‘We’re like cash cows’: stranded Chinese students upset after Australia’s coronavirus travel ban

A government task force has estimated a US$5 billion loss if Chinese students – angered and frustrated by the ban – cannot enrol for university

The tourism sector is also likely to be hit by restrictions on travel from the mainland as Chinese visitors spend about U$8 billion in Australia each year

Reading Time:5 minutes

Some 150,000 Chinese nationals are enrolled at Australian universities, making up around 11 per cent of the student population. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 7:30am, 4 Feb 2020Updated: 6:23pm, 14 Feb 2020

Abbey Shi knows first hand the anger and frustration felt by Chinese students left stranded by the Australian government’s decision to ban travel from the mainland in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Shi, general secretary of the Students’ Representative Council at the University of Sydney, is in contact with more than 2,000 Chinese students who went home for the Lunar New Year holiday and now cannot return to Australia with just weeks to go until the start of the new academic year.

“There is a lot of confusion about the ban and anger towards the government,” said Shi, an international student from Shanghai. Currently in Australia, she is sharing information with the stranded students via WeChat.

“The education sector in Australia is being commercialised and students are being treated like cash cows,” she said. “Universities don’t care about our affected career path, life, tenancy issues, our pets at home.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Saturday announced that non-citizens – excluding permanent residents and their immediate family members – who arrived from or passed through mainland China within the previous 14 days would be denied entry to Australia as part of efforts to halt the spread of the coronavirus, which was first detected in December in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Other countries including the United States, Singapore and the Philippines have introduced similar travel restrictions in response to the outbreak, which has sickened more than 19,000 people in at least 26 countries and territories outside mainland China and claimed 425 lives.

The travel ban, which is due to be reviewed on February 15, has upended the plans of numerous Chinese students who were due to begin or return to their studies from late February following the summer break.

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