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WEHI's InSPIRE program promotes Australia-China collaboration and education in biomedical research. The National Foundation for Australia-China Relations supported WEHI with a virtual Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Masterclass and an Australia-China Research Symposium as part of the 2021-22 grants round.

Professor Shanton Chang finds it easy to relate to international students. He first became one at the age of 11.

That’s when he left his Malaysian hometown of Kuching to study in Singapore. A decade later, he was off to Perth for university.

Through our annual grants program, we support Australian individuals and organisations to develop, promote and strengthen understanding and engagement between Australia and China, including at the business and community level, in support of Australia’s national interests.

The 2022-23 grants program is now open. Applications close on October 4. There is up to $6.5 million available in this grant opportunity. For more information click here.

In less than 24 hours, Chinese online shoppers snapped up more than $1 billion worth of Australian goods.

The year was 2020 and the occasion was the world’s biggest shopping festival, known as “Singles Day”. And despite last year’s event being pared back, many Australian brands remain hugely popular with Chinese bargain hunters.

Little wonder so many Australian companies try to target the market.

In just a few months, Chinese international student Joie Cao went from having virtually no work experience to landing her dream job.

The key was finding a way to leverage her university studies into something industry needed.

The first time the Wah Days brought lychees to a fruit market in Cairns, some local residents mistook them for apples.

“My grandmother said they just tried to eat the whole lot, with the sharp skin still on,” Lawrence Wah Day recounts with a laugh. Lychees were native to China and possibly one of “the first exotic fruit that people in Cairns had seen”.

Chinese migration during Victoria’s gold rush is part of the Australian story.

Perhaps not so well-known, is that more than 16,000 Chinese migrants landed in the South Australian seaport of Robe, after Victoria imposed a tax on arrivals in the late 1850s.

Beach Smarts for Life is a program to introduce Chinese international students to Australian surf lifesaving and beach culture.

Professor Lily Xiao is a world-leading expert on caring for people with dementia.

The plan was hatched over a long lunch in Sydney’s Chinatown.

“That’s quite appropriate in a Chinese context,” says Stephen FitzGerald, who was one of the diners that day. “You never do anything serious without discussing it over a meal.”

It was such a desperate experiment that he didn’t dare tell his wife.

Barry Marshall was a doctor at the Royal Perth Hospital in 1981 when he became convinced that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria. That was a big leap from the prevailing wisdom at the time that considered stress to be the underlying factor.

Jessica is studying in Melbourne to become a psychologist.

But the Chinese international student says her chosen profession doesn’t mean her mental health takes care of itself.