By DIRK MULDER

The feds are funding research for COVID-19 virus vaccine – somebody should tell China

Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday announced $2m from the Medical Research Future Fund is up for researcher-grabs in a competitive process. The Doherty Institute, CSIRO and Uni Queensland researchers are already on the case.

Which is good – what will be great is telling China all about it.

The Chinese will remember who helped them in the crisis and who didn’t. At the moment, the Australian focus on loss of international student income has us in the second category.

Demonstrating Australia is supporting China in its efforts to get on top of the virus outbreak would be displaying Guanxi or demonstrating our trust and strong relationship. It would go a long way to getting us back into the category we should be in.

Dirk Mulder is CMM’s international education correspondent. Reach him @ [email protected]