Introduction

Australia，one of the largest English-speaking countries in the Asia-Pacific region，has established special relations with Asian countries and is one for the first Western English-speaking countries which has emphasised Asian-literacy.Teaching Chinese in Australian universities has been strongly influenced by Australia’s National Language Policies(1987，1991，1994，2005，2012)in the past decades.Chinese language and cultural studies have been offered and promoted in most Australian higher educational institutions.In particular，China’s rapid economic rise and the fact that Mandarin Chinese is fast being seen as the second most-spoken language for business and trading have been the driving force of teaching and learning of Chinese(Chen and Sit，2019;Sit and Guo，2019;White，2014).

In spite of the rapid development of teaching and learning of Chinese，Australian universities are facing an unpredictable challenge derived from the changes of the compositions of learners and the learning environments，namely，rising enrolment of Chinese heritage background students in Chinese language classrooms compared with the low retention rate of local English native speaking students.This situation has started from the secondary sector and is continuing to the tertiary level.According to Australia-China Relations Institute(ACRI，2015)in the University of Techonology Sydney(UTS)，there were only 0.1 percent(4，149)of the total number of 3，694，101 students who attended school took Year 12 Chinese in 2015，and no more than 400 were of non-Chinese background.And the proportion of Chinese language learning in the 12th grade has been maintained at around 19%～21%among all language enrolments since 2006—2017(Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority，2017).Take New South Wales for example，in 2008，there were 1，243 students enrolled into Chinese at High School Certificate(HSC)level，but in 2018 when there were 8，800 more HSC students，that number was 979，and most of those were native or background Chinese speakers and only about 200 were studying it as a second/foreign language(NSW Government Education Standards Authority，2018).

Australian schools are the main sources of domestic students for Australian universities and as such，this severe circumstances at school level have naturally influenced Chinese language teaching(CLT)in Australian tertiary institutions.For example，in the University of Newcastle it is notable that the number of non-Chinese background continuators has dramatically decreased but the number of Chinese heritage background students is increasing significantly.As a result，the composition of learners of Chinese are identical in two main cohorts.The former is mainly composed of native English speakers，and the latter is formed by Chinese heritage background learners.Therefore it is urgent and imperative to examine the current situations in most Australian universities，identifying problems due to this change of composition of learners.On the basis of the findings from research，we can create a productive learning environment which maintains and increases non-Chinese background learners while meeting the needs of Chinese heritage background learners at the same time.

This article first reviews the existing literature to explore if the issue of cultural diversity of the learners’background has been addressed in Australian universities.Second，it examines the current composition of learner of Chinese in the 7 participating universities in Eastern Australia.Then it scrutinises how these universities deal with the two main cohorts of Chinese heritage background students(CHBS)and non-Chinese background students(NCBS)in learning Chinese.Finally，a constructive model of how to create a productive and supportive learning environment is proposed according to the empirical research finding revealed in this study.