Those of you who have fumbled in the dark for a degree at the University of Tasmania would have a nostalgic interest in the way the university has been snookered by a maelstrom of international events.
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In recent years UTAS developed a slight swagger as it morphed through stellar balance sheets from campus into a corporation.
Since 2015 revenue surged by 30 per cent.
The new tycoon in robes raided our cities of prime real estate.
With the legions of overseas students, half of whom were Chinese, UTAS became the new city slicker.
And then suddenly China stopped sending students and instead sent COVID-19 and a new Cold War.
Before the pandemic UTAS had about 7000 international students or 17 per cent of total students, half of them Chinese.
More than 10 per cent of UTAS income came from international students, paying about $140 million a year in student fees.
Overseas students contributed twice as much to the campus coffers as domestic students and UTAS had plans to increase the student intake to about 10,000 within five years.
They were worth more than $420 million a year to the Tasmanian economy. Not any more.
Last year total university revenue was almost $800 million, with income from overseas students about 18 per cent, but this must surely diminish along with the more than $400 million in government grants.
The overseas factor would have been an impetus for UTAS to raid the cities of real estate and create havens for higher education.
The pandemic and China's anger with the little upstart down under will no doubt change all that.
As usual, in financial terms if someone coughs in China it blows a stiff breeze in Australia.
The same cough will blow a gale in Tasmania.
China's confected fury - we've hardly assaulted them - will hurt our fragile economy a lot harder than mainland states.
UTAS will suffer.
China represents 30 per cent of our exports or $120 billion a year with Chinese trade restrictions or trade suspensions, real or political, imposed on our barley, beef, wine and coal.
President Xi Jinping's totalitarian regime has such a coercive hold over its citizens, that if the Chinese Government tells its students and their families to bypass Australia for overseas studies I'm betting they will do what they are told. It's a big worry for Tasmania.
They need our products but they are so big now they can afford to go elsewhere, even just to make a point.
President Xi Jinping's totalitarian regime has such a coercive hold over its citizens, that if the Chinese Government tells its students and their families to bypass Australia for overseas studies I'm betting they will do what they are told. It's a big worry for Tasmania.
China is a massive powerhouse with 1.3 billion people and economic output valued at 12 per cent of the world's economy.
China's economy is more than four times the size of Australia's.
The Chinese military is about 4.6 million strong, with half of them fully operational. Australia's Mickey Mouse military has about 82,000 in uniform.
China outspends us on defence by about eight to one.
Mind you our dear ally the United States outspends China by three to one.
I could go on about relative military and economic strengths, suffice to say China's military firepower could roll right over Australia in a morning.
With the pandemic gripping the world by March this year, and international travel crippled, visitors from Mainland China were down 32 per cent and Hong Kong down six per cent.
You could safely say those numbers would have crashed by now.
It's a long way from those halcyon times in 2014 when President Xi clutched Bobbie the Lavender Bear in Hobart and we all thought we'd struck it rich.
With its new superpower status China has developed that distinct UTAS swagger, as it pleases itself who it hurts and who it offends.
The now big, arrogant and petulant China is bullying a number of countries but I think they single us out because we're small enough politically and militarily but significant enough in the West to make an example of.
I personally think Xi's government is a bunch of totalitarian thugs, being bullies because they can, especially towards their own and Hong Kong, but the hurt ripples beyond borders.
In the political crossfire are tiny hopeful entities like UTAS, that just a few months ago had such wonderfully big plans for an academic and investment renaissance.
UTAS is struck in an awful limbo, lamenting the gold rush days of cashed-up Chinese students and tourists and a bank balance to be proud of.
The grand plans of the campus, with the bold moves to soak up the cities, are suddenly risky ventures, until there's a vaccine, full resumption of international air travel and a thaw in Sino-Australian relations.
Sadly, when China takes offence at our perfectly reasonable call for a COVID inquiry, and shuts down the last of our media offices in Beijing, you know it's going to be a long, drawn-out thaw.
- Barry Prismall is a former The Examiner deputy editor and Liberal adviser