There are over one million people in Australia of ethnic Chinese descent. World wide there are over 50 million ethnic Chinese, living in countries other than China.
The earliest date when the first Chinese visited Australia isn’t known for sure. But maybe this gives us a clue. In one book by Confucius, in his “Spring and Autumn Annals”, written in 481 BC he recorded that two solar eclipses were observed by Chinese astronomers on 17 April 592 BC. And as best we can reckon, they might have been in Arnhem Land. The problem is that it wasn’t called Arnhem Land then so they could have been anywhere.
Another Chinese book, called “Atlas of Foreign Countries”, written between 265 and 316 AD, described the mountains above Cairns, as being inhabited by a race of one metre tall pygmies. It turns out that this was a reference to the pygmy sized Aboriginals identified by Australian anthropologist Norman B. Tindale in the late 1930s.
The earliest known Chinese immigrant to arrive in Sydney post Invasion Day, I’m not sure whether his arrival constitutes the beginning of a yellow invasion following hard on the heels of the white invasion. It’s highly unlikely that he was a Communist because Karl Marx, lazy sod that he was, well he as a socialist, didn’t get around to writing his book Das Kapital until 1867. Anyway this person, probably not a Communist, is recorded as being a man by the name of Mak Sai Ying. He was born in Guangzhou (Canton) in 1798. He arrived as a free settler in New South Wales in 1818 and purchased land at Parramatta.
In 1829 Mak Sai Ying (who had adopted an English style name, John Shying) was granted the licence for The Lion, a public house at Parramatta. I guess this shows that racism hadn’t been invented by white people back in those days. His descendants became cabinet-makers and undertakers in Sydney. Packing death.
Between 1849 and 1887, China, particularly in the south of China, suffered from foreign invasions, rebellions, severe flooding and famines. Since China wasn’t then the nice place to live that it has become under Xi Jinping, and the gold had just been discovered in Australia, a lot more Chinese were encouraged to come here.
Many of the people living in Australia today, of Chinese ethnic descent, are therefore very dinkum di Aussies.
There are also many more recent Chinese arrivals in Australia and some of those have a dubious connection with this country.
Bob Hawke was the Australian prime minister at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 the man who famously said on the day that Australia won the America’s Cup, that “any boss who sacks someone for celebrating Australia II's America's Cup victory is a bum” and he always a man who carried his heart on his sleeve. After the massacre, Tiananmen Square, not the whipping that Australia gave the Americans in 1983, Bob Hawke generously gave 42,000 Chinese who were in Australia at the time permanent resident rights – and the same to their close family members – making a total of about 100,000 Chinese. It was a big hearted gesture. It was to help Chinese dissidents by not forcing them to return to an unpleasant reception when they got back to China. But it was a really dumb gesture. No one from China could visit a foreign country like Australia unless they were trusted by the Chinese Communist Party. No dissidents allowed. This gesture by Bob Hawke was against the wise advice by public servants who told him not to do it.
Tag words: Confucius; Atlas of Foreign Countries; Norman B. Tindale; Karl Marx; Mak Sai Ying; John Shying; Xi Jinping; Bob Hawke; Tiananmen Square massacre; Overseas Chinese Affairs Office; He Yafei; Chinese Communist Party; CCP; qiaowu; Clive Hamilton; Silent Invasion; xenophobia; racism; Marxist-Leninist; Uigher people; The Red Detachment of Women; Carillo Gantner; Sidney Myer Fund; Jung Chang; Wild Swans; Mao Zedong; People’s Liberation Army; Australian Eighth Corps; The East is Red; Premier Li Keqiang;
