The number of Australia-bound visitors from China has more than tripled over the past 10 years, according to statistics released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Friday.
More than 933,000 Chinese nationals visited Australia during the 2014-2015 period, the second most of any nation only behind New Zealand, whose residents made almost 1.3 million trips to Australia during that financial year.
Amy Donnelly from the ABS said it was unlikely that any nation other than New Zealand would snatch the top spot, but the number of Chinese visitors was continuing to rise quickly.
"Short-term arrivals from China have more than tripled over the last 10 years to make it the second most common country our visitors come from.
"Japan meanwhile dropped from third place to seventh after arrivals from there halved."
