Australian universities love Chinese students, and it would seem the love is reciprocated on the part of the students and their families. Students from the mainland and Hong Kong make up around a quarter of the 450,000 foreign students who are enrolled at one of Australia's 40 or so tertiary institutions.
But it's not all beer and skittles for these students, living far away from their homeland. Chinese students often experience loneliness, discrimination and racism while they study at an Australian university - as do their fellow foreign students.
For 20 years now, foreigners have been attractive to cash-strapped Australian universities, because they are full fee-paying students. So the institutions aggressively market themselves in Asia, increasingly in the Chinese mainland.
But, a landmark report, published by some of Australia's leading researchers in international education, paints a sobering picture of life for students who move to Australia. The study, conducted by Monash and Melbourne universities, found that of 200 foreign students interviewed, two-thirds were experiencing loneliness and isolation. It also found that foreign students experience what the study termed 'cultural loneliness', brought on by religious, language and other cultural differences. Six out of 10 Chinese students in the study said they had experienced, or continued to experience, loneliness in Australia.
The practical reality, then, of life for many Chinese, and other foreign students, is one of cultural and personal segregation from their Australian-born counterparts. This is not helped by the fact that so many foreign students, particularly from China, are living in purpose-built student apartment blocks near campuses in major cities.
In Melbourne alone, where there are two university campuses close to the downtown area, some 10,000 students live in such blocks. It is estimated more than 90 per cent of them are foreign students.