At one level, Australia's engagement with China in the past decade can be judged to be a roaring success. China is now its largest trading partner and, late last month, Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced that the government would release a white paper on how Australia should build its level of engagement with China over the course of the next few decades.
Gillard's political opponents are also anxious to jump on the China bandwagon, with Malcolm Turnbull, a prominent opposition MP, giving an address in London last week that touched on a vision for a Sino-Australian relationship.
But while the political class, media and business leaders chatter about China on a daily basis, Australia's youth do not appear to be nearly as engaged.
Despite the fact that, for the average young Australian at school today, China will be as dominant in their future working and cultural lives as the US and Britain were for previous generations of Australians, the number of students wanting to study the Chinese language is diminishing.
A report in the Sydney Morning Herald last month illustrates the disturbing level of disinterest. In Victoria, Australia's second-largest state, the number of non-Chinese-speaking students studying Chinese in the final year of schooling prior to university was only 150, and all 65 students who scored an A+ for Chinese language last year had a Chinese surname. Around Australia as a whole, there are only 300 non-Chinese-speaking students studying the language in their final year.
According to Dr Jane Orton, one of Australia's leading Chinese-language education experts, students from a non-Chinese background become disheartened in Chinese-language classes because they are competing with students who speak Chinese in the home environment.
That Australian students are not immersing themselves in Chinese culture and language has ramifications for attempts by the government to link Australia more closely to China.
