who was suspected of having links to the CCP. The raid took place at 6:30 am, with SMH reporter Nick McKenzie and a 60 Minutes crew already waiting outside Moselmane’s home when the raid unfolded. The journalist gets the scoop; the agency got its message out (McDonald 2020). No criminal charges were laid and a parliamentary investigation cleared Moselmane (The Sydney Morning Herald, October 22, 2020). But the case for Chinese influence was already made in the media.

What is now observed in the media is the curious co-existence of “watchdog” and “guard dog” models of journalism (see Sun 2023a). In domestic political reporting, the watchdog is vigilant – probing politicians’ motives, questioning the powerful, and scrutinising institutions. But in coverage of China, the watchdog barks only at Xi Jinping and the CCP, while acting as a guard dog for Australia’s security establishment.

Journalists frequently name individuals with business or political ties to China, yet rarely ask who stands to benefit from heightened tensions or military confrontation. In helping security agencies “watch China,” the guard dog often overlooks the fact that foreign policy is a contested arena – shaped by inter-departmental competition, bureaucratic rivalries, budgetary interests, and the influence of lobbyists, think tanks, and defence industries.

Struggle for epistemic authority 

Too often, “China watchers” are conflated with “China scholars.” The former refers to journalists, commentators, and analysts who have a general understanding of China; the latter refers to those who are proficient in the language and professionally dedicated to studying one aspect of China. At present, the former enjoys significantly more epistemic authority than the latter. In fact, an Australian China watcher even questions whether China expertise is relevant. He stated:

The right China policy is not really about China expertise. [W]e need to have people who diagnose what China is doing. But translating what China is doing into what the problem is for Australia, and how we respond to that problem, is a different skill set. And so I always challenge this idea that China policy should be left to China experts (McCourt 2026).

To be sure, it is fair to say that China expertise is not identical to China policy, and not all aspects of knowledge about China are relevant to policymaking. However, formulating effective China policy requires knowledge of China as much as knowledge of Australia. Insights into what Arthur Kleinman and co-authors (2011) call “deep China” – gained from political scientists, historians, linguists, economists, sociologists, anthropologists, and media scholars – are crucial. After all, who better than these experts can “diagnose what China is doing” and explain how political decisions are made, how the CCP or Chinese government functions, and what Chinese people truly want, fear, or perceive about themselves in the world?

Currently, much media commentary on China’s military threat relies heavily on Xi Jinping’s statements. However, as China historian Louise Edwards (2023) observes, this view of China’s politics as an “undifferentiated blob” dominated by a single leader – informing most prevailing analyses – is simply incorrect.

Instead of leveraging their scholarly insights, China scholars are often met with suspicion; in-depth knowledge of China may be perceived as a sign of sympathy toward the country. McCourt (2026) observes that in the UK, USA, and Australia, security establishments often subscribe to a logic where it seems that too much knowledge of China could be a dangerous thing.

The term “expert” proves unhelpful in the context of China-related knowledge because a struggle over epistemic authority persists: the question of who can legitimately speak about China. For instance, in the SMH’s Red Alert – a series reporting China’s imminent military invasion of Australia – journalists Peter Hartcher and Matthew Knott (2023) feature five “experts” with security, intelligence, or defence backgrounds. When the series was heavily criticised for its lack of China expertise, Hartcher claimed that the panellists “know a great deal about China” (The Guardian, March 16, 2023).

Here, it appears that Hartcher recognises these analysts as authoritative not because they know more about China than China scholars, but because they exist outside the “epistemic community” – a network of individuals sharing common beliefs and assumptions about China’s intentions and ambitions (see Haas 1992). Today, most predictions about China exclude China scholars, not because their knowledge is irrelevant, but because their perspectives might undermine the epistemic authority of that network.

An example of this exclusion can be seen in a significant scholarly paper published in 2025. Three US-based scholars – none of them connected with the PRC – published a peer-reviewed article titled “What Does China Want?” The study, which examined Chinese leaders’ speeches, state media, and textbooks, concluded:

China is a status quo power with limited global aims, not a revisionist state seeking to dramatically expand its power and reshape the world order. In its global actions, China seeks to boost both economic growth and political influence. But these international efforts are aimed internally, and they stem from domestic issues. China is not a grave threat to US dominance (Kang, Wong, and Chan 2025).

Despite wide resonance in academic circles, their findings received little media attention. Indeed, they got far more media pushback than, for example, former US Assistant Secretary of Defense Graham Allison’s popularisation of the Thucydides Trap, where he posits that war between two superpowers is inevitable, apparently confirming pre-conceived perceptions.

Some scholars do engage with the media from time to time, and China scholars are not monolithic in their views on the China threat – a healthy diversity of opinion exists. However, as a collective, particularly in Australia, China scholars wield little influence over the hegemonic discourse framing the China threat. Reluctance to engage with media is understandable. One China scholar in Sydney confided that his refusal to give interviews was for two reasons: first, media engagement is not part of his workload, and there are no institutional rewards for doing so; and second, he felt journalists did not respect his expertise: “I talked to this journalist for about an hour, and he ended up having one sentence attributed to me, and that sentence was not what I said.”

In such circumstances, it is difficult to fault him for disengaging. Having nuanced insights misrepresented or oversimplified can be especially perilous for China scholars, given the widespread acceptance of the supposed China threat. This risk is magnified for scholars of Chinese heritage or those with a PRC background. Who wants to be labelled a “panda hugger”? The relationship with the media is all the more difficult when reporters want a quote rather than nuance. As an Australian reporter admitted, he usually approaches think-tanks rather than China scholars, because think-tank staff “know how to talk to the media.” 

Yet allowing think-tanks to dominate public discourse carries its own dangers. A Europe-based study shows that think-tanks act as “securitising actors,” framing policy debates through a security lens (Rogelja and Tsimonis 2020). Similarly, the Quincy Institute in the USA finds that the weapons industry funds think-tanks, which then identify China as a strategic competitor to foster policy environments conducive to higher defence budgets (Swaine 2022).

War with China: A case study

In recent years, the narrative of “imminent war with China” has been added to the “China threat” repertoire. The Nine Entertainment Network was among the first to realise that this was a profitable line to pursue. Since 2022, its 60 Minutes programme has produced segments about China’s military threat at regular intervals.

One such episode was “Poking the Panda,” with the sub-title, “Prepare for Armageddon: China’s Warning to the World” (Steinfort 2021). Here’s how the host and reporter Tom Steinfort introduced the likelihood of war with China: “The message coming out of China is getting louder by the day. It’s worth taking that threat seriously because Xi controls the largest military force in the world. As one of his supporters cautions, the cost of conflict with China could be Armageddon.” Also taking this line, the ABC followed with a 2022 Four Corners episode, “War Games,” where reporter Angus Grigg established the premise of a likely war with China in these terms: “The message is clear – the People’s Liberation Army is ready for combat, and the target is Taiwan … Some strategists are predicting an assault on Taiwan by China could happen as early as 2025, [and] … there are warnings that it’s now a question of when not if a conflict over Taiwan will occur” (ABC News 2022).

Both 60 Minutes and Four Corners insisted that “the message is clear” and “getting louder.” Clearly the message is that a militarily strong China is flexing its muscles and that means most likely the threat of war involving the region and Australia.

When in 2023, the SMH’s Red Alert series warned that a war could erupt within three years. Red Alert cited a source: US CIA Director William Burns. He was speaking to the US House Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats, when he stated that: “CIA has intelligence that China has instructed the Chinese military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.” Referring to the Chinese President Xi Jinping, Burns added: “Now, that does not mean that he’s decided to conduct an invasion in 2027, or any other year, but it’s a reminder of the seriousness of his focus and his ambition” (Reuters, February 2, 2023).

Through repeated retellings, Burns’s cautious remark was transformed into a taken-for-granted assumption that China will invade Taiwan soon. The media’s allergy to complexity is understandable: why let Burns’s caveat get in the way of a good story? And it might also be asked: why cite William Burns at all when pitching a China threat for Australia? He is head of the CIA, and represents America’s national interests. The implication is that Australia’s interests are congruent with those of the USA. Indeed, in early 2025, former US National Security Adviser John Bolton complained that Canberra was too hesitant to name China as a threat: “Why the hell are we worried about talking about what the threat is?” (Collinson 2025). Yet the reality is that it is not always in Australia’s national interest to be completely aligned with the USA. 

Mindful of Bolton’s complaint, Australian journalists pressed Prime Minister Albanese on China:

Journalist: Prime Minister, in the context of the debate about defence spending, you’ve said that we have strategic competition in the region, but I was hoping you could really simplify that so voters understand your thinking. So, do you think China is a national security threat to Australia?

Prime Minister: I think that our engagement with the region and the world needs to be diplomatic, needs to be mature, and needs to avoid attempts to simplify what are a complex set of relationships. And Australian journalists should do the same. And I believe – 

Journalist: But does that mean China is a potential military threat to Australia? 

Prime Minister: We have strategic competition in the region (Albanese 2025).

It seems unlikely that Australian journalists will heed Prime Minister Albanese’s call to avoid simplification of a complex situation. Why not? The simple answer is that threat talk is good business. For instance, “Poking the Panda” has attracted over 14 million views on YouTube, while another episode, “War with China,” has almost 16 million. Comparing these figures with view counts for domestic stories from around the same period – for example, a 2022 investigation into political infiltration by a church, which received only about 29,000 views on YouTube – makes it clear that “war with China” reporting is a profitable topic to cover. Apparently, stoking fear sells papers and guarantees strong ratings. And what could be more fear-inducing than China cast as strong, aggressive, and on our doorstep, promising Armageddon?

Discursive power with real consequences

At this point, we can take stock of the analytical perspectives employed to critique of the China threat discourse. Without claiming to be systematic or exhaustive, the China threat discourse can be understood as:

1. A liberal teleology of modernity, progress, and development that views China’s rise as aberrant, disruptive, and unacceptable.
2.  An interpretative framework that explains China’s actions, behaviours, and practices in a pre-determined way.
3. A cultural commodity whose marketability depends on ongoing processes of production, circulation, and consumption. 
4.  An implicit set of agenda-setting news values that shape not only which stories about China are told, but also how those stories are told.
5. An “epistemic community” involving a coalition of securitisers – the media, security agencies, and political elites.
6. A struggle over expertise, through which geo-politically driven views of China’s actions and intentions have come to supplant scholarly knowledge.
7. A complex and shifting “structure of feeling” – a vast, emotional, and inchoate substructure of fear, anxiety, panic, and grievance – that has become attached to the idea of “China.”

But analysing the China threat discourse is not a purely intellectual exercise. The issues and problems outlined so far would not be particularly worrying if they had no real-world consequences. Yet, for a number of reasons, the consequences of an ill- informed and panicked public are both real and serious.

First, debates about the China threat not only concern political elites and media institutions; they also shape public opinion. In the 2025 national poll conducted by the Lowy Institute – Australia’s most influential foreign policy think-tank – 95% of respondents viewed a military conflict between the USA and China over Taiwan as a likely threat. In this polling, 2018 marked a turning point: Australians shifted from feeling relatively safe (78%) to relatively unsafe (51%) in light of global events. It also reveals a dramatic increase in perceived threats between 2022 and 2025: the proportion who believe China is likely to become a threat within the next 20 years rose from 45% to 69% (Neelam 2025).

Of course, the perspective presented here is not an argument against disagreeing with China where necessary – and there is a long list of issues on which the Australian government and people do and must disagree with China. But as China scholar David Goodman (2022) argues, when we disapprove of something about China, that is not the same thing as delineating a China threat. While security agencies have a role in informing the public of challenges and even threats, failing to right-size the threat leads to excessive fear, and that is not in the nation’s social or economic interest. Indeed, as Goodman (2022, 3) says, “The language of existential threat is more likely to lead to war and open hostility rather than conflict resolution.”

Accurate China media reporting is also crucial for an informed public. Research in the USA demonstrates that the media play a major role in shaping public understanding of China (Ha and Willnat 2022; Li and Ang 2025). A Pew Research Center survey indicated that American audiences tend to place more trust in their domestic media’s reporting on the PRC over its reporting on other foreign countries (Silver et al. 2023). This is likely true in Australia, with the Australia–China Relations Institute’s 2025 poll showing that mainstream media are the most frequently cited influence on Australians’ overall views of China (Collinson and Burke 2025).

Second, polarisation in Australia’s China relations debate is damaging to social cohesion. An Australia–China Relations Institute survey of Chinese-Australians found a high level of fear that they are becoming collateral damage in the debate – being suspected, distrusted, or racially targeted (Sun 2023b). For four consecutive years, polling by the Institute has shown that four in ten Australians believe Chinese Australians could be mobilised to act against Australia’s national interest. This perception has profound implications for belonging, trust, and the health of Australia’s multicultural society.

Third, public opinion and policymaking are locked in a feedback loop. By shifting war rhetoric from the unimaginable to the imaginable – and from if to when – the public is primed to accept this framing. Once public opinion is measured as broadly supportive of this view, it is then cited as evidence of voter support for defence policy decisions and spending priorities. This is a vicious cycle, one in which media narratives, political rhetoric, and public anxieties reinforce each other.

In lieu of a conclusion: A challenge 

Australia’s China threat discourse is closely connected to the broader USA–China strategic competition, yet Australia has produced a discourse with distinctly Australian characteristics. America’s China threat centres on the rivalry between two superpowers; Australia’s China threat, by contrast, reflects Australia’s struggle over its difficult position of being caught between China and the USA.

It is not surprising that many China-based scholars agree that this threat rhetoric is overdone. Jia Qingguo, a Professor at Peking University and a prominent commentator, writing on the USA, observes: “If viewed from within China, the so-called ‘China threat’ has little to do with China’s actual intentions or behaviour. Instead, it reflects Western – particularly US – perceptions, anxieties, and political considerations” (Jia 2025). Echoing Jia, but writing from an Australian perspective, several Canberra-based academics warn against the “deductive reasoning from doubtful premises” that underpins much of the China threat debate in this country. They call instead for a “fine-grained understanding of the ideological, political, social and economic drivers of foreign policy that real expertise unlocks” (EAF Editors 2025).

This raises an unavoidable question: as media narratives shift toward a new Cold War framing, what role can China scholars play in providing this “fine-grained understanding”? And, can Australia-based China scholars step up to meet this responsibility?

The reality currently facing Australia-based academics is not encouraging. Despite the Australian Academy of the Humanities’ warnings about Asia capability gaps, for China, Australian universities appear to be diminishing the country’s literacy and capability. Language programmes are being cut. Students no longer see many viable career opportunities in studying China. Universities are neither producing the next generation of China scholars with Australian perspectives nor rewarding academics for media engagement, despite rhetorical commitments to social impact. Funding for China research is shrinking, and collaborations with Chinese universities are increasingly diminished due to growing scrutiny, including by security agencies.

To say that China Studies in Australia is at a crossroads is no exaggeration – it may be at a crisis point. The hollowing-out of China expertise is not merely an academic problem; it is a strategic vulnerability. As narratives of threat harden and policy debates narrow, Australia risks locking itself into choices shaped more by fear than by understanding. Reversing this trend requires more than isolated funding decisions – it demands a national commitment to rebuilding the intellectual infrastructure necessary for serious engagement with China. Without such a commitment, Australia’s capacity to act with confidence, nuance, and independence in its foreign policy will continue to shrink. The future of Australia’s China debate depends on decisions to choose knowledge over noise.

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