Batting for Chinese diaspora, but not the communist party
Anthony Pun has no truck for communist bullies but he is loyal to Chinese people and has done more than anyone to change the make up of Australia’s Chinese diaspora.
Anthony Pun has no truck for communist bullies but he is loyal to Chinese people and has done more than anyone to change the make up of Australia’s Chinese diaspora.
Dr Pun was playing the long game when he lobbied Bob Hawke for Chinese students to stay in Australia after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989.
He has his eye on the long game again as Chinese capitalists prepare to flee the security clampdown on Hong Kong.
To understand the Chinese diaspora in Australia it is worth getting to know Anthony Pun AOM.
Dr Pun came to Australia via Malay where his maternal line can be traced to the Ming princess entourage sent by the Ming dynasty to the Malacca Sultan to marry him in the 15th century.
“They probably sent 100 boys and girls, I am one of those descendants,” Dr Pun says.
Doubts persist about whether or not the Ming princess was indeed royalty or a “diplomacy princess” — a lower-ranked lady elevated to the status of “princess” to further China’s foreign affairs.
Dr Pun has deep links with the Australian government, the Chinese diaspora and talks openly about his strong connections at the highest levels of the Communist Party in China.
He led a delegation of the Chinese Community Council of Australia to meet Chinese officials in 2007 whose members were praised by then PRC ambassador Zhang Junsai for confirming their “patriotic enthusiasm”.
Dr Pun says he remains dedicated to the Chinese people but his personal relations with the Chinese embassy have soured to the point that he is no longer invited to embassy parties.
“I am empathetic to the Chinese, but you ask the question do you want to live in China? No thank you,” Dr Pun says.
“I say to China I will do everything to give you influence in this country for trade and cultural activities for no fee but we do it for love of the Chinese.”
Dr Pun is a Sino-centric former British subject who has done more than anyone to force a change in the Chinese diaspora in Australia towards mainland Chinese.
Dr Pun was St Vincent Hospital’s chief medical scientist in Sydney for 20 years before becoming a member of the Immigration Review Tribunal and Equal Opportunity Tribunal in NSW.
He has been president of the Australian Chinese Community Association of NSW, chair of the Ethnic Communities Council and chair of the advisory board of the Australia China Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Most significant is the role Dr Pun played in helping to build the Chinese diaspora into a major force in Australia following the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. As head of the Chinese Community Association when the Tiananmen Square massacre happened, Dr Pun lobbied prime minister Bob Hawke to let Chinese students already in Australia stay.
“At the time of Tiananmen I went on television and said if the parents want to discipline their children they should cane them, not run them over with tanks,” Dr Pun says. His efforts to pressure then immigration minister Nick Bolkus and Mr Hawke helped to get a total of 42,680 Chinese migrants into Australia.
The influx represents the start of a transformation of Chinese migration to Australia which now sees about half of the nation’s Chinese diaspora come directly from the Chinese mainland.
Today, Dr Pun tells The Australian his motivations in 1989 had nothing to do with fear of persecution of students by the communists. “My thinking was that the threshold of the Chinese population in Australia was not enough,” Dr Pun says.
“We need to have a certain number of people so this group of people will be very difficult to be pushed into the sea.
“The more Chinese staying here the better for us and you get the number up and they will be stable and we could do a lot of things.”
The influx of students and their families following the Tiananmen massacre changes the story of Chinese immigration to Australia.
The Chinese diaspora is not a homogenous group but one that is made up of distinct waves over more than two centuries.
There were colonial labourers, gold-rush entrepreneurs, British colony expatriates, Colombo Plan students, Tiananmen Square refugees and more recently the businessmen, children and families who have been the beneficiaries of China’s economic transition over the past 20 years. The latest group is tied most closely to the Communist party elite. Dr Pun says many of the new arrivals don’t care about China’s Communist Party because they just want to have a good life in Australia. “They are not going to cause trouble overseas because they have got relatives at home,” Dr Pun says.
Dr Pun says he does not have relatives in China so could not be threatened.
Dr Pun says of the 40,000 students he got to stay in Australia “only a few were reds”.
Dr Pun says he has no illusions about the delicate state of China’s relations with the West.
But says he understands the communist regime desire to break the American hegemony in the Asia Pacific region.
“Look at the totalitarian government mentality,” he says. “The most important thing to them is power — you lose the power, you lose everything. From that point you hang on to power by whatever means possible, if it is not by civilised means, uncivilised means.
“Hopefully we have not come to that stage yet.
“I think it is time (for China) to get up after 100 years of failings. I did pose them a question you know: When you become rich and powerful will you be like the ugly Americans and they didn’t answer my question.”
Dr Pun says he is only interested in the future.
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