Ties bind a rich cultural history
The citizens of China have long-lasting links to Australia.
Jieh-Yung Lo calls himself an ABC, or Australian Born Chinese.
“We are born here, grew up here, have very little exposure to China but still have that Chinese cultural heritage,” he says.
Like many migrants, gold first brought Mr Lo’s family to Australia. His great, great grandfather struck it rich on the goldfields before losing the fortune back in China and returning to Australia to die. Mr Lo says the shared history of Australia and China is the story of the diaspora which often is overlooked.
“Within the Australian national fabric we don’t talk about Chinese Australians,” he says.
“But the more you isolate Chinese Australians the more you are going to make us vulnerable to Chinese propaganda.
“When the Communist Party says ‘you are one of us, come back’, it is a very seductive message. ‘Your country hates you, they are racist, they don’t want you there, come back.’
“It works on some people I know who have moved to Hong Kong.”
Ironically, as China clamps down on Hong Kong, a new wave of pro-democracy migrants is being welcomed to Australia, adding further layers to the complex story of China’s overseas diaspora.
Australia’s 1.2 million residents who claim Chinese heritage have arrived in a series of distinct waves, each migration triggered by different circumstances. About 700,000 people with Chinese heritage have come to Australia after their ancestors had left mainland China for other places, predominantly elsewhere in Asia.
Over the past 30 years about 500,000 migrants have come mostly from the mainland, often arriving as students, but staying on after their education and bringing out other family members.
Others were refugees from the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, while another wave was the wealthy beneficiaries of China’s decades-long economic miracle.
The shifting historical circumstances of Chinese migrants has also brought about changes — more recent arrivals are more likely to speak Mandarin, while earlier cohorts predominantly spoke Cantonese. And there is also an ever-growing group of Chinese Australians who were born in Australia, and can only speak English.
“With the new migration from the mainland we now have Chinese coming from all over China and the composition of the Chinese Australians has changed significantly from what it would have been 40 years ago,” says diaspora historian Daphne Lowe Kelley.
“What we now have here in Australia are Chinese who might be fourth or fifth generation, to more recent arrivals.
“This is why you can’t look at Chinese Australians and say they are one group because within that group there are quite a few different journeys.”
The influx of students and more wealthy Chinese means the pace of change within the diaspora is increasing. Census data show that of the 41 per cent of diaspora members who have come to Australia directly from mainland China, about half of them have arrived in the past eight years.
There is also a range of attitudes towards mainland China within the diaspora, driven by historical circumstance.
The first record of Chinese trade between Australia and China was in the 1700s when fishermen sailed to the Kimberley region of Western Australia to trade in sea cucumbers destined for southern China.
Chinese settlers first came to Australia in large numbers in search of fortune during the gold rush, starting in 1850.
Within a decade relations between European and Chinese settlers were strained by the new arrivals with anti-Chinese riots and government restrictions.
The Victorian government imposed a tax to limit Chinese arrivals in Melbourne, forcing them to land in South Australia and walk about 400km to the Victorian goldfields. The Victorian government has recently formally apologised for the policy.
In part, hostility towards the new Chinese migrants and competition for gold helped spawn the White Australia policy at the start of the 20th century.
Chinese migration to Australia picked up in the 1960s with the Colombo Plan that encouraged students to come to Australia from Asia. Migration from the Chinese mainland resumed in the late 1980s with the easing of travel restrictions by the communist government after the end of the Cultural Revolution and decades of turmoil in China.
A steep change occurred following the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 when the then-prime minister Bob Hawke allowed 20,000 students already in Australia to stay. They were quickly joined by another 20,000, many of whom sponsored family members to follow.
For the diaspora, the arrival of big numbers from the mainland meant an end of the dominance of the Cantonese language.
“The new mainland arrivals came from all over China and because China had adopted Mandarin as their dominant language they were mainly Mandarin speakers,” Ms Lowe Kelley says.
“We have got everything from those who are very much anti-Communist … to those who realise that China did suffer a lot in the 100 years of humiliation when China was weak.”
Mark Wang, the chief executive of Melbourne’s Chinese Museum, says overseas Chinese “can be more Chinese than mainland Chinese — holding tighter to traditions and customs”.
“Just like overseas Italians can be more Italian than the Italians,” Mr Wang says.
Mr Wang believes the Chinese probably were the first to create a multicultural and integrated society in Australia.
The Melbourne Chinese museum is researching the relationships between Chinese people and Aboriginal people in the 1850s.
“They had the same station in life,” says Mr Wang.
“Lots of Chinese married Aboriginal women, and Irish women. You see a lot of Aboriginal people with Chinese names because of that relationship.”
Yap Yung, a Malaysian-born doctor who has been in Australia for 24 years, says the only thing that defines someone as being Chinese is their heritage.
“The word Chinese is so broad it is almost meaningless,” he says.
“Chinese is just a heritage, it is no different to someone saying they come from an Irish background or an Italian background or even an Anglo background — it should just be someone’s heritage and that is it.” But Dr Yap says subtle racism still exists both within the Chinese and wider communities in Australia. There can still be barriers to job selection and different levels of service.
“Within the Chinese community there is this subtle caste system where they see you as whether you come from China or overseas Chinese from other parts of Asia or were born in Australia and how strong the Australian accent is,” he says. “Negative racism has moulded the community to try to assimilate into the Australian view of to be as white as you can, dress like a caucasian, speak like a caucasian even have an Australian accent.”
Within the diaspora it can also work in reverse based on whether or not someone can speak Mandarin and whether or not their partner is also Chinese, Australian or another nationality.
“One way to look at that pressure is if someone is proud to say my girlfriend or my boyfriend is of a different race,” Dr Yap says.
“Sometimes you hear the word ABC — it is actually a subtle derogatory way to say somebody has lost their heritage or cultural link.”
Dr Yap says Chinese who are not from mainland China might have felt a bit uneasy about the fresh wave of Chinese migrants who have come to Australia with a new sense of confidence.
“Migrants from China who came in the 1980s or 1990s weren’t from a country that strongly supported them, they moved because of the discriminatory experience they had,” he says. “The new wave of Chinese coming from China have not been discriminated against in another country.”
As a result, different groups within the Chinese diaspora can hold different attitudes towards the Chinese Communist Party.
Ruan (Frank) Jie, editor of the Tiananmen Times and chairman of the Chinese Democratic Party Australia, says attitudes can be divided into four categories.
The first category consists of those who advocate democracy in the mainland.
The second category consists of those who understand the malevolence of the Chinese Communist Party, usually because their family members have been persecuted by the regime.
A third category is ethnic Chinese who cling to patriotic sentiment. “They confuse the Chinese Communist Party with China, unable to discern the ruling regime from the nation, leading to misplaced feelings of patriotism,” Mr Jie says.“The fourth category consists of those who forge connections with the Chinese Communist Party to further their personal interest.”
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