Chinese Australian
A
Chinese Australian is an
Australian of
Chinese heritage. They are part of the ethnic Chinese diaspora (or
Overseas Chinese). Chinese Australians are the fifth largest ethnic group in Australia, numbering 557,021 in 2001.
The early history of Chinese Australians had involved significant
immigration from
villages of the
Pearl River Delta in Southern
China. Less well known are the kind of society Chinese Australians came from, the families they left behind and what their intentions were in coming. Many Chinese were lured to Australia by the
gold rush (since the mid-19th century, Australia was dubbed the
New Gold Mountain after those in North America), sent money to their families in the villages, regularly visited their families and retired to the village after years working as a
Sydney market gardener,
Cairns shopkeeper or
Melbourne cabinet maker. As with many overseas Chinese groups the world over, early Chinese immigrants to Australia established
Chinatowns in several major cities, such as in
Sydney (
Chinatown, Sydney),
Brisbane and in
Melbourne.
The
White Australia Policy of the early 20th Century severely curtailed the development of the Chinese communities in Australia. However, since the advent of
Multiculturalism as a government policy in the
1970s, many Chinese from
Hong Kong,
Mainland China,
Taiwan, and Southeast Asia (
Malaysia,
Vietnam,
Cambodia,
Indonesia and the
Philippines) have immigrated to
Australia.
Earliest arrivals: 1788 to 1848
From the very beginning of the colony of
New South Wales, links with China were established when several ships of the
First Fleet, after dropping off their
convict load, sailing for
Canton to pick up goods for the return to
England. The
Bigge Report attributed the high level of
tea drinking to 'the existence of an intercourse with China from the foundation of the Colony ...' That the ships carrying such cargo had Chinese crew members is likely and that some of the crew and possibly passengers embarked at the port of Sydney is probable. Certainly by
1818,
Mak Sai Ying (also known as
John Shying) had arrived and after a period of farming became, in
1829, the
publican of
The Lion in
Parramatta.
John Macarthur, a prominent pastoralist, employed three Chinese people on his properties in the
1820s. (Records may well have neglected others.)
Indentured labour: 1848 to 1853
After transportation of convicts ceased in the
1840s, the increasing demand for labour led to much larger numbers of Chinese men arriving as
indentured labourers, to work as
shepherds and
irrigation experts for private landowners and the
Australian Agricultural Company. These workers seemingly all came from
Fujian via the port then known as Amoy (
Xiamen) and some may have been brought involuntarily, as
kidnapping (or the 'sale of pigs', as it was called), was common.
Between
1848 and
1853, over 3,000 Chinese workers on contracts arrived via the Port of Sydney for employment in the NSW countryside. Resistance to this cheap labour occurred as soon as it arrived, and, like such
protests later in the century, was heavily mixed with
racism. Little is known of the habits of such men or their relations with other NSW residents except for those that appear in the records of the
courts and
mental asylums. Some stayed for the term of their
contracts and then left for home, but there is evidence that others spent the rest of their lives in NSW.
Gold rushes: 1853 to 1877
Attempts at importing contracted labour ended with the discovery of
gold as those contracted at minimal wages could and did simply head for the diggings. Large numbers of Chinese men were working on the
Victorian goldfields and on the smaller NSW fields in the mid
1850s. With major gold finds in NSW and the passing of more restrictive
anti-Chinese legislation in Victoria, thousands of miners moved to NSW in
1859, and more miners continued to come from China.
Fish curing, stores and dormitories in places such as
The Rocks, soon developed to support the miners on the fields as well as those on their way to the diggings or back to China. The presence of numerous Chinese on the diggings led to anti-Chinese agitation, including violent clashes such as the
Lambing Flat riots, the immediate result of which was the passing of an Act in
1861 designed to reduce the number of Chinese people entering the colony.
From miners to artisans: 1877 to 1901
The last gold rush in the eastern colonies of Australia occurred in
1873 in the far north of
Queensland at the
Palmer River, and by
1877 there were 20,000 Chinese there. After this gold rush ended people either returned to China or dispersed across the Australian colonies. This openness of the land borders and the rise in Chinese numbers after a period of decline again raised anti-Chinese fears in NSW, resulting in restrictive Acts in 1881 and 1888.
As gold rushing was always a risky endeavour, Chinese people began trying other ways of earning a living. People opened
stores and became
merchants and
hawkers, while a
fishing and
fish curing industry operating north and south of Sydney supplied dried fish in the
1860s and
1870s to Chinese people throughout NSW and Victoria. By the
1890s Chinese people were represented in a wide variety of occupations including
scrub cutters,
interpreters,
cooks,
tobacco farmers, market gardeners,
cabinet-makers,
storekeepers and
drapers, though by this time the fishing industry seemed to have disappeared. At the same time, Sydney's proportion of the Chinese residents of NSW had steadily increased; one prominent Chinese Australian was
Mei Quong Tart, who ran a popular tea house in the
Queen Victoria Building in Sydney.
The era of White Australia policy: 1901 to 1936
By the Australian Federation, Chinese people in NSW were a significant group, running numerous stores, an import trade, societies and several
Chinese language newspapers. They were also part of an international community involved in political events in China, and also made donations at times of
natural disaster. The immigration restrictions of
1888 had not had a great impact on total numbers and a continued inflow of Chinese from Queensland mitigated even this. The passing of the
Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, however, froze the Chinese communities of the late 19th century into a slow decline.
Continued
discrimination, both legal and social, reduced the occupational range of Chinese people until market gardening, always a major occupation, became far and away the representative role of 'John Chinaman'. These men often had to go back to their villages in China in order to find wives, then relied on the minority of merchants to assist them to negotiate with the immigration bureaucracy. Only the rise of a new generation of Australian-born Chinese people, combined with new migrants that the merchants and others sponsored, both legally and illegally, prevented the Chinese population of NSW disappearing entirely.
War and refugees: 1936 to 1949
By the war period numbers had nevertheless fallen greatly and Australian-born people of Chinese background began to predominate over Chinese-born people for the first time. Numbers increased rapidly again when refugees began to enter Australia as the result of
Japan's war in China and the
Pacific. Some were Chinese crew members who refused to return to Japanese-held areas and others were residents of the many Pacific islands evacuated in the face of the Japanese advance. Still others included those with Australian birth who were able to leave
Hong Kong and the villages on the approach of the Japanese. At the same time the anti-Japanese War helped inspire the development of organisations focusing on China as a whole, rather than the region of a migrant's ancestry. A few of these organizations, such as the Chinese Youth League, survive to this day.
The era of assimilation: 1949 to 1973
In the post-war period,
assimilation became the dominant policy and this led to some relaxation to migration and citizenship laws. At the same time "cafes" (as
Chinese restaurants were known in Australia during the 1950s) began to replace market gardens as the major source of employment and avenue for bringing in new migrants, both legal and illegal. In addition, some students of Chinese background arrived under the
Colombo Plan from various parts of Asia.
The era of multiculturalism: 1973 to the present
Soon after the effective end of the
White Australia Policy in
1973, immigrants of Chinese ancestry began to increase significantly. The first wave of arrivals were ethnic Chinese
refugees from
Vietnam and
Cambodia during the
1970s; this was followed by economic migrants from
Hong Kong in the
1980s and
1990s, whose families often settle in
Sydney while the breadwinner returned to Hong Kong to continue earning an income - a significant reversal of the traditional migration pattern. Likewise, immigrants from
Taiwan often arrived via
New Zealand, with the breadwinner returning to
Taiwan or
Mainland China to work.
After the
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the Australian Prime Minister of the day,
Bob Hawke, allowed students from mainland China to settle in Australia permanently. Since then, immigrants from mainland
China and
Taiwan have arrived in increasing numbers.
New institutions were established for these arrivals and old ones such as the Chinese Chamber of Commerce revived; Chinese language newspapers were once again published. The equality of citizenship laws and family reunion immigration after
1972 meant that an imbalance of the sexes, once a dominant feature of the Chinese communities in Australia, was not an issue in these later migrations.
Today there are significant Chinese communities in all major Australian cities, the largest concentration being in
Sydney, followed closely by
Melbourne. While
Chinatowns continue to serve as the focal points of these communities, Chinese Australians have long settled in suburbs across the metropolitan areas, with their own shops, restaurants, churches, and Chinese language schools. A few areas have developed into satellite "Chinatowns"; for example, Sydney's "Little Shanghai" is in
Ashfield, "Little Hong Kongs" in
Chatswood and
Hurstville, and "Little Saigon" in
Cabramatta. In Melbourne suburbs with a large Chinese concentration are
Doncaster,
Box Hill,
Murrumbeena,
Springvale and
Glen Waverley. These all contribute to the cosmopolitan character of modern urban Australia.
Apart from shops selling imported Chinese language books, magazines,
CDs and
DVDs, there are also several Chinese language
newspapers, three
shortwave radio channels in
Cantonese and
Mandarin, as well as a number of Chinese language
satellite television stations from around the world - all helping to bring the communities up-to-date with the events and cultures of their ancestral homes. Australian public broadcaster
SBS also provides television and radio programming in both Cantonese and Mandarin.
Like Chinese people across the world, Chinese Australians have a tradition of academic excellence; Chinese Australians are prominent among the top performers of the annual
Higher School Certificate (NSW),
Victorian Certificate of Education, and their counterparts in other states and territories. Perhaps surprisingly, few second-generation Chinese Australians learn the Chinese language at normal weekday schools, but many do attend privately-run Chinese language classes on Saturdays.
People of Chinese descent are now well-represented across all professions in Australia; quite a few receive the prestigious
Order of Australia award every year. In part fuelled by anti-migrant policies of
Pauline Hanson in the
1990s, Chinese involvement in Australian politics is quite strong, with several representatives in Federal and State parliaments over the years. (See also
Unity Party (Australia).)
Like many Chinese communities overseas, Cantonese has historically been the
lingua franca of the Australian Chinese communities. However, recent arrivals (see below) from other parts of China and Taiwan mean that Mandarin and other dialects are increasingly commonly spoken as well. Both
Traditional Chinese and
Simplified Chinese scripts can be seen, although local Chinese language newspapers tend to prefer the former. As Australia is an English speaking country, most Chinese Australians also have some knowledge about the English language, although the level of proficiency varies among recent immigrants. In the past, those who came from Hong Kong have tended to know English better than those from
Mainland China and Taiwan.
Australian Bureau of Statistics data records that the Chinese language with the greatest number of speakers in Australia is Cantonese with 225,300 (thereby spoken by around 40.4 per cent of Chinese Australians), followed by Mandarin with 139,300 (25.0 per cent). Other Chinese languages, and English, are undoubtedly the home languages of the remainder.
Chinese migrants to Australia are drawn from throughout the
Chinese diaspora. According to the 2001 Census, the main source countries and regions for overseas-born ethnic Chinese are:
*
China (PRC excluding Hong Kong and Macau) - 132,020
*
Hong Kong - 59,810
*
Malaysia - 51,910
*
Vietnam - 41,230
*
Taiwan (ROC) - 21,520
*
Indonesia - 19,620
*
Singapore - 19,120
*
Cambodia - 9,500
*
East Timor - 4,880
*
Philippines - 2,230
*
Thailand - 2,210
*
Laos - 1,450
*
Burma (Myanmar) - 1,030
*
Mauritius - 820
*
South Korea - 190
*
Ghana - 110
Prominent Chinese Australians include:
*
Andrew Chan: drug lord, sentenced to death
*
Victor Chang: heart surgeon
*
Si Yi Chen: drug smuggler
*
Michael Choi: politician (Queensland)
*
Kwong Sue Duk: pioneer herbalist and merchant
*
Jeff Fatt: performer with the
Wiggles. One of the Wiggles' catchphrases is, "Wake Up Jeff!"
*Sir
Leslie Joseph Hooker: real estate magnate, founder of
L.J. Hooker*
Helene Chung Martin: former ABC Peking correspondent, author of 'Shouting from China' and 'Lazy Man in China'
*
John So: Lord Mayor of Melbourne
*
Terence Tao: mathematician
*
Henry Tsang: politician, NSW
*
Peter Wong: politician (New South Wales)
*
Jack Wong Sue:
World War II soldier, mariner and author (Western Australia)
*
John Yu: paediatrician and
Australian of the Year 1996*
Ouyang Yu: poet, novelist and author of
The Eastern Slope Chronicle* Brawley, Sean,
The White Peril - Foreign Relations and Asian Immigration to Australasia and North America 1919-1978, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1995.
* Cushman, J.W., "A 'Colonial Casualty': The Chinese community in Australian Historiography",
Asian Studies Association of Australia, vol.7, no 3, April, 1984.
* Fitzgerald, Shirley,
Red Tape, Gold Scissors, State Library of NSW Press, Sydney, 1997.
* Macgregor, Paul (ed.),
Histories of the Chinese in Australasia and the South Pacific, Museum of Chinese Australian History, Melbourne,1995.
* May, Cathie,
Topsawyers: the Chinese in Cairns 1870 to 1920, James Cook University, Townsville, 1984.
* Williams, Michael,
Chinese Settlement in NSW - A thematic history (Sydney: Heritage Office of NSW, 1999) http://www.heritage.nsw.gov.au
*
White Australia policy*
Chinatowns in Oceania*
Overseas Chinese*
Chinese American*
Chinese Canadian *
British Chinese*
Chinese New Zealander*
Jook-sing
