Canada making efforts to increase number of Chinese visitors, students

Canada is making efforts to massively increase numbers of Chinese tourists and students as the federal government presses forward its rapprochement with the world's second-largest economy.

"Canada can easily double or triple or quadruple the numbers" of Chinese visitors, Ahmed Hussen, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, said in an interview in Beijing Thursday.

And "we'll do whatever we can" to increase the ranks of Chinese students, who already make up 32 per cent of the international cohort in Canadian schools, Mr. Hussen said.

By August of this year, more than 478,000 Chinese overnight arrivals had already come to Canada, up 11.5 per cent over the previous year, according to numbers released by Destination Canada. Roughly 186,000 Chinese students are now in Canada, according to recent statistics provided by the consulate in Toronto.

But Canada's enthusiasm for welcoming more Chinese comes amid pointed new debate in other Western countries, in particular Australia, over the influence being exerted by nationalist Chinese forces as schools grow increasingly reliant on tuition dollars from China, and incidents accumulate of students criticizing instructors who do not adhere to Beijing's views

"We need to be very conscious of the possibilities of foreign interference in our universities," said Duncan Lewis, who heads the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.

Australia has about 164,000 Chinese students. (For reasons that are not clear, Canadian government figures are dramatically lower than those tabulated by Chinese authorities: Ottawa places the number of Chinese students at 132,000 in 2016.)

But Mr. Hussen dismissed concerns about the potential for similar issues in Canada.

"I have great confidence in our social-political environment in Canada," he said, and Canadian universities "are resilient" in upholding their values. "The people running those institutions have demonstrated a commitment to academic freedom and independence, and I don't see how that will change."

Educating foreign students has become a major business in Canada, worth $11.6-billion per year, Mr. Hussen said. The number of international students in Canada rose by a quarter last year.