sp - gov - 2018 - 05 - 23. html 3 / 20 5 / 25 / 2018 australia's deepening economic relationship with china : opportunities and risks | speeches | rba graph 3 last year there were 1. 4 million visitors from china to australia, up from around 400, 000 a decade ago. in 2009, just four passenger airlines flew between china and australia. today, there are 15 airlines and last year there were more than 15, 000 direct flights between our two countries. on average, chinese visitors tend to stay longer in australia and spend more money than other visitors. as a result, they now account for around 25 per cent of total visitor expenditure in australia, a considerably larger share than any other country ( graph 4 ). this shift is having a significant effect on the tourism industry. http : / / www. rba. gov. au / speeches / 2018 / sp - gov - 2018 - 05 - 23. html 4 / 20 5 / 25 / 2018 australia's deepening economic relationship with china : opportunities and risks | speeches | rba graph 4 on the education front, there are currently around 200, 000 chinese students studying in australia ( graph 5 ). education exports to china now account for around one - third of australia's total education exports, up from around one - fifth in 2009. most of the students are studying at the tertiary level, but there has also been an increase in enrolments in australian schools and vocational education programs. even so, more than half of all chinese tertiary enrolments in australia are in the broad fields of management and commerce. for many educational institutions, foreign students, including those from china, have become an important source of fee revenue, with foreign students paying higher fees than domestic students. http : / / www. rba. gov. au / speeches / 2018 / sp - gov - 2018 - 05 - 23. html 5 / 20 5 / 25 / 2018 australia's deepening economic relationship with china : opportunities and risks | speeches | rba graph 5 moving beyond services, china has become the largest single export market for a range of australia's manufactured food items ( graph 6 ). exports of dairy products and alcoholic beverages have grown especially strongly, as have a range of other food and health - related products ( of which vitamin sales are often remarked to be growing strongly ). and more broadly, there has also been strong growth in exports to china of scientific instruments, pharmaceuticals and some telecommunication products.

on households is not to deny that businesses have also become more circumspect about debt as well. but corporate leverage did not really rise much in the preceding decade, at least outside a few celebrated instances. it was the change in household debt that was the defining feature of the period from the early 1990s to about 2008. bis central bankers ’ speeches the retail sector now faces different consumers. it is not actually that consumers have no income to spend, nor that their confidence levels are that low, nor that their saving rate is that high. measures of confidence that date back to the 1970s show it to be roughly at its long - run average. the household saving rate as measured by the australian statistician, at just over 10 per cent, is not, in fact, high in the broader sweep of history ( graph 4 ). graph 4 to be sure, confidence was persistently very high for years up to 2008, and saving was very low – even falling to about zero, as measured, at one point. but that period was unusual. i don ’ t think it will return. moreover consumers are much more knowledgeable about prices as a result of information technology, and have at their disposal ways of responding to that information that a decade or more ago they did not have. this is putting pressure on retail business models, on wholesaling and distribution, and also on segments of the retail property sector. given that the change to household behaviour was probably inevitable, the income boost from the terms of trade arrived at a rather fortuitous time. it helped to accommodate a rise in household saving and a slowdown in the build - up of debt in a fairly benign fashion. the weakness of some other parts of private demand, and openness to imports with a high exchange rate has also meant that a very large expansion in mining investment has been accommodated without overheating the economy overall. as it was, total real private final demand in australia rose by 6 per cent in 2011 / 12, well above trend. with the peak in the investment phase of the mining boom now coming into view, the question naturally arises as to how the balance between the various types of demand in the economy will unfold. mining investment will contribute less to growth in domestic demand in the current fiscal year than it did last year, and less again next year. working in the other direction, it is likely that export volume growth will begin to strengthen as the capacity being installed in the resource sector is used. that