Chinese Immigration and Australian Politics: A Critical Analysis on a Merit-Based Immigration System [1st ed.] 9789811559082, 9789811559099

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xxi
Post-multicultural Realities Distorted by Pre-multicultural Ideologies (Jia Gao)....Pages 1-41
Australia’s New Immigration Selection Tetralogy (Jia Gao)....Pages 43-79
Chinese Entrepreneurialism and Australia’s China-dependent Economy (Jia Gao)....Pages 81-114
Australian Responses to the Rise of Chinese Immigration (Jia Gao)....Pages 115-152
Chinese as Voting Blocs in Australian Politics (Jia Gao)....Pages 153-188
Integration-Inspired Community Activism and Pushing the Bamboo Ceiling in Australia (Jia Gao)....Pages 189-222
Established Elites Challenged by the Historical Shift Towards Asia (Jia Gao)....Pages 223-255
Conclusion: Getting Back on the Track of Nation-Building (Jia Gao)....Pages 257-280
Back Matter ....Pages 281-328

Citation preview

Chinese Immigration and Australian Politics A Critical Analysis on a MeritBased Immigration System Jia Gao

Chinese Immigration and Australian Politics

Jia Gao

Chinese Immigration and Australian Politics A Critical Analysis on a Merit-Based Immigration System

Jia Gao Asia Institute University of Melbourne Melbourne, Australia

ISBN 978-981-15-5908-2    ISBN 978-981-15-5909-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5909-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-­01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

This book is dedicated to my late uncle who financially supported my study in Australia in 1988.

Preface

This is the third monograph that I have written on the experiences of new Chinese migrants in Australia since the late 1980s, following Chinese Activism of a Different Kind (Brill, 2013a) and Chinese Migrant Entrepreneurship in Australia from the Early 1990s (Elsevier, 2015). As one of the first large group of Chinese students who came to study in Australia in the late 1980s and have since settled permanently in the country, I have long been planning to write a trilogy based on the experiences of our group and many other later groups coming to Australia since the early 1990s. I hope that this book will be the realisation of my ambition. After publishing the above first two major books on the topic, my research attention was temporarily shifted away from new Chinese migrants in Australia and turned towards working on Social Mobilisation in Post-­ Industrial China (Edward Elgar, 2019). This was partially because I have maintained my keen research interest in studying some China-related issues, and partly also because I had been considering which aspects of the experiences of Chinese migrants in Australia could be further explored in addition to the crucial issues studied in the first two monographs. At the same time, my own research circumstances changed, and I have since been supervising graduate research students, including those conducting their doctoral studies, examining some interesting but important issues concerning the Chinese Australian community. As a result, such new circumstances unavoidably made the process of identifying and selecting my own next research topic lengthy and challenging, as I wanted to choose a meaningful theme that is as important as activism and entrepreneurship, which I analysed in my first two books. vii

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What finally led me to decide to write this book is that since the second half of 2016, there has been an increasingly intense campaign in Australia regarding the alleged interference by China in Australian politics and public life. This debate over the so-called Chinese influence or interference has been predominantly dominated by a few Malcolm Turnbull-led Liberal government agencies and media outlets, and its tone is very onesided and frightening. Among the many flaws of published comments and the official discourse, the most disturbing aspect of the campaign is the extent to which the efficacious integration of Chinese migrants in Australia has been linked to China’s assumed infiltration of every layer of Australia’s political landscape. I tried very hard to avoid allowing the debate to influence my writing task, and I also erroneously believed the debate would be short-lived, as many other debates in Australia have come and gone rather quickly. I was soon proved incorrect as this politicised debate not only dragged into 2018, but also intensified, resulting in more actions by the Turnbull government. New espionage and foreign interference laws were hastily debated and received parliamentary approval in June 2018. Before the Review of the National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill 2017 was officially tabled and debated in Parliament, the Turnbull government issued a call for public submissions on the proposed amendment to Australia’s security laws. I was contacted by a couple of colleagues who wished to express their disagreement with some of the key claims that had been raised in this increasingly heated debate, and I therefore became one of the original 30 or so signatories of the public submission, numbered 44, to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the issue. As reported in the media, the debate over China’s interference in Australia has split its community of China researchers, which was also a loud wake-up call for me to bring my attention back to what was happening to Chinese Australians. As a long-time observer of this fast-growing and dynamic community, I can see that there is a great deal of misconception and mistrust, in terms of the facts and the ways of viewing the facts, in the many hostile comments made by some journalists, politicians and critics. Fortunately, at the time, I was about to finish writing the book on social mobilisation, and part of my attention could be turned to the debate. I started sorting out my own views on Australia’s debate about Chinese influence in a systematic and analytical way after receiving an invitation from Current History, the oldest US-based journal devoted exclusively to

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world affairs, to write an essay on Australia’s uneasy relations with China, and how Chinese Australians are caught in the middle. My essay was included in the September 2018 issue of Current History. Through the process of writing the essay, I saw clearly how the debate had been wrongly directed and badly conducted, giving some displeased Australians an opportunity to express their unhappiness and frustration about various changes in present-day Australia, but regrettably, once again, through spreading anti-China and anti-Chinese sentiments. Leaving aside the human cost of frightening Chinese Australians, this debate has been found to be flawed intellectually and analytically in several ways. First, the debate is very tabloid in nature, typified by a short-sighted view of the situation that it pretends to explore. Australia has been suffering from a periodic fear of China and the migrants from China since the continent was first occupied by a scattered group of colonies, though this time it has become more concerned with a more aggressive Chinese foreign policy in its region. Fear has been part of the psyche of European settlers in Australia, and China has long been seen as a peril in the Australian imagination. In recent decades, there has been debate about China and its migrants in Australia, the typical case of which is Hansonism, concerned that Australia will be swamped by Asians. However, this debate is so short-­ sighted as to disregard the influence of Hansonism and related xenophobic fear, taking the debate out of the historical context of Australia. Second, the debate is also dominated by some rather one-sided views of China and, more harmfully, of local Chinese Australians. This is very evident in the case of the participation of Chinese community members in the debate, which has seen ‘very few Chinese-Australians speak publicly on these issues’ (Lo 2018, n.p.). What is even more evidence of its one-­ sidedness is its narrow focus on a few cases of Chinese donations. While those who asked for and received donations are not challenged and disciplined, the loyalty of Chinese Australians has been questioned based on those cases. I am aware that the debate has also included a few other issues, which are defined as ‘four points of contention’, in the words of an Australian analyst (Chubb 2018, n.p.). These include activities of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), causes of racist sentiments, sovereignty issues, and threats to democratic politics in Australia. However, the loudest message of the debate is about the donations from a few Chinese businesspeople, from which an overgeneralised conclusion is drawn: there has been infiltration of Chinese agents into every layer of Australian society (Borys 2018; Welch 2018). As a person who went through the

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Maoist Cultural Revolution, I was disturbed by such a politically frightening tune, and felt the need to discuss what mistakes the debate has made. Third, the most fundamental mistake of the debate is that all Chinese Australians have been implicated as a threat by a small group of critics who are unfamiliar with Chinese Australians, especially migrants’ entrepreneurialism, and their ways of dealing with business challenges and interpersonal relations. Though a few critics mention some seemingly known facts, the latter is seen and interpreted according to illusory constructs and logic that are more related to dated perceptions of Chinese migrants of earlier periods, such as coolie labourers and patriotic overseas Chinese, than the realities of post-multicultural Australia. These critics seem also to believe that many activities by Chinese Australians are driven by geopolitics, or even directed by China’s ruling political elites, and that the many networking activities of Chinese Australian business people, which have been actively promoted by government bodies and businesses in Australia, are evidence of China’s interference in Australia’s domestic affairs. Lastly, a further analysis shows that critics are clearly unversed in what a succession of Australian governments has been doing over recent decades in utilising migration schemes to maintain the country’s socio-economic development and standard of living. In other words, critics have hardly viewed what they call the Chinese problem as Australia’s own issue, but simply repudiate it through othering Chinese migrants from the country they have long called home. The debate has skipped some fundamental aspects of social transformations taking place in Australia and failed to consider a range of domestic factors behind the debate, especially Australia’s postwar historical shift toward Asia and the merit-based selective migration system that Australia has formed and executed since the early 1990s. Both the strategic shift and the merit-based migration system have significantly changed the economic structure and the demographic composition of Australia. As I argued in my essay in Current History, these fundamental and structural transformations have resulted in the following changes: The strong reorientation of Australia’s trade toward Asia, especially China, has slowly changed established patterns in the distribution of employment opportunities, wealth, and political influence in Australia. These changes have been intensified by a shift in immigrant selection policies, with an emphasis on education, skills, and ability to contribute to the economy. As a result, trained, skilled, and well-off Chinese have been attracted to Australia—and Chinese Australians have been better positioned than many others to prosper in changing economic conditions. (Gao 2018, p. 231)

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All the above issues are absent from the debate over alleged Chinese interference in Australian politics, the problem of which is equivalent to blaming other people, friends or enemies, in far-away lands for the problems of its own society. Importantly, it also appears to be a new global phenomenon, not only in terms of blaming others for their own problems, but also in terms of paying inadequate attention to the demographic changes that have taken place in all immigration countries, as well as their correlation with domestic politics. More theoretically, Australia’s highly charged China debate is not only a simple or one-off reflection of what has been disturbing Australia and sections of its population, but is a typical example of one of the most important issues confronting many countries, especially developed Western countries: the accumulated effects of global immigration and ongoing changes in population composition in post-industrial economies. This will soon be more theoretically and practically vital than it is now if considering, for example, that Australia’s merit-based migration system has been repeatedly applauded by President Donald Trump, who considers Australia’s approach as an ideal solution to the migration-related problems of the United States (Williams 2017; Boyer 2018). The issues that emerged from the debate, as well as my preliminary analysis of the debate, present me with an opportunity to continue my ongoing research on Chinese migrants in Australia and deepen and broaden our current understanding of the merit-based selective migration system and its medium-term effects on Australia as the host country. As will be detailed in Chap. 1, this analysis takes a long-term and comprehensive view, to look at how Australia’s strategic shift towards Asia and its merit-based migration selection policies have slowly transformed its economic structure and demographic composition over the past three decades, and how the new Chinese migrants, who were selected by various new criteria of merit, have been integrated into Australia’s economic, social and political life. All these have added a new and unfamiliar dimension to Australian politics. As the first book-length study written in English in recent decades to systematically look at the medium-term effects of merit-based migration system, this book is written with a sincere hope to fill the knowledge gaps that have appeared in Australia’s recent debate over China’s influence and exist in the research literature. Melbourne, Australia

Jia Gao

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References Borys, S. (2018). ‘China’s “brazen” and “aggressive” political interference outlined in top-secret report’, China Power, ABC News, 29 May 2018, www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-29/chinas-been-interfering-in-australian-politics-for-past-decade/9810236. Accessed 18 November 2018. Boyer, D. (2018). ‘Trump praises Australia’s merit-based immigration system’, Washington Times, 23 February 2018, www.washingtontimes. com/news/2018/feb/23/trump-praises-australia-merit-immigrationsystem/. Accessed 18 November 2018. Chubb, A. (2018). ‘When it comes to China’s influence on Australia, beware of sweeping statements and conflated ideas’, The Conversation, 11 April 2018, http://theconversation.com/when-it-comes-to-chinasinfluence-on-australia-beware-of-sweeping-statements-and-conflatedideas-94496. Accessed 18 November 2018. Gao, J. (2018). ‘Chinese Australians face a foreign influence panic’, Current History, September: 229–234. Lo, J. Y. (2018). ‘Just because I have a moderate view on China doesn’t make me a Beijing stooge’, The Guardian, 6 April 2018. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/06/in-the-debate-around-foreigninterference-chinese-australians-suffer. Accessed 18 November 2018. Welch, D. (2018). ‘Chinese agents are undermining Australia’s sovereignty, Clive Hamilton’s controversial new book claims’, China Power, ABC News, 22 February 2018, www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-22/ book-reveals-extent-of-chinese-influence-in-australia/9464692. Accessed 18 November 2018. Williams, J. (2017). ‘Trump looks to Australia in overhauling immigration system’, New York Times, 3 August 2017, www.nytimes. com/2017/08/03/world/australia/trump-immigration-meritbased-points.html. Accessed 18 November 2018.

Acknowledgements

This book is based on my continuing longitudinal research on the experiences of new Chinese migrants in Australia, which started as early as 1988 when I decided to leave my teaching and research position at Beijing-­based Renmin University of China and pursue a foreign postgraduate degree. Over the past three decades, I have been assisted by so many people in so many ways that I cannot possibly acknowledge all of them properly in a short acknowledgement. My deep gratitude goes to everyone who has helped me in the past three or so decades. My special and heartfelt thanks go to the following colleagues, friends and organisations for their help, support and advice, direct and indirect, in writing this book. I am indebted to many of them in the fields of migration and Chinese migration studies, who have in recent years provided me with valuable advice and encouragement, particularly to Professor Pookong Kee of the University of Melbourne, Professor Wanning Sun of the University of Technology Sydney, Dr Bin Wu of the University of Nottingham, Professor Min Zhou of the University of California, Los Angeles, Professor Chee-Beng Tan of Sun Yat-Sen University, Professor Liu Hong of Nanyang Technological University, Professor Fan Ke of Nanjing University, Professor Wei Li of Arizona State University, and Professor Minghuan Li of Jinan University. I wish to thank two young scholars, Dr Qiuping Pan and Dr Yilu Yang, who have been very helpful to my research in recent years, keeping me well informed of what has been happening in Chinese Australian communities. They were undertaking their PhD research on Chinese migrants in Australia at the University of Melbourne. xiii

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am also grateful to Mr Vishal Daryanomel, the Commissioning Editor at Palgrave Macmillan, for encouraging me to write and submit the manuscript for publication. I would also like to thank all the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on both the book proposal and the first draft of the manuscript. My thanks also go to the editorial and production teams at Palgrave Macmillan for guiding me through the publication process. A special mention goes to the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. My research activities have never been supported by any external funding, including Australia’s research funding institutions, and I am therefore particularly grateful for the internal funding I received from the Faculty Internal Grant Scheme. Once again, I am assisted by Ms Helen Koehne, an accredited editor of Editorial Combat, and I am greatly indebted to her for her professional assistance in editing the manuscript and many helpful suggestions. This book could not have been written without the help of my family, who have all been very supportive of me in this writing task. I would like to thank all the interviewees for sharing their views and insights with me. Since this manuscript is largely based on what I have studied in Australia since 1988, I would like to dedicate this book to my late uncle who financially supported my study in Australia in 1988 as a self-funded and fee-­paying foreign student. This permitted me, as a Chinese university lecturer, to study abroad. Just like what happened to many Chinese families in the late 1940s, my uncle was relocated to Taiwan as a young medical student. His support made my study in Australia possible.

Contents

1 Post-multicultural Realities Distorted by Pre-­multicultural Ideologies  1 2 Australia’s New Immigration Selection Tetralogy 43 3 Chinese Entrepreneurialism and Australia’s China-­ dependent Economy 81 4 Australian Responses to the Rise of Chinese Immigration115 5 Chinese as Voting Blocs in Australian Politics153 6 Integration-Inspired Community Activism and Pushing the Bamboo Ceiling in Australia189 7 Established Elites Challenged by the Historical Shift Towards Asia223

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8 Conclusion: Getting Back on the Track of NationBuilding257 References281 Index325

Abbreviations

ABC ABS ACPET ACRI AEC AGPS ALP ANU ASIO AustLii Austrade CCCA CCP CGTN ChAFTA CITIC CSC DFAT DHA DIAC DIBP ELICOS FIRB GFC HK IMF

Australian Broadcasting Corporation Australian Bureau of Statistics Australian Council for Private Education and Training Australia-China Relations Institute Australian Electoral Commission Australian Government Publishing Service Australian Labor Party, the Australian National University Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Australasian Legal Information Institute Australian Trade and Investment Commission Chinese Community Council of Australia Chinese Communist Party China Global Television Network China-Australia Free Trade Agreement China International Trust Investment Corporation China Scholarship Council Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (of Australia) Department of Home Affairs Department of Immigration and Citizenship Department of Immigration and Border Protection English Language Incentive Course for Overseas Students Foreign Investment Review Board Global financial crisis Hong Kong International Monetary Fund

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Abbreviations

ISSCO NBSC NSW OECD OPC PLA PRC PUP SBS SIV SMEs UCL UTS UWA VCE

International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas National Bureau of Statistics of China New South Wales Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Office of Parliamentary Counsel, the People’s Liberation Army (of China) People’s Republic of China, the Palmer United Party, the Special Broadcasting Service, the Significant Investor Visa Small- and medium-sized enterprises University College London University of Technology Sydney University of Western Australia Victorian Certificate of Education

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4 Fig. 2.5 Fig. 2.6 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3

Foreign-born population in Australia, 1901–71. (Source: DIBP (Department of Immigration and Border Protection) (2015, p. 16)) 5 Origins of Chinese Australians, by region, 1981–2016. (Source: Based on data from ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) (2017)) 9 Australia’s postwar immigration, 1945–2010. (Source: Based on data from DHA (Department of Home Affairs) (2017)) 48 Migrant intake by stream, 1984–2014. (Source: DIBP (2015, p. 71))50 Annual migrant intake, 1983–2014. (Source: Based on Larsen (2013, p. 4)) 53 Number of regulations introduced to improve immigration policies, 1994–2016. (Source: Based on data from OPC (2017)) 57 Employment of China-born Australians, 2016. (Source: ABS (2018, p. 6)) 66 East Asian sources of migrants since 1991. (Source: Australian Census Stats (2012, n.p.)) 68 Sectoral employment trends in Australia, 1976–2001. (Source: Based on Productivity Commission (2003, p. 27)) 85 Maslow’s five-tier hierarchy of needs. (Source: Maslow (1943, 1987))87 Australia’s export market to China, 1991–2001. (Source: Based on the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee (2005)) 93

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List of Figures

Fig. 3.4 Fig. 3.5 Fig. 3.6 Fig. 3.7 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2

Business visa application lodgements, 2010–14. (Source: Joint Standing Committee on Migration (2015, p. 45)) 101 China’s share of Australia’s total merchandise trade, 1901–2012. (Source: The Treasury (2012, n.p.)) 103 China as Australia’s largest services export market. (Source: The Treasury (2012, n.p.)) 104 Australia’s top two-way trading partners, 2016–18. (Source: Based on Chau (2019)) 106 Academic performance of 16-year-old British students, by ethnic background, 2015. (Source: Based on Harris (2016)) 132 Housing price growth in Australia since the mid-1990s compared to income. (Source: Based on Pash (2018); (index: 1970 = 100))138 Declining housing prices in Sydney and Melbourne. (Source: Based on Oliver (2019)) 142 Changes in Australia’s workforce and declining union membership. (Source: Based on Bowden 2017) 156 Number of minor political parties in Australia. (Source: Based on Wood et al. 2018, p. 28) 159 Number of Chinese community organisations, Victoria. (Source: Based on Pan 2019, p. 203) 166 Number of federal election candidates of Chinese origin. (Source: Based on AEC 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019) 171 China’s increasing number of university-educated people. (Source: Based on China’s Ministry of Education 2018) 195 Growth in annual disposable income of urban residents per capita in China. (Source: Based on NBSC 2013, 2017, 2018) 197 Australia’s merchandise exports to Europe (%). (Source: Bingham 2016, p. 8) 226 Australia’s merchandise exports to Asia (%). (Source: Bingham 2016, p. 8) 233

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Industrial disputes in Australia, working days lost per employee, 1973–2002 Table 2.2 Business skills (provisional) visas, subclasses 160–165 Table 2.3 Percentage of Chinese students in Australia’s total foreign student population, 2005–13 Table 3.1 Educational attainment in Australia’s main workforce sectors, 1984, 1994 and 2001 Table 4.1 Percentage of students from non-English-speaking backgrounds in NSW’s top 10 selective schools, 2017 Table 4.2 Number of schools offering Chinese in Australia, by state Table 5.1 Federal election candidates of Chinese origin, 2019

47 60 64 97 131 134 170

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CHAPTER 1

Post-multicultural Realities Distorted by Pre-­ multicultural Ideologies

This book aims to analyse how an increasing number of new Chinese migrants have integrated into Australian society and added a new dimension to Australian domestic politics as a result of Australia’s strategic shift towards Asia and its merit-based migration selection system. The turning point in public awareness of this new dimension is the country’s heated debate on China’s interference in its domestic politics and its open assumptions, if not direct allegations, of active meddling of many Chinese Australians in Australian politics. This chapter briefly introduces the debate as a crucial part of the context of this analysis. Recent debates over China form the latest part of an ongoing topic of discussion in Australia, in part because of, as noted in the Preface, Australia’s fear of China, and perhaps its migrants as well, which has long been part of the psyche of European settlers in Australia. Discussions over China have intensified since July 2016, when a Hague-based arbitral tribunal made a ruling in favour of the Philippines’, and ruled that China’s nine-dash line and its historical claim over almost the entire South China Sea were invalid. The Hague’s ruling triggered a series of rallies by Chinese migrants and international students in Australia within a few days. A large demonstration was organised in Melbourne, attracting the support from more than 100 Chinese community organisations (Wen and Flitton 2016). It shocked many observers from politics, academia, media organisations and government agencies, particularly the public call from the rally

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organisers on the Australian Government to maintain its not-taking-sides policy and ‘not to toe the American line’ (Sun 2016, p. 47). The Liberal prime minister at the time, Malcolm Turnbull, was profoundly shocked by pro-China rallies by many Chinese community members, which was exacerbated by the exposure of Labor senator Sam Dastyari’s receiving gifts from an ethnic Chinese businessperson.1 Turnbull did not only openly question the national loyalty of Sam Dastyari, but he reportedly ordered an investigation after the pro-China demonstration in Melbourne on 23 July 2016 to find out the extent of foreign interference in Australia. The word ‘foreign’ in this special socio-political context has been often used in the debate to refer to China. Australia’s Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) chose to become involved in the investigation into China’s political interference in Australia. On its purpose-built website, called China Power, an ABC reporter wrote the following, which reveals that there was an investigation in 2016, resulting in some oversimplified and highly politicised conclusions: A top-secret report has raised concerns that the Chinese Government has attempted to influence Australia’s political parties for the past decade … One intelligence source told the ABC there had been infiltration at every layer of Australian Government, right down to local councils (Borys 2018, n.p.).

A couple of months before this report, another piece appeared on China Power, making the target of Australia’s debate over China’s meddling even clearer than before. With the eye-catching headline, ‘Chinese agents are undermining Australia’s sovereignty, Clive Hamilton’s controversial new book claims’ (Welch 2018, n.p.),2 the focus of the debate has evidently shifted from China to Chinese community members, including international students from China. What is also apparent is that the debate’s main focus has been expanded from looking into individual cases, such as the case of Sam Dastyari, to Chinese agents and spies working in Australia. In this particular report, the most troubling and damaging message that the China debate could possibly produce has spread widely and rapidly, the core points of which are as follows: Thousands of agents of the Chinese state have integrated themselves into Australian public life—from the high spheres of politics, academia, and

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­ usiness all the way down to suburban churches and local writers’ groups— b according to a controversial book to be published on Monday (Welch 2018, n.p.).

As noted in the Preface, it is a most harmful mistake, by any standard, of the debate to target ordinary members of Chinese communities as a whole, who have long been enthusiastically and positively embraced as ‘national assets’ by many Australians (DFAT 2013, p. 6; Shorten 2014, n.p.). The radical shift from debating the South China Sea issue to investigating China’s direct interference activities in Australia, from revealing several Chinese donation cases to claiming thousands of Chinese agents and spies have infiltrated every layer of Australian society, has been guided by an analytical problem, if we are to leave aside various motives. This analytical problem has led to a situation in which Australia’s post-­ multicultural realities have been debated according to pre-multicultural ideologies. This chapter discusses the analytical problem behind Australia’s debate on China and Chinese migrants in four sections to infer how such a big mistake could have been made. The first section sketches the history of Chinese immigration to Australia, with an emphasis on recent periods that make Australia’s multiculturalism and merit-based selective immigration policies stand out clearly. The second section reviews the existing literature related to three broad areas: studies of recent Chinese migration to Australia; studies of worldwide merit-based immigration systems; and studies of policy impact and evaluation with a focus on the medium-term and long-term impact. The third section will be a brief discussion of the approach to be used in this analysis. The fourth section of this chapter sketches the structure of this book, which includes a brief synopsis of each chapter.

Chinese in Australia Chinese immigrants have been part of Australian society since the continent was still a group of colonies, large and small. In my book published in 2015, I divided the history of Chinese migration to Australia from the 1850s to the present time into six periods (Gao 2015). These were the gold rush period in the 1850s and 1860s; the establishing period from the 1870s to the 1890s; the consolidation period in the early decades of ‘White Australia’ from the 1900s to the 1940s; the diversification period

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as a flow-on of the Colombo Plan in the 1950s and 1960s; the multicultural period in the 1970s and 1980s, and the current or ‘model community’ period from the early 1990s to the present. For the purpose of analysing the issue of this book, however, it would be more helpful and meaningful to look at the history of Chinese migration to Australia from the new perspective of taking into account how the Chinese have come, under what socio-economic circumstances or policy conditions they have come, who they are, and how many of them there are. Accordingly, the entire history of Chinese migration to Australia could be simply divided into three main periods. The first period is the 100-year history of Chinese migration to Australia from the 1850s to the early 1950s. This period was mainly characterised by a large number of indentured Chinese labourers initially, and then other types of settlers, although there were some successful entrepreneurs who have been identified by various recent studies (Fitzgerald 2007; Kuo 2009). This long period also largely featured Chinese sojourners, who, it is believed, intended to earn some money and then return to their homeland, the explanation of which has been called the sojourner hypothesis (Yang 1999). This hypothesis has been rejected by some, because of the introduction of the ‘White Australia’ policy in 1901, when several colonies formed a federation. The policy to stop Chinese and other non-white labourers and settlers coming to Australia was legislated through two pieces of legislation: the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, and the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901. These laws reduced the number of Chinese settlers in Australia, which was fewer than 10,000 in the late 1940s, before such racist and unpopular laws were progressively abandoned between 1949 and 1973. During the gold rush, the number of Chinese labourers and settlers increased so dramatically that they accounted for around 4  per cent of Australia’s population (Blainey 1982), and more than 12  per cent of Victoria’s population in 1859 (McConnochie et al. 1988). However, the number drastically reduced by almost two-thirds after the gold rush (Willard 1967; Clark 1969). For many decades before and after Australia became a federation, governments sought to attract migrants from certain European countries. As revealed in Fig. 1.1, the number of migrants from other European countries surpassed those from the UK in the 1960s. The second period of the history of Chinese migration to Australia took place from the early 1950s, when the Colombo Plan was launched to handle the postwar geopolitical situation in South and South-East Asia, to

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Fig. 1.1  Foreign-born population in Australia, 1901–71. (Source: DIBP (Department of Immigration and Border Protection) (2015, p. 16))

the late 1980s. During this period, the ethnic Chinese community recovered from a relatively small community with fewer than 10,000 members nationally in the late 1940s, growing to about 200,000 people in 1986 (Kee 1992). It also transformed itself from a mostly low-end, working-­ class population, working in tailor shops, barber shops, fast food or restaurants, laundries, market gardens and furniture factories, to a diverse one with a growing number of professionals. There were two major policy changes that drove these transformations in postwar Australia. As noted, the first key policy initiative was the Colombo Plan; the second key policy change, or socio-political reform, was Australia’s adoption of multiculturalism in the 1970s. All policies can potentially have unintended consequences and undesirable effects after being implemented and in operation for a period of time, and the Colombo Plan was no exception. The purpose of the Plan, made in 1950, was to maintain British colonialism and influence in South and South-East Asia, and limit the spread of communism (Ninnes 2005). Part of this Plan was an overseas student scheme, which brought thousands of students of Chinese origin from a few South-East Asian countries to Australia (Oakman 2004). The Plan resulted in at least two unexpected effects that are still relevant to present-day Australia. First, many young Colombo Plan students stayed in Australia after finishing their studies, or migrated back to Australia after working in their home countries for a short period, according to the requirements of the Plan. Second, more interestingly, the Plan paved the way for Australian educational institutions, including universities, colleges and high schools, to recruit privately funded Asian international students, a high proportion of whom were of Chinese ancestry. At that time, the number of private fee-paying Asian

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students was found to be as high as more than five times greater than the number of officially funded Colombo Plan students (Yuan 2001; Gao 2015). The Colombo Plan added a large group of educated members to the Chinese Australian community, the population of which started increasing and reached around 13,000 in 1954 and 50,000 in 1976 (Kee 1992; Yuan 2001). More importantly, however, the student schemes of the plan helped invigorate the Chinese community and make it more diversified than it had been. This is why this analysis sees this policy initiative and its implementation as the beginning of the second key phase of the history of Chinese settlement in Australia, and why that period should be seen as the first turning point in the history. Its importance also lies, to a large extent, in the fact that the Plan was not only the start of Australian education export, but also the earliest form of Australia’s merit-based immigration selection policy that was tentatively applied to non-European immigrants. Significantly, this second period revealed that a key policy initiative could be used in a different manner from what the policy intended. In this case, the Colombo Plan offered almost no help in avoiding the decolonisation of the second half of the twentieth century, but opened up opportunities for not only ethnic Chinese students from South-East Asia to migrate to Australia, but also for educational institutions in Australia to enrol international students. In addition, the benefits carried by this major policy initiative were shared among unintended individuals and sectors. What has been even more disruptive than the Colombo Plan to Australia’s established order and pattern of distributing benefits is the official introduction of multiculturalism in the 1970s. In 1973, Australia finally abandoned its ‘White Australia’ policy, which was followed by the official acceptance of multiculturalism. The latter was endorsed by the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, legislated in the final year of the Labor prime ministership of Gough Whitlam (Jupp 1995). As pointed out by Graeme Hugo, an Australian demographer, among many postwar transformations in Australia, one of the most important changes has been an increasing level of population movement from and to Asia (Hugo 2012). The 1970s was a decade of sweeping social and political change in Australia and many Australians started embracing new ideas of the Vietnam War, immigration, the role of women, labour rights and other social issues (Viviani 1996). In 1976, large groups of Indochinese boat people were also accepted into Australia.

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Under the joint effects of the implementation of multiculturalism and the acceptance of Indochinese boat people, the ethnic Chinese population in Australia experienced significant growth from 1976, when there were about 50,000 of them, to 1986, when about 200,000 people claimed primary and secondary Chinese ancestry according to the 1986 census (ABS 2016). Such a huge increase is largely because well over one-quarter, perhaps as high as 50 per cent, of Indochinese refugees were of Chinese ancestry (Jordens 2001). Therefore, the Indochinese boat people crisis added a large number of new members, somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 people, to the ethnic Chinese population in Australia. The surge was a remarkable change in size of the ethnic Chinese population in Australia, but as a quantitative change, it occurred after the qualitative change, or the merit-based change, that was caused by the Colombo Plan. Theoretically, it would be expected that quantitative change would occur first, and when numbers had reached a certain level, there would be a subsequent qualitative change. In reality, however, it is not always true that social processes take place according to a rational order of sequence or the laws of order. The acceptance of Indochinese boat people and other asylum seekers from the 1970s was part of the geopolitics of that era, and beyond Australia’s control (Ang 1997); it was a major interruption to Australia’s effort and policy to attract educated Asian migrants. Multiculturalism has been a global trend, a reflection of numerous deep-­ rooted changes that took place not only in postwar Australia, but also in a number of other industrialised countries. Australia’s adoption of multiculturalism from the 1970, as the second crucial policy change in the second period of the history of Chinese migration to Australia, made the country more ethnically and culturally diversified. From an economic viewpoint, the policy of multiculturalism has partially met the needs of changing labour markets. From a political economic position, however, the distribution of interests, resources and powers of influence among Australians has become far more diversified and complex, adding more people and social groups into the socio-economic system, and sharing benefits more widely than a sole focus on those early settled groups and social classes. That is, the adoption of multiculturalism has had a substantial impact on Australia’s established socio-economic structures and orders, and the lives of those whose ancestors settled earlier. It has become especially challenging for some in this latter group to cope with a changing Australia, which has subsequently triggered some strong negative reactions, including from Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent

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historian,3 and John Howard, the Liberal prime minister from 1996 to 2007.4 As will be detailed later, Pauline Hanson is a grassroots political figure who has, since the mid-1990s, represented the anti-­multiculturalism voices in Australia.5 In the mid-2000s, there were race-fuelled youth riots at Cronulla in Sydney,6 which were defined by some scholars as ‘the most extreme case of militant racism’ (Jupp 2007, p. 122). The broadly defined third period of the history of Chinese migration to Australia is the current stage, which began in the late 1980s, when China’s socio-political turmoil in 1989 turned tens of thousands of Chinese students studying in Australia into the largest group of onshore asylum seekers or, more precisely, residency claimants, in Australian immigration history (Jupp 1991; Cronin 1993; Gao 2013). Around 45,000 Chinese nationals were granted permanent residency in Australia, helping resume the immigration from the Chinese mainland to Australia. This third period is the most relevant to the key issues of this book, and will be discussed from two slightly different perspectives. This section is concerned with the general historical background of this period, while various immigration policy responses that have since been made by ruling elites in Australia will be analysed in detail in Chap. 2. From an historical viewpoint, the ethnic Chinese population in Australia grew suddenly and considerably in the early 1990s, as a result of the settlement of approximately 45,000 Chinese students. Since then, the Chinese community has been in a state of constant and rapid expansion. The 1996 census revealed that the estimated number of Australian residents of Chinese origin had grown from about 200,000  in 1986 to as many as 343,500. This number increased to around 555,500  in 2001 (Chan 2005). In the past 15 or so years, the number has increased even further. According to the 2011 census, there were around 866,200 Australian residents claiming Chinese origin, and as many as 74 per cent of them were the first generation living in Australia (ABS 2012). According to the 2016 census, this total has reached more than 1.2  million (ABS 2018). The significant increase of one million people of Chinese origin from 1986 to the present has shown some changing characteristics. First, as shown in Fig. 1.2, a high proportion of new Chinese migrants since the early 1990s have come from mainland China. This change has benefited Australia by providing many direct links with China’s growing economy, but has also unsettled many Australians who do not feel comfortable about China and its people, for various reasons.

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6,00,000

Mainland China

5,00,000

Hong Kong

4,00,000

9

Taiwan

3,00,000 2,00,000 1,00,000 0

1981

1991

1996

2001

2006

2011

2016

Mainland China

25,200

84,600 1,18,640 1,53,360 2,51,960 3,87,420 5,26,040

Hong Kong

15,300

62,400

Taiwan

75,760

73,920

81,360

85,990

96,920

19,380

24,140

25,490

33,450

58,080

Fig. 1.2  Origins of Chinese Australians, by region, 1981–2016. (Source: Based on data from ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) (2017))

Second, Australia’s growing economic closeness to China and people-­ to-­people contacts with Chinese people have occurred as a result of two macro-level historical trends that have taken place in the Asia-Pacific region. The first trend is Australia’s shift towards Asia, which was initiated by both the Whitlam Labor government and the Fraser Liberal government in the 1970s and early 1980s. It was then actively promoted by the next two Labor prime ministers, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, and reached full swing under the Howard Liberal government from 1996 to 2007, despite Howard’s past speech against Asian immigration. The second major trend is China’s post-1978 reform and opening policy, especially its open-door approach to Western industrial economies. The full and long-term impact of the transformations in China on Australia, and the Asia-Pacific region, has been felt more strongly and directly by more non-Chinese Australians in recent years. But one fact is evident: there are more Chinese in Australia is a result of policies made by successive Australian governments. Third, the acceptance of 45,000 or so Chinese students to settle permanently in Australia not only resulted in the growth in the number of Chinese migrants, through which Australia has become closely linked to the economic expansion in China, but has also driven political elites in Australia to further think about how to select new migrants without upsetting settled residents. That is, the settlement of the Chinese students as a

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result of the Keating Labor government’s ‘1 November (1993) decisions’ was the official start of Australia’s merit-based migration system (Wang 2012, p. 132; Gao 2015, p. 105).7 Therefore, from a merit-based viewpoint, the settlement of the Chinese students in the early 1990s should be defined as the second decisive turning point in the history of Chinese migration to Australia.

Theoretical Contexts As briefly outlined in the Preface, the key conceptual weakness of Australia’s current debate about China and Chinese migrants is its failure to consider various aspects of social change that have taken place in the country in the aftermath of the bipartisan execution of the strategic shift towards Asia, especially since the late 1980s and early 1990s. Such analytical failure has resulted in ignoring a range of sources of discontent among non-Chinese Australians. In the light of these shortcomings, as will be outlined in the fourth section of this chapter, this analysis looks at the key issues of what has taken place in Australia’s socio-economic and socio-political life based on the consideration and examination of multiple factors and perspectives, with a focus on how the vibrant Chinese Australian community has, consciously or unconsciously, become part of present-day Australian politics. To conduct such a comprehensive analysis on broad theoretical grounds and to study the issues raised by Australia’s debate over the influence of China and Chinese Australians, this analysis is based on three major types of research literature, which broadens the scope of the study. As noted, these research fields include studies of new Chinese migration to Australia, studies of worldwide merit-based immigration systems, and studies of policy impact and evaluation with a focus on the medium-term impact. Studies of New Chinese Migration to Australia Studies of recent Chinese migration to Australia refer to analyses of Chinese migration to Australia since the late 1980s and early 1990s. Their significance in terms of number and activeness, and because they are from the same country of origin, means these migrants and their experiences can be considered from several perspectives. The many studies that have resulted can be classified into two main types, according to the need of this analysis.

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First, there are many studies that have been conducted from a non-­ political-­economic perspective, focusing on topics and issues including changing perceptions of Australia and China (Forth 1994; Fung and Chen 1996; Ip et al. 1998); family life (Crissman 1991; Chiang 2004a); identity and transnationality (Ip et  al. 1997; Ang 2000; Tan 2006; Chiang and Yang 2008); community media and cultural life (Sun 2005; Gao 2006a; Sun et al. 2011); and social mobility (Wu et al. 1998; Wu 2003; Chiang 2004b). Other topics that have been studied are gender issues (Ryan 2003; Da 2004; Hibbins 2005, 2006; Ho 2006, 2008); health and aging (Guo 2005; Lo and Russell 2007); and intergenerational and educational issues (Dooley 2003; Ngan and Chan 2012). As part of traditional research, numerous studies have been undertaken to look at specific geographic locations and trade activities (Atkinson 1995; Brumley 1995; Couchman 1995; Wilton 1995; Lydon 1999; Fitzgerald 2001). Although all these studies were undertaken after the late 1980s and early 1990s, they were all about early Chinese settlers. There are also many studies that are fall between what is considered political-economic studies and non-­ political-­ economic studies. For example, numerous studies have paid attention to the pre-migration experiences of new migrants and the factors that drove them to make their decision to come to Australia (Kee and Skeldon 1994; Coughlan 1996, 1998; Ho and Coughlan 1997; Sun 2002). Some publications have also analysed how Chinese nationals obtained the right to permanently stay in Australia in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Birrell 1994; Gao 2001, 2002, 2006b, 2009, 2011). Second, a political-economic perspective has also been used to examine issues of recent Chinese migration to Australia, though the perspective may be articulated differently from what is defined in this book. Among such research efforts, some studies have related the Chinese experiences in Australia to broader matters, including racism and its global and historical contexts, the capitalist world, and multiculturalism in Australia (Brawley 1995; Lake and Reynolds 2008; Jakubowicz 2011). More relevantly, some researchers have studied key issues of post-migration economic life, such as occupational adjustment of a few different groups of new Chinese migrants (Iredale 1983; Wu et al. 1998; Chiang 2004a, b; Hugo 2008; Cooke et al. 2013) and their family business operations and new entrepreneurship (Lever-Tracy et  al. 1991; Ip 1993, 2007; Gao 1999, 2015; Lever-Tracy and Ip 2005; Yu 2001; Collins 2002, 2003; Dai et  al. 2011, 2017).

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Because of rapid economic development in Asia, especially in China, the topic of Chinese migrant entrepreneurship has attracted more attention in Australia in recent years. Apart from the studies mentioned, researchers have also considered the relationship between ethnic Chinese migrant entrepreneurship and their social and human capital (Lund et al. 2006; Collins and Low 2010; Zolin et  al. 2011); the integration issues confronted by new Chinese entrepreneurs (Liu 2011); intergenerational succession of family businesses (Ye et al. 2010); the role of Chinese businesses and entrepreneurs in trade (Tung and Chung 2010); and dynamism and transnationalism (Hsu 2009; Selvarajah et al. 2012). Regardless of whether studies have taken a non-political-economic or political-economic perspective, almost all studies relating to new Chinese migrants have been influenced, either explicitly or implicitly, by an old-­ fashioned, pre-multicultural view about immigrants from Third World countries to rich industrialised countries. One of the fundamental issues of such pre-multicultural thinking is the tendency to see immigrants as ‘others’ (Orgad 2012; Furman et  al. 2016). Consequently, there are more studies that are concerned with whether Chinese immigrants can adjust to the conditions in Australia and how quickly and smoothly they can be integrated, if not assimilated, into mainstream Australian society. This is very one-sided by the standards of post-multicultural realities, neglecting at least two major developments in Australia. First, of all countries in the world, Australia now has the highest percentage of its population born overseas (Hunt 2017); second, for decades Australia has relied on the intake of migrants with required qualifications, skills, industrial experiences, and financial resources for investment to sustain its high standard of living. The importance of such critical developments needs to be taken into account and requires at least some changes to existing analytical paradigms and research methods. A likely first step might be considering new migrants to Australia to be of equal importance, or considering both long-­ settled inhabitants and newcomers from an interactive perspective. What is also lacking from existing studies of Chinese migrants in Australia is analysis from the combined viewpoint of what has happened in both China and Australia, and what has changed about the relationship between the two countries. Though some researchers have pointed out that the recent Chinese migration has to be considered in the broad context of ‘the global economic restructuring process’ (Lo and Wang 1997, p. 49), or ‘within the political economy of the nation state’ (Jakubowicz 2009, p. 115), little attention has been paid to such analysis. The absence

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of such research efforts is more problematic than it appears on the surface, considering that Australia has, over the last three decades, become the most China-dependent economy in the world (Conley 2014). Though some have tried to clarify that it is the most China-reliant economy in the developed world (Heath 2016), such close links between the two economies and peoples have to be analysed differently from a pre-multicultural perspective. A few years ago, my own analysis identified that the analytical inadequacy of existing research has not only made it impossible to answer questions on why new Chinese migrants are different from earlier migrants, but also allowed anti-Chinese sentiments, such as ‘Chinese are coming’ or ‘Chinese pushing up house prices’ (Gao 2015, p.  15), to take hold in Australia. Before such sentiments turned into what was called an ‘anti-­ Chinese jihad’ and ‘a form of neo-McCarthyism’ by Kevin Rudd, a former Labor prime minister (Karp 2018, n.p.), more fear about China and its people had been spread across the country through headlines such as ‘Chinese investors heat up Australian farm buying spree’ (Granston et al. 2015, n.p.). Due to the lack of research and proper explanation of the new Australia–China relationship, this recent wave of Sinophobia has not been dealt with adequately. Merit-based Immigration Systems The second main research area that can provide this study with broader analytical insights and viewpoints is studies of merit-based immigration systems. Because of its global scope, this type of scholarship will be used to supplement what is lacking in the first type of research. For the same reason, this review needs to be selective, focusing on studies relevant to this analysis. A race-neutral, points-based immigration selection system is believed to have emerged in Canada in 1962 because of global socio-political changes in the 1960s, especially ‘increasing social justice activism and anti-colonial nationalisms’ (Sabra 2011, p.  61). The system was further modified in 1966 and legislated in 1967 (Poy 2013). At that time, the important points considered by the Canadian approach included education, work experience, and proficiency in English or French. Since then, there has been a worldwide trend among industrialised countries to adopt a points system to select migrants. According to a study by Natasha Duncan in 2012, similar systems have progressively been developed and introduced,

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fully or partially, in several developed economies since the introduction of the Canadian system in 1967. These include Australia in 1979, New Zealand in 1991, Singapore in 2004, Demark in 2007, the United Kingdom in 2008, and Austria in 2011 (Duncan 2012). Germany attempted its own reform in 2002, while the United States also tried a reform in 2007, but their selection criteria still devote attention to the link of immigration applicants to the host country, through either family or other close ties. In this long process of implementing points-based systems in several developed economies, the system has been widely and highly praised and called the merit-based immigration system by its admirers, including President Donald Trump. Such merit-based immigration selection approaches have been challenged by a more liberal and humanitarian approach to forced migrants or asylum seekers, shortly after it was developed and introduced. The most significant interruption to the implementation of the new policies was the Indochinese refugee crisis, which began after the fall of Saigon in late April 1975 and the withdrawal of American troops and armed forces of allied nations (Viviani 1984; Davies 2008; Betts 2009). A very large number of people from South Vietnam, especially those who worked for the American-supported Saigon government, chose to leave and seek protection outside Vietnam. The post–Vietnam War emergency resulted in ‘a major international policy response’, which involved numerous countries (OECD 2016, p. 241). Such policy responses diverted the attention of the then-emerging merit-based approach to immigration and pushed many countries to give priority to refugees. Since then, there has always been a degree of tension, both political and ideological, between the rational economic idea and approach behind different forms of merit-based immigration policy and the liberal humanitarian approach, which is sympathetic to programs such as family reunions, refugees and other humanitarian intakes (Anderson 2012; Castles et  al. 2014; Natter 2018). In the case of Chinese migration in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Chinese student and scholar protection issue, which was caused by China’s domestic turmoil at the time, resulted in several Western countries taking many migrants from China through refugee, humanitarian and family reunion programs (Orleans 1988; Ma 1993; Birrell 1994; Ling 1998; Gao 2006b, 2009, 2013). As will be discussed in later chapters, the Chinese student protection issue pushed Australia to step up its effort to be selective regarding immigration (Bell 1997; Betts 2003; McPhail 2007).

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Another research topic on the merit-based immigration systems is what some have unsympathetically defined as ‘technical discussions’ about orderly management of skilled migration (Uhl 2014, p. 727). According to such critical reviews, many studies in this subfield could well be regarded as having a rational economic perspective, but most of them are regular and standard examinations of policy measures and executions, or policy impact evaluations. Such policy-oriented studies are largely concerned not only with policy matters specific to each immigration country, but specifically with policy adjustments for the purpose of ensuring various policies are working well. A considerable amount of research attention has been paid to various operational issues from the rational economic point of view, and three research areas have resulted in many publications. The first focus of research analysis has been the goals of policymaking according to domestic socio-economic or socio-political situations in order to either enhance, if not maximise, the benefits of merit-based immigration policies, or avoid negative impacts caused by the new policies. The second focus has been on comparative studies of merit-based migration policies and their implementation. Specifically, many countries closely monitor the changes that other similar countries make to their immigration selection policies or processes to avoid being disadvantaged in the global talent or skilled labour market. The third focus in this research subfield has been the labour market integration of immigrants, semi-skilled or skilled, in different countries (Knocke 2000; Kogan 2007; Liebig 2007; Lancee 2012; Beyer 2016; Frattini 2017). Though migrants are simply seen from this perspective as labour or part of the labour force in their host country, it is a rare case of attention being paid to the human side of global immigration. However, just like the other research focuses, most of these studies have narrowly focused on practical problems in implementing immigration policies (Carens 2013; Shachar 2013; Koslowski 2018). As far as this analysis is concerned, there appear to be at least two problems among existing studies on merit-based immigration systems. The first problem, as noted above, is that the human side of these important policies is largely absent from the current studies, and the immigrants themselves who are the most fundamental part of this strategic policy are observed and analysed as statistics or figures rather than people in a real-­ life setting or context. As also mentioned, the role of migrants is taken into account in analyses of their labour market integration, but they are barely regarded as ‘normal members of the host society’ (Valenta 2008,

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p. 15), let alone socio-political beings. That is, the pre-multicultural view of seeing some immigrants as ‘other’ has also influenced the way in which merit-based migration has been studied (Epps and Furman 2016; Bailey and Mulder 2017; Yu 2018). The second problem is that because these migrants are just regarded as part of economic decision-making or part of the labour market reforms, there are hardly any studies that thoroughly consider their post-migration lives from a longer-term perspective. Multiple short-sighted views on merit-based immigration are also apparent, providing the field with almost no theoretical basis for further study of this internationally important form of migration. As pointed out, the recent strong reaction to a growing presence of Chinese migrants in Australia reveals that the country’s elites never thought about any longer-­ term consequences of merit-based migration polices, when deciding to utilise new selective policies. Often critics of Chinese influence in Australia do not realise that many educated, skilled, as well as entrepreneurial and rich, Chinese immigrants have been deliberately attracted by policy as a way of maintaining Australian standards of living. Of course, such post-­ multicultural realities can not now be condemned along racial lines, or by using some pre-multicultural ideas and sayings, such as foreign agents, Chinese spies or infiltrators. Medium-term Policy Impact and Evaluation The third major research area to be reviewed is the study of policy impact and evaluation with a focus on medium-term impact. The medium-term in this analysis implies a period of two to three decades, from the late 1980s and early 1990s to the present, but this review is flexible about how the time period is defined in other studies. Studies of policy impact and evaluation grew into an emerging discipline of research in the mid-1970s (Coleman 1975; Yin and Heald 1975; Greenberg et  al. 1977). A few years later, it became an active field of research, which was visibly enriched by, for example, books on social impact assessment (Finsterbusch 1980) and analysis of policy impact (Grumm and Wasby 1981). Before that, political scientists were far more interested in examining political processes than outcomes, benefits and impacts of the various processes. For a long time, there was a link missing from our knowledge of causality between policies and impacts; there was just a trust in a linear correlation between them. For example, in the case of evaluating the impact of science policy, such a missing link was seen as

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‘blind delegation’, in terms of policy execution, allowing an abstention of policymakers from policy implementation and just trusting the agents in what they would do (Braun 2003, p. 309). Since the 1980s, ex ante, ex nunc, and ex post assessments of the social consequences of public policies and projects have become legal requirements in several countries, which has turned all these studies into a mature field of inquiry, both academic and applied (Land 1982; Considine 1994; Gertler et  al. 2016). The research literature on policy impact and evaluation has become so large and complex that it is actually beyond what this short review is able to evaluate. Therefore, this review will pay more attention to what can be learnt from past studies, rather than undertaking a systematic critique of them. One of the most crucial methodological issues in policy impact and evaluation studies is the consideration of multiple variables or factors since the early years of the discipline (Bobrow et  al. 1977; Greenberg et  al. 1977; Kochan and Jick 1978). It is also since the early years that the selection of variables in policy analysis processes has troubled scholars and analysts, as they have been challenged to only select factors that are adequately observable, and also to assess or even quantify much larger and more complex issues. Therefore, complexity has been a key challenge for policymakers and analysts (Arnold et al. 2018). In addition to new issues, such as who governs or conducts policy evaluations (Schoenefeld and Jordan 2017), other biases or predispositions that could make evaluations highly malleable have also been a focus of concern for policy analysts (Bovens and Hart 2011; Soroka 2014). Among the many issues regarding observable and accountable variables or factors in evaluating public policies and projects, one point is of particular methodological significance to this analysis: the need to avoid utilising or relying on any reduced or simplified equation of variables or factors. This issue has long been identified and regarded as a major problem in the field of policy impact evaluation, and has also been found to have caused various unfortunate and profound misunderstandings in Australia’s recent top-down initiated and ill-advised nationwide debate over Chinese influence on its socio-economic and socio-political life. As will be detailed next, this study will broaden the scope of analysis to take more variables into consideration of the hotly debated issue of Chinese influence in Australia. Another important methodological issue that is relevant to this study concerns the time factor in policy evaluation. Even though some researchers have critiqued that the time factor ‘has been given little attention’ in

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studies of policy and policy impact (Bressers et al. 2013, p. 23), there has never been a lack of researchers who have devoted their attention to it (Bovens and Hart 2011; Wolf and Dooren 2018). Some have also stressed that temporal complexities in policy evaluation are as decisive and complex as spatial factors in assessing outcomes of policy decisions. More analysts now agree that time is a decisive factor in shaping the perceptions of the outcomes of public policies. Consideration of temporal factors has already been extended to take into account temporal scope and quality in order to develop a better temporal perspective than the widespread short-­ sightedness in evaluating policy impact and outcomes (Greenberg et  al. 1977; Bovens and Hart 2011). In the case of analysing some race-related issues, which should include present-day international migration and integration, some have also warned of the possibility that ‘time has made past racial practices and assumptions invisible to modern eyes’ (Vargas 2003, cited in Morris 2017, p. 46). In the case of the new Chinese migration to Australia, however, a longer time frame of up to 20 to 30 years will likely reveal problematic racial issues, and also uncover other deep-seated dynamic features and processes in Australian politics related to Chinese immigration. The 30 years from the late 1980s to the present will be used in this analysis. It is almost equivalent to the working life of one generation, significant enough to cover the entire history of recent Chinese migration to Australia, but more importantly, to reveal and examine more decisive aspects and dynamics, or the entirety, of the relationship between recent Chinese immigration and Australian politics. This long temporal span will also set this analysis on a solid foundation, making it different from numerous other attempts to examine similar issues.

Towards a New Approach The literature review in the previous section revealed some of the main conceptual and analytical problems that have troubled researchers and obstructed their efforts in developing a clear understanding of present-day Chinese immigration to Australia and other immigrant-receiving countries in the developed world. Despite the broad coverage of the literature review of three research areas that have often been researched separately, there are several common analytical shortcomings in the reviewed research areas that are almost identical to the problems that have appeared in Australia’s recent debate over the role of new Chinese immigrants in Australian

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society. The discussion of these shortcomings forms the first step to introducing the new approach of this study. For the purpose of this study, the common analytical deficiencies can be summarised as four main obstacles to understanding the issues clearly and accurately. First, many studies have narrowly focused on a single aspect of migrant populations and their communities without linking it to the broader context. What is worse is that theories based on such analyses are often presented as the best depiction of the migrant population or community. Historically as well as academically speaking, the modern positivist tradition of scholarship is partially responsible for simplifying the world we live in into a few sets of notions and ideas, if not assumptions. Such a disciplined academic tradition has then been further reduced, by officials, politicians and journalists among others, to pithy slogans or individual cases. In the case of Australia’s recent debate about China and its migrants, accusations against almost everyone in the ethnic Chinese community are based on a few donation cases, which have then been used to assert that China has infiltrated Australia at every level. As pointed out earlier, such a fictionalised discussion has completely disregarded Australia’s efforts to not only connect itself with Asian economies, but also to create various schemes to attract Asian immigrants. Because of its narrow focus, the debate appears almost no different from the rhetoric of Pauline Hanson, the details of which can be found in Note 5 of this chapter. Second, modern-day analysts, academic or otherwise, have tended to focus on what happens within a shorter time period. The present-day academic culture in many countries, developed or developing, has inappropriately emphasised research outputs or the productivity of research activities, which has turned many research projects into journalistic reporting. As noted earlier, this study covers the longer period of the past three decades in order to rectify the weaknesses of many research designs. Studying a longer period makes it possible to look at more fundamental changes that have caused the debate, compared with what journalistic stories are able to do. For example, as will be argued, Chinese migrants in Australia should be analysed at the intersection of two macro-level historical transformations that have taken place simultaneously in both Australia and China. Third, immigrants have frequently been ‘othered’ politically and socially by dominant groups or cultures in host nations (Ty 2004; Paso 2016), including Australia (Butler 2013). Immigration has been utilised globally as a policy mechanism to resolve a range of socio-economic problems

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troubling immigrant-receiving countries, regardless of whether it is seen from a negative viewpoint, such as ‘as a direct weapon to break down the price of wages’ (Shanks 2001, pp. 99–100), or from an optimistic stance as ‘a mechanism of nation-building’ (Rabben 2016, p.  152). However, there is almost no country that deals with immigrations long-term consequences satisfactorily. One of the most fundamental problems in this subfield is that migrants are generally considered from an economic position, but not as normal residents of their host country, as they are frequently left out of various mainstream socio-political processes. Their socio-political existence in their host country can be further denied when there appear to be serious disagreements between their host country and their home country. Australia’s recent debate over China is one such case. Of course, the othering approach has been practised selectively in some countries, where positive stories of migrants are claimed as a credit to the host country, but troubles of migrants are blamed on the sending country. Fourth, the narrow focus and short-sightedness have also prevented researchers from considering immigration issues as part of the host country’s political-economic processes. This issue has been worsened by othering immigrants as outsiders, if not aliens, paying more attention to their integration or other apparent settlement issues, and less attention to their contribution to nation-building and the efforts that other groups of the mainstream society could make to adjust to a multicultural and multi-­ ethnic society. New immigrants from China have, in recent decades, played a very important role in Australian economic development and its shift towards Asia, especially its close connection with China’s rapid and huge economic expansion. Therefore, they merit a mainstream focus and an analysis according to a new post-multicultural point of view. Despite all the above problems, the rich history of present-day Chinese migration to Australia has suggested a new approach that can be used to analyse the emerging issues related to Chinese migrants and their relations with mainstream society. This may be likened to what Goethe, the great German writer and culture hero, famously declared, ‘All theory is grey, but the tree of life is eternally green’ (cited in Witte and Alexander 2007, p. 167). This approach would apply a more comprehensive standpoint to this study as a historical political-economic perspective. This historical political-economic perspective is utilised in this analysis to deal with all the above-mentioned analytical problems, but it is mainly characterised by the combination of the following two key features.

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The first feature of this fresh approach is the consideration of a range of historical aspects of modern-day Chinese immigration to Australia, which is aimed at overcoming the short-sightedness of many past studies. As introduced earlier, this historical standpoint covers a long period of two to three decades, which is sufficient to rectify the many problems that have been identified in the review section. In the first place, a longer historical standpoint allows this study to put the issues related to Chinese immigration to Australia into the larger context of history, and consider them at the intersection of two major socio-economic transformations happening in the Asia-Pacific region. The first major transformation is Australia’s strategic shift towards Asia, and the second main transformation is China’s post-1978 reform and opening to the world. Both of these, as well as merit-based migration policies adopted in Australia, have gradually but very significantly transformed Australia’s economic structure and demographic composition. Also, this long view will help the analysis identify and consider multiple factors that are largely absent from earlier studies. It can also help find the missing links from the causality analysis between policies and impacts. This longer time consideration would also make it likely to see both present-day Chinese immigration to Australia and their relations with mainstream society as a process, which is dynamic and humane in nature. That is, the idea that ‘process matters’ would be helpful in taking into account the human side of immigration, which has largely faded away from earlier research (Gao 2015, p. 20), and would also overcome the analytical distortion that attempts to explain post-multicultural realities in Australia based on pre-multicultural perspectives. The second feature of this fresh approach is the focus on the political-­ economic aspects of present-day Chinese immigration to Australia and the relationship of these new migrants with mainstream society. A great deal of attention in the field of Chinese migration to Australia has been paid to their post-arrival experiences and some related issues, while in the field of international migration, focus has been from either a liberal or a rational economic perspective. The key justification for focusing on political-­ economic aspects of Chinese migration to Australia is to include more factors than earlier studies on this topic, and also to examine them from a longer-term point of view. This point of view is concerned with more fundamental processes that underlie the activities of groups, communities and individual migrants than with some superficial and isolated aspects that have often been explored in past studies. Specifically, this analysis

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considers the issue through six aspects. As will be discussed further, these six aspects are migration policy changes, economic factors, grassroots responses, the role of major political parties, community activism and knowledge issues. The inclusion of these six aspects of the political-economic point of view bases this study firmly in the position of seeing the issue at the intersection of two macro-level historical processes that have changed Australia and China, and also deepens this analysis beyond the simple connection between two countries. While China has been reforming its socio-­ economic systems, becoming more open and well-off than before, Australia has been restructuring its economy. However, unlike China, Australia’s economic restructuring shrank some major industrial sectors, resulting in a ‘troubling experience’ nationwide (Pusey 2003, p.  1). Immigration has subsequently been used to deal with the issues of economic growth, placing Australia ‘in the process of becoming more Asian’ (Katzenstein 2002, p.  106). All these changes have sporadically been examined and debated in the Australian political economic context (Castles and Collins 1989; Pusey 1991; Webber 1991; Webber et al. 1992; Garnaut 1993; Burnley and Forrest 1995; Jakubowicz 2009), but limited efforts have been made recently. Subsequently, many Australians are still deeply confused by post-multicultural realities, and Australia as a whole remains a rather ‘anxious nation’, as defined by David Walker, an Australian scholar of the Australian-Asian engagement (Walker 1999, p. 114). Methodologically, this analysis is based on the data that I have collected through my longitudinal study of the Chinese migrant community in Australia, which has been undertaken since the late 1980s (Gao 1999, 2001, 2002, 2013, 2015). Although my research can be broadly defined as a systematic effort to study the experiences of new Chinese immigrants in Australia since the late 1980s, the focus of my research is largely on the political activism and social and economic entrepreneurship that they have been displayed over the course of the past three decades. My ongoing efforts in this area has resulted in a number of journal papers and books, some of which are listed in the References section of this book. This book is also partly based on documentary sources, especially Australia’s numerous Chinese-language newspapers, as well as mainstream English-language media outlets, both nonprint and print. The latter has made China, as well as Chinese migrants, one of the most frequently used topics for the purpose of attracting audience attention. This analysis also makes use of a

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number of policy statements of Australian Government offices and departments. I will also draw on information obtained from social media, including several WeChat-based news bulletins, providing this analysis with rich, written documentary sources.

Organisation of the Book As pointed out earlier, this study has identified six main aspects of the historical political-economic processes that underlie the two-way interaction between recent Chinese migrant groups in Australia and other sections of Australian society. These six aspects have been missing from the debate about China’s influence in Australia, making its arguments baseless and unconvincing. Because of these theoretical and practical problems, the analysis in the next six chapters look closely at each of the six aspects, followed by a concluding chapter. Chapter 2 considers the immigration policy–related reasons behind both Australia’s recent misguided debate over China and the connection of new Chinese immigrants with Australian politics. This analysis builds on the background information provided in the first chapter, and analyses how Chinese migrants have, in recent decades, come to Australia and become an integral part of Australian society (if considering it from a positive stance) or a problem (if looking at it with a pre-multicultural mindset). A few decades ago, many praised multiculturalism for making Chinese Australians feel that ‘being Chinese is no longer stigmatised’ (Shum 2001, p. 208). The national mood in Australia has changed dramatically in recent years. Once again, China is seen as a threat, and many Chinese Australians are suspected of being Chinese agents, infiltrating the entire society (Borys 2018; Uhlmann 2018). Such sinister accusations have actually been decades in the making, and they are a politicised reading of a series of new migration policies introduced and executed by successive Australian governments in recent decades. Chapter 2 examines this process, but begins with a brief reflection on Australia’s economic restructuring in the 1970s and 1980s. There are then three sections studying how the merit-based immigration system was initiated and used in earlier years, how business experiences and investment capacities have been included in immigration policies, and how a large number of young Chinese have been attracted to Australia by various policies over the past decades. In other words, in addition to the immigration policies that are absent from Australia’s recent debate over China’s influence, this chapter provides a demographic analysis.

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Chapter 3 looks at the economic reasons aggravating the long-brewing resentment of many Australian battlers towards Chinese migrants, and contributing to the recent surge of Sinophobia in Australia. This chapter discusses entrepreneurial activities of new Chinese migrants in Australia over the past three decades and the process of how Australia has unexpectedly, but profitably, become the most China-dependent economy in the developed world. Such transformations have not taken place without controversy, resistance and agonies; a coalition of critics from both the political right and left have politicised what entrepreneurial Chinese migrants have been doing in Australia or for Australia, expressing displeasure at more recent waves of Chinese migration and the merit-based migration system that has brought them in. Their disapproval is so strong that Australian political elites are forced to choose between competing understandings, which trapped the Turnbull-led Liberal government in a no-­ win situation. All these issues are examined in three sections. The first section answers why the new Chinese migrants have been so actively doing much China-related business, which has nothing to do with their political inclination or loyalty, as argued by some amateur critics, but is an effect of the issues in Australia’s current economy. The second section looks at early economic, or entrepreneurial, activities of Chinese migrants from the mid-­1990s to the late 2000s, before China’s going-global strategy reached Australia’s shore. The third section examines the post-GFC (Global Financial Crisis of 2007–08) economic ties of Australia with China, inspiring the second wave of entrepreneurial activity among Chinese Australians. Due to the increasingly close links between the two countries, new Chinese migrants not only expanded their activities into new sectors, but also started causing some changes to job and wealth distribution patterns. Chapter 4 focuses on the social reasons that make it possible for Sinophobia to spread as a potential political force in a country as multi-­ ethnic as post-multicultural Australia. This is an analysis of grassroots responses to the rapid increase in Chinese migration to Australia; the corresponding responses of various elite groups are discussed in Chaps. 5 and 7. Grassroots responses are a very critical and fundamental factor in determining why Sinophobic sentiments can exist and even become a socio-­ political force in contemporary Australia. This discussion pays attention to the population composition, profiles and behaviours of new Chinese migrants, and how they challenge the stereotypes that many earlier settled Australians have held about Chinese Australians for more than a century. The first section begins with a brief analysis of Australia’s traditional fears

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of China, or fears of possible Chinese expansion, and the rise of Hansonism in the mid-1990s. The second section looks at the new tension resulting from increasing competition in school education, which generated new fractures between the dominant community and the new Chinese community. The third section examines the general trend of how ordinary Australians and new Chinese migrants have responded to each other over the course of the strategy of shifting to Asia, and the key characteristics of the process. This analysis focuses on the tensions created by differences between the laid-back attitudes of many Australians and the life situations and mindsets of new Chinese migrants. The fourth section considers grassroots responses to the purchasing activities of many Chinese buyers in Australia’s property market, which has been key for grassroots groups in the campaign to dilute Chinese influence. Chapter 5 extends this analysis to a very special but concealed aspect of the current debate about Chinese influence in Australia—the roles of major Australian political parties in courting ethnic Chinese groups. This discussion is about the first political reason—the political party–related cause—that has misled the China debate, but the analysis pays attention to activities orchestrated by major Australian political parties. This discussion starts with a preliminary and exploratory effort to answer why the new Chinese migrant community has seemed to have a pro-Labor tendency, which has been used by some observers to explain why there was the anti-­ China interference campaign under the Malcolm Turnbull–led Liberal government before the Bennelong by-election in late 2017. This section also offers an overall review of how all the major political parties have reached out to Chinese community groups in their effort to recruit members, develop support networks, attract donations and win more votes. The second section looks at several electorates with a high proportion of ethnic Chinese voters, where greater political efforts have been made by political parties than in other electorates to maintain their political appeal. Such efforts are made by party organisations and outside groups in both direct and indirect ways. This discussion offers a different account from the media and some politicians, who mistake political participation by Chinese Australians as evidence that China has tried to exercise its influence on Australian party politics. The third section of this chapter presents a case study of the Bennelong by-election, which was one of the key triggers of Australia’s recent panic over Chinese interference. Chapter 6 concerns itself specifically with the second political reason— community-based activism—that has resulted from Australia’s merit-based

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migration policies and programs, but has also been misread by those who have embarked on the furious debate about China’s interference in Australian politics. This is about a new form of integration-inspired community activism and the push to break through the so-called bamboo ceiling in Australian society. This chapter analyses the new community activism from a community viewpoint in four sections. The first section considers socio-political behavioural characteristics that the first large group of Chinese students-turned-immigrants demonstrated in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which has already called into question the general perception of Chinese people as passive and timid. The second section looks at many Chinese migrants’ enthusiastic responses to the encouraging ideas and practices of multiculturalism and integration in Australia. The enthusiasm has been maintained by the ongoing demographic changes resulting from many new merit-based migration schemes. This analysis considers which types of Chinese migrants have, over recent decades, been more motivated than others to be active, why they have chosen to do so, and what they would like to achieve through active participation. The third section discusses the need for migrants in business to have local socio-political networks and regular meetings with non-Chinese elites in order to ensure business conditions are good and their investments are secure. Of course, such demands have also been elevated to an idealist level, at which political participation is promoted with the aim of pushing the bamboo ceiling above them. It is at this point that tensions between people from dominant groups and ethnic Chinese groups have worsened, leading to the current China debate. The fourth section looks at the extent to which the activism of Chinese community groups is related to the Chinese state and its strategies, and how the long-expected role of Chinese migrants in bridging Australia and China has hastily been re-interpreted in the debate. Chapter 7 offers an in-depth analysis of a range of knowledge-related issues that have affected Australia’s current China debate. Attention is given to why and how many Australian analysts, politicians and journalists have, in the current debate over China’s interference, misinterpreted the anticipated integration of Chinese Australians and why many educated Australians tolerate, or even accept, politicised generalisations about ethnic Chinese community members who have been attracted from China through merit-based migration policies and schemes, and have also helped Australia to prosper for nearly three decades. The first section further discusses the critical appraisals of Australia’s postwar elites based on what was discussed by John Douglas Pringle in his book, Australian Accent

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published in 1958, and Donald Horne in The Lucky Country published in 1964. After more than five decades, many Australians have hardly paid any serious attention to Asia, leaving them with a simplistic, vague and inadequate insight into the region and its people. The second section of this chapter looks at how Australia’s attitudes towards Asia have fluctuated in more recent decades based on the five-icy-period analysis set forth by Graeme Dobell, a veteran Australian journalist, but focuses on Australia’s attitude towards post-reform China and its knowledge-related problems. This section argues that Australia’s anxieties over China and its growing influence are partly caused by China’s rapid economic development, as well as by the lack of knowledge among Australian elites about a rapidly changing China. The third section examines where the misconceptions pervading Australia’s current China debate have arisen by way of analysing a number of reports produced by the ABC, former Fairfax media and News Corp newspapers, in the process of debate. Chapter 8 is the concluding chapter of this book and focuses on theoretical insights into how the medium- to long-term socio-economic and socio-political consequences of the merit-based migration system could be better studied and what practical lessons may be drawn from Australia’s debate over China’s interference. The first section summarises what has been analysed in earlier chapters, while emphasising the importance of the historical political-economic approach to issues resulting from many merit-based migration policies and programs. The second section further discusses a few theoretical questions related to shortcomings in the existing research literature, through which this study offers analytical insights into how the merit-based migration system could be adequately considered. The third section considers practical implications of this study, calling attention to the importance of positioning the debate in the context of nation-building and enhancing intellectual ability for understanding a rapidly changing world.

Notes 1. Sam Dastyari was born in Iran in 1983 and arrived in Australia in 1988. In 2010, he became General Secretary of the New South Wales branch of the Labor Party, and he was then appointed to the Senate in 2013. As a federal Senator, he had served on several parliamentary committees, but was under pressure to resign after some allegations of misconduct. It was revealed that he allowed a business owned by Chinese entrepreneur Huang Xiangmo to

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pay a legal bill for his office, and he also warned Huang that his phone was probably being tapped. He made public comments about the South China Sea issue, which went against the Labor Party’s policy (Sweeney 2017). He resigned from the Senate in January 2018. Interested readers can read more about Sam Dastyari in Hamilton (2018) and Dastyari (2017). 2. Clive Hamilton is an Australian public intellectual and Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University. He is a member of the Board of the Climate Change Authority of the Australian Government, and the founder and former executive director of the Australia Institute. He appears in the Australian media regularly, making contributions to public policy debates. In 2009, he tried to enter politics as an Australian Greens candidate. He has published widely on a range of topics from capitalist industrialisation in Korea to the economic dynamics of the Australian industry, from consumerism to overconsumption. His 2018 book on China’s influence in Australia is about the increasing involvement of China’s ruling Communist Party (CCP) in Australian civil society and politics, which has made him a very controversial figure in Australia. For more information about him and his 2018 book on China’s silent invasion of Australia, see Brophy (2018), Fitzgerald (2018) and Hamilton (2018). 3. Geoffrey Blainey is one of Australia’s most eminent historians of social and economic history of Australia. He became a Professor at the University of Melbourne in 1968 and the Dean of the Faculty of Arts in 1982. In March 1984, he addressed a Rotary conference in the coastal city of Warrnambool, in which he criticised the level of Asian migration to Australia. In his book entitled All for Australia, which was also published in 1984, he criticised the policy of multiculturalism for undermining the British heritage of Australia and argued that Asian immigration might be a threat to social cohesion. His comments were widely reported in the media, triggering a nationwide debate about immigration. Blainey resigned from the University of Melbourne in 1988. Interested readers can read more about Geoffrey Blainey in McQueen 2004), Lines (2006) and West and Murphy (2010). 4. John Howard is the second-longest serving Australian prime minister (1996–2007). He was elected to the House of Representative as a Liberal member in 1974 and promoted to cabinet in 1977. Howard became a target of public criticism in 1988 because of his comments on multiculturalism and his suggestion that ‘the proportion coming from Asia was higher than the majority of the public preferred’ (Betts 2003, p. 177). His public advocacy of slowing down the intake of Asian migrants in 1988 made him an easy target for pro-multiculturalists. Interested readers can read more about John Howard in Markus (2001b) and Errington and Onselen (2007). 5. Pauline Hanson ran a fish-and-chip shop in rural Queensland before being elected to the House of Representative as an independent member in the

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1996 federal election. Her background indicates that she did not have the necessary sophistication for politics, and she spoke about what she heard from many ordinary Australians. Hansonism is seen as ‘evidence of a resistance to multiculturalism in some sections of Australian society’ (Moore 2001, p, 55). Its most visible targets are Aborigines and Asian immigrants. But according to the then-prime minister John Howard (1996–2007), Hansonism was actually a cry from people who felt that they were missing out economically. For more information, see McMaster (2001) and Kelly (2010). 6. Cronulla is a beachside suburb of southern Sydney. In December 2005, a series of violent attacks against those of Middle Eastern appearance broke out in the area. The riots lasted a few days and also spread to neighbouring suburbs. The riots are seen as a stain on Australian history, and those days shamed the whole nation in the words of Rachel Olding, a journalist of The Sydney Morning Herald (Olding 2015). For more information about the riots, readers are referred to Collins (2009), and Moran and Waddington (2016). 7. The so-called ‘1 November [1993] decisions’ were made by the Keating Labor government (1991–1996) in 1993, to honour a promise made by his predecessor, Bob Hawke, that none of the Chinese students who were in Australia in 1989 and 1990 would be forced to return to China against their will. However, as I have argued elsewhere, the decisions should also be considered as part of Paul Keating’s ‘big picture’ vision for Australia, as he considered the Chinese student protection issue from a perspective of a ‘long-term strategy’ (Gao 2013, pp. 3, 129). Keating visited China in June 1993, when China’s economic growth was once again accelerating after Deng Xiaoping’s famous southern inspection tour in early 1992. Keating’s realisation of China’s economic potential helped him consider the Chinese student issue differently from his predecessor. Interested readers can read more about Paul Keating and the ‘1 November [1993] decisions’ in Birrell (1994), Keating (2000), Kelly (2010), Raby (2012) and Gao (2013, 2015).

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Gao, J. (2002). ‘The role of primary social groups in migration decision-making: A case study of Chinese students’, Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 11(3): 375–398. Gao, J. (2006a). ‘Radio-activated business and power: A case study of 3CW Melbourne Chinese radio’. In W. Sun (ed.), Media and the Chinese Diaspora: Community, Communications and Commerce (pp.  150–177). London: Routledge. Gao, J. (2006b). ‘Organized international asylum seeker networks: Formation and utilization by the Chinese students’. International Migration Review, 40(2): 294–317. Gao, J. (2009). ‘Lobbying to stay: The Chinese students’ campaign to stay in Australia’, International Migration, 47(2): 127–154. Gao, J. (2011). ‘Seeking residency from the courts: The Chinese experience in the post-White Australia era’, Journal of Chinese Overseas, 7: 187–210. Gao, J. (2013). Chinese Activism of a Different Kind: The Chinese Students’ Campaign to Stay in Australia. Leiden: Brill. Gao, J. (2015). Chinese Migrant Entrepreneurship in Australia from the Early 1990s: Case-Studies of Success in Sino-Australian Relations. Oxford: Elsevier. Garnaut, R. (1993). Getting off the Sheep’s Back: 9th Stan Kelly Memorial Lecture. Melbourne: Economic Society of Australia. Gertler, P., S.  Martinez, P.  Premand, L.  Rawlings and C.  Vermeersch (2016). Impact Evaluation in Practice, Second Edition. Washington: World Bank Group. Granston, M., A.  Grigg and L.  Murray (2015). ‘Chinese investors heat up Australian farm buying spree’, Australian Financial Review, 27 September 2015, www.afr.com/real-estate/chinese-investors-heat-up-australian-farmbuying-spree-20150902-gjd67t. Accessed 28 November 2018. Greenberg, G., J.  Miller, L.  Mohr, and B.  Vladeck (1977). ‘Developing public policy theory: Perspectives from empirical research’, American Political Science Review, 71(4): 1532–1543. Grumm, J. and S. Wasby (eds.) (1981). The Analysis of Policy Impact. Lanham: Lexington Books. Guo, X. (2005). Immigrating to and Ageing in Australia: Chinese Experiences. PhD thesis, Murdoch University. Hamilton, C. (2018). Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia. Sydney: Hardie Grant. Heath, M. (2016). ‘Most China-dependent economy isn’t so keen on Chinese money’, Bloomberg Business, 29 March 2016, www.bloomberg.com/news/ articles/2016-03-28/the-most-china-dependent-economy-isn-t-so-keen-onchinese-money. Accessed 28 November 2018. Hibbins, R. (2005). ‘Migration and gender identity among Chinese skilled migrants to Australia’. Geoforum, 36(2): 167–180.

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Hibbins, R. (2006). ‘Sexuality and constructions of gender identity among Chinese male migrants in Australia’. Asian Studies Review, 30(3): 289–303. Ho, C. (2006). ‘Migration as feminisation? Chinese women’s experiences of work and family in Australia’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 32(3): 497–514. Ho, C. (2008). Migration and Gender Identity: Chinese Women’s Experiences of Work, Family, and Identity in Contemporary Australia. Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag. Ho, C. H. and J. Coughlan (1997). ‘The Chinese in Australia: Immigrants from the People’s Republic of China, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau’. In J. Coughlan and D. McNamara (eds.), Asians in Australia: Patterns of Migration and Settlement (pp. 120–170). Melbourne: Macmillan Education. Hugo, G. (2008). ‘In and out of Australia: Rethinking Indian and Chinese skilled migration to Australia’. Asian Population Studies, 3(4): 267–291. Hugo, G. (2012). ‘Population flows between South Australia and Asia’. In J. Spoehr and P. Jain (eds.), The Engaging State: South Australia’s Engagement with the Asia Pacific Region (pp. 20–44). Adelaide: Wakefield Press. Hunt, E. (2017). ‘Barely half of population born in Australia to Australian-born parents’, The Guardian, 27 June 2017, www.theguardian.com/australianews/2017/jun/27/australia-reaches-tipping-point-with-quarter-of-population-born-overseas. Accessed 28 November 2018. Hsu, J. (2009). ‘Economic geography: Transnational ethnic networks’. In R. Kitchin and N. Thrift (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (pp. 400–403). London: Elsevier. Ip, D. (1993). ‘Reluctant entrepreneurs: Professionally qualified Asian migrants in small businesses in Australia’. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 2(1): 57–74. Ip, D. (2007). ‘From battlers to transnational ethnic entrepreneurs? Immigrants from the People’s Republic of China in Australia’. In E.  Fong and C.  Luk (eds.), Chinese Ethnic Business: Global and Local Perspectives (pp.  120–131). New York: Routledge. Ip, D., C. T. Wu and C. Inglis (1998). ‘Gold mountain no more: Impressions of Australian society among recent Asian immigrants’. In E. Sinn (ed.), The Last Half Century of Chinese Overseas (pp.  347–369). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Ip, D., C. Inglis and C. T. Wu (1997). ‘Concepts of citizenship and identity among recent Asian immigrations in Australia’. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 6(3–4): 363–384. Iredale, R. (1983). The Occupational Adjustment of Indo-Chinese Refugees in Australia. Canberra: Australian National University. Jakubowicz, A. (2009). ‘New groups and social cohesion in Australia’. In J. Higley et  al. (eds.), Nations of Immigrants: Australia and the USA Compared (pp. 115–131). London: Edward Elgar.

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CHAPTER 2

Australia’s New Immigration Selection Tetralogy

This chapter considers the immigration policy reason behind both Australia’s recent debate over Chinese influence in its politics and the connection between new Chinese immigrants and Australia, which has then been politicised by some interest groups and individual activists. As a nation built on immigration, Australia has long been utilising immigration policies to solve various problems that emerged in the course of its nation-­ building. The practice can be seen throughout the entire history of Australia, but a more sophisticated use of it arose in the 1990s, although many scholars have argued for the importance of the 1970s in terms of the official end of the ‘White Australia’ policy and the introduction of multiculturalism (Jupp 1995; Hugo 2012). As outlined in Chap. 1, the importance of the 1990s in Australia’s immigration history was twofold. First there was the acceptance of 45,000 or so Chinese students to settle permanently in Australia by the Keating Labor government’s ‘1 November [1993] decisions’, which were detailed in Note 7 of Chap. 1 (Birrell 1994; Shu and Hawthorne 1996; Gao 2013). Then in March 1996, the Howard Liberal–National Coalition was elected after more than 13 years of Labor government,1 and there was a policy reset. Philip Ruddock,2 the Coalition’s new Minister for Immigration lobbied the Cabinet successfully for the acceptance of the remaining ‘more than 8000 refugees who had fled Kuwait, Iraq, Lebanon, Sri Lanka and China before 1993’ (Bagshaw 2019, n.p.). This decision finally resolved the issues left over from the so-called Chinese student issue of the late © The Author(s) 2020 J. Gao, Chinese Immigration and Australian Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5909-9_2

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1980s and early 1990s, ready for Australia to resume direct immigration from China. The rationale for this decision that contrasted with the Coalition’s strong rhetoric on Labor’s policies on refugees and immigration appeared to be that the new government did not want to carry any political baggage left by the Labor party (Senate Hansard 1996; Gao 2013), but more importantly, the new government wanted to reset immigration policy in line with its economic philosophy and policy. This policy reset is the second reason for the significance of the 1990s in Australia’s immigration history. The significance of this policy reset is agreed on by many researchers, but one piece of evidence came to light only recently. On 1 January 2019, the National Archives of Australia released the Cabinet documents from 1965 to 1997, and among these documents are records of the discussion by the Howard government about adopting a new set of migration policies, which have resulted in the following shift: [The discussions] began the transition from a family-based immigration system to a skills-based system that would help propel Australia through 27  years of economic growth. … The evidence turbo-charged Australia’s shift towards a skills-based immigration system that mirrored Canada and New Zealand, with stricter qualification, financial and English-language restrictions. … In 1996, 65 per cent of migrants arrived under family reunification visas and 35 per cent were skills-based. By 2018 those statistics had been reversed (Bagshaw 2019, n.p.)

This chapter examines how the statistic reverse has been achieved in relation to the growing number of immigrants from China. The chapter has four sections to examine how Australia has in recent decades modified its tactical use of immigration programs, shifting the focus away from family reunion and humanitarian programs to what is now usually called merit-based immigration policies, and how the new immigration policies have brought in hundreds of thousands of new immigrants from China. Merit-based policies are defined as the ‘new immigration selection tetralogy’ in this analysis; the tetralogy is made up of required qualifications, skills, business experiences, and financial resources for investment. This chapter begins with an analysis of Australia’s economic restructuring that was initiated in the 1970s. The second and third sections look respectively at how the merit-based policies of selecting immigrants were initiated and implemented, and how business experiences and investment capacity have

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been included. The fourth section is a survey of how many Chinese have been attracted to Australia under the various merit-based selection policies in recent decades.

Economic Restructuring Australia has, for many decades, enjoyed a reputation as the lucky country, including a vast continent with a comparatively small population, and its postwar economic success, which is still well remembered by some (Bell and Keating 2018). After World War II, Australia entered a period of economic boom, which was largely characterised by strong economic growth, full employment and a high level of immigration. All these have been explained by different analysts in different ways. Some have attributed the postwar success to ‘the acceptance of the economic doctrine of John Maynard Keynes (Bell and Keating 2018, p. 1),3 while some have argued that it was just luck (Horne 1964). The latter seems to be factually correct as, for example, the postwar recovery of Australia’s wool industry, or as the popular saying goes, ‘riding on the sheep’s back’, actually resulted from the Korean War wool boom (Dyster and Meredith 1990; Massy 2011). Regardless of whether Australia’s postwar prosperity resulted from Keynesian ideas or the luck that Donald Horne critically remarked on in his popular book, The Lucky Country (Horne 1964), the boom ended in the 1960s and the economy was clearly in trouble by the early 1970s. Current situations influence what many people believe to be correct, making the correctness or practicability of policy measures relative to circumstances of place and time, as well as people. Australia was dragged into a recession in the early 1970s, resulting from problems created by its earlier success. A report produced by a Commonwealth committee identified that factories that had opened proudly in the early postwar years ‘have become today’s structural problems in terms of efficient use of resources’ (cited in Meredith and Dyster 1999, p. 204). The crisis in the 1970s was a serious one, which has been defined as the crisis of stagflation and governance. Stagflation is the simultaneous occurrence of high unemployment and high inflation, resulting in sluggish demand and economic activity. Stagflation is believed to be the problem ‘for which Keynesian theory had no remedy’ (Hargrove and Nelson 1984, p. 120). This crisis, therefore, became the start of various changes in policy thinking, opening ‘the door to much more conservative policies’ as described by Jefferson Cowie

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(2010, p.  226). In reality, the 1970s was also a decade of economic restructuring in a number of developed economies, including Australia. By the time Australia had to restructure its economy, it already had a relatively large number of experts, the new educated class, who were trained in other developed countries and brought home various neoliberal ideas and practical strategies. These ideas favoured free market solutions to economic problems; key ideas included deregulation of access to finance, reduction of trade barriers and industry protection, privatisation of public assets and services, floating of the currency, opening up to overseas investment, improvement of productivity, and labour market flexibility (Gao 2015). In Australia, the first neoliberal policy that was used by the Whitlam Labor government in 1973, when the recession hit, was a massive across-­ the-­board tariff cut of 25 per cent, the approach also used in 1988 and 1991 (Pincus 2001; Leigh 2002). Though it sounds peaceful, economic restructuring is still a type of revolutionary change, and it comes at the cost of suffering and other miseries. Australia’s economic reform was not conducted without any negative impact on ordinary people. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the unemployment rate in Australia stood at only 2 per cent, but over the 1970s, it gradually rose to 6 per cent. The early 1980s saw a sharp rise in the unemployment rate to 10 per cent in 1983. Although it declined to 6 per cent by 1989, another increase then occurred in the early 1990s, peaking at around 11 per cent in 1993 (ABS 2001). Simultaneously, inflation started rising in 1971, reaching 5.7 per cent, and climbing to 9.1 per cent in 1973. Since then, the country has been troubled by high inflation: above 15 per cent in 1974 and 1975, more than 10 per cent in 1982 and 1983, and above 8.5 per cent in the mid-1980s (Warby 1994). Inflation has been a more serious and constant issue in Australia than unemployment. As hinted above, economic restructuring in Australia had been ongoing since the early 1970s, because its economy had slid into three main downturns one after another in 1973–77, 1982–83, and 1989–93 (Burnley and Forrest 1995). There are a range of explanations for why Australia was hit so frequently by downturn from the late 1960s to the early 1990s and, therefore, had to keep restructuring its economy. There were global factors at play, leading to the troubles in Australia’s economy; for example, a few competitive economies—the four Asian tigers or little dragons (Taiwan, South Korean, Hong Kong and Singapore)—appeared in the Asia-Pacific region at the almost same time. However, the most serious

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issue troubling Australia’s economy, and pushing for constant and sweeping changes as well, appears to be productivity or flexibility of the labour market. It is also from this position that economic restructuring and immigration policies are found to be closely related, which can be observed from two perspectives. First, in terms of the general condition of Australia’s economy, macroeconomic management, trade quotas, tariffs and some other government protectionist measures did not help to stimulate competition in import– export trade, which perhaps made Australian manufacturing look inward. There was more pressure on wages, and a greater proportion of the workforce unionised; yet a very laid-back attitude towards work became a cultural norm, flowing through most aspects of life. In fact, floating the currency and lowering tariffs were executed ‘in the quest for a neoliberal restructuring of the economy’ in order to integrate into worldwide markets, opening up Australia’s overprotected economy, and ‘forcing both management and workers to compete’ globally (Bowles 2006, p.  217). That is, among neoliberal ideas, such as deregulating capital flows, privatisation and free trade, the essential point appears to be to prevent workers from unionising, but ultimately is to ensure labour supplies for economic sectors. Because of such challenges, immigration as a policy mechanism had never been abandoned by Australian elites throughout economic restructuring. Table  2.1 shows part of the problem troubling several industries in Australia. Table 2.1  Industrial disputes in Australia, working days lost per employee, 1973–2002 Industry

Period

Mining

Manufacturing

Construction

Transport

Coal

Other

Metal

Other

Days

Days

Days

Days

Days

Days

0.86 0.32 0.24 0.11 0.12

1.79 0.62 0.21 0.43 0.42

0.89 0.26 0.23 0.08 0.04

−86.4

−86.5

−95.7

1973–75 8.99 2.35 2.89 1985–87 8.95 2.11 0.39 1990–92 4.17 0.91 1.02 1995–97 5.35 0.48 0.16 2000–02 1.08 0.04 0.17 Changes from 1973–75 to 2000–02 (%) −88.0 −98.4 −94.0 Source: Based on Productivity Commission (2003)

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The second perspective is that in terms of the future change and direction, a skilled workforce has long been a concern in Australia’s nation-­ building. One of the earlier, and also frequently quoted, comments on it was made bluntly by John Douglas Pringle, who came from Britain to be the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and wrote in his powerful book, Australian Accent, as early as 1958 that ‘what Australia badly needs is not a ruling class, but an educated class’ (cited in Roskam 2013, p. 36). This critical comment was echoed by Donald Horne, who pointed out that Australia’s success was almost totally based on luck rather than its economic and political strengths, and that the nation was suffering from complacency and the lack of novelty, ambition and entrepreneurship (Horne 1964). In the mid-1970s and 1980s, there was a clearer consensus among elites in Australia that more educated specialists and skilled people were needed. In some way, this thinking appears to have been firmly held even during recession years. In fact, partly because of earlier economic structural change, and the decline in manufacturing employment in the late 1960s, immigration policy had already moved towards a skill-based selective approach in the 1970s, when a points system was introduced as early as 1973 (Burnley and Forrest 1995, p.  71). As part of socio-economic changes, or for the objective of increasing labour market flexibility, multiculturalism was adopted ‘in top-down fashion’ (Dryzek 2002, p. 133) as a new national policy by the Liberal–National Coalition government led by Malcolm Fraser in the late 1970s. Figure 2.1 reveals that despite downturns, Australia kept accepting immigrants over recession years. Among the arrivals of the 1960s and 1970s, more and more of them were from non-English-speaking countries; for example, about 400,000

Intake (million)

2.00

1.60 1.30

1.50

0.96

1.00

1.10

1.20 0.90

0.50 0.00

1945-60

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

Fig. 2.1  Australia’s postwar immigration, 1945–2010. (Source: Based on data from DHA (Department of Home Affairs) (2017))

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non-­ English-speaking migrants arrived between 1966 and 1976 (Claydon 1981). During the 1970s and 1980s, as detailed in Chap. 1, there was a huge increase in the number of Chinese Australians, growing from around 50,000 in 1976 to approximately 200,000 in 1986, despite serious economic downturns. When the Howard-led government was elected in 1996, the number had risen to about 343,500. Under the Hawke and Keating governments from 1983 to 1996, wide-ranging micro-economic reforms with greater emphasis on labour market flexibility and free market competition had been attempted (Brennan and Pincus 2002). Most of their new policies were largely supported or by the Liberals in Opposition; they were not reversed by the Howard government. However, the Howard-led Liberals had rather different views from Labor in a few areas. Apart from the Liberals’ major reform to industrial relations based on enterprise bargaining, triggering many industrial actions when they were in government (OECD 2001; Kelly 2010; Philipatos 2012), another key change was in the area of immigration, prioritising merit-based immigration selection policies and schemes, and moving attention away from family reunion and humanitarian programs. It is fair to say that the push for reform of the immigration system that the Howard government commenced after the 1996 election was a continuation of the neoliberal economic restructuring pursued by both the Labor and the Liberal parties. It had been ongoing since Australia was warned by the slogan ‘populate or perish’, revived and promoted by Arthur Calwell, Australia’s first Minister for Immigration after Wold War II (Jupp 2007, p.  11). Since then, it had taken Australia’s ruling elites three economic recessions, from the early 1970s to the early 1990s, to further realise the need to improve its immigration strategy and refocus on merit-based approaches. The Howard-led government was in power for 11  years from 1996 to 2007, without the leadership changes that have plagued both the major parties in the post-Howard years.4 As a result, Australia had ten or so years from the mid-1990s to reset its immigration policies.

Shifting the Focus of Immigration Australia’s systematic adjustment of immigration policies to cope with economic structural changes and the changing migrant flows from traditional sending countries to new ones has, in general, gone through two

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main steps. This section looks at the first step: to shift the focus of immigration policies by partially turning policy attention away from the family-­ reunion schemes and reintroducing the points system that was already attempted in 1973 (Koslowski 2018). This change had achieved the goal of re-introduction or inclusion of qualification and skill requirements as the first two key components of Australia’s immigration selection tetralogy into the system. Other recent and complex efforts in immigration reform will be analysed in the next section. Historically, due to the flow-on effect of the Indochinese boat people crisis, the Hawke–Keating Labor governments had to direct more attention to family-reunion schemes than skilled-based plans. This had been debated for years between two political parties, and the Liberals were very critical of this issue, believing the family-reunion-focused migration policy and programs to be out of touch with the needs of contemporary Australia. After the 1996 election, the Howard government started changing what it inherited. Figure 2.2 shows what had occurred to Australia’s immigration intake in the second half of the 1990s. As noted in Chap. 1, Australia’s strategic policy of recruiting trained and skilled immigrants was interrupted by the Indochinese refugee crisis of the mid-1970s and 1980s, or put on hold twice in the eyes of other critics by both the Indochinese refugee crisis and the Chinese student issue of the late 1980s and early 1990s. While the acceptance of Indochinese refugees could also indisputably be considered from the viewpoint of labour market liberalisation, the Chinese student case was more

Fig. 2.2 Migrant intake by stream, 1984–2014. (Source: DIBP (2015, p. 71))

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complicated. The Chinese student case not only helped a large number of Australian elites and officials learn and understand the next main sending region of immigrants, but also facilitated a modification of the focus of Australia’s migration program. At the time, Australia’s history of looking for migrant supply was at a turning point. It had gone through the stages of attracting migrants from the United Kingdom and other European countries, and it had also tried South-East Asian countries. In the 1990s, its search had reached China in north-east Asia. This is the region where a very high proportion of Australian trade is conducted, but it is also the place where Australia’s fear of being invaded comes from. In terms of this, new Chinese migrants have been part of the post-1996 reforms of Australia’s migration strategy and programs since the very beginning of this round of policy fine-tuning. The evidence to support the link of new Chinese migrants with Australia’s immigration policy changes dating back to the first half of 1990 has been analysed in my previous books (Gao 2013, 2015). Gerry Hand, the then Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, replaced Robert Ray as the Minister for Immigration. However, as a person from the left faction of the Labor Party, Hand disagreed with what was then called a blanket approach to the Chinese student issue, because of the number of the students, totalling about 45,000, and the low level of their qualifications. His argument was statistically correct by predicting that if the spouses and children of the 45,000 students were taken into consideration, together with the effects of chain migration, the total intake would increase to 300,000 by the turn of the century. However, Hand’s argument was politically hazardous for Labor’s ethnic support, to which more attention has undoubtedly been paid by Labor than the Liberals since the Liberal government formally endorsed and promoted multiculturalism in 1975 and accepted Indochinese refugees. As a result, after publicising his short-­ sighted calculation, Hand was dumped from the position in 1993 by the big-picture leader and newly elected prime minister, Paul Keating. Gerry Hand’s successor, Nick Bolkus, had done his own check without following long passed-down hearsay and stereotypes. His department carefully went through the profile of the students, and then realised that ‘we had within our shores some of the crème of young China’ (Bourke 2009, n.p.). Unlike the worry articulated by Gerry Hand, Nick Bolkus publicly praised the Chinese students as ‘an enormously highly talented group of people’ based on the new analysis (Banham 2003, n.p.). This is a very interesting case, as the same group of onshore Chinese residency

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applicants were seen so differently, and one conclusion that may be drawn from this is that there is a serious lack of basic understanding of present-­ day China and its people. At the time, this knowledge problem was so serious that it even applied to ministers at the federal level. What is more unfortunate is that such limited knowledge did not stop them from speaking publicly about the topic, and similar problems are still being repeated by the country’s ruling elites in the recent debate over China and Chinese migrants living in Australia. Leaving the knowledge issue aside, the Chinese student case in the early 1990s had two characteristics. At first it looked like a humanitarian issue, because a major political turmoil struck China while they were in Australia. On the other hand, the students also met almost every merit-based selection criterion for migration, if discounting their ethnicity. As pointed out, the student issue was an opportunity for Australian elites to understand that trained and skilled migrants from north-east Asia could be found. This was a learning process for Australia’s decision-makers and bureaucrats, and Labor’s errors helped the Liberals form a clear strategy for reform. According to Philip Ruddock, the new Minister for Immigration from March 1996, the family schemes in 1995–96 comprised around 70  per cent of the total annual migration intake, with skilled migration ‘barely an afterthought’ (Ruddock 2002, p. 14). A new policy focus was, therefore, placed on skilled migration, which was expected to closely align with the needs of the Australian labour market. In practice, its first step focused on the reduction of migrant intake under the family-reunion stream, although the new government claimed that the reform of migration policy would be guided by four major goals: Australia’s economic, social, environmental and humanitarian interests. Before forming a clear idea, as well as identifying applicable strategies about how to attract more skilled migration, the new government started changing the policy from the other end of implementation, which was to cut the family-reunion migrant intakes almost immediately after the 1996 federal election in order to ensure that ‘new immigrants are not a burden on society’ (Shah and Burke 2005, p.  2). This contentious approach was also accompanied by the restriction of new migrants’ access to welfare, strict border control, and the limitation of the role of the courts in migration litigation (Betts 2003). These measures were once called the Howard–Ruddock reforms, and they became very unpopular. In the award-winning book Borderline, former ABC journalist and presenter Peter Mares called Ruddock ‘the

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minister for misery’ in relation to Australia’s policies towards refugees and the cutbacks to the family-reunion intakes (Mares 2002, p. 100). Protests against tough migration reform measures that Ruddock’s department had introduced haunted him from Sydney to Melbourne, from the mid-1990s to the 2000s (Stratton 2011; Fiske 2016). However, the focus of Australia’s migration policy has indeed been reset. Figure 2.3 is from a report to the Australian Parliament, providing more details than Fig. 2.2. At the same time, the new government was also making efforts to find out where and how to recruit trained and skilled young people to come to Australia. This was the second key effort, the first being the reduction of family-reunion migrants, but this effort was made on the supply side, or constructive side, of migration reform. At that time, migration was becoming a fierce global competition, because more advanced economies started employing immigration as a demographic strategy to address socio-­ economic problems. Among the approaches used by Australia on the supply side of migration, one tactic could well be defined as a typical approach of hitting two birds with one stone. This refers to the policy measure of allowing foreign students to study in Australia first, and then apply for permanent residence. This has been closely observed and analysed by a New Zealand researcher, who defines this creative approach as a ‘two-step migration’, with the following details and comments: From 1998, a series of innovative immigration policies were introduced to retain international students as skilled migrants. The approach originated

Fig. 2.3  Annual migrant intake, 1983–2014. (Source: Based on Larsen (2013, p. 4))

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from the expectation that people who were trained locally would have fewer barriers to finding employment or would perform better in the local labor market (Birrell and Healy 2010; Hawthorne 2008). … [the policy] that had been put in place to bar international students from applying for permanent residence after study were removed. International students became immediately eligible for permanent migration after successfully completing their education in Australia (Chiou 2017, p. 88).

The researcher also praised the active role of Australia’s higher education sector in the process, but somehow made no mention of the funding cut by the Howard Coalition government. According to the then education minister, Labor’s Julia Gillard, the Howard-led government had cut public funding to universities by 4 per cent in the period from 1996 to 2004, while the OECD average increased by 49 per cent for tertiary education in the period (Grattan and Tomazin 2008). The Coalition government argued that they had provided universities with a deregulated international education market, and universities could make money from there. As for the new migration mechanism, Philip Ruddock believed that student migrants who were educated locally were ready for local jobs and had the required the language skills. Of course, it has been seen as a policy reflecting neoliberal ideas of free market and deregulation. From a critical point of view, this measure is not much different from the greedy act of ‘swiping one’s credit card twice’, or double-dipping of a different kind. However, it is fair to say that this approach achieved what it intended to accomplish. In another report to the Australian Parliament, the link between the overseas-student program and skilled migration was found to have resulted in a sudden and huge increase in overseas-student numbers; for example, ‘a 27 per cent increase in offshore student visa grants between 2001 and 2003’ (Spinks 2016, p. 9). In the early 2000s, Australia’s student migration strategy attracted attention internationally. Migration research publications at the time included many mentions of the uniqueness of Australia’s migration system and strategies, and a high proportion of them were about the link between the overseas-student program and the renewed point-based skilled-­ migration system. Throughout this transition period, the students from the PRC (the People’s Republic of China) were increasingly well represented. In 1994, only about 4500 PRC students were studying in Australia, about 6.5 per cent of the total number of full-fee-paying overseas students (Shu and Hawthorne 1996). In 2000, new arrivals from China alone

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reached 14,000, when Australia had only 153,400 international students in total (ABS 2002). Since 2001, the enrolments of PRC students in Australian universities ‘have grown more than twelve-fold’; subsequently, both constructive and critical attention have been given to the Chinese in Australia (Norton 2016, p. 24). Of course, other policies, apart from the profitable student-migration scheme, were also introduced, including schemes encouraging migrants to settle outside big cities (Shah and Burke 2005). After the transition described above, qualifications and skills became the first two criteria of Australia’s emerging migration selection tetralogy, resulting in the new immigration intake pattern shown in Figs. 2.2 and 2.3, which is also characterised by an increasing link with China. Concurrently, one clue has also emerged from the process: the effect of selective immigration policy measures on Australian politics. As a historical fact, these selective policies were devised to prevent poorly trained and barely skilled people from coming to Australia and becoming a burden on society, which were based on perceptions of Indochinese refugees and, to a lesser extent, the Chinese students. These intentions have, of course, been articulated from a positive position in terms of recruiting able and skilled people for Australia’s labour force. What many long-settled Australians have not clearly been aware of until recently is that there are, in fact, not only more Asians who could meet the new criteria, but also many Chinese from mainland China, who were not long ago regarded as aliens by many Australians. What is even more difficult to accept, however, is that recently many Chinese migrants have not only been able to meet Australia’s requirements for qualifications and skills, but have also satisfied the next two selection criteria: business experiences and investment capacities.

Utilitarian Use of Immigration Australians are largely relaxed with a laid-back attitude. So are politicians and other ruling elites. As pointed out recently by John Hewson, a former Liberal Opposition leader from 1990 to 1994, it has therefore been the eternal pattern of economic management in the country to wait for, and then seek to respond to, a crisis, rather than prepare for it. The elites are more interested in exploiting the short-term politics than real economic management. John Hewson believes that the style of this approach has often resulted in costly ‘policy drift’ (Hewson 2019, n.p.). However, his

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remarks are only partially correct. Management can be divided into three levels: economy, public policy and politics. Australian elites can perform very well in politics, such as leadership challenges or playing with whatever popular social or ideological issues they need to deal with. From time to time, they are also good at developing certain public policies. In the case of reforming the migration system, they have not only reset the policy, but have also made utilitarian use of various new schemes to compensate for bad economic management. Australia’s utilitarian use of its migration schemes refers to the inclusion of business experiences and investment capacity in its migration selection criteria. As the last two key components of the new immigration selection tetralogy, both business and investment capacity have been used as part of economic management, because Australian ruling elites seem to be more familiar with developing public policies than with running the economy. This strategic policy option has become more frequently used, after the previously discussed economic restructuring offered almost nothing valuable in ameliorating the country’s economic structure; the exception was the discovery of some emerging markets, including China, for the exporting of raw materials and primary products. As a result, Australia has become highly reliant on several export markets and migrants from related countries to support such an export-oriented economy. As noted, this tactic as an alternative public-policy option has somehow worked well for Australia, but a range of related problems have remained a major blind spot in the country’s understanding, or exposition, of its nation-building. Such a blind spot has become a breeding ground for adverse public sentiment, germinating a long-seeded bias against new migrants. According to Katherine Betts, a Melbourne-based immigration researcher, Australia had a business migration program before the Hawke-­ led Labor government, which was kept and expanded until it was renounced in 1991. After the 1996 federal election, the migration policy reform included the introduction of two business schemes: business visitors and long-stay business migrants. However, these schemes were just different names for guest workers, with no real entrepreneurs or business executives being recruited (Betts 2003). In 1997, these two schemes attracted approximately 25,000 migrants, increasing to around 68,600 in 2001. This increase included far more long-stay business migrants (56,000) than short-stay business visitors (12,600). Importantly, it was based on a different set of selection criteria, including regional and business-­sponsored employment visas. All these had been pressed by the

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growth lobby, demanding higher levels of immigration and population growth on economic grounds, and the number of migrants began to rise in 2000 (Betts and Gilding 2006). Before the innovation and investment visas, especially subclass 188 and subclass 888, were introduced in late 2012 (O’Brien 2013; ICF International 2016), significant policymaking efforts had been made to better engineer migration policies. This was in order to develop novel migration schemes for sustaining economic development, to compensate for the increasing uncertainty over improvements to the country’s economic structure that had been anticipated since the 1970s. A document from July 2017 compiled by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel (OPC), Australia’s national provider of legislative drafting and publishing services, records all ten visa categories,5 totalling 95 subclasses of visa, ranging from subclass 010 to subclass 995. Many of these visa subclasses were introduced as a result of policymaking efforts. As shown in Fig. 2.4, there were 282 efforts, in the form of regulations and amendments, by the Australian Government from 1994 to 2016 to adjust the country’s immigration policies and schemes in order to fully use immigration to supplement the labour force, and to attract more businesses and investments to the country (OPC 2017). Through such efforts, business experiences and investment ability were included in Australia’s merit-based migration system. 30 24

22 19

20 14

15 10 5 0

5

7

9

13

12 9

12 12

14

12 9

7

13 9

10

14

15 12

9

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Number of regulations

25

Fig. 2.4  Number of regulations introduced to improve immigration policies, 1994–2016. (Source: Based on data from OPC (2017))

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In addition to Fig.  2.4 evidencing Australia’s overall policymaking efforts, note 5 of this chapter provides a brief analysis from a different position to reveal where the focus of immigration policies is and how different visa subclasses have been used to achieve the new policy objectives. Additionally, it is worth noting that the above policymaking efforts were accompanied by another key legislative effort to regulate the conduct of registered migration agents, through the Migration Agents Regulations 1998 (OPC 2018). Generally, these regulations have been regarded as a set of measures and guidelines for an emerging migration industry in Australia, since more people who are unable to find job opportunities in conventional sectors have turned to the migration sector. The regulations could be considered the policy mechanism to mobilise support for a fuller utilisation of the migration schemes in improving the economy. This is crucial because more and more migrants are coming from non-Anglo-­ Celtic countries; many Australians in the late 1990s and 2000s were little acquainted with these cultures, and so felt some concern over the unknown. However, the old challenge of ‘populate or perish’ has become more pressing in recent years, as economic restructuring has resulted in the shrinking of industrial employment and a growing dependence on exports to emerging economies in Asia and on population growth for domestic economic development. Just as in the past the Australian economy was seen to be riding on the sheep’s back, and it is increasingly now on the people’s backs, including tourists, foreign students and migrants. Commercially active and experienced, if not talented, Chinese came to the attention of Australia’s political leaders before John Howard’s first official visit as prime minister to China in late March 1997. His decision to visit China was made when Australia–China had worsened because of a number of diplomatic moves by his government in 1996, such as official contacts with Taiwan and Howard’s meeting with the Dalai Lama (Seneviratne 1997), but a surprising 25  per cent increase of exports to China in 1996 altered Howard’s strategic thinking. He made use of a Chinese New Year gathering in Sydney to honour the contributions that Chinese Australians have made to the building of modem Australia, with their flair for entrepreneurial expertise and professional skills (Howard 1996). Just like Paul Keating’s thinking in 1993 when deciding how to resolve the Chinese student issue, part of Howard’s ‘big-picture’ strategy was also to tie Australia to the economic growth and strength of China (Catley 1996; Watson 2002). Howard’s official trip to China also made him and

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his colleagues realise that it is the responsibility of any Australian government to advance relations with China in Australia’s national interest. Success, in the eyes of Howard, ‘lies in fostering the economic, the cultural and the other links that now exist between Australia and not only China but the Chinese diasporas’ (Howard 1996, n.p.). In fact, though he has not been seen as an Asian-friendly politician thanks to his stance on restricting Asian immigration in the 1980s, Howard was among the first Australian public figures who publicly praised the special role of Chinese Australians in Australia’s nation-building. But, as shown below, it appears considered from a utilitarian standpoint. One of the many contributions that Australians of Asian, especially Chinese, descent make to the modern Australia are the links that they provide with the countries often of their birth and certainly of their family association. I’ve lost count of the number of Australians of Chinese descent who over the last couple of years have provided me with valuable insight into the culture and the politics and the attitude of countries within our region (Howard 1996, n.p.).

Howard’s new strategic thinking, as well as Keating’s big picture, was once interpreted as a strategy of connecting Australia closely with the fast-­ growing economies of Asia, which led to disagreement in Australian politics, but helped lay a strategic foundation for attracting and recruiting more Chinese migrants to Australia, through which Australia’s economy has been linked with China’s economy. There has been considerable controversy in Australia in recent years over the misuse of subclass 457 visas, accused of letting temporary migrants take Australian jobs and ‘failing to take labour market testing’ (Stiles 2017, n.p.). The controversy made subclass 457 a famous visa category, but the users from China are not the largest group, taking up only 5.8 per cent of the total in the 2015/16 financial year (Karp 2018). This was partially because of the need to obtain a local nomination when applying for this subclass of visa. Therefore, a large number of Chinese migrants have relied on visa subclasses related to business skills and investment. Among related schemes, subclass 163 visas and others listed in Table 2.2, which were created in 2002 and 2003 after experimenting with the student-migration scheme, and subclasses 188 and 888 that were introduced in 2012 to replace subclass 163, have been the key channels used by those who are unable to satisfy the criteria of points-tested, skilled independent

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Table 2.2 Business skills (provisional) visas, subclasses 160–165

Visa category

Business skills

Subclass 160 Subclass 161 Subclass 162 Subclass 163

Business owner Senior executive Investor State-/Territory-sponsored business owner State-/Territory-sponsored senior executive State-/Territory-sponsored investor

Subclass 164 Subclass 165

Source: DHA (2018a, n.p.)

migration. While a large number of students from China stay through subclass 189 or subclasses 190 and 489 visas if their agents can obtain local nomination quotas, subclasses 163, 188 and 888 show how migration mechanisms have been shrewdly and pragmatically used in Australia for attracting business talent and investment. Subclass 163 was a typical scheme that was flexible and business-­ oriented, in terms of no qualification requirement and open to anyone younger than 55 years of age. Its aims were to attract commercially active people from foreign countries, mostly from China, who would bring skills and connections. The criteria also included that they should have an ownership interest in a main business that ‘had an annual turnover of at least AUD300,000’ for two years and had ‘at least AUD500,000 that is available’ for doing business in Australia (OPC 2017, p. 141). Table 2.2 shows that to fully utilise the policy, a few other options were also available to people with business skills. Chinese subclass 163 visa holders were very active in the Chinese community in Australia for several reasons. They were financially active, while also needing help from some English-­ speaking fellow country people. They even formed their own association, called the ‘163 Club’, which still survives today, although the scheme was replaced by subclasses 188 and 888, and many 163 visa holders and holders of other related visas shown in Table 2.2 have been granted permanent residency in Australia. As will be analysed in Chap. 3, these subclass 163 visa holders once made a big impact on not only Chinese communities, but also on many people’s understanding of Chinese activism in Australia (Jakubowicz 2017; Laurenceson 2018; Gao 2018). Their frequent activities and avid desire to be associated with Anglo-Celtic elites have become an undeniable source of misunderstanding of their motives.

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Table 2.2 also reveals another migration policy reform measure, which is the inclusion of the inventive and flexible use of federal–state government relations in the migration system. Since the late 1990s, some state governments in Australia have been given more opportunities and power to be involved in migration decision-making and actual operations. Similar to what has happened in China’s reform process over recent decades, a decentralised approach and flexible central–local relations can mobilise and encourage lower-level bureaucracies to make decisions according to their economic conditions and to execute them more effectively (Gao and Su 2019). Of course, this may increase the likelihood of making inappropriate decisions or abusing the system. This structural change in the new migration decision-making has been overlooked by some critics in the recent debate over China’s influence in Australia. Leaving judgement aside, local government–sponsored, business migration schemes have indeed benefited local economic development, and Chinese migrants have been well represented in many such schemes. In fact, by the end of the 1990s, around 80 per cent of business migrants were of Chinese origin (Jordens 2001). This strong trend has continued; for example, in the mid-­2000s, as many as 84 per cent of sponsored business migrants in the state of Victoria were from China (Deng 2014). There are also several types of migrants who are usually called tuhao (rustic rich or new rich) migrants in the Chinese community. They have been attracted to Australia through subclasses 188, 132, and 888 visas. As noted, subclasses 188 and 888 visas are well known in the community, and they are officially called Business Innovation and Investment visas, while subclass 132 visas are called Business Talent visas, which need a Significant Business History (ICF International 2016; OPC 2017). By the 2018 standards, the aspirants for subclass 188 visas are required ‘to invest AUD1.5 million into an Australian state or territory’ (DHA 2018a, n.p.) or invest AUD5 million to be listed under Significant Investor Stream, or invest AUD15 million under Premium Investor Stream. The differences among these subclasses are that subclass 188 is a temporary visa and its holders can apply for permanent visas after two to four years either through subclass 888 or other permanent visas. All these are favoured by the story-­ hungry media, which have named all of them the SIV (significant investor visa) program or the golden ticket visa. As indicated below, wealthy migrants from China are believed to be the target of these new migration schemes:

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The SIV program is open to all nationalities but is targeted towards Chinese investors—the visa number 888 (eight is auspicious in Chinese culture) is designed to attract Chinese interest—and is used overwhelmingly by that nationality. About 87% of SIVs granted since the scheme was launched by the Gillard government in 2012 have been to Chinese nationals (Doherty 2018, n.p.).

Such media reports are very confusing for many Australians as not long ago, the media kept reiterating that China is a poverty-stricken country with a backward economy. Such confusions have persisted through the decades, while Chinese communities have transformed almost beyond recognition.

The Community Reformed by the New Tetralogy Australia’s new immigration selection tetralogy has been invented, executed and repeatedly amended to deal with the challenges from two major fronts: the industry’s demand for skilled workers, and restrictive immigration policies required by union and other grassroots activists, who have hoped to set certain protective barriers against their potential competitors. However, just like what had happened in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, various ostensibly restrictive immigration legislations were made one after another in Australia, which satisfied the demands made upon ruling elites, and calmed many local people down, while more ‘liberal immigration outcomes’ have been achieved as a result of effective manoeuvres (Delaet 2000, p. 104). Successive governments have been blamed for being guided by a culture of control (Cronin 1993; Jupp 2007), and both Labor and Liberal governments have competed with each other to show their toughness in dealing with difficult immigration matters, from onshore mandatory detention of unlawful arrivals to the so-called Pacific solution.6 All these bold efforts, or inhuman approaches by humanitarian standards, have been helped by numerous legislative changes. Sophisticated new laws and policies have satisfied many ordinary Australians, who could only realise after a few years that the new laws and policies have enabled the governments to operate more sophisticated migration schemes than before, attracting new migrants, including many Chinese, and imposing more challenges to early settled Australians than before.

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Although the Chinese migrant community, in general, is seen to have greatly benefited from the pro-migration political choices adopted by the two main political parties in Australia, the Labor and Liberal, new Chinese migrants are often left alone in the heated public debates about immigration policies. This is because such debates in Australia are often rather damaging to the party’s re-election chances. In the recent decades, both major political parties have been using immigration and trade policies to sustain Australia’s economic development, but they want to present themselves to their electorates in the best possible manner rather than revealing too much of their practical lifeline of governance, which is to rely on immigration and trade to maintain economic development. In fact, they have opted to pay less attention to family-reunion and humanitarian migration programs, focusing primarily on trained and skilled migrants, and then on those with business experiences and the financial means to invest. The latter sounds greedy, but it is cunningly phrased to shift the focus towards ‘demand driven’ independent skilled migration and away from ‘supply driven’ sponsored migrants (Spinks 2010, p. 4). Many people did not fully understand the real implication of this policy change until they saw new migrant business operators and affluent migrant families everywhere with their own eyes. All these unpopular changes have been attributed to new migrants by some shallow-thinking local commentators while both political parties hide away from the spotlight. This is a simplified version of what has actually happened to many Chinese migrants in Australia, when the ethnic Chinese population in the country has changed drastically as a result of the new immigration selection tetralogy. First, this is a comparatively young community with more than 1.2 million people claiming Chinese origin, and the median age is only 33 years (ABS 2018). This median age is two years younger than in 2011 (DIAC 2011), and five years younger than the median age of the total Australian population (DHA 2018b). According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 41  per cent of people claiming Chinese origin were born in China, compared to those who were born in Australian (25 per cent) or Malaysia (8 per cent), and 46 per cent of them also claim to be Mandarin speakers. It is also worth noting that in 2011, the ethnic Chinese population only accounted for 4.5 per cent of the total Australian population, but increased to 5.6 per cent in 2016. Since then, Australian residents born in China have been considered the largest group of migrants, accounting for 15.8 per cent of total arrivals (Walsh et al. 2018), achieving an increase of 59.8 per cent from 2011 to 2016 (DHA 2018a). According to George

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Megalogenis, an Australian political analyst and author, the 25 millionth person in Australia is most likely a young Chinese female student or skilled worker (Walsh et al. 2018). As discussed in the second section of this chapter, the Chinese population in Australia has been young largely because of the long-used student-­ migration strategy. The Howard-led government’s effort in the late 1990s and early 2000s, to effectively transform the international education sector into a very large income-generating industry in the Australian economy, has never been relaxed since then. In the early 2000s, Australia became worried about its dependence on the Chinese market, and made a series of tactical efforts to diversify its supplies of foreign students and migrants. Its hope was placed on India, but this ended with a string of violent attacks against Indian students in Australia from 2007 to 2010 (Waters and MacBean 2009; Ziguras and McBurnie 2015). Anti-Chinese sentiment also resurfaced in Australia at the time due to many Chinese students’ over-enthusiastic responses to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing (Gao et  al. 2017). Though the dependence on Chinese students is not ideal, economic benefits have prevented decision-makers in Australia from cutting off China’s market or reducing the number of Chinese students coming to Australia. Table 2.3 is based on figures from Austrade (the Australian Trade and Investment Commission) from 2005 to 2013, showing that Chinese students are still welcomed. Table 2.3  Percentage of Chinese students in Australia’s total foreign student population, 2005–13 Year

Total foreign students in Australia

Percentage that are Chinese, incl. HK (%)

The second largest country, India (%)

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

344,815 383,818 455,185 543,898 631,935 619,119 557,425 515,853 526,932

29.7 28.9 27.9 26.7 26.3 28.0 28.7 29.6 28.9

8.0 10.2 13.9 17.8 19.1 16.2 13.1 10.5 9.3

Source: Austrade (2015, n.p.)

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International education has been one of Australia’s top three export earners since the late 1990s, during which time China has been ‘the largest nation contributor to the international student population in Australia’ (ABS 2011, p. 4). As shown in Table 2.3, the share of Chinese students in the past decade has been approximately 30 per cent (ACPET 2014, p. ii), and although India was expected to be another main source of foreign students in Australia, its share in the market remained considerably smaller than China’s. Overall, a couple of million young Chinese have been attracted to Australian education institutions, and a proportion of them have stayed under the new merit-based selective migration schemes. This demographic provides an explanation of why the Chinese migrant community has become increasingly active in not only business activities, but also social, cultural and even political spheres in Australia, which has triggered a plethora of speculation as to whether they are guided by China and even whether they have acted on behalf of the Chinese state. Second, as hinted, Chinese migrants are now mostly from the Chinese mainland, which is shown in Fig. 1.2. Based on data from Fig. 1.2 and the ABS (2018), students’ regions of origin are as follows: the Chinese mainland (41 per cent), Australia (25 per cent), Malaysia (8 per cent), and Hong Kong (6.5 per cent) (ABS 2018). This has led some Australian critics to make outdated assumptions about China and its people. It was not long ago when many Chinese migrants from Hong Kong or South-East Asia were often suspected of links with the Triad, an old criminal organisation in some Chinese societies. Since the early 1990s, people who read something about Chinese politics and geopolitics have jumped onto the front stage of the public debate over China–Australia relations, leading the country to think about present-day China–Australia relations according to the textbooks they read. As will be analysed later, this has been an intellectual challenge to the analysis of not only the relations between Australia and China, but also the links between new Chinese migrants, the Chinese state and Australian politics. Third, more Chinese migrants have become better educated and qualified in comparison with portions of the Australian population. It has apparently resulted from two factors: Australia’s merit-based migration selection measures, and the cultural influence of China’s long-practiced imperial examination and official-selection system, called keju in Chinese. In the 1980s, when the average proportion of Australians with tertiary qualifications rose to about 5.4 per cent, the level of the ethnic Chinese population with tertiary qualifications was at least two times higher than

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the national average: 13  per cent by the first generation of immigrants, 16.4 per cent by the second generation, and 10 per cent by the third generation (Kee 1992). The Chinese community has changed significantly since then. The 2011 Census recorded that approximately 38 per cent of Chinese Australians held tertiary qualifications, while the national average was 14.3  per cent. Five years later, the national average had risen to 16.1 per cent, but the proportion of the Chinese community had climbed up to more than 43 per cent (ABS 2018). Moreover, their high level of qualification has partially been reflected in their new job opportunities and patterns in Australia. Figure  2.5 shows that in 2016, China-born Australians were more likely to hold white-collar jobs. The fact that more China-born migrants are held white-collar jobs has been a very encouraging outcome, proving that the merit-based migration system works well for Australia and functions in a cross-cultural context. However, such outcomes have unfortunately been considered differently by some who view the changes as unfavourable. While some Australians

Fig. 2.5 Employment of China-born Australians, 2016. (Source: ABS (2018, p. 6))

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simply feel discontented and even upset, exemplified by what Pauline Hanson described as being ‘swamped by Asians’ (Hanson 1996, n.p.), other people are equipped with more concepts and theories and believe that China is infiltrating Australia (Borys 2018; Callick 2018). Such a belief is very damaging to new migrants, alienating them through limiting their integration into certain levels and sections in Australian society. There are more fundamental moral or human rights problems in that analysis than the geopolitical excuses that have used can account for. Importantly, the positive outcomes of the merit-based migration system have been publicly challenged by some disgruntled members of Australian society, which is of not only theoretical and practical significance, but also has international implications. Fourth, as mentioned earlier, the Chinese Australian community as a whole is financially better off, if not affluent, than previous generations, making it possible to set up and run more types of community-based businesses than it was. Apart from what was already examined in the third section of this chapter, a reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald investigated what he called ‘millionaire migrants’, who have been attracted to Australia in recent years (Bagshaw 2018). The report revealed that Australia had 7260 millionaire migrants in the 2017/18 financial year, 5781 in 2016/17 and 6484 in 2014/15. Although the figure for 2015/16 is not yet available, a parliamentary report documents that 6150 visas were granted in 2013/14 to the applicants of the Business Innovation and Investment program (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2015, p. 20). Among the sending countries of these millionaire migrants, ‘China accounted for 90  per cent of all high-net worth investors coming to Australia’, and investors from the Chinese mainland have become ‘Australia’s largest source of millionaire migrants’ in recent years (Bagshaw 2018, n.p.). Tens of billions of investment dollars have been poured into Australia, making it ‘the No. 1 destination for the world’s millionaire migrants’ (Pash 2017, n.p.). Just recently, while calls for reducing immigration are growing across Europe and the United States, Bloomberg Business published a report with a striking heading: ‘The secret to Australia avoiding recession: Mass immigration’. Apart from the eye-catching front page, the report also mentions the following key message to some recession-threatened countries, emphasising both the benefit and the risks of Australia’s migration policy:

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A flood of arrivals that’s swelled the population by 50 percent over the past three decades has underpinned economic growth and allowed a succession of governments to boast of avoiding recession since 1991 … Introducing such curbs in Australia, which has one of the fastest-growing populations in the developed world, could derail economic growth (Scott and Heath 2018, n.p.).

At this point, several dilemmas that have emerged in the process of developing and applying the new immigration selection tetralogy need to be mentioned, and the most noticeable one is the prominence of Chinese migration throughout Australia’s post-multicultural migration history. Figure 2.6 shows increasing Asian migrants coming to Australia, and the Chinese have been prominent. Another major dilemma seems to be that the preferred Chinese migrants according to more progressive Australian decision-makers are rather different from what is expected by many Australians. As revealed, many new Chinese migrants have been selected according to not only educational

Fig. 2.6  East Asian sources of migrants since 1991. (Source: Australian Census Stats (2012, n.p.))

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qualifications and skills, but also business experiences and investment capacity, the two more recently added measures. These policies calmed many people down when they were first implemented, but there is a clear lack of understanding among many Australians, including decision-­makers, regarding the long-term socio-economic and -political consequences of the migration selection criteria. Now, more Australians accept the reality of having more immigrants, including those from China, but many of them are not truly ready for such a big number of white-collar professionals, business owners and executives, and wealthy entrepreneurs from Asian countries, especially from countries that give them feelings of unease or fear. In other words, though it is creatively designed to maintain economic expansion, Australia’s migration selection tetralogy has also put certain types of new migrants on a collision course with some earlier settled Australians. Such tension has gradually evolved into a new but politicised component of current-day Australian politics. Of course, it is not likely that a modern society like Australia can recruit able new migrants without allowing them to climb the social ladder, no matter whether they are able to achieve upward social mobility in the end. As will be examined in the next few chapters, many issues that have emerged in Australia recently are caused, directly or indirectly, by such tension. Unlike the simpler responses represented by Pauline Hanson, middle-class and upper-middle-class Australians have joined the debate this time, making the debate conceptually complex, and therefore being very misleading and damaging.

Notes 1. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) has won 14 out of 45 House of Representatives elections throughout the history of Australia’s federation since 1901, and its longest-serving prime minister was Bob Hawke, who held the position for nearly nine years from 1983 to 1991 (Barber and Johnson 2014). Bob Hawke was then replaced by Paul Keating at the end of 1991, and the Labor under Paul Keating won the 1993 election. Therefore, the so-called 13 years of Labor rule were actually comprised of two historical periods: the Hawke-led Labor government, and the Keating-­ led Labor government. In March 1996, The Liberal–National Party Coalition led by John Howard won the 1996 election and the Liberal Party returned to power after 13 years in Opposition. The Howard-led Coalition government were in power for 11 years until their electoral defeat to Kevin Rudd in 2007. In addition to Barber and Johnson (2014), interested r­ eaders

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are referred to Keating (2000), Markus (2001b), McPhail (2007), Kelly (2008, 2010) and Evans (2014). 2. Philip Ruddock was a Liberal member of the House of Representative from 1973 to 2016, the second-longest-serving parliamentarian in the history of the Australian Parliament. During the 11 years of the Howard-led Liberal– National Coalition government, Ruddock served continuously in federal Cabinet, and as the Minister for Immigration from 1996 to 2003. He is worth noting for at least two reasons. First, over the course of the Chinese-­ student protection issue of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Labor Hawke and Keating governments had three ministers for immigration: Robert Ray (September 1988 to April 1990), Gerry Hand (April 1990 to March 1993), and Nick Bolkus (March 1993 to March 1996). Ruddock served as the Opposition spokesperson for immigration at the time, and he was deeply involved in dealing with the student protection issue from the Opposition side. Second, Ruddock served as Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs from 1996 to 2003, during which Australia had made a series of major changes to its immigration policies. His speeches and writing are worth studying. For more information about Ruddock, readers are referred to Mares (2002), as well as Jupp (2007) and Marr and Wilkinson (2003). 3. John Maynard Keynes was a British economist who was born in 1883, but his macro-economic ideas, which are often called Keynesian economics or Keynesianism, were mainly used shortly before and after World War II. The 1970s saw a decline of the influence of his economic theories, but his critics focused very heavily on his ideas about the ability and role of government in regulating economic activities and cycles. One of his many publications is The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936, which is widely believed to be a theoretical justification for interventionalist policy approaches. Interested readers can read more about John Keynes in Blaug (1990) and Davenport-Hines (2015), or about his theoretical influence on the debate about Australia’s economic policies in Meredith and Dyster (1999), and Bell and Keating (2018). 4. After Howard, Australia had a period of ‘revolving-door leadership’ (Judd 2018) or ‘revolving-door prime ministers’ (Coorey 2018). Kevin Rudd led the Labor Party to a landslide victory in November 2007, but he was replaced by his deputy Julia Gillard in a leadership spill in June 2010. Julia Gillard won the election in August 2010, and she was then replaced by Kevin Rudd in June 2013 shortly before the 2013 election. Tony Abbott led the Liberal–National Coalition to a federal election victory in September 2013, but he was also challenged in a leadership spill and was replaced by Malcolm Turnbull in September 2015. Malcolm Turnbull led the Coalition to an election victory in July 2016, but he was replaced by Scott Morrison in August 2018. These are seen as Australia’s political drama or a leadership

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drought, and have turned attention away from key issues of socio-economic life of the nation. Interested readers can read more about Australia’s decade-­ long federal leadership challenges and instability of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd-­ Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison era in Weller (2014), Cooney (2015), Errington and Onselen (2016), Ferguson and Drum (2016), and Freeman (2017). 5. The ten visa categories that are currently in use in Australia, which could help readers understand the focus of immigration policies, are as follows: nine subclasses from subclass 010 to subclass 070 for various bridging visa needs; 27 subclasses from subclass 100 to subclass 190 for a very wide range of migrants, especially for business talent, business owner and investor; five subclasses from subclass 200 to subclass 204 for refugees and humanitarian cases; two subclasses for subclass 300 and subclass 309 for prospective marriage and partner; 16 subclasses from subclass 400 to subclass 489 for attracting short-term workers, specialists and investors; two subclasses from subclass 500 and subclass 590 for foreign students and their guardians; five subclasses from subclass 600 to subclass 676 for many visitors including tourists; five subclasses from subclass 771 to subclass 790 for transit and temporary protection; 22 subclasses from subclass 800 to subclass 893 from a mixed group of migrants. The last several subclasses are for investors and business owners; and two subclasses from subclass 988 and subclass 995 are for maritime crew and diplomates (OPC 2017). 6. Australia’s mandatory detention policy of detaining unlawful arrivals was introduced in 1992 when Gerry Hand was the minister for immigration. At the time, the Labor government had learned its lesson from a large group of onshore Chinese students–turned–asylum seekers, and decided to send out a clear signal that permanent residency in Australia may not be obtained by simply arriving in this country and expecting to be given a chance to stay permanently. The policy was revised but endorsed by subsequent Liberal and Labor governments. The Pacific solution was introduced in September 2001 after the Howard government refused permission for the Norwegian container ship MV Tampa, carrying more than 430 rescued asylum seekers, to enter Australian waters in August 2001. The key point of the solution is to send asylum seekers to Nauru, and at the same time many Australian islands were excluded from Australia’s migration zone. The policy was criticised by the Rudd Labor government (2007–2010), resulting in resurgence of boat arrivals from 2008 to 2009, which partially contributed to the downfall of the first Rudd government in June 2010. The succeeding Gillard-led Labor government introduced a similar policy in 2012. For more information about both Australia’s mandatory detention policy and the Pacific solution, see Errington and Onselen (2007), Jupp (2007), Weller (2014), Cooney (2015) and Fiske (2016).

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Hugo, G. (2012). ‘Population flows between South Australia and Asia’. In J. Spoehr and P. Jain (eds.), The Engaging State: South Australia’s Engagement with the Asia Pacific Region (pp. 20–44). Adelaide: Wakefield Press. ICF International (2016). Volume II: Admission of Migrant Entrepreneurs. https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/ policies/legal_migration/volume_ii_-_admission_of_migrant_entrepreneurs_ en.pdf. Accessed 18 January 2019. Jakubowicz, A. (2017). ‘Ethnic religious communities may be the ‘No’ campaign’s secret weapon in same-sex marriage fight’, The Conversation, 24 August 2017. https://theconversation.com/ethnic-religious-communities-may-be-the-nocampaigns-secretweapon-in-same-sex-marriage-fight-82429. Accessed 18 January 2019. Joint Standing Committee on Migration (2015). Report of the Inquiry into the Business Innovation and Investment Programme. www.aph.gov.au/ Parliamentar y_Business/Committees/Joint/Migration/BIIP/Report. Accessed 18 January 2019. Jordens, A.  M. (2001). ‘Post-war no-British migration’. In J.  Jupp (ed.), The Australian People (pp. 65–70). Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Judd, B. (2018). ‘Australia-New Zealand rivalry heats up as former PM John Key roasts revolving-door leadership’, ABC News, 13 September 2018. www.abc. net.au/news/2018-09-13/former-nz-pm-john-key-roasts-australia-revolvingdoor-leadership/10241782. Accessed 8 January 2019. Jupp, J. (1995). ‘From “White Australia” to “Part of Asia”: Recent shifts in Australian immigration policy towards the region’, International Migration Review, 29(1): 207–228. Jupp, J. (2007). From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Karp, P. (2018). ‘Kevin Rudd accuses Turnbull government of “anti-Chinese jihad”’, The Guardian, 12 February 2018, www.theguardian.com/australianews/2018/feb/12/kevin-rudd-accuses-turnbull-government-of-anti-chinese-jihad. Accessed 28 November 2018. Keating, P. (2000). Engagement: Australia Faces the Asia-Pacific. Sydney: Macmillan. Kee, P. (1992). ‘The Chinese in Australia: A brief historical overview and contemporary assessment’. In Chinese Association of Victoria (ed.), Chinese Association of Victoria: 1982–1992 (pp. 56–67). Melbourne: The Chinese Association of Victoria Inc. Kelly, P. (2008). The Hawke Ascendancy: A Definitive Account of Its Origins and Climax 1975–1983. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Kelly, P. (2010). The March of Patriots: The Struggle for Modern Australia. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

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Koslowski, R. (2018). ‘Shifts in selective migration policy models: A comparison of Australia, Canada and the US’. In M. Czaike (ed.), High-Skilled Migration: Driers and Politics (pp. 108–129). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Larsen, G. (2013). ‘Family migration to Australia’, Research Paper Series, 2013–14, Parliament of Australia. https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/ librar y/prspub/2931915/upload_binar y/2931915.pdf;fileType= application/pdf. Accessed 8 January 2019. Laurenceson, J. (2018). Do the Claims Stack Up? Australia Talks China. Sydney: ACRI (Australia-China Relations Institute), UTS (University of Technology Sydney), www.australiachinarelations.org/sites/default/files/20181029%20 Australia-China%20Relations%20Institute%20report%20-%20Australia%20 talks%20China%20-%20James%20Laurenceson.pdf. Accessed 18 January 2019. Leigh, A. (2002). ‘Trade liberalism and the Australian Labor Party’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 48(4): 487–508. Mares, P. (2002). Borderline: Australia’s Response to Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the Wake of the Tampa. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Markus, A. (2001b). Race: John Howard and the Remaking of Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Marr, D. and M. Wilkinson (2003). Dark Victory: How a Government Lied its Way to Political Triumph. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Massy, C. (2011). Breaking the Sheep’s Back: The Shocking True Story of the Decline and Fall of the Australian Wool Industry. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press. McPhail, A. (2007). John Howard’s Leadership of Australian Foreign Policy 1996 to 2004: East Timer and the War against Iraq. PhD thesis, Griffith University. Meredith, D. and B. Dyster (1999). Australia in the Global Economy: Continuity and Change. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Norton, A. (2016). Mapping Australian Higher Education 2016. https://grattan. edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/875-Mapping-Australian-HigherEducation-2016.pdf. Accessed 28 February 2019. O’Brien, J. (2013). ‘Australian investment opportunities’, www.sinocleantech. com/pdf%20files/articles/English/1310-John%20O%27Brien-Australian%20 Investment%20Opportunities.pdf. Accessed 18 January 2019. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) (2001). Innovations in Labour Market Policies: The Australian Way. Paris: OECD. OPC (Office of Parliamentary Counsel) (2017). Migration Regulations 1994, Compilation No. 185. www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2017C00582. Accessed 18 January 2019. OPC (2018). Migration Agents Regulations 1998, Compilation No. 25. www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2018C00013. Accessed 18 January 2019.

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Pash, C. (2017). ‘Australia is now the No. 1 destination for the world’s millionaire migrants’, Business Insider, 28 February 2017, www.businessinsider.com.au/ australia-is-now-the-no-1-destination-for-the-worlds-millionair emigrants-2017-2. Accessed 18 January 2019. Philipatos, A. (2012). Back to the bad old days? Industrial relations reform in Australia. Sydney: Centre for Independent Studies. Pincus, J. (2001). ‘Liberalism and Australia’s economic and industrial development’. In J.  Nethercote (ed.), Liberalism and the Australian Federation (pp. 245–266). Sydney: Federation Press. Productivity Commission (2003). Trends in Australia Manufacturing. Melbourne: Productivity Commission. Roskam, J. (2013). ‘An Australian ruling class?’, Institute of Public Affairs Review, 65(2): 36–39. Ruddock, P. (2002). ‘Australian immigration: Gasping the new reality’. In M. Crook and K. Lyon (eds.), Nation Skilling: Migration, Labour and the Law in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States (pp.  12–17), Annandale: Desert Pea Press. Scott, J. and M. Heath (2018). ‘The secret to Australia avoiding recession: Mass immigration’, Bloomberg Business, 13 March 2018, www.bloomberg.com/ news/articles/2018-03-12/the-secret-to-avoiding-recession-in-australiamass-immigration. Accessed 8 January 2019. Senate Hansard (The Senate of Australian Federal Parliament) (1996). Questions without Notice, 9 October 1996. https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/ search/display/display.w3p;query=(Dataset:weblastweek,hansardr,noticer,web thisweek,dailyp,votes,journals,orderofbusiness,hansards,notices,websds)%20 ParliamentNumber:%2238%22%20Responder_Phrase:%22senator%20 short%22;rec=9. Accessed 8 January 2019. Seneviratne, K. (1997). ‘Australia-China: Rights take back seats to trade at the Howard visit’, www.ipsnews.net/1997/03/australia-china-rights-take-backseat-to-trade-at-howard-visit/. Accessed 18 January 2019. Shah, C. and G. Burke (2005). Skilled Migration: Australia. Monash University ACER, Working Paper No. 63, www.monash.edu/education/non-cms/centres/ceet/docs/workingpapers/wp63dec05shah.pdf. Accessed 8 January 2019. Shu, J., and L.  Hawthorne (1996). ‘Asian student migration to Australia’, International Migration, 34(1): 65–95. Spinks, H. (2010). Australia’s Migration Program. Parliament of Australia. www. aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_ Library/pubs/BN/1011/AustMigration. Accessed 18 January 2019. Spinks, H. (2016). ‘Overseas students: Immigration policy changes 1997–2015’, Research Paper Series, 2015–16, Parliament of Australia. https://parlinfo.aph. g o v. a u / p a r l I n f o / d o w n l o a d / l i b r a r y / p r s p u b / 4 3 9 0 2 6 5 / u p l o a d _ binary/4390265.pdf;fileType=application/pdf. Accessed 8 January 2019.

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Stiles, J. (2017). ‘Government’s 457 visa crackdown “misses the core problem”’, The New Daily, 18 April 2017. https://thenewdaily.com.au/money/ work/2017/04/18/457-visa-crackdown/. Accessed 18 January 2019. Stratton, J. (2011). Uncertain lives: Culture, Race and Neoliberalism in Australia. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Walsh, M., S. Mantesso, B. Xiao, and B. O’Connor (2018). ‘Australia’s population hit 25 million, newest resident likely to be young, female and Chinese’, ABC News, 7 August 2018, www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-07/australia-population-hits-25-million/10077100. Accessed 18 January 2019. Warby, M. (1994). From There to Back Again? Australian Inflation and Unemployment 1964 to 1993. Background Paper No. 9, 1994. Canberra: Parliamentary Research Service. Waters, J., and N. MacBean (2009). ‘Anger grows over Indian students bashings’, ABC News, 29 May 2009. www.abc.net.au/news/2009-05-29/anger-growsover-indian-student-bashings/1697904. Accessed 18 January 2019. Watson, D. (2002). Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM. Sydney: Knopf. Weller, P. (2014). Kevin Rudd: Twice Prime Minister. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Ziguras, C. and G. McBurnie (2015). Governing Cross border Higher Education. Abingdon: Routledge.

CHAPTER 3

Chinese Entrepreneurialism and Australia’s China-dependent Economy

This chapter looks at the economic reasons why there are so many Chinese Australians who have fervently involved themselves in a wide range of China-related businesses, and how their active involvement in such business activities has been misread by some Australian critics as part of China’s influence on Australia’s economy and politics. As outlined in Chap. 1, this discussion is about entrepreneurial activities undertaken by Chinese migrants in Australia over the past three or so decades, and the process of how Australia has now become the most China-reliant economy in the developed world. Importantly, these changes have recently caused the resurgence of Sinophobia in Australia, aggravating Australia’s periodic anxiety about China’s threat and its long and deep-rooted resentment towards the Chinese migrants, old and new. It is fair to say that many struggling Australians might be better able to understand and appreciate how difficult it is for new migrants to find a stable job and earn a living in Australia’s domestic job market, and the need to be entrepreneurial in order to survive well in their host country, than Australians who are well positioned and connected. The privileged socio-economic position of the latter group, like in other societies, has usually resulted in a very different standpoint on their country’s economic structure and its current situation. It is also often that many well-­positioned and well-connected people pay less attention, if any, to the operational issues of their country’s economy because they are well protected from troubles. Therefore, they are more concerned with various non-economic © The Author(s) 2020 J. Gao, Chinese Immigration and Australian Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5909-9_3

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issues in terms of sustaining daily life, such as political inclination and loyalty or values, than with the state of the economy. They might have never fully understood the suffering that many new migrants have endured. Because of this, this chapter is, in part, aimed at drawing attention of politically minded critics to more fundamental aspects of people’s lives and the economic conditions in which people work and live than some less essential aspects. This discussion will allow geopolitically oriented critics to observe and consider the situation from the position of ordinary people and their daily lives, not just from a theoretical standpoint. It is also worth remembering that the politicisation of business activities or problems in order to serve and protect the interests of some established groups has been a distinct part of the Australian political tradition, which becomes even more visible when dealing with anything related to Chinese coolies or labourers in the past or Chinese migrants in recent decades.1 There are plenty of historical examples of it, and the following is one of them: [T]he 1890s depression led to fierce competition as European workers moved into direct competition with Chinese workers. Fear of Chinese competition lead to the formation in 1880 of an anti-Chinese furniture makers association and eventually the 1895 Factories Act Inquiry. The discriminatory 1896 Factories and Shops Act emerged out [of] this inquiry. Similar Acts were passed in New South Wales and other colonies … The Victorian Act stipulated that all Chinese (and ‘part-Chinese’) made furniture had to be stamped (Couchman 2001, n.p.).

The above case and other similar political and legislative efforts to restrict the commercial activities of early Chinese labourers and settlers in Australia in both the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were discussed in my 2015 book on new Chinese migrant entrepreneurship in Australia from the early 1990s (Gao 2015). It would be helpful to read this discussion alongside what I explored and analysed in my 2015 book. The Chinese entrepreneurship and local responses have been an ongoing process since the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Australia restarted direct immigration from mainland China through recruiting thousands of Chinese students and then granting them residency. The analysis of such a long time span would hopefully assist readers to better comprehend why the accusation of China’s influence has been made so publicly and directly

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in Australia, a successful multicultural immigration society, and why commercial activities could possibly be interpreted as geopolitical actions. With Australia’s political tradition and practice in mind, the business-­ related causes triggering new tensions between migrants from China and their opponents will be analysed in this chapter in three sections. The first section looks at the post-migration realities facing new migrants from China in Australia and the reasons why there are so many of them who have been actively conducting many China-related businesses. The second section considers the second stage of their economic or entrepreneurial activities from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s, before the wave of China’s ‘going global’ strategy reached Australia’s shore (Gao et al. 2017, p. 2). The last and third section examines the post-GFC new economic relations that have developed between Australia with China, symbolised by the fact that China overtook Japan to be Australia’s largest trading partner in 2007, and then in 2009 China become Australia’s largest export market. Such close ties attracted more Chinese to come to Australia and generated another wave of entrepreneurship sweeping through the Chinese Australian community.

Post-migration Realities in Australia The Chinese community in Australia has, since the early 1990s, moved rapidly through three key stages, from being a group of poor new Chinese mainland migrants, as compared with early Chinese settler groups who were scarcely respected by any, to a bunch of well-off people who have not only disrupted real estate markets in both Sydney and Melbourne as widely reported in the local media, but have also lured Australians policymakers into creating migration schemes to attract their money, investment, and business activities and networks. These three stages are the initial wealth accumulation stage (shengcun or jilei in Chinese) to survive in their host country; the second, small business, or well-off, stage (jingshang or xiaokang in Chinese); and the current business expansion stage to make many households prosperous, which has no generally accepted Chinese phrase to define it.2 This section examines what happened in the first stage. As indicated by the above Chinese phrases, the post-migration life of Chinese migrants to post-multicultural Australia has some similarities with what has taken place in China, which is typically characterised by popular modern-day Chinese sayings concerning entrepreneurship: to get rich is glorious (zhifu guangrong) and, its more recent form, to strive for a

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prosperous life (ben xiaokang). The reason for mentioning these famous post-Mao slogans is to suggest two key analytical points. First, many new Chinese migrants have been largely influenced by Deng Xiaoping’s reformist beliefs and ideas, although they live in Australia, and such influence has been shown throughout the three stages. Second, these beliefs or ideas are no different from those held by many non-Chinese Australians. In fact, many post-Mao reformist ideas have been strongly criticised by Maoists in China, as well as outside China, as Western capitalist influences. It is, therefore, not accurate to say that China and its diasporas are still guided or motivated by any communist beliefs and ideals, as some Australian critics continue to tell their domestic audiences. Their interpretation is very much a modern-day Eurocentric view of the world, but what is even worse is their refusal to take into account many recent fundamental transformations of Chinese society. Driven by a desire to have a better life in liberal Australia, the large group of new Chinese migrants who first came to Australia as students tried very hard in the late 1980s and early 1990s to find opportunities to stay in Australia. As noted in Chap. 1, most of them were allowed to stay by both the Keating Labor government and the Howard Coalition government, the history of which was examined in my 2013 book (Gao 2013). It was after being granted residency in Australia that they experienced a great deal of frustration in finding jobs and accessing training for skilled and better-paid jobs. As detailed in Chap. 2, Australia at the time had just gone through its last main recession of the early 1990s, resulting from unsuccessful efforts to restructure its economy. Australia’s economic restructuring of the 1970s and 1980s did not create a smart economy or a knowledge-based economy, as promised and predicted by its ruling elites, but ended with shrinking employment levels in a number of industrial sectors. Figure 3.1 shows the employment trends in the manufacturing and services sectors, two of the biggest employment providers, from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s. The gradual and rather sizable decline in manufacturing employment was the main real challenge confronting new Chinese migrants in the 1990s. What Fig.  3.1 can also show is that while manufacturing could only provide less than one-fifth of the jobs needed in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the first cohort of new migrants from China settled in Australia, more jobs were available in the services sector. However, jobs in this sector were not really suitable for new migrants from non-English-­ speaking countries, especially migrants from China, whose English was

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Manufacturing, %

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Fig. 3.1  Sectoral employment trends in Australia, 1976–2001. (Source: Based on Productivity Commission (2003, p. 27))

weak and who were also unfamiliar with many aspects of Australian society. The only options they had were either to seek whatever jobs they were able to find or to purchase and operate a small business. However, the overall economic conditions in Australia at the time were also unaccommodating to small-business operators, who largely rely on the domestic economy, or precisely, the level of people’s incomes. According to Michael Pusey, a prominent Australian sociologist and a critic of ‘Australia’s rightward drift’ (Murray 2006, p. 58), the adoption of neoliberalism, or economic rationalism, in Australia was hurting a large number of families of middle Australians. He mentioned the following in his lecture delivered at Parliament House, Canberra: The economy has indeed been ‘restructured’ … Over the twenty years from 1980 to the turn of the millennium the total wages share has fallen from 60 per cent to 54 per cent as the profit share has risen from 17 per cent to

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just on 24  per cent. The government share has stayed at about the same low level. … And, yes, as GDP has soared, we find that the real unit cost of labour has fallen for twenty years and more … in 1996 young men of between 25 and 34 years of age were already bringing home, in real terms, 75 dollars less per week than their fathers were twenty years earlier in 1976 (Pusey 2003, n.p.).

In the early and mid-1990s, it was also impractical for Chinese migrants to return to China because the country was not as affluent as Australia. Their determination to stay on in Australia was also reinforced by a long-­ term wish to have their children educated in a Western, English-speaking country. This desire is still very strong, and is increasingly shared by more ordinary Chinese families, which partly explains why Australia’s international education has lasted so many years. Both the impossibility of giving up their residency in Australia to return to China and the strong desire to build a better life in Australia forced them to review and reprioritise their needs, which enabled them to handle the contradictions between their ideals and the realities of living in their new host country. As I pointed out in my 2015 book, what had happened to these Chinese migrants is a problem typical of skilled migration. All host countries want more qualified and skilled migrants, but few countries can smartly make use of their skills. In the early and mid-1990s, Australia was found to have limited job security as an outcome of neoliberal economic restructuring, and also virtually no employment services (Gao 2015). The widespread neoliberal economic ideas provided governments at different levels with a range of excuses for being paid handsomely, but taking no responsibility or action in taking care of the essential needs of a society, especially employment. Although the first group of new Chinese migrants was not rigorously selected based on the merit-based system, it did possess most of the traits associated with merit-based immigrants in terms of training, skills, and levels of ambition and self-confidence. As I found in my 2003 study, their main worry after being granted residency in Australia was whether they could sacrifice their early career for family life in the new host country. Though residency in Australia was seen as a success among young Chinese in the early 1990s, many still wanted to maximise their potential and achieve self-actualisation, as a high proportion of them were, in the words of Maslow, ‘self-actualizing people’ (1987, p. 199).3 According to Maslow, people have a set of needs that is expressed as a five-tier hierarchy, as shown

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in Fig.  3.2. My 2003 study showed that many Chinese migrants found that their needs for self-actualisation and esteem, which are the top two tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy, became unachievable as a result of migration. The reduced likelihood of realising self-actualisation and esteem in new host counties appears to be the major challenge for almost all better-­ qualified migrants globally. Australia is no exception and in the case of the Chinese migrants of the early and mid-1990s, they were all found to have made enormous and often painful efforts to adjust their aspirations to the new realities of settling in Australia. Chinese migrants’ top six original ideals and life priorities frequently include plans to undertake formal study to get an ideal job, and to buy and run a business. These three goals were all considered and tried by more than 91 per cent of the interviewees I met for my 2003 study. After living in Australia as permanent residents for a while, and also having tried their original strategies, they were found to form a new understanding of their lives as new migrants, requiring a rearranged set of ideals and life priorities. Their first two original ideals were replaced by family-oriented priorities: to buy a house and to send children to a better school, while the third priority remained unchanged. Also new was the addition of two more realistic plans: save for an investment and assist their next of kin to migrate to Australia. The only ideal that remained unchanged, sometimes the only alternative left to them, was that they could be economically entrepreneurial. Having been pushed, sometimes reluctantly, onto an entrepreneurial path, new Chinese migrants actively attempted to buy and run a range of small businesses, but focused on operating milk bars, takeaway shops, fruit and vegetable stores and laundry services. These low-level options were taken, firstly, because many of them did not waste too much of their time doing low-paid work, what is called dagong in Chinese, and wanted to start their own business as soon as possible. Secondly, many wanted to run a business of their own and accumulate some business experience in Australia, a setting that was unfamiliar. Their options were also limited by Fig. 3.2  Maslow’s five-tier hierarchy of needs. (Source: Maslow (1943, 1987))

Self-actualisation Esteem Love-belonging Safety Physiological needs

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their actual purchasing capacity at the time, which is completely different from those new financially able and commercially experienced cohorts who came after them. The first cohort of new Chinese migrants was not very familiar with non-planned economies, including Australia’s, in the early 1990s, therefore only a small proportion of them had tried to establish their own small businesses. The exception was those examined in my 2015 book, which will be briefly discussed later in this chapter. A large majority of this first cohort had reasonably believed that running a small business would be a lifeline for their families, making them less affected by increasing instability in the Australian job market. This belief benefited them significantly. According to my study carried out in 1997, up to 82 per cent of the first cohort families purchased their own houses or apartments and businesses, and 32 per cent of them had already become small investors in real estate and stocks after living in Australia for seven to nine years (Gao 1999). Such rapid accumulations of wealth laid a foundation for other business ventures, but it was not achieved without tension. From the early 1990s, shops were permitted to extend their trading hours. This was of great benefit for large retail chains in Australian cities, but much more difficult for the numerous small shops, many of which were owned and operated by this group of Chinese migrants. This trend seriously affected many newly purchased small businesses. For example, many suburban milk bars in the hands of this group of Chinese migrants closed, which meant a loss of the initial investment. All this forced them to find alternative methods of financial survival. It is not unusual for transnational migrants to consider their options based on two frames of reference: relevant situations in the home country and the host country. Like the cost-benefit calculations in the migration decision-making process, a constant comparison is frequently made between two sets of life conditions in two related countries. In the case of new Chinese migrants, the influences they had from China were positive, helpful to not only their own lives in Australia, but also to their host country as a whole. Such influence took the form of entrepreneurialism, which was officially advocated and encouraged by China’s ruling elites and commonly known as qinlao zhifu (achieving wealth through diligence, or working hard enriches your life). This was the time when China’s extraordinary and rapid economic growth, or the last stage of its industrialisation, was well under way.4 Just like what had occurred in the process of industrialisation of several other economies, a new social mindset emerged from

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the process and spread throughout China and beyond its border. The impact of such new entrepreneurialism on Chinese diasporas was optimistic, reminding new migrants of a new way of living. This was the very start of the emergence and spread of transnational life among new Chinese migrants, compensating them for the hardships in the job market in Australia. One crucial aspect of the newly emerged international link between new Chinese migrants and their home county appears to have been misconstrued by some Australian critics, which is whether these migrants are connected with China’s party-state system or with its new market system. This may not sound serious or disturbing to ordinary Australians, but critics have regarded it as one of their criteria for making judgments about various business deals and some individual migrants. What they have overlooked is that, since the late 1970s, China has been shifting from a planned economy to a market economy, alongside privatisation efforts (Gao and Su 2019); its old planned economy was already largely dismantled in the mid-1990s. All these changes, especially China’s higher levels of marketisation and privatisation, have been reflected in recent international academic discourse and debate (Fewsmith 1994; Goodman 1994; Solinger 2015), but has not entered public discourse, especially media discourse. One of the reasons is that people, like reporters and commentators, no longer have time to read and study because of various real-life pressures. Without studying further, and without international experiences and foreign language skills, people only repeat what they have heard or been trained to say, causing considerable misunderstanding among the general public. Fortunately, the critical attention within Australia was mostly directed towards China, not to the first cohort of new Chinese migrants, because there was a set of fixed and convenient topics about China in the West, requiring no additional effort from individual media outlets. Therefore, the first cohort of Chinese migrants was not really on their radar, and the limited amount of media attention on them was based on various long-­ standing stereotypes, such as quality issues of a range of imported Chinese products, and filthy Chinese shops. However, while the noisy and dominant mainstream media enjoyed giving a tongue-lashing, new Chinese migrants were accumulating wealth silently, or mensheng fadacai. In the 1990s, the rapid growth of the Chinese economy provided some overseas Chinese, especially those new migrants from mainland China, with more opportunities to earn a living from the businesses connected with the

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expanding Chinese market. Deng Xiaoping’s influential way of thinking turned China’s attention away from its decades-long ideological endeavours, focusing instead on developing the economy for its prosperity. Up to the early 1990s, China’s economic expansion, market deregulation and liberalisation helped turn new migrants from China into a very active force to promote and facilitate Australia–China economic ties, which has, in turn, contributed to Australia’s prosperity for more than a quarter of a century. The links that Chinese migrants developed with their home country have nothing to do with loyalty to the home country or inclination towards any ideology, as hypothesised by a small group of critics, but are a sad effect of Australia’s problematic economic structure and governance. As pointed out, Australia’s traditional manufactural industries, especially automobiles and white goods, have continued to decline over the past decades and provided fewer and less stable employment opportunities for new migrants. At the same time, no government in the past decades has demonstrated either the political will or the competence to drive further economic transformations, except relying on migrants intakes to maintain housing construction and exports of natural resources. These domestic economic conditions have acted as a strong push factor for new migrants to find money-earning opportunities elsewhere than in Australia. In the case of new Chinese migrants, many of them have not much choice in Australia’s job market but to reconnect with the home country they opted not long ago to leave behind.

Riding on Two Waves of Transformation As mentioned earlier, a small proportion of the first cohort of new Chinese migrants had, in the mid-1990s and soon afterwards, successfully established and operated their own small businesses, many of which were directly related to China’s rapid economic expansion, and emerging market demands and opportunities in China. As I discussed in my 2015 book, for example, some set up their own businesses in the sectors that were regarded by many Australians as less optimistic, such as manufacturing and exporting sheepskin products; importing Chinese-made televisions; and creating and organising programs for Chinese students and tourists, while rebuilding community schools and creating media outlets in the community (Gao 2015). In other words, there were various forms of newly emerging business links between Australia and China, which were developed as a result of efforts by new Chinese migrants and were clearly

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valuable to the Australian economy. If the first phase could be regarded as a spontaneous market-driven connection between two economies, the period following the 1996 election was characterised by the addition of various proactive strategic approaches adopted by Australia’s ruling and economic elites. The political populism of the 1990s contributed to the deterioration of Australia’s relationship with China, because ‘a number of actions by the new Australian Government, elected in March 1996, led China to believe that Australia was changing its China policy’ (Sherlock 1997, p. 1). Yet, at the time, Australia was just out of a recession, and attention of Australian elites was still on economic recoveries. For example, the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee reviewed the bilateral relationship in 1996, including the political relations with China. The committee report noted that Australia’s ties with China could not be ignored. Such understanding enabled a pragmatic neoliberal policy change. Michael Sainsbury, the correspondent of The Australian, observed the following details behind the policy adjustments: It was during his first trip to China as prime minister, in 1997, as he travelled in the lift up Shanghai’s landmark television tower, that Howard became acutely aware of the immense scale of change that was happening in China … Less than a year earlier his foreign minister Alexander Downer had thrown the relationship between the two countries into turmoil by saying Australia would defend Taiwan … Howard says the trip ‘set up our relationship very effectively. It followed a period where we had a few ups and downs. It seemed to gather momentum from then on’ (Sainsbury 2010, n.p.).

In 1997, the Australian Government finally resolved the post-­ Tiananmen Chinese student issue by allowing the remaining students to stay permanently under a set of new policies. This was called the ‘13 June 1997 decision’, made by the Howard government, and it extended the Keating government’s ‘1 November (1993) decisions’ to a few thousand Chinese nationals who arrived in Australia after 12 March 1992, but before 1 November 1993 (Gao 2001, 2013). This practical policy gave the Howard government a free hand to not only rationalise Australia’s migration system, shifting the emphasis of migration policy from family reunification to skilled migration, as detailed in the second section of Chap. 2, but also to fine-tune Australia’s China policy to focus on mutual economic partnership and benefits. Despite being ideologically and

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politically different from the Labor Party in a wide range of aspects, what the Howard conservative government had done in reassessing and finetuning Australia’s relations with China in the second half of the 1990s was in fact a continuation of what the Hawke–Keating Labor governments had done in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This had laid a seemingly stable socio-­economic and socio-political foundation for attracting many trained Chinese migrants from an economically active home country to Australia where employment opportunities had been visibly declining. Two of the most widely promoted new concepts in Australia’s public discourses, namely multiculturalism and its mutual benefit-based relationship with China, have acted as a political promise to assist the above policy changes and reduce the negative effects of both the Australia’s anti-­ Chinese past and the smallness of its job and business markets on migration decision-making, as well as the destination selection process, of Chinese migrants. Having put their faith in Australia’s ideas of shifting towards Asia and multiculturalism, many better-educated young Chinese who were either already granted residency in Australia or intending to migrate decided to call Australia home instead of settling in their economically booming home country. There have been few studies and limited empirical data about what new Chinese migrants, both the first cohort and the second cohort, who came to Australia during the years of the Howard government, did to influence the changes of understanding and attitudes of conservative Liberals in regard to Asian immigration and China. The conservative Liberals were not displeased by the first cohort of new Chinese migrants from mainland China, who were allowed to stay permanently by the Hawke–Keating Labor governments. Although the topic of linking China with communism has never disappeared from public discussions and debates, the conservative Liberals and other right-leaning elites at the time had become less concerned about the connections of new Chinese migrants with China. Instead, more politicians, including John Howard, regarded the connection between Chinese migrants and China as a valuable, national socio-economic asset, which is different from recent public and political sentiments in Australia. Figure  3.3 is based on the report of the 2005 inquiry by Australia’s Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee into the country’s new relationship with China, revealing the reason why more Australian politicians spoke positively of their support for strengthening and deepening trade and economic relations with China. Since a large group of Chinese students and other nationals who were

Million

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8000 6846 7000 6000 4966 5000 3781 3584 3872 3948 4000 2964 2268 2590 3000 2000 1458 1000 0 1991 - 1992 - 1993 - 1994 - 1995 - 1996 - 1997 - 1998 - 1999 - 2000 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01

Fig. 3.3  Australia’s export market to China, 1991–2001. (Source: Based on the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee (2005))

allowed to stay in Australia under the Hawke–Labor government’s long-­ term temporary protection residency arrangement, Australia had, since 1991, seen a steady and significant growth in its exports to China. The figures shown in Fig. 3.3 are consistent with what I observed in the new Chinese migrant community and analysed in my 2015 book. It is worth remembering that these results were achieved when China was in the process of reforming its old planned economy, and accelerating the pace of its economic reform and development. However, Australian politicians from both left- and right-leaning political parties, economic elites, and influential senior bureaucrats had all become aware of the benefits of linking Australia closely with China’s socio-economic development and the tremendous potential in the years to come. In the financial year of 1990/91, China was ranked 10th among Australia’s trading partners, with two-way trade worth $3.2 billion (Andrew 2009). By 1997, China had became Australia’s fifth largest trading partner, according to Tim Fischer, the then deputy prime minister, who was also the Minister for Trade (Fischer 1997, n.p.). In 1997, Australia’s two-way trade with China was valued at more than $8 billion, and had increased to almost $10 billion in 1998 (Fischer 1999). As an effect of such rapid growth, China became Australia’s third-largest trading partner in 2003, as estimated by the Senate Standing Committees on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade (2005). What was also realised by many politicians and decision-makers in Australia was the important role played by new Chinese migrants in facilitating, supporting and conducting trade between Australia and China.

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Politicians and decision-makers had more information than other Australians in regard to who had been behind the rapid growth. There were some Australian corporations and businesses that were involved in trade with China from the 1980s, but it was not as common as it is today. Up to the late 1990s, most Australians still imagined China as either the red menace or the blue ants, as summarised by Timothy Kendall in his book Ways of Seeing China (2005) and few were capable of doing anything in Asia. New Chinese migrants were, in effect, regarded as quiet facilitators. At the time, many politicians, economic elites and senior bureaucrats had started to realise that China could be a goldmine for Australia’s struggling economy (Strahan 1996). Various initiatives were rolled out by the Howard government, including the merit-based migration system. In addition to what was taking place in Australia, it is also important to consider what had been occurring in China to understand the action and reaction of Chinese migrant groups. The lack of knowledge of the latter has been challenging some Australian analysts and observers working in related professions. There has been great difficulty working out how China as the red menace could achieve rapid economic growth, and how Chinese as blue ants could be so entrepreneurial. In fact, throughout much of the 1990s and 2000s, China was once again pushed strongly by reformists to quicken its economic reform that started in the late 1970s, but was interrupted by the unrests in the late 1980s, particularly the Tiananmen incident in 1989. As noted, Deng Xiaoping made his last tour to South China in early 1992, aiming to turn the post-1989 political atmosphere around. One of the important messages from Deng’s inspection tour was to call for an end to the troubling ‘debates on isms’ (Chen 1999, p. 449), or the idealistic debates of the socialist or capitalist nature of China’s reform policies. Deng’s ‘post-1992 imposition of “no-debate” curse’, in the words of Zhao Yuezhi, removed ideological hurdles for China’s reform (2015, p. 20). After Deng’s inspection tour, more market-­ oriented measures were adopted, and the number of private enterprises increased. What had become widespread and dominant was the phenomenon known as quanmin jingshang (the whole population, or country, is going into business) (Gamble 2003; Suettinger 2003). Among the many new ideas, its open-up policy was further articulated by the phrase yu guoji jiegui (linking up with the international track). As noted, because of unsuccessful efforts to restructure its own economy, Australia’s ruling elites responded to China’s post-1989 reform in a rather constructive manner. More serious consideration was devoted to

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the country’s economic survival and prosperity than to political and ideological differences. As a result, despite the emergence and rise of the racist rhetoric of Pauline Hanson over this period, the inherent strong racial prejudice against China and its immigrants was superficially overshadowed by the new bipartisan approach to China and Chinese migration. Two specific, pragmatic policies played a more encouraging role than other measures in enabling the increase in the number of Chinese migrants and their entrepreneurship (Pitts 2004). First, though the Chinese student issue troubled Australia until the mid-1990s, the Howard government noticed the ‘double-digit growth in the number of Chinese students arriving in Australia’ and decided to facilitate it and to make an economic use of the international student program as part of what was called ‘the growing complementarity’ of two economies (Downer 1997, n.p.). This understanding and subsequent decision have not only initiated the resumption of the Australian education export, but has since then made the education sector one of Australia’s top three foreign-currency earners, together with mining and tourism. In fact, the education of international students was the biggest foreign-currency earner for a few years before the mining boom. According to Alexander Downer, then the foreign minister, there were around 3000 Chinese international students taking full-time courses in Australia in 1997 (Downer 1997). In the early 2018, as the Chinese influence debate reached its climax, this figure rose to more than 168,000 (Robinson 2018). Other details of the growing trend from the mid-2000s to the early 2010s are listed in Table 2.3 of this book. These figures are economically significant, indicating that Australia must have been earning a minimum of $30  million in tuition fees each year from around 3000 Chinese students in the late 1990s, assuming the fees averaged at that time to around $10,000 per student. But in 2018, the earning could have reached about $5  billion from 168,000 or so Chinese students a year, as the fees average at about $30,000 per foreign student. Of course, these figures are only one slice of the entire income that Australia has earned from this export sector. Many businesses and investors, especially some from the new Chinese migrant community, have also earned a lot from the students’ living expenditure, as well as their spending on recreation, leisure and travel (DFAT 2018). These non-­ tuition expenses could also total up to a few billion dollars per year, excluding other investments that come along with the students. In terms of this,

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Australia has actually exerted far more influence on China and its people than China has on Australia. What is more fundamental than the dollar figures, as stated in Chap. 2, is that the international student program was not just an education scheme, but a rather innovative policy change, which is defined by a parliamentary analyst as ‘a complex nexus’ between overseas student schemes and skilled migration programs (Spinks 2016, p.  6). That is, Australia created the student-migration nexus with an aim to make better use of both the international education sector and the merit-based migration program. This has since been called the student-migration program, while critics have regarded it as a double-dipping approach. According to the above-­ mentioned analyst, the Howard government made two changes in 1998. It allocated $21  million to support a four-year international marketing campaign to promote Australia’s education and training industry in a few markets, and China became its key target. At the same time, the government announced a new point system for its new migration policy measures, and the system included the following measure in order to raise Australia’s competitiveness in attracting international students and skilled migrants: In August 1998 the Government announced that, from July 1999, the points test used to assess skilled migrants for General Skilled Migration (GSM) (applicable to skilled migrants who are not sponsored by an employer) was modified to grant five additional points where an applicant obtained their diploma, trade or degree from an Australian educational institution, giving such applicants a competitive advantage over applicants who had not obtained their qualification in Australia (Spinks 2016, p. 8).

The second pragmatic policy, as noted in Chap. 2, was the introduction of some new measures to directly recruit trained and skilled migrants from sending countries. Due to the successes of the first cohort of new Chinese migrants, China was also the main target country for Australia’s recruitment of young skilled migrants. New categories, such as skilled independent and skilled state/territory nomination, were well utilised by Chinese applicants. These measures were then followed by a set of similar, but business-focused, migration programs as listed in Table 2.2. The above policies were introduced for domestic and global reasons, besides the achievements of the first cohort of new Chinese migrants. Domestically, Australia was suffering a shortage of skills and labour in the

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context of demographic ageing and unsuccessful economic restructuring (OECD 2018). At that time, China was becoming more pragmatic, less dogmatic, or less ideological, resulting in rapid economic growth. Many changes in China were making some countries, including Australia, unable to maintain their established economic advantages. It was because of recessions striking Australia repeatedly before the early 1990s that the Howard government, as well as the Keating government before 1996, had devoted more attention to economic issues than non-economic topics, which helped Australia avoid being influenced by geopolitical and ideological gossip about China by journalists, commentators and researchers. In other words, the history of the 1990s compelled Australia to keep a clear mind about its own survival conditions differently from today. Australia’s policy responses to China’s post-1989 reform and a range of other policy changes have helped it successfully avoid an economic slump during both the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98 and the GFC of 2008–09. In terms of policy impact, the above two policies led to nationwide improvements in educational attainment in almost all sectors, as shown in Table  3.1. Moderately speaking, the declining trend has at least been reversed. An even more noticeable impact of the above policies has been made on the Chinese Australian community. What happened in China in the 1980s and 1990s had, in effect, made more young Chinese better qualified than many people from other countries by either studying in Australia first and Table 3.1  Educational attainment in Australia’s main workforce sectors, 1984, 1994 and 2001 Relevant sectors

Agriculture Mining Manufacturing Basic utilities Wholesale & retail Business management Health, education & community Total

University degree, %

Other post-school qualifications, %

1984

1994

2001

1984

1994

2001

2.3 8.1 4.5 8.4 3.6 15.5 4.3 9.6

4.5 14.4 7.2 13.6 5.2 22.1 35.3 14.6

6.3 21.0 11.2 24.5 7.4 31.7 46.4 20.3

24.5 91.9 35.3 45.3 34.2 29.4 34.2 35.9

25.6 35.8 37.4 50.5 34.9 30.1 33.8 35.0

30.1 40.3 39.1 45.1 37.9 28.6 30.3 35.3

Source: Based on Productivity Commission (2003, p. 79)

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then applying for residency, or migrating directly to Australia under its reinstated merit-based point system. With a rapidly growing number of better trained Chinese migrants settling in Australia, the details of which are listed in Fig. 1.2, the community had become increasingly entrepreneurial in a number of business areas, as outlined at the start of this section. China rapidly become the world’s factory and decided to lift its control over the export trade quota system, which provided many new Chinese migrants, who were familiar with the Chinese market, a unique opportunity to conduct both import and export business. China’s internationalisation strategy or yu guoji jiegui (linking up with the international track), which was widely and actively encouraged by Jiang Zemin’s leadership, started the emergence and expansion of China’s outbound tourism and international education businesses. Both have benefited Australia significantly, but their connections with Australia were largely established through Chinese migrants. Among Australia’s top three export sectors, the mining industry is considered to be the business of big corporates, and ethnic Chinese were often thought to have no role in it, until the media reported the arrest of Rio Tinto’s China executive Stern Hu in China in July 2009.5 As a matter of fact, the many roles played by Chinese migrants were either largely indirect and less obvious, or hardly observable within a short period of time. A group of young entrepreneurial Chinese who have turned some Australian products, such as infant formula, into popular brands in China through the current daigou business (cross-border shopping and exporting services) are from the student-migration generation who came to Australia in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Becoming a China-Reliant Economy Despite never being in a comparable or symmetric relationship with each other, the history of Australia–China relations has never lacked for drama and tension. After the 2007 election, there was a string of controversies, resulting from the departure of the Kevin Rudd–led Labor government and the long-term even-handed approaches of previous governments towards China and the United States, which became evident when both the Chinese President Hu Jintao and the president George W.  Bush addressed parliament in October 2003. Troubles after the 2007 election included Kevin Rudd’s awkward speech at Peking University in 2008, violent clashes between pro-Tibet protesters and Chinese students in Canberra during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games touch relay,

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‘anti-China sabre-rattling’ of the 2009 defence white paper in the eyes of its critics (Rudd 2018, n.p.), and the arrest of Rio Tinto manager Stern Hu (Gao 2011). Paradoxically, it was also in the first half of 2007 that China surpassed Japan and the United States to become Australia’s biggest trading partner, the combined total of exports and imports reaching $52.7 billion, eclipsing Japan’s $50.6 billion (Uren 2007). Such obvious paradoxes were seen as a ‘contentious friendship’ in the words of Geremie Barmé V(2018, n.p.). Clashes over the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games touch relay in Canberra and China’s new position as Australia’s biggest trading partner seemed to have eventually made Australia more worried about China as a threat, as shown in the 2009 defence white paper. At the same time, many Australians who support the utilisation and strengthening of Australia–China relations emphasised the long-term economic and strategic benefits of the relationship and focused their attention on promoting the idea of ‘a complementary partnership’, which was once enthusiastically endorsed by Tim Fischer, the National Party leader and deputy prime minster of the Howard-led Coalition government (Fischer 1997, n.p.). Since the late 1990s, the ruling elites from both sides of Australian politics—the Labor and the Coalition—have kept talking about two economies and markets being complementary, and there have been few Australians or Chinese who have realised or pointed out that this is largely a polite expression, if not a false idea. Both the good trade figures and the continuing promotion of the concept of complementary economies have acted as driving forces to push bilateral economic cooperation and trade forward, but the growing dependence of Australian businesses and policymaking processes on the Chinese economy have also challenged the level of acceptance of partnering with China and working with the Chinese, among a small proportion of Australians. However, such a strong and widespread reluctance to work with China and have so many new Chinese migrants in Australia has not been effectively transformed into any actual strategies or actions to restructure the Australian economy and its governance practices, except a more sophisticated, and somehow ideologically rationalised, resentment towards anything Chinese. Without actual reform efforts, Australia has kept moving forwards to practically become the country that is riding on the back of China’s growing economy, as it once rode on the sheep’s back and mine carts. By the early 2000s, the biggest mining boom since the mid-1800s

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had begun, and Australia started becoming China’s quarry. Many ‘risks and challenges were dulled by a rich tide of easy money’ (Crabb 2012, n.p.). Australia-based multi-award-winning investigative reporter and author Paul Barry went to Western Australia in 2010 and learnt the following details, revealing that after six to seven years of speedy expansion, the mining boom was still going strong: According to the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB), China invested $26 billion in Australian mining companies and projects in 2008–09, which was almost one-third of all foreign investment in the sector. And plenty more is on the way. The latest figures show that 170–180 deals with Chinese businesses have been approved since Labor took office in November 2007, with 60–70 having been processed this year alone (Barry 2010, n.p.).

The mining boom in Australia since the early 2000s has produced huge economic benefits for Australia (Windle and Rolfe 2013), but it has also spread its long-held laid-back attitude wider and deeper, into some elite classes, especially politicians, policymakers and business leaders, and given rise to a new type of politics. This is the politics of easy money, or the addictive politics of easy money, in the words of an ABC reporter and analyst (Crabb 2012). While this particular type of politics has some other key dimensions, one neglected aspect of the Australian version of the easy money politics is that there is an emerging contradiction—a gap in skill and ability—between the political elites who are commonly selected by supporters based on popularity in their electorate, and the increasingly highly skilled, as well as highly experienced, migrants who are selected worldwide based on merit. As analysed in Chap. 2, Australia’s merit-based migrant selection has lately been closely connected with business networks and investment capacities, which has in some way made popularity-based local politicians and some policymakers passive and subordinate to capable, connected and wealthy migrant business people and other entrepreneurial migrants. As an outcome of such new dynamics, the option of the easy money politics has often had a bigger effect on policymaking and policy selection than efforts to make hard decisions, or take actions, in economic restructure and governance. For decades, the easy option has been to rely on migrants with either skills or wealth. What many Australians have been unable to understand is that, as will be discussed in the succeeding chapters, a migration-dependent economy transfers part of policymaking and related power to the newcomers to the country.

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Fig. 3.4  Business visa application lodgements, 2010–14. (Source: Joint Standing Committee on Migration (2015, p. 45))

Figure 3.4 shows that, while earning a great deal of money from the mining boom, Australia has kept recruiting business migrants, who have also been expected to be more financially capable than others in investing in Australia. Regardless of whether it is because of an addiction to easy money, Australia has experienced an increasing number of migrants recruited, especially from China, in order to sustain its economic growth. This is because of the increasingly vital role of China’s economy in Australia’s economic prosperity, taking place in the same way that Japan’s role did from the 1950s to the early 1980s. Australia’s trade with China in the early 2010s already accounted for near 28 per cent of the country’s total trade, and more migrants from China have been favourably selected and mobilised for sustaining the momentum in the bilateral economic relationship. As quoted below, the former chief economist of Austrade, Tim Harcourt, noted that more Australian people and businesses have become involved in trade with China: In fact, Australia’s export relationship is more broadly based than people think at first glance. According to ABS data, over 5600 Australian small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) now export to China (plus another 4900 via Hong Kong) and over 3000 are based there and are succeeding. Australian SMEs battle their way into China and over time many have forged a reasonable business through time and enduring relationships (Harcourt 2014, n.p.).

In fact, before the above analysis was made, the enormous scale of the mining boom and the attention of the media had already put the spotlight

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on the deep involvement of Chinese Australians in the resources trade, especially new migrants from mainland China. In addition to the case of Stern Hu, Rio Tinto’s then chief deal negotiator in China, the election win of Dio Wang in the 2013 federal Senate election in Western Australia came completely out of the blue, partially as a result of the ruling of the High Court of Australia.6 As a candidate, and then a federal senator, representing the Palmer United Party, Wang’s case is different from Stern Hu, evidencing the rapid expansion of the China-driven mining boom. While Hu seemed to be hired mostly because of his previous work experience with CITIC, China’s key investment company, Wang was a student as part of the Howard government’s student-migration scheme, and trained as a civil engineer in Australia. Wang worked in Western Australia after graduation, where up to 45  per cent of trade was conducted with China (Business Council of Australia 2015), which was a key factor in his election win. The mining boom has also attracted a third major type of participant since the late 2000s and early 2010s, which is a small group of Chinese business or investment migrants who want to try their luck in the mining sector. One of them is Sally Zou, an owner and director of a mining company called AusGold. While not media-shy, she knew nothing about how to conduct herself as a rich entrepreneur. Her donation to the Liberal Party in South Australia and her business practices were reported widely by various media outlets, providing the public a glimpse of the ventures by Chinese migrant entrepreneurs entering the sector (Donnellan and Wainwright 2017; Robin 2018). Leaving aside other details, the involvement of ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs in the mining boom made non-Chinese businesses, proprietors and operators more confident in the trade. Due to the huge volume and the high prices, Australia’s trade with China entered a phase of rapid expansion. As shown in Fig. 3.5, a sharp rise of China’s share of Australia’s trade started in the early 2000s, from which Australia’s economy has become highly integrated with Asia, if considering it from a positive angle, or perhaps far too reliant on the Chinese market. This particular type of commodity trade and pattern has slowly and quietly turned into a contentious socio-political issue, making changed patterns of employment and wealth distribution lean towards either some well-established migrant groups or to a few new migrant groups. As a result, a feeling of intense irritation or annoyance has also grown stronger. That is to say, the strong desire, if not greed, of some Australians, both individuals and institutions, to benefit from China’s growing economy has

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Fig. 3.5  China’s share of Australia’s total merchandise trade, 1901–2012. (Source: The Treasury (2012, n.p.))

made China the easy target of renewed anti-Chinese agitation in Australia. What has made the situation worse has been that the sharp rise in the trade volume was partially driven or supported by investments from China, which complicated the issue, making Australian companies feel insecure about earning and reluctant to argue for positive relations with China. At the same time, there are many Australians, both Chinese and non-­Chinese, who need to make a living and are able to distinguish everyday life from geopolitics, as well as fabricated ideologies from reality. As illustrated in Fig. 3.6, businesses other than mining, especially international education and tourism, have expanded at a phenomenal rate in Australia, making these sectors the second- and third-largest foreign-currency earners. Figures on total numbers of Chinese students studying in Australia for the same period can be found in Table 2.3. It is fair to say that Chinese Australians as a whole have had a big influence on the changes illustrated in Figs. 3.5 and 3.6, except partially on the mining sector. Such influence is the result of deliberate migration policies of consecutive Australian governments, and without its Chinese community, Australia would almost certainly never attract so many travellers and students from China and persuade so many Chinese to purchase Australian goods and services. For these reasons, there is nothing suspicious about the Chinese community taking up a large share of some markets or

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Fig. 3.6  China as Australia’s largest services export market. (Source: The Treasury (2012, n.p.))

earning a large slice of the total incomes from some businesses. Of course, some Australians, especially several noisy politicians and self-important commentators, have completely ignored this reality during the recent China debate, blaming new Chinese migrants for various problems caused by Australia’s ruling elites. A breeze of cool air has only recently blown into the stiflingly heated political atmosphere of Australian politics. Several reports have reminded anti-immigrant Australians that migrants have met more than 80 per cent of the demand for labour because of problems with Australia-born workers (Uren 2019). It must be emphasised that there are some serious intellectual and analytical problems and issues in Australia’s recent China debate. These explain why, despite many successes, especially greater benefits to Australia than to China, the Australia–China relationship has never escaped strong and endless criticism from opponents, as mentioned at the beginning of this section, nor have many hardworking new Chinese migrant entrepreneurs been treated sympathetically. There appears to be nothing that would please some critical Australians, but an analysis shows that some commentators have inappropriately based their criticism on a number of

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methodological and factual mistakes, and three of them are worth noting here. First, many economic and entrepreneurial activities have been interpreted as demonstrative of the political influence that the Chinese state wants to exert over Australia. This lopsided and uneven manner of thinking is very similar to the logic of Maoism. Second, the connections that Chinese migrants or businesspersons have with companies and individuals in China have been defined by some Australians, who only see the world from a political viewpoint with no consideration of economic activities, as political links with China’s state and party systems. Third, the current economic structures and conditions in Australia that are fundamental to the welfare of the country have hardly been taken into account by some critics, who have isolated the emergence of Chinese migrant entrepreneurship from Australia’s dependent economy. Similar to Maoist followers, these critics in Australia are familiar with, but not experts in, geopolitical conflicts, class struggle, ideologies and racial tensions. These non-­ economic topics have spread all over the country through several attention-­ seeking media outlets, and given rise to many suspicions of not only the motives of many Chinese migrants’ commercial activities, but also other aspects of new Chinese migrant life. The action of suppressing the sudden emergence of many Chinese migrants in Australia has also extended to other areas. Of course, the misunderstandings of Chinese Australians in the recent Sinophobic crusade do not just occur among those with left-wing ideological and political leanings, but also between many on the right-wing conservative side of the political spectrum. Their need for sensation and furore has led to the reuse of old political methods from McCarthyist tactics to Maoist purges. At the same time, the media is used by political leaders to hide their ineptness in economic management from the real issue confronting Australia: Australia’s response to China’s continuing rise mixes anxiety, even a touch of paranoia, with anticipation of the riches that derive from the sale of vast quantities of commodities … Economic dependence on China is two-edged and potentially policy-distorting … To put this in perspective: Australian exports of goods and services to China in 2016–17 were worth $110.4 billion. That accounts for nearly 30% of total exports. This compares with $20.8 billion for the US, or 5.16% of total exports. The EU (including the United Kingdom) accounted for $30.5 billion, or 9.8% (Walker 2018, n.p.).

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What the above article did not mention is that Australia signed the free trade agreement (ChAFTA) with China in December 2015, which was an ostensible trigger for the deterioration of Australia’s ‘love triangle’ relationship with both China and the United States (Garrett 2011, n.p.; Laurenceson 2017, n.p.). The then new prime minister, Malcom Turnbull, who grabbed the position through an internal party-room vote, was challenged, both politically and intellectually, in the three-way relationship tension. He somehow decided to stand up to China, including initiating an inquiry into China’s interference activities in Australia, departing from the even-handed approach that was advanced by the Howard-led Coalition government. What Turnbull did not take into account was that China was the world’s second-largest economy, and Australia’s trade with it had become far too huge to overlook. Australia sells 30.6 per cent of its exports to China, worth more than $123 billion, eclipsing the combined total of its exports to Japan, the United States, South Korea and India (Chau 2019). As revealed in Fig.  3.7, Australia’s two-way trade with China is significantly larger than with its other trading partners. This is why some observers have pointed out that Australia’s relationship with China is a question worth more than $120 billion. From a domestic political point of view, however, any mistakes in the area could be tactically utilised by political opponents.

250

Billion

200 150 100 50 0 China

Japan

USA

S. Korea

India

New Zealan d

Singap ore

UK

2016-17

174.2

68.5

66.6

38.6

25.7

26.4

24.7

27.6

2017-18

194.6

77.6

70.2

52.3

29.1

28.3

27.8

27.8

Fig. 3.7  Australia’s top two-way trading partners, 2016–18. (Source: Based on Chau (2019))

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As I argued in my commentary published in Current History, the most disturbing aspect of Australia’s recent debate on China is its impact on Chinese Australians who have contributed to their host country substantially, yet their successful integration in Australia has been linked to China’s suspected infiltration of every layer of Australia’s political landscape, including governments at federal and state levels, education institutions, professional bodies and businesses. Some Australian politicians and analysts appear to believe that all Chinese Australian are motived by geopolitics, the thinking of which is similar to Maoist red guards of the mid-1960s. This absurd debate has not only reminded many people of Australia’s past, but has also potentially positioned ethnic Chinese communities on a collision course with Sinophobic forces and groups, eroding the solid foundation of Australia’s national solidarity. These non-economic aspects of Australia’s debate on China and its influence will be the main themes of the chapter that follows.

Notes 1. ‘Coolie’ is an old Chinese word in English, and its modern Chinese pinyin or phonetic spelling is kuli, meaning bitter or hard labourer or labourers. Even though some have argued that this word has an Indian origin, it has become widely known as a Chinese word since the coolie trade started in the early nineteenth century. The coolie trade was a continuance of the old infamous slave system or slave trade, but since the 1820s it was covered or restricted by some forms of contract or subcontract. The people being recruited, if not traded, then were called indentured labourers. The coolie trade lasted about 40 years and ended in the 1870s as a result of government interventions by the UK and China. Over the coolie trade period, the Chinese from South China were the largest group of people being recruited or traded, and part of the demand for indentured labourers was from Australia. This is important for understanding Australia’s relations with China and its people, and both fear and sympathy related to their past interactions have been passed down to current generations. For more information about the coolie trade and the indentured labourers in the Australian context, see Willard (1967), Clark (1969), Walker (1999), Fitzgerald (2007), and Lake and Reynolds (2008). 2. These Chinese expressions are worth mentioning in order to show readers what else has been influencing new Chinese migrants in addition to many fresh ideas and values that they have learnt from living in Australia. The mention of these expressions can also serve as a reminder to readers of the

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need to observe and consider the activities of Chinese migrants alongside what has occurred in China at the same time. Without such background knowledge, many have incorrectly assumed that many Chinese are still predominantly guided by communist ideas and so on. The latter has been a major intellectual failure in Australia’s recent debate about China and its migrants. For relevant information about socio-economic and socio-­political transformations taking place in China see Joseph Fewsmith (1994), Cheng Li (1997), Zheng Yongnian (2010) and David Goodman (2014). 3. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a theory was first proposed by Abraham Maslow (1908–70), an American psychologist, in his 1943 paper, and it was then fully discussed in his 1954 book, Motivation and Personality. His theory, especially his interpretation of the basic needs of humans, has been very popular and widely used since it was introduced into China in the early 1980s. Many Chinese have been using his concepts of self-actualisation and esteem without realising the origins. Maslow believes in the importance of focusing on the positive qualities in people and he used five key concepts— physiological needs, safety, belonging and love (or social needs), esteem, and self-actualisation—to describe the patterns behind human motivations. For more information about Maslow’s theory and his well-known hierarchy of human needs, as well as his other research, see Maslow (1987), McGuire (2012) and Grogan (2013). 4. I have kept reminding readers of the meaning of China’s industrialisation or modernisation in a longer historical context in my early publications. This is because, according to my observations in classrooms or other settings, many confusions about contemporary China and its development are more or less related to the misunderstanding of China’s industrialisation process, which is also phrased as modernisation and reform in different periods. In fact, in the past one and a half centuries or so, there have been two major reform efforts made in China to industrialise and modernise its economy. The first began in the early 1860s, which was called Yangwu Yundong (the Westernisation Movement, 1861–95) and was terminated by the first Sino-­ Japanese War (or the War of Jiawu, 1894–95). This effort can be regarded as the first reform or the early industrialisation in China as it laid a solid foundation for later developments, but afterwards, China went through a long period of turmoil, resulting from numerous conflicts at national and international levels. China’s post-Mao economic reform guided by Deng Xiaoping’s thinking and ideas is the second major effort, and this four-­ decade-­long effort has taken China through a few steps of its industrialisation process. To help fully and clearly understand this historical process, I have often called the post-1978 or post-Mao effort the second reform, which is found to be helpful in understanding China’s rapid economic development. For further information about the Yangwu Yundong, or

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China’s first reform, of the late Qing, see Huters (2005) and Scott (2008); for further information about the immediate period after the first Sino-­ Japanese War, see Schwarcz (1986), Eastman (1991) and Lee (1991). Since then, young Chinese intellectuals, including many first-generation members of the CCP, have been heavily influenced by imported foreign ideas, including communism. 5. As will be discussed in the third section of this chapter, Stern Hu, or Hu Shitai in Chinese, was an executive of Rio Tinto Group’s China office in Shanghai, and was arrested in July 2009. Hu is a graduate of Peking University, and worked for China’s CITIC (previously known as China International Trust Investment Corporation) for years in the 1980s before leaving China for Australia. Hu then worked for Hamersley Iron Pty Ltd in Australia, and became an Australian citizen in 1997. Hu and three of his Chinese citizen colleagues were arrested for allegations of bribery and stealing state secrets. In March 2010, they were all convicted of accepting bribes totalling about US$14 million, and stealing trade secrets. Hu was given a 10-year sentence in 2010, but he has recently been released from jail in July 2018. Leaving the many details of this specific case aside, which is not a positive case in the eyes of many people, both non-Chinese and Chinese, the point here is to argue against the belief that Chinese Australians have no role to play in Australia’s mining industry. A few more cases will also be put forward to substantiate my argument. For more information about Stern Hu and his case, as well as the related political tensions, see Huang and Austin (2011), Weiner (2011) and Neoh et al. (2014). 6. Different from the case of Stern Hu discussed earlier, Dio Wang, or Wang Zhenya in Chinese, is another case to show the involvement of the ethnic Chinese in Australia’s mining boom. Wang was born in 1981 in Nanjing, and came to Australia in 2003 to study a graduate course in engineering structures and urban planning. He was employed by Australasian Resources, which was partially owned by Clive Palmer, from 2006 as an engineer first and then an executive after 2010. Wang became a Senate candidate for the Palmer United Party (PUP) in Western Australia at the 2013 federal election. He was elected to the Senate, but lost on a recount. The PUP disputed the result of the recount and took the issue to the High Court of Australia. According to the court ruling, a fresh 2014 half-Senate election was held for Western Australia, and Wang won a Senate seat with an increase in votes. He joined the Senate in July 2014 until the then prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, dissolved both houses of parliament in May 2016 and called double dissolution elections on 2 July 2016. Despite being a federal senator for only two years, Wang was only the second China-born senator, after Tsebin Tchen (Chen Zhibin) from Victoria, a Liberal member of the Australian Senate from 1999 to 2005. At the same time, according to an ANU

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(Australian National University) researcher, Dio Wang’s case has been used to show the difficulties inherent in the political representation of ethnic minorities and new migrants in Australia because he did not speak out against Clive Palmer, who referred the Chinese as mongrels and Chinese bastards. For further discussion, see Gabrielle Chan (2014), Tom King (2015) and Juliet Pietsch (2018).

References Andrew, J. (2009). ‘Australia’s trade performance, 1990-91-2010-11’, http:// dfat.gov.au/about-us/publications/Documents/australias-trade-performance-1990-91-2010-11.pdf. Accessed 28 February 2019. Barry, P. (2010). ‘China’s quarry’, The Monthly, www.themonthly.com.au/ issue/2010/august/1281336434/paul-barry/chinas-quarry, Accessed 28 February 2019. Barmé, G. (2018). ‘Contentious friendship’, China Heritage, http://chinaheritage.net/journal/contentious-friendship/. Accessed 28 February 2019. Business Council of Australia (2015). Submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties Inquiry into the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement. Melbourne: Business Council of Australia. Chan, G. (2014). ‘Dio Wang, the diplomatic senator left to clean up PUP’s mess’, The Guardian, 22 August 2014, www.theguardian.com/world/2014/ aug/22/dio-wang-the-diplomatic-senator-left-to-clean-up-pups-mess. Accessed 28 February 2019. Chau, D. (2019). ‘Australia’s fortunes are linked to China’s economy – for better or worse’, ABC News, 15 January 2019, www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-15/ china-economy-slowdown-will-affect-australia/10716240. Accessed 28 February 2019. Chen, F. (1999). ‘An unfinished battle in China: The leftist criticism of the reform and the third thought emancipation’, China Quarterly, 158: 447–467. Clark, M. (1969). A Short History of Australia. London: William Heinemann. Couchman, S. (2001). Furniture Making Industry. www.chia.chinesemuseum. com.au/biogs/CH00016b.htm. Accessed 28 February 2019. Crabb, A. (2012). ‘End times for the addictive politics of easy money’, ABC News, 13 March 2012, www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-13/crabb-federal-politicseasy-money/3884184. Accessed 28 February 2019. DFAT (2018). Australia’s Trade in Services with China. https://dfat.gov.au/ about-us/publications/Pages/recent-trade-statistical-articles-and-information-papers.aspx. Accessed 28 February 2019. Donnellan, A. and S. Wainwright (2017). ‘Sally Zou: The Chinese mining magnate who paid workers with a bag full of cash’, ABC News, 15 November 2017,

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www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-14/sally-zou-mining-magnate-liberal-partydonor/9125672. Accessed 28 February 2019. Downer, A. (1997). ‘Australia and China: Engagement and Cooperation’, https://foreignminister.gov.au/speeches/1997/china10sept97.html, Accessed 28 February 2019. Eastman, L. (1991). ‘The May Fourth Movement as a historical turning point: Ecological exhaustion, militarization, and other causes of China’s modern crisis’. In K.  Lieberthal et  al. (eds.), Perspectives on Modern China: Four Anniversaries (pp. 123–138). New York: M.E. Sharpe. Fewsmith, J. (1994). Dilemmas of Reform in China: Political Conflict and Economic Debate. New York: M.E. Sharpe. Fischer, T. (1997). ‘Australia and China: A Complementary Partnership for the 21st Century’, https://trademinister.gov.au/speeches/1997/index.html. Accessed 28 February 2019. Fischer, T. (1999). ‘Australia-China Trade and Investment Summit’, https://trademinister.gov.au/releases/1999/990716.html. Accessed 28 February 2019. Fitzgerald, J. (2007). Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Gamble, J. (2003). Shanghai in transition: Changing Perspectives and Social Contours of a Chinese Metropolis. London: Routledge/Curzon. Gao, J. (1999). ‘The patterns and processes of family wealth accumulation among mainland Chinese migrants in Australia’. Population and Economics, 2: 47–56. Gao, J. (2001). ‘Chinese students in Australia’. In J. Jupp (ed.), The Australian People (pp. 222–225). Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Gao, J. (2011). ‘A foreign concept: less Rudd’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 October 2011. Gao, J. (2013). Chinese Activism of a Different Kind: The Chinese Students’ Campaign to Stay in Australia. Leiden: Brill. Gao, J. (2015). Chinese Migrant Entrepreneurship in Australia from the Early 1990s: Case-Studies of Success in Sino-Australian Relations. Oxford: Elsevier. Gao, J., C. Ingram, and P. K. Kee (2017). ‘Transforming Sino-Western relations through global media and public diplomacy’. In J.  Gao et  al. (eds.), Global Media and Public Diplomacy in Sino-Western Relations (pp. 1–13). Abingdon: Routledge. Gao, J., and Y. Y. Su (2019). Social Mobilisation in Post-Industrial China: The Case of Rural Urbanisation. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Garrett, G. (2011). ‘Why this love triangle works’, The Australian, 13 August 2011, www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/why-this-love-triangle-works/ news-story/f6c262e1d92a7a77a3b5a2913adb7d8b. Accessed 28 February 2019. Goodman, D. (1994). Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese Revolution: A Political Biography. London: Routledge.

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Goodman, D. (2014). Class in Contemporary China. Cambridge: Polity Press. Grogan, J. (2013). Encountering America: Humanistic Psychology, Sixties culture, and the Shaping of the Modern Self. New York: Harper Perennial. Harcourt, T. (2014). ‘China won’t dwell on insults’, The New Daily, 29 August 2014, https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2014/08/29/chinaclive-palmer-insults/. Accessed 28 February 2019. Huang, X.  L. and I.  Austin (2011). Chinese Investment in Australia: Unique Insights from the Mining Industry. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Huters, T. (2005). Bringing the World Home: Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Joint Standing Committee on Migration (2015). Report of the Inquiry into the Business Innovation and Investment Programme. www.aph.gov.au/ Parliamentar y_Business/Committees/Joint/Migration/BIIP/Report. Accessed 18 January 2019. Kendall, T. (2005). Ways of Seeing China: From Yellow Peril to Shangri La. Perth: Curtin University Books. King, T. (2015). ‘The advent of two new micro parties: The Palmer United Party and Katter’s Australia Party’. In C.  Johnson and J.  Wanna (eds.), Abbott’s Gambit: The 2013 Australian Federal Election (pp.  293–309). Canberra: ANU Press. Lake, M., and H. Reynolds (2008). Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality. London: Cambridge University Press. Laurenceson, J. (2017). ‘In the US–AU–China love triangle, actions speak louder than words’, East Asia Forum, 11 October 2017, www.eastasiaforum. org/2017/10/11/in-the-us-au-china-love-triangle-actions-speak-louderthan-words/. Accessed 28 February 2019. Lee, L. (1991). ‘Modernity and its discontents: The cultural agenda of the May Fourth Movement’. In K. Lieberthal et al. (eds.), Perspectives on Modern China: Four Anniversaries (pp. 158–177). New York: M.E. Sharpe. Li, C. (1997). Rediscovering China: Dynamics and Dilemmas of Reform. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Maslow, A. (1943). ‘A theory of human motivation’. Psychological Review, 50(4): 370–396. Maslow, A. (1987). Motivation and personality. New York: Harper & Row. McGuire, K. (2012). Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: An Introduction. Munich: Grin Verlag. Murray, G. (2006). Capitalist Networks and Social Power in Australia and New Zealand. Abingdon: Routledge. Neoh, J., D. Rothwell, and K. Rubenstein (2014). ‘The complicated case of Stern Hu: Allegiance, identity and nationality in a globalised world’. In D. Jenkins

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et  al. (eds.), Allegiance and Identity in a Globalised World (pp.  453–477). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. OECD (2018). Recruiting Immigrant Workers: Australia. Paris: OECD. Pietsch, J. (2018). Race, Ethnicity and the Participation Gap: Understanding Australia’s Political Complexion. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Pitts, L. (2004). ‘Collaborators, business partners friends: Australia-China subnational government relations’. In N.  Thomas (ed.), Re-orienting Australia-­ China Relations (pp. 67–86). Abingdon: Routledge. Productivity Commission (2003). Trends in Australia Manufacturing. Melbourne: Productivity Commission. Pusey, M. (2003). An Australian Story: The Troubling Experience of Economic Reform. Paper on Parliament no. 41, Canberra: Parliament of Australia. www. aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/ pops/~/link.aspx?_id=6F7B19F24405402F8F8880A57A4A5C83&_z=z. Accessed 28 February 2019. Robin, M. (2018). ‘Liberals’ would-be $1.2m donor Sally Zou has history of not delivering’, Australian Financial Review, 6 March 2018, www.afr.com/brand/ rear-window/sa-liberals-wouldbe-12-million-donor-sally-zou-has-historyof-not-delivering-20180305-h0x1m0. Accessed 28 February 2019. Robinson, N. (2018). ‘Australia hosting unprecedented number of international students’, ABC News, 18 April 2018, www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-18/ australia-hosting-unprecedented-numbers-international-students/9669030. Accessed 28 February 2019. Rudd, K. (2018). ‘Malcolm Turnbull’s new McCarthyism on China’, The Australian, 24 February 2018. www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/ malcolm-turnbulls-new-mccar thyism-on-china/news-stor y/8fd371 077779d6e04647c8bb4eabad2f. Accessed 28 February 2019. Sainsbury, M. (2010). ‘Howard rekindles his Chinese connections’, The Australian, 18 September 2010, www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/howard-rekindleshis-chinese-connections/news-story/1ba3fafe780f86e0cb67bbcaec7285d4. Accessed 28 February 2019. Schwarcz, V. (1986). The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919. Berkeley: University of California Press. Scott, D. (2008). China and the International System, 1840–1949: Power, Presence, and Perceptions in a Century of Humiliation. Albany: State University of New York Press. Senate Standing Committees on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade (2005). Opportunities and Challenges: Australia’s Relationship with China. www.aph. gov.au/Parliamentar y_Business/Committees/Senate/Foreign_Affairs_ Defence_and_Trade/Completed_inquiries/2004-07/china/report01/index. Accessed 28 February 2019.

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Sherlock, S. (1997). Australia’s relations with China: What’s the problem? Canberra: Parliment of Australia. Solinger, D. (2015). China’s Transition from Socialism: Statist Legacies and Market Reforms, 1980–1990. Abingdon: Routledge. Spinks, H. (2016). ‘Overseas students: Immigration policy changes 1997–2015’, Research Paper Series, 2015–16, Parliament of Australia. https://parlinfo.aph. g o v. a u / p a r l I n f o / d o w n l o a d / l i b r a r y / p r s p u b / 4 3 9 0 2 6 5 / u p l o a d _ binary/4390265.pdf;fileType=application/pdf. Accessed 8 January 2019. Strahan, L. (1996). Australia’s China: Changing Perceptions from the 1930s to the 1990s. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Suettinger, R. (2003). Beyond Tiananmen: The Politics of U.S.-China Relations 1989–2000. Washington: Brookings Institution Press. The Treasury (2012). Australia-China: Not Just 40 Years. https://treasury.gov. au/publication/economic-roundup-issue-4-2012/australia-china-not-just40-years/. Accessed 28 February 2019. Uren, D. (2007). ‘China emerges as our biggest trading partner’, The Australian, 5 May 2007. www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/china-emerges-as-ourbiggest-trade-partner/news-story/805457e7d980cf3b4462801320b63433. Accessed 28 February 2019. Uren, D. (2019). ‘Migrants key to labour force as home-grown workers dwindle’, The Australian, 29 January 2019. www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/ migrants-key-to-labour-force-as-home-grown-workers-dwindle/. Accessed 28 February 2019. Walker, D. (1999). Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1850–1939. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press. Walker, T. (2018). ‘Australia needs to reset the relationship with China and stay cool’, The Conversation, 4 June 2918, https://theconversation.com/australianeeds-to-reset-the-relationship-with-china-and-stay-cool-97370. Accessed 28 February 2019. Weiner, E. (2011). The Shadow Market: How the Global Economy is Controlled by Wealthy Nations and What Investors need to Know to Prosper in it. New York: Scribner. Willard, M. (1967). History of the White Australia Policy to 1920. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Windle, J. and J. Rolfe (2013). ‘Assessing the trade-offs of increased mining activity in the Surat Basin, Queensland’, Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resources Economics, 58: 111–129. Zhao, Y. Z. (2015). ‘(Re)-Focusing in the target: Reflections on a trajectory of studying the Chinese media’. In G.  Rawnsley and M.  T. Rawnsley (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media (pp. 9–26). Abingdon: Routledge. Zheng, Y. N. (2010). The Chinese Communist Party as Organizational Emperor: Culture, Reproduction and Transformation. Abingdon: Routledge.

CHAPTER 4

Australian Responses to the Rise of Chinese Immigration

This chapter examines the social reasons why Sinophobia is still a potential political force in a country as multi-ethnic as post-multicultural Australia. In other words, this is about Australia’s grassroots responses to the rapid and huge increase in Chinese immigration to Australia and the dramatic changes in the composition of the Chinese community and their socio-­ economic position in the transformation of the Australian economy. As discussed in Chap. 2, these changes were the intended outcome of new merit-based immigration selection policies that have been introduced by consecutive governments. However, they have also challenged the stereotypes that many Australians have held of the ethnic Chinese for more than a century. This chapter focuses on the general social conditions, in which the top-down political crusade aimed at diluting alleged Chinese influence in Australian politics and deactivating Chinese Australians remains a reality in modern-day Australia. Theoretically, this analysis does not assume that people are rational at all times or that public opinions are all correct and trustworthy. One has to remember that history, early and recent, has witnessed many irrational episodes resulting from what have been called people’s wishes, demands or support. It is also true that what was supported by a large percentage of people at one time and in one place could be considered irrational and undesirable in other times and places. In this study, grassroots responses are not going to be judged, but simply considered as part of the social conditions that are important and fundamental in determining why © The Author(s) 2020 J. Gao, Chinese Immigration and Australian Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5909-9_4

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Sinophobic sentiments could still exist and even become a socio-political force in modern-day Australia. Responses are reflections of what people are concerned about, but are not necessarily rational and correct. Public opinions are a useful product and a tool that can be used, misused or manipulated by some politically motivated individuals to serve their own interests. Because of this, modern societies have seen numerous cases in which public opinions are nurtured or identified, and then put to a political use. In this case, grassroots responses have connected Chinese Australians closely to the local political scene, the dynamics of which is a focal point of this analysis. Although reactions of people and groups are essential to socio-­economic and -political processes, they do not begin in isolation, or take place without a trigger event or process. This helps explain why this chapter is put here, after considering policy reasons and economic activities in Chaps. 2 and 3. It is because of these two sets of changes that some people feel their lifestyles being challenged, or even threatened, by an influx of migrants from culturally different countries, such as China. Some readers may not see the need for such an explanation, but my decades-long teaching experience has warned me that there are always some who blindly believe in the concepts of people and public opinions without understanding that people are reactive creatures and their collective opinions are responsive to changes in their living conditions. This chapter has four sections, two of which, the first and third sections, are about general trends and their key characteristics; the second and fourth sections look at two main topics that have been used to fuel new Sinophobic sentiments since the mid-1990s. Specifically, the first section examines Australia’s traditional fears of China, or invasion anxiety, and how this contributed to the emergence and support of Pauline Hanson as a public figure. The second section analyses the new tension resulting from increasing competition in secondary school education, which generated new fractures between the dominant community and the Chinese community. The third section looks into the overall interactions or trend of how ordinary Australians and new Chinese migrants have, since the late 1990s and early 2000s, responded to each other and a range of key features of the process. More attention will be paid to the tensions generated and shaped by differences between the laid-back attitudes of Australians and the mindsets of new immigrants from China. The last section of this chapter offers an analysis and explanation of strong responses in Australia’s mainstream English media to the purchasing activities of Chinese buyers

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in the local property market. This has been a heated topic for quite some time, which has prepared ordinary Australians and grassroots groups for sympathising with the Sinophobic campaign staged during the prime ministership of Malcom Turnbull.

Australia’s Long-held Fear of China Methodologically, any analysis of current issues has to be situated within the context of the topic or issue under examination. While the context of social actions and processes is always multi-dimensional and intricate, the historical ins and outs are one of the most critical aspects to be taken into account when undertaking analysis. In the case of Australia’s attitudes towards China and its people, consideration must be given to Australia’s long-held attention on China and the anxiety it can trigger, even though the focus of this study is on the effects of Australia’s merit-based migration system that has been used and refined since the mid-1990s. The above point is important given that Australia’s recent anti-China sentiment is not the first of its kind, but has been a national chronic condition since the early 1850s, when the first large group of Chinese workers came to Australia. Just like genetic factors influencing and shaping human physical development, behaviour and character, all human groups and societies also inherit tradition and culture, including both positive and negative past experiences. Migration places groups of people with different cultural, or collective, inheritances in one social and economic system, which can lead to tension. In Chap. 1, this study outlined six main phases of the history of Chinese immigration to Australia since the early 1850s, and how that history could also be considered in three main stages according to the types of Chinese migrants Australia has recruited over that time. In fact, this history could also be considered from the perspective of local responses, from which China and Chinese migrants have sometimes been regarded problematic in Australia. Even though Myra Willard, one of Australia’s early scholarly authorities on the White Australia policy, argued that ‘the Chinese question was suddenly brought before the Australiana colonies by happenings in Queensland in 1876’, when the discovery of gold in north Queensland attracted thousands of Chinese labourers (Willard 1967, p. 37), the Chinese question had already been raised elsewhere in Australia in the 1850s. Benjamin Mountford, an Australian historian, noted the following:

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White Sinophobes might have seen themselves as racially superior, but they couldn’t help being struck by the efficiency and resourcefulness of the men from Canton and Fujian. At the same time the growth of Chinese communities on the goldfields highlighted concerns over the sheer size of China’s potential emigrant population. ‘Considerable anxiety prevails as to the invading army of Chinese’, noted the Melbourne Argus in 1855 (Mountford 2016, p. 57).1

In other words, as I noted in my commentary piece for Current History, fear has been a prevailing part of the psyche of European settlers in Australia since colonial times (Gao 2018). At first, Australia’s fear of non-­ European labourers and settlers and its neighbouring countries was predominantly caused by the tyranny of distance from Britain and Europe (Blainey 1982). However, more recently it has been largely caused by workplace competition, as Mountford pointed out, as well as by media sensationalism for commercial gains, and by the politicisation of societal relations by those making a living through politicising themselves. Among these four perspectives, the last political reason has evolved from being part of domestic politics to part of a geopolitical push, which will be analysed in more details in Chaps. 5 and 7. This is because Australia’s current Sinophobic campaign is more influenced by geopolitics than by local and economic factors, the mechanism of which is some Australian elites who do not feel comfortable with the policy to align more closely with Asia. Since the colonial period, Chinese labourers and migrants, and their homeland, have loomed as a threat in the Australian imagination. The threat was largely imaginary and characterised by what Edward William Foxall, pseudonym Gizen-No-Teki, defined as colorphobia (Walker and Collins 2008).2 At that time of federation in January 1901, ‘the yellow peril view was a common theme in the press of the period’ as stated by Edmund Fund and Colin Mackerras, Australia’s leading academics on Australia–China relations (Fung and Mackerras 1985, p. 15). In spite of the above main theme and nature, Australia’s fear has also evolved superficially without altering anything fundamentally. As proud subjects of the British Empire, most Australians made little effort to learn more about their Asian neighbours, leaving them with a simplistic and biased view of the region and its peoples, and inundated by the ‘yellow hordes’ discourse. Chinese settlers in Australia since the mid-1850s have been portrayed in numerous ways, ranging from aliens who were unable to integrate in the early decades, to hardworking citizens and a national economic asset

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in recent years. After about 100  years of ‘yellow peril’ fears, Australia’s Sinophobia evolved into an anxiety over China as a red menace in the context of the Cold War between the Eastern socialist bloc and the Western capitalist bloc. The Chinese question was then politicised and elevated to the China problem (Albinski 1965; Andrews 1985; Strahan 1996). During this period, Australia received virtually no immigration from mainland China, and both Australia and China became famous for their closed-door policies, However, Australia’s worries over China were not lessened, as the media and politicians had seamlessly transitioned from portraying China as the terror of yellow hordes to a communist threat. Australia’s understanding of China and its people has, since the spread of the Red China concept, further evolved and shown a persistent inadequacy. In the minds of many Australians, China as its key neighbour could simply be observed and therefore represented by different colours at different times, as examined by Timothy Kendall in his book Ways of Seeing China. Over-simplified views ranged from the yellow peril in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the red communist threat before and during the Cold War, the blue ants when China was in poverty during the Maoist period, to the new golden colour in the eyes of those benefiting from China’s economic expansion, a money-making El Dorado for some (Kendall 2005; Fung 2007). Throughout the course of elevating the Chinese question to the China problem, and then to China’s influence in Australia, Australia’s anxiety about China and migrants from China has shown three noteworthy correlations with other factors. First, although the first large group of Chinese was recruited to Australia as indentured labourers, which was legal in the nineteenth century,3 Australian politicians and the media were inclined to disregard laws and policies of their own country, and to willingly follow the sensationalism along ‘the global colour line’ (Lake and Reynolds 2008). When debating on the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, Foxall criticised that ‘Australia had imported its “colorphobia” from the United States’, the bias of which ‘had entered the Australian mind’ (Kemp 2011, p.  41). As specified in Chap. 2, the same problem has been repeated in the current heated debate about China’s influence in Australia, as the debate ‘tends to be dominated by hawkish voices who favour close ties with the US’, and its own multicultural harmony and cohesion become secondary (Sun 2018, n.p.). That is, the foreign influence from its allied countries, predominantly from Britain previously and the United States now, has always appeared to be

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more powerful and superior than its own rules and policies. This has been a decisive dimension of Australian politics. Of course, this special aspect of Australian political behaviour and attitudes, as well as its connection with the recent China debate, is beyond the scope of this book. This analysis draws attention to the issue, hoping that future studies can look at it from different viewpoints, including international politics and national identity. Second, some media outlets in Australia have, over the past 170 or so years, played an active, but often disgraceful, role in inflaming and sustaining hostile attitudes towards China and the Chinese living and working in Australia. It was not only true during the gold rush years beginning in the early 1850s, as noted earlier (Fung and Mackerras 1985), but remains true now. Wanning Sun, professor of media at the UTS (University of Technology Sydney) and an active partaker in the current China debate, criticised the mainstream media as being part of ‘megaphone diplomacy’, which is ‘good for selling papers, but harmful for Australia-China relations’ (Sun 2018, n.p.). In the article, she also made the following comments: Australia has a free but financially struggling media. This makes for a tricky combination. Take a media sector that is desperate to boost its readership, combine with a populist turn in the political discourse, add a generous dash of fear of China’s growing global power, and stir. The result, while great for sound bites and political posturing, is not a pretty picture, but it does make a good story (Sun 2018, n.p.).

Third, Australia’s long-lasting fears of China and its emigrants are a complex feeling or collective emotion; they are often accompanied by, or expressed in, some form of arrogance, which has even evolved into ‘a bubble of narcissism’ as defined by Hugh Mackay, Australia’s renowned social researcher and demographer (Mackay 2018, p. 7). Such a strange combination of nervousness, arrogance and narcissism was a direct result of postwar economic accomplishments and prosperity. In the three or four decades after World War II, the Australian economy expanded successfully and became more industrialised and prosperous than most of its Asian neighbours. The general mood of the country started changing and narcissistic self-admiration was fuelled and sustained by what was achieved at that time. It was also during the postwar years that Australia had a generation of better educated professionals than it had before, or an educated class as argued by John Douglas Pringle in his 1958 book Australian

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Accent. However, in the eyes of Donald Horne, a famous Australian critic and the author of The Lucky Country, the new educated class was found to just live on other people’s ideas. Horne’s powerful book criticised Australia’s elites for relying on their inherited access to British markets, governance structures, and industrial knowledge, rather on than intellectual vigour and entrepreneurial abilities (Horne 1964). Donald Horne’s timely warning had no obvious effect on changing the new general mentality, making the country less well prepared for a fundamental postwar transformation in the Asia-Pacific region: China’s reform. Australia’s knowledge of China, just like everything else in society, exists at two levels: the public level, and the professional and elite level. The latter has been a key concern because of the problems pointed out by John Douglas Pringle and Donald Horne. Aside from a small group of bureaucrats, business professionals and researchers who are up-to-date and informed about China and the region, much of Australia’s knowledge of China is still far too simplistic and fanciful, and of little help for devising useful policies rather than spreading fear and Sinophobia. When China kept its door closed to the outside world from the early 1950s to the late 1970s, and was preoccupied by a string of political purges and infighting that consumed most of its attention and energies, fears of red communist China in Australia were not eased. A bizarre conspiracy theory surrounded the disappearance of the prime minister Harold Holt, who went for a swim in the sea in 1967 and never returned, allegedly because he was abducted by a Chinese submarine.4 This apparent drowning incident at one of Victoria’s most treacherous beaches pushed the nation’s long-held anxiety over China’s invasion into the realm of paranoia. This story has added an additional piece of evidence to the theory that the recent revivals of Australia’s invasion anxiety include an element of national narcissism. China has been frequently used in Australia to satisfy its feeling of being a blessed and important country. Such a narcissistic feeling has spread widely among grassroots groups, adding a frame to their social responses towards changes in their living situations. In the eyes of many Australians, their country is so prosperous and comfortable that impoverished people in overpopulated China must want to come and stay. Their understanding is partly correct, and Australia has seen many new arrivals from China since the late 1980s, some of them were so desperate that they even tried to seek Australian residency from the courts (Gao 2011). However, this is not a complete picture of contemporary China, nor an accurate reflection of that transforming society.

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Australia’s illusory superiority over Asian countries and people has led to a distorted view of themselves and regional realities. No matter whether it is driven by fear or narcissism, Australia’s practical and serviceable knowledge of, as well as attitudes towards, China and Chinese people have prevented it from learning and understanding what changes have been happening in China and what the current situation is. Among the many ignored aspects of changing socio-economic and -political landscapes, Australia and China are two countries that have been going through dissimilar socio-economic processes on two dissimilar historical tracks. Such different social circumstances and processes have resulted in different beliefs and attitudes towards everyday life among the populations. Generally speaking, Australia became a developed economy and a welfare state earlier than many Asian countries. This has given rise to the reality that a high proportion of Australians prize a laid-back attitude, or being ‘comfortable and relaxed’ in the words of John Howard, as the Australian way of life (cited in Errington and Onselen 2007, p.  233). However, many Asian migrants, especially those from the Chinese mainland, have different mindsets and life situations that have resulted in different behaviour. Since the end of the Maoist Cultural Revolution in the late 1976 and after more than a century of political instabilities after the decline of the Qing dynasty in the late nineteenth century, the Chinese people’s strong demands for improving living standards have firmly placed China on the path of reform. The people’s own beliefs, aspirations and behaviours have also changed, becoming very different from how they’ve been portrayed in the media and other publications, including those in both English and Chinese. These demands have stimulated people all over China, making them more ambitious and hardworking than before, and compared with people in other countries. They are doing whatever they can to make a good life and to climb the social ladder wherever they live and work. More abstractly, Australians are at a relatively stable, less-fluctuating point in their societal life, while the Chinese display an upward trend of enthusiasm and engagement. A large number of Chinese migrants have lately come to Australia with this newly awakened pragmatic spirit or mentality of upward social mobility, posting a new challenge to the Australian way of life. However, the tension occurred first at the grassroots level. Unlike recent years when merit-based migration programs have brought in many professionals and experts, migrants brought into Australia before the late 1990s, or even up to the early 2000s, did not pose any challenge

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to the so-called white-collar groups and other elite classes, but formed part of both the blue-collar labour force and the small business market. Therefore it was here that the different attitudes and behaviours of Australians and Chinese collided, resulting in the formation and spread of Pauline Hanson’s racist ideologies since the mid-1990s. While Hanson was strongly criticised by many Australians, she gained sufficient support to suggest that her ideas were shared by many, both working-class and middle-class. Because of the sympathy it has elicited in parts of the country, Hanson’s ideas have been considered to be a popular resistance to multiculturalism and Australia’s strategic shift towards Asia. As noted, she openly warned that Australia was in danger of being swamped by Asians in her maiden speech to parliament as a new independent member of federal parliament in 1996. However, the strong discontent expressed by Pauline Hanson was in fact a clear revelation of both the disadvantaged position of various grassroots groups in Australia’s changing economy and changing job market and their lack of competitiveness in comparison to many of those new migrants. Pauline Hanson had no understanding of what immigrants had brought to Australia since the mid-1980s, but attacked them in the above speech by asserting that migrants from Asia ‘have their own culture and religion, form ghettos, and do not assimilate’ (Hanson 1996, n.p.). Even though Hanson could be seen as reinvigorating old Sinophobic sentiments, her popularity is most like an outcry from grassroots groups for their fast-disappearing advantage and ever insecure job prospects in an increasingly unbalanced economic structure.

Competition in Secondary School Education Australia has, in recent decades, witnessed many changes resulting from a large number of new Chinese migrants coming to Australia since the late 1980s and early 1990s, some of which have changed and disturbed Australia’s relaxed approach to life. There are more Asians in Australia’s urban centres than in regional areas. While some Australians feel proud that their country is admired, some have developed a stronger sense of themselves as Australians and others as non-Australians. More race-related differences have slowly and quietly emerged among different groups and communities in society, but the strong push for multiculturalism temporarily cemented them together and hid them away from too much public attention. From the late 1980s to the early 2000s, many Chinese

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immigrants could be seen in factories and other production lines, and they were often welcomed and liked by business owners, managers and supervisors. This was once used to create a pressure on existing workers, but also unavoidably upset many of them. The same level of competitiveness has also become an issue in the small business market after many Chinese migrant families started buying and operating milk bars, takeaway food outlets, fruit and vegetable stores, and laundry services (Gao 1999, 2015). The tensions in the market reduced significantly after more Chinese migrants started running the businesses that related to the Chinese economy, or the demands for goods and services by consumers from either country. The purchasing of residential, as well as commercial, properties by many Chinese migrant families has also been a topic in the media and everyday conversations. This issue is discussed in the last section of this chapter. It has, to a great extent, prepared the Australian public for accepting the current ‘Sinophobic blatherings’, in the expression used by Dr Michael Spence, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney (Clark 2018, n.p.). What is also worth special attention is the disruptive role of new Chinese migrant children in Australia’s school system. While a large number of ethnic Chinese students are found to excel academically in school, their different attitudes and approach to education have also added evidence for Sinophobic sentiment, straining relations between the ethnic Chinese community and mainstream Australians. The schooling of children in non-Mandarin-speaking countries has been one of the most regularly discussed questions among the migrants from China since the early 1990s, when a large group of Chinese children came to Australia as a result of the Hawke Labor government’s decision to allow around 45,000 Chinese students to stay in Australia. As noted in Chap. 1, this was actually the very first large cohort of migrants from the Chinese mainland since the late nineteenth century. Because they were new to Australia, what they were most worried about, when their children also arrived in Australia, was the future of their children in the new host country. All these Chinese families, and those of later arrivals as well, have been found to spend most of their time making a living, but devote almost all their attention and effort to their children’s education. Their preferred conversation topics may seem rather boring to some, always centring on school, subjects and exams. Their worries were indeed more valid and serious than many Australians could imagine then, because these children were the first few cohorts of China’s one-child generations, a policy put

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into effect in 1979. Because each married couple was only allowed to have one child, bringing them up and educating them properly was a serious issue for Chinese families. However, the above reasoning has only recently, almost at the same time the current Sinophobic drive began, been brought to the attention of the Australian public. A News Corp website carried a story headlined ‘Why children of migrants are performing better in school’ in December 2016. The report included the following answer from a confident student from a new Chinese migrant family: Both my parents migrated from China about 20 or so years ago, and speaking from my personal experience, there was a definite sociological link between my attitude to education that came from that … A lot of migrants when they come realise it’s extremely difficult because of the language barrier but also the cultural barrier. One of the best ways to overcome that is through education (Burke 2016, n.p.).

The long-distance, or cross-border, migration has traditionally been described as beijing lixiang in an old Chinese saying (Wang 2005; Williams 2010). Traditional wisdom is often found to be helpful and powerful when families have moved away from their home country or hometown. The new Chinese migrant families in such diasporic situations have also been found to be more likely to be guided by time-honoured traditions and know-how than before they migrated. One piece of old wisdom that has aided many new Chinese migrant families is an ancient learning and approach, expressed as zibujiao, fuzhiguo (raising a child without teaching is the fault of parents) (Choi and Peng 2016). That is, in spite of strong criticisms of the Chinese tradition by many radical intellectuals of the twentieth century, some time-honoured knowledge and skills have been used in diasporic situations more than people thought (Wang and Weisfeld 2018). Having been guided by such attitudes and approaches, school-aged students from new Chinese migrant families have commonly been seen making efforts to study hard, including doing far more homework than required. It is fair to say that since the early 1990s, despite ongoing racism against Chinese, these young students and their parents have genuinely hoped to be able to integrate themselves with local people, especially with those born in Australia. Such a genuine wish has nothing to do with their children’s need to learn English, but has been motivated by what they

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believe about luodi shenggen (taking roots where you land), another old saying encouraging integration of migrants (Liu and Benton 2004). Such integration efforts have been continuously made by children from Chinese families over the past three or so decades. However, their wish for integration has generally been disregarded, whereas their focus on academic study has often alienated them from their peers. The following is one of many such cases that have recently been reported in the mainstream media: ‘I suffered a lot of racial bullying and a lot of physical bullying,’ she recalls … ‘I even had kids’ parents telling me to go back to China, even though I’m not from China’ … She remembers that during the tricky pre-pubescent and teenage years she ‘tried not to be Asian’ … ‘I even told my parents, “I want to change my last nam.”’ (Mulligan 2016, n.p.).

While such a situation could happen anywhere, including non-­migration situations, and they may be isolated cases, the main point is that tensions have emerged between new Chinese migrants and earlier settled Australians since the early or mid-1990s, when a large number of ethnic Chinese children started appearing in local schools. From the perspective of this analysis, this was one of the starting points of the persistent tension that has not only existed in Australian society, but has then also led to the current Sinophobic campaign. A number of other issues have also been observed in this same area of social life, which have prevented many early settled Australians, especially from dominant communities, from understanding why so many children from migrant backgrounds have been able to perform well academically. These issues are worth discussing. First, the persistent stereotypes of poor and ignorant Chinese have made it very difficult for Anglo-Celtic Australians to clearly understand new migrants from post-Mao China. Their perceptions and opinions of people from China in the early 1990s were largely influenced by the portrayals or images of Chinese labourers of the gold rush era, which has remained an impediment. One has to remember the case discussed in Chap. 2, in which two immigration minsters of the Hawke and Keating Labor governments had different understandings of the Chinese students living in Australia, but seeking permanent residency. As an Anglo-­ Australian, Gerry Hand could only see those Chinese as a burden; his successor, Nick Bolkus, as the son of Greek immigrants, regarded them as ‘the crème of young China’ (Bourke 2009, n.p.) and a ‘highly talented

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group of people’ (Banham 2003, n.p.). This is a typical example showing the real level of knowledge of Australian political elites of present-day China, and how prejudice and arrogance can lead to ignorance. In the case of school-based contacts or interactions between students of Chinese backgrounds and Anglo-Celtic backgrounds, the lack of knowledge about new Chinese migrants has resulted in a visible resistance of some Anglo-­ Celtic Australian students to what their parents might regard as Chinese practices in schools. As to be discussed next, different attitudes towards the use of coaching programs by students from new migrant families of non-English-speaking backgrounds, as well as attending selective schools, could be typical examples of such tensions (Ho 2011, 2017). Second, various forms of after-school, and even before-school, coaching activities and programs have been another issue that has exacerbated the tensions in Australian schools. Children from new Chinese migrant families were the early users of coaching programs, making them a visible target of resentment and hostility from others. As I analysed in my 2015 book, members of mainstream Australian society were unable to see any merit in the coaching practice and even opposed its culture (Gao 2015). Many Chinese Australian parents, however, regard it as a way to offset their disadvantage as non-English speakers in Australia. Of course, the use of various coaching programs by students of Chinese backgrounds has since evolved into other programs, such as preparing students for selective school entrance exams,5 or even for private school scholarship exams. That is, there are quite a few steps, over which the use of the coaching has become an estranging issue, making some students and parents of ethnic Chinese backgrounds less welcomed in schools by some students and parents. These later developments and the effect will be part of the discussion in the following section. Third, the tension, if not competition, in Australian schools has been further intensified as an outcome of the various new merit-based migration selection policies that were discussed in Chap. 2. The new migration polices have brought more educated immigrants to Australia, and their children are, in fact, placed in a comparatively advantaged position in terms of learning skills. A typical example that has puzzled many people for years is the better mathematical skills shown by many ethnic Chinese students, who have benefitted from their well-educated parents. For the same reason, many middle-class families have migrated to Australia, which has made the situation in Australian schools intricate on two fronts. In the first place, their children often have an academic advantage over their

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Australian peers. In the second place, various Chinese educational practices have been brought in, ensuring their children progress according to two sets of reference systems: not being left too far behind Chinese school standards and excelling in Australian schools. However, all these have triggered extra competition in some schools. Certain policy measures, such as the advocacy and promotion of multiculturalism in schools, are very helpful for non-English-speaking migrants in the long run, but they can sour the relations between some Anglo-­ Celtic Australians and other ethnic communities. In the case of school performance, for example, the Jeff Kennett–led Coalition government (1992–99) in the state of Victoria decided to publish the results of VCE (Victorian Certificate of Education) examinations in major local newspapers, which was a new policy measure to improve school performance through competition. The measure introduced by the government led by Jeff Kennett, a ‘far more visionary Victorian premier in the 1990s’, was widely considered too divisive to execute (Earl 2016, n.p.). This practice has revealed evidence to back up the claim that students of Chinese backgrounds perform well in schools. School examinations are considered by many Australian-born students to be too much to handle, and the publication of the results is very un-Australian. More attention from the mainstream community has been paid to the impact of stress caused by many exams on students’ mental health (H. Cook 2019). Of course, some initially refused to believe that students from Chinese-speaking backgrounds could perform better, because not long ago they were influenced by the racially constructed conception of the Chinese as an inferior race. A range of narratives have since been developed to criticise Chinese practices, including the concepts of authoritative parenting (Chiu et al. 1992; Lau 1996) and the tiger mother (Chua 2011; Chio and Hahm 2017).

Growing Distance from Each Other The tensions caused by school performance were the start of the new mistrust and estrangement between Australians of Anglo-Celtic origins and new Chinese migrants. It should be an encouraging and positive change to Australian school life to have a little bit of competition to progressively improve school learning outcomes. It should also be considered from a social-change perspective and regarded as part of Australia’s nation-­ building efforts and advancement. However, such a change, or indications of a change, has somehow been misunderstood by many along ethnic

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divisions, because children from new Asian immigrant families are found to often perform better than their peers of Anglo-European backgrounds. The fact that ‘Asian migration is transforming education cultures in the Anglo-sphere’ in Australia (Watkins et al. 2017, p. 2283) has not resulted in much positive response among dominant sections of the population. On the contrary, the racial line is again drawn between ‘them’ and ‘us’, attributing the success of Asian-Australian students to their ethnic cultures, which are portrayed as being rather different from the Australian way of life. In the minds of many Australian parents, school-aged students should grow up in a stress-free environment and there is no need to put too much pressure on them. Such a relaxed approach is still widespread, but seen by some Asian migrants as a possible risk, if not irresponsible parenting, that may lead to negative attitudes towards learning. At the same time, many Chinese migrant families and groups have gained more confidence from their children’s school performance. It has been since the early 2000s that the growing distance between dominant Anglo-Celtic groups and Chinese migrant groups has become felt in some quarters, except in neighbourhoods and workplaces where common decency is still largely upheld. In the process of becoming parallel communities and enjoying parallel lives in multicultural Australia, the competition for places in selective schools has externalised the tensions brewed in many individual schools. Christine Ho, a researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, has closely monitored and analysed the enrolment trends in Sydney-based selective public schools and private high schools, and her multi-year study has confirmed the existence of new and increasing segregation along ethnic lines. The Sydney Morning Herald once carried the surprising headline: ‘The Sydney schools becoming Anglo ghettos’, and the reporting included the following comments: ‘Schools are becoming more segregated in terms of both class and ethnicity,’ Dr Ho said. ‘More and more students are going to schools that do not represent the range of people in their neighbourhood, but rather a select group.’… Dr Ho also said the very high proportion of non-Anglo students in selective high schools ‘raised questions’ about whether they were being shunned by Anglo-Australian families (Wade 2015, n.p.).

Of course, both mainstream and Chinese community media have played a vital role in sensationalising this issue and adding a big new worry into

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mainstream anxieties. Financially struggling media outlets have increasingly and heavily relied on a range of divisive and sensational issues to attract audiences and to earn income. What they fail to take into consideration is that some parts of this discussion are deeply flawed, implying that the social privileges of certain racial groups need to be protected beyond the examination-based selection principles and practices, on which an increasing number of selective public schools are based. Selective public schools have been introduced in Australia to cater for the learning needs of high-achieving talented students in order to provide them with the opportunity to reach their academic potential. Both media professionals and many observers have also failed to understand this socio-economic function of education in a modern nation-state. Their standpoint suggests that the existing social privileges of some racial groups are far more important than the openness and fairness of the nation’s education system, one of the most fundamental systems to maintain a nation-state’s fairness, modernity and nationhood. However, Australia is a Western country, allowing media institutions independence to discuss whatever they want, while analysts are also free to talk about what they believe to be true. Without consensus about the importance of an open, fair and competitive education system for the nation’s long-term future and success, complaints about the high concentration of students of Asian heritages in some well-established and sought-­ after schools has been kept alive, but the topic has also become more complex in recent years. The widespread use of tutoring and coaching classes by students with Chinese backgrounds has lately entered the public debate on educational practices of Chinese migrant families, after it has been practised by many new Chinese migrant families for more than a decade. As I examined in my 2015 book, coaching services emerged in the mid-1990s, a few years after the settlement of the first sizable group of new Chinese migrants. The tutoring services have, from the beginning, taken the form of both basic classes to enhance skills in English and maths, and advanced classes preparing students for private school scholarship exams and selective public school entrance exams (Gao 2015). In the course of the 2000s, tutoring services had already expanded to become ‘a $6  billion industry’ in Australia according to the Australian Tutoring Association (Daily Telegraph 2011, n.p.). However, the practices are seen as ‘an educational arms race’, and they inevitably are ‘exacerbating social inequality’ in the eyes of a group of analysts and journalists (Weale 2018, n.p.). These critics appear

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to be unconcerned about the quality and competitiveness of Australia’s education system, but uneasy about the equity problem caused by the practices. What they forget is that these practices have been utilised to overcome the disadvantage new immigrants from non-English-speaking countries encounter. Their concern is, however, partially valid because student enrolments in certain schools have shown an abnormal pattern. Table 4.1 records some of the statistical data that has surprised many Australians. Because of their examination selection policies, sought-after top selective government schools in the state of New South Wales (NSW) have enrolled a very high proportion of students from a language background other than English. Though Australia has been a multicultural society for decades, and though it has been known that Asian Australian students perform well academically, the above figures are still very surprising because of the incredibly high percentages. However, many Australians are divided in how to interpret these figures and how to respond to the changes caused by new immigrants who are recruited according to their merits. In the 1990s, when the state of Victoria introduced a series of policy measures to improve schools’ performance, as mentioned in the previous section, the published examination results of high achievers included many non-­ Anglo-­Celtic names, which caused widespread unhappiness. Jeff Kennett, the then premier, argued strongly for the need to help and motivate students from Anglo-Australian backgrounds to study harder. It is worth pointing out that this is a global phenomenon happening in many developed economies. Figure 4.1 shows what has occurred in the UK, where Table 4.1 Percentage of students from non-English-speaking backgrounds in NSW’s top 10 selective schools, 2017

School James Ruse Agricultural High School Baulkham Hills High School Girraween High School North Sydney Girls High School Sydney Technical High School North Sydney Boys High School St George Girls High School Sydney Boys High School Sydney Girls High School Hornsby Girls High School Source: Based on Ho (2019)

Percent 97 94 93 93 93 92 92 90 88 88

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Chinese Asian (Indian) Asian (any other) Mixed (White & Asian) White (Irish) Mixed (any other) Any other ethnic group Asian (Bangladeshi) Preferred not to tell Mixed (White & Black Afrian) White (any other White) Black (Afrian heritage) White (British) 0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Fig. 4.1  Academic performance of 16-year-old British students, by ethnic background, 2015. (Source: Based on Harris (2016))

the academic performance of 16-year-old White British students are surpassed by students from 12 other ethnic groups in terms of the percentage of those meeting the school learning targets at the age of 16. Dominant responses in the UK are different from Australia, focusing instead on how White British children are let down by their parents and schools (Harris 2016). In Australia, constructive responses to the change occurring in schools have not been shared by everyone, especially not by many analysts and journalists. Instead, as observed by many over recent decades, a very high proportion of Australians have devoted more attention and effort to complaining and criticising than to learning how to guide and help their children (Ho 2011, 2017; Wade 2015; Weale 2018). As noted by UTS’s Christine Ho, the widespread discontent caused by the ethnic imbalances in numerous schools has societal implications, ranging from obvious segregation in the playground to hostility from Anglo-Australian parents accusing some Asian Australians of gaming the education system (Ho 2017). The question raised by a journalist from Fairfax Media was ‘How much domination will we accept?’, revealing that the real issue is dominance or superiority (Cook 2017, n.p.). Recently, there has even been widespread talk of eliminating exams in schools and banning non-school

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tutoring and coaching services. Such discussions further establish that many early settled Australians become so upset that they have started thinking about dismantling what has been institutionalised in the country for the sake of maintaining their dominance. While two headlines: ‘Pupils let down by their parents’ in the Daily Mail (Harris 2016, n.p.) and ‘How much domination will we accept?’ in Australia’s The Age (Cook 2017, n.p.), clearly display the difference between British and Australian attitudes toward the issue, the serious challenge is that the widespread unhappiness has pushed some Chinese groups further apart from dominant groups or communities. Both the efforts of many Chinese families and the responses of many Anglo-Australians are related to positioning in society, although some believe they are about social privilege. In any case, these are a normal part of social life as they take place in every society and in every stage of social life. Immigration has, somehow, veiled some social tensions with an ethnic dimension, providing many with an excuse for them being less hardworking. The first retreat from school-based learning activities by many non-­ Chinese students was the decrease in the number of students studying the Chinese language. This has been ongoing since the mid-2000s, showing a clear correlation with the massive increase in the number of Chinese migrants to Australia. As noted, China is Australia’s largest trading partner, which in theory means that there should be more school-aged children and other students who are choosing to study Chinese than in previous years. In reality, school enrolments in the language have been found to be low for a number of years, according to Bob Carr, Director of the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) at UTS.6 Also, according to Bob Carr, there were as few as ‘380 non-Chinese background students’ nationally studying Chinese at high school level in 2016, which he regards as a ‘challenging statistic’ (Baker 2019, n.p.). Table  4.2 is based on an analysis conducted by Jane Ortan, a Melbourne-based researcher, who reveals a rather complex situation of teaching and learning Chinese in Australia. This set of figures shows a positive sign as the number of schools offering Chinese has increased in all three main types of school: government, independent and Catholic, except the drop in South Australia’s independent school sector. The figures in Table 4.2 show the effort made by governments, but the real worry is twofold: the large decrease in the number of students studying Chinese from primary school to high school, and the low enrolment of non-Chinese-background students in Chinese language courses. Jane

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Table 4.2  Number of schools offering Chinese in Australia, by state State

New South Wales Victoria Queensland West Australia South Australia Tasmania

Government

Independent

Catholic

2008

2008

2008

ND* 88 ND 12 38 11

2015 162 231 137 30 40 31

15 42 41 ND 22 1

2015 40 108 53 20 17 8

ND 26 11 0 6 0

2015 10 59 12 8 22 2

Source: Based on Ortan (2016) Note: * No data available in the year

Ortan’s analysis reveals that the number of primary and secondary students learning Chinese in Australia was 172,878, or 4.7 per cent of 2015’s total student number. But, more than 50 per cent of those who started studying Chinese in primary school do not study it in secondary school. By Year 12, there were only 4149 students studying it in 2015, or 0.1 per cent of the total student number. Among these students, ‘only an estimated 400 are not of Chinese background, a 20 per cent drop from 500 in 2007’ (Ortan 2016, p. 42). Many education specialists in Australia have put forward their explanations about the drop. However, it is not a result of any single factor, nor is it a simple educational issue. Any observer living in Australia can tell that a gradual but substantial decline in enrolment of non-Chinese students in school-offered Chinese-language course has been closely correlated with the increasingly politicised and highly charged anti-China sentiment in the country. It is also true to say that some students from Chinese-speaking backgrounds are advantaged by taking various Chinese courses in school, which has been one of the main reasons why students and parents of non-Chinese backgrounds have reacted negatively. Such social fractures in communities across Australia, cities in particular, have then become very evident by what is called White flight, the leaving of many middle-class White Australian children from racially mixed schools. Although it first arose in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, the White flight problem was delayed in Australia by its immigration control mentality and intake policies (Jupp 2007). Having taken a large number of non-European immigrants for a couple of decades after

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the 1970s and 1980s, Australia’s White flight issue started appearing as headlines in the mainstream media in the mid-2000s (Patty 2008). However, there have been two different types of White flight in Australia. One is associated with the White students fleeing local public schools that are located next to commission housing in inner suburbs, ‘leaving behind those of Aboriginal and Middle Eastern origin’, which has lately included those of African descent (Patty 2008, n.p.). Of course, this type has become almost irrelevant to those of Chinese origin as a result of Australia’s merit-based immigration selection policies. The second type of White flight is generally defined as wealthy White parents ‘avoiding sending their kids to selective schools’ because of their worry that their children ‘will be an ethnic minority’ (Talbot 2019, n.p.). This form of White flight is closely related to the changing demographics of the Chinese population in Australia. The second type of White flight is a true phenomenon in large Australian cities, but it has rarely been explained accurately because the entry to selective schools is ultimately decided by examinations (Maud 2008; Ho 2011). Although it is not accurate -to say that White parents have purposely avoided selective schools, one thing has become very clear: many students from new Chinese migrant families have been guided to adopt positive attitudes towards academic achievement. In the eyes of traditional assimilationists, they have somehow become a new generation of aliens to many Anglo-Celtic students who are neither determined, nor very acquainted with education-related career paths. There are hardly any elites from mainstream groups who have fully realised that many Chinese Australian school students ‘achieve math scores that are more similar to those of students in Shanghai’ than to their non-immigrant Anglo-Celtic peers (Feniger and Lefstein 2014, p. 845). This is what Australia would like to achieve through various merit-based immigration programs, but popular reactions have not been welcoming, instead objecting that Chinese use private tutoring and a few other issues. Such an unhelpful reaction from a few sections of mainstream society has led to the surprising result noted in Table 4.1, making social fractures not only persistent, but also even more divisive. The widespread understanding in Australia of Chinese migrants as poor and uneducated people, which is largely shaped by limited reading of stories of the gold rush period, has prevented a very big proportion of Australians from comprehending the real nature and characteristics of present-day Chinese migration to Australia. One crucial point that has

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been misunderstood is that migration to certain rich developed countries, has in the minds of many Chinese, become part of their upward social mobility. That is, migration is no longer the action as categorised in the old Chinese saying beijing lixiang, a forced move away from their hometown. Nowadays, many young Chinese have even regarded international migration as a glamorous episode of their life. In the case of those migrating to Australia, the country’s merit-based selection system has reinforced the perception that migration to Australia is clear evidence they are qualified and recognised. Australia has therefore attracted many very able Chinese. This is a relatively new and complex Chinese social mentality, but has been overlooked by many Australians, leading them to believe that Chinese practices have no value to them. Fortunately, despite the Sinophobia spread and perpetuated by several populist politicians, from Pauline Hanson in the 1990s to Malcolm Turnbull more recently, most Chinese migrants have been guided by a pragmatic attitude towards their new life in Australia. It is fair to point out that at the same time, ‘the utilitarian pragmatism of Australian society’ has also prevailed over the affectation and mannerisms of insisting on any deceptively constructed ideologies (Jayasuriya 2003, p. 4). Since more Asians have come to Australia after the mid-1980s, for example, more teachers are found to favour non-English-speaking Asian students for ‘diligence, discipline, achievement orientation’ (Bullivant 1988, p.  223). This has, to a great extent, protected students from migrant families from prejudice displayed by Anglo-Celtic students, as well as by some of the parents. This is also why Chinese parents have encouraged their children to study harder in schools. While young Chinese Australian students have been well treated and encouraged by schools and teachers, some pugnacious critics have identified non-education areas to vent their dissatisfaction, one of which is the active participation by Chinese migrants in the housing market.

Chinese as Scapegoats for High Housing Prices New Chinese migrants partaking in Australia’s housing market has been regarded by many analysts, including myself, as a subjective indicator of how well they have survived in their host country and how well they have been treated in the host society. Only a few years after the first larger group of Chinese students–turned–asylum seekers were granted permanent residency in Australia, my 1997 survey found that more than 61 per cent of these new migrant families had bought their own houses or flats (Gao

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1999). Among those who did not purchase their houses or flats at the time, over 55 per cent of them had purchased and owned their own businesses. This survey also revealed that among those who either owned their own house or flat, or owned their own small business, around 32 per cent of them already owned, or were in the process of buying, investment properties or other forms of investment, such as shares (Gao 1999). This was a surprisingly positive outcome, which has been used to show how successful the new Chinese migrants are and how accommodating Australia is to new Asian migrants. Of course, from a macro-historical perspective, it was also part of the new Chinese appetite, if not obsession, for private property, which was partly activated and driven by China’s housing reforms taking place at almost the same time. China’s reforms ‘have once again made home ownership a reality for millions of Chinese, and encouraged them to invest in their residences, based on their own choices’ (Wang et al. 2014, p. 6). In a 19-episode documentary series filmed in Melbourne from 2001 to 2007 by Chen Jing, a former reporter of China’s Zhejiang Television, one episode documented the story of a person nicknamed ‘millionaire dishwasher’. The entire series is titled Chen Jing Riji: Aozhou xin yimin de gushi (Teresa’s Diary: Stories of new Chinese migrants in Australia), and its current Episode 11, according to its latest YouTube edition, records how a Chinese migrant arrived in Melbourne in 1990 and purchased six properties, both commercial and residential, by relying on income from working as a kitchen hand. As one of the earlier episodes of the documentary series, the story was about what new Chinese Australians did in the late 1990s and very early 2000s, when housing prices in Australia, including the two major cities of Sydney and Melbourne, were significantly cheaper than they are now, and the rental markets were also about to expand due to the expansion of Australia’s international education sector (Chen 2016; Yan 2016). This millionaire dishwasher did a job similar to what Pauline Hanson did in her fish-and-chip shop before entering politics, but seemed to advise nothing to many early settlers, except that the fact of successful newcomers’ ethnic background was stressed to separate them conceptually from early settlers. Australia’s mainstream media outlets tend to use anything related to the Chinese or China for their own publicity to achieve wider circulation. However, the media jumped on the housing price problem since the early 2010s. The real estate market in Australia bottomed in late May 2012 as a result of the GFC of 2008, but then ‘leapt 23 per cent with Sydney process

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jumping 35 per cent’ between May 2012 and January 2015 (Joye 2015, n.p.). The issue has provided the media with a new complaint against Chinese migrants, accusing them of pushing up house prices after blaming them for competition in schools. The out-of-control housing market became a heated issue, preparing many Australians for tolerating the Sinophobic campaign staged soon after 2015. Figure 4.2 shows how serious the issue has been after the early 2000s through comparing house price growth and income growth. This has resulted in ‘median home prices have increased from four times median incomes in the early 1990s to more than seven times’ in 2017. This ratio has reached as high as ‘more than eight times income’ in Sydney (Pash 2018, n.p.). This issue was first raised in 2013 under the stirring headline, ‘Chinese buyers sway Australia property market’, which appeared in The Wall Street Journal (Glynn and Kelly 2013). It has then become a topic of Australia’s mainstream media, which has treated it in an irresponsible way. The article in The Wall Street Journal explores the correlation between Chinese migration and housing prices, the key mechanism of which is the decision made by migration policymakers and migrant intake programs executed by the government. For instance, in the financial year ending June 2011, more Chinese immigrants arrived in Australia than from any other country.

Fig. 4.2  Housing price growth in Australia since the mid-1990s compared to income. (Source: Based on Pash (2018); (index: 1970 = 100))

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Such major policy initiatives were almost completely ignored by media outlets in Australia. Their reporting was not aimed directly at policymakers and policy initiatives, but focused on the usual suspects of Australian populism and political reporting, which are immigrants and the Chinese in particular. They ran sensational headlines, such as ‘Sydneysiders blame Chinese and other foreign buyers for high home prices’ and ‘Chinese buyers pushing-up Aussie property values’ (Onselen 2013; Devine 2017). Many similar headlines have drawn attention and public anger directed at Chinese Australians, over rapidly rising housing prices, and in a couple of years, some Chinese attending local auctions in Sydney and Melbourne were reportedly confronted by some frustrated non-Chinese buyers. People who looked Chinese were required to disclose their citizenship, or have their proof of identity checked by auctioneers or agents. In a few nasty cases, non-Chinese bidders even openly questioned why property brochures had to be translated into Mandarin, and whether Chinese-­ looking bidders could completely comprehend and speak English. This is because the brochures in Chinese had been widely used in Australia’s latest property boom cycle ending in late 2017 (Dobbin 2009; Cheer 2018). Of course, this was applicable to the houses in the above-average price range. While this marketing technique made some Australians of non-­ Chinese background think about ‘why Chinese buyers are winning at auctions’ (Chung 2016, n.p.), this unfamiliar approach also prompted some to link it with their long-held worries and anxiety about the power and influence of the Chinese. On the other hand, many new Chinese settlers, especially those who can better understand various messages conveyed in English, have been forced to ponder why they are the subject of widespread resentment and disapprobation. What they are unable to comprehend is why many financially stable Chinese migrants, who were either deliberately recruited through government-sanctioned migration programs to support Australia’s economy or who earned their family fortune in Australia through hard work, especially running businesses, have become a regular target of the mainstream media’s public allegations and unbridled vilifications. To a great degree, they can understand and tolerate emotional responses from some grassroots people, including public figures such as Pauline Hanson. They are unable to understand similar reactions from numerous journalists, researchers, politicians of middle- and upper-­ middle-­class origins, and commentators. These people have long been well regarded by Chinese people as well educated, well versed and

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open-minded or unbiased. What has recently happened in Australia’s China debate has seemed at odds with this high regard. Among the numerous responses, one community member believes that recent media reports and many commentaries have carried the following discriminative messages: Many of their reports and comments have surely gone too far, exposing themselves in a way similar to what is often called a Freudian slip: disclosing things hidden in their unconscious. [The journalists and commentators] have seemed to want to warn that the Chinese can come [to Australia] and work here, but they should not be allowed to buy assets, that they should not be permitted to buy houses or flats in certain suburbs, and that they should not be permitted to buy any property above a certain price level. Otherwise, they would be very angry, and what they have just hinted at is different from the free market idea they have boasted in different contexts (Respondent 9, March 2019).

The media’s strong reactions to a growing presence of Chinese property buyers in Australia clearly indicate that many middle-class Australians, especially politicians, policymakers and lobbyists, never considered the consequences of merit-based migration selection policies and schemes when they were initially developed and executed. Many of them, including critics, have never realised that numerous educated and skilled, as well as entrepreneurial and wealthy, Chinese migrants coming to Australia as a way to sustain economic growth and to uphold the standard of living would pose fundamental challenges to established patterns in the distribution of employment opportunities, wealth and political influence. Such challenges occur at least in relation to both their existing perception of themselves as superior over Asians and of the Chinese as others, if not inferior aliens, and the socio-economic status and standing as well. Apparently, there has been a massive gap in many Australians’ understanding of the link between merit-based Chinese migrants and their purchasing power, as well as their consumption behaviour in Australia’s property market. Just as many established Australian elites fail to identify and appreciate the entrepreneurship and activism of Chinese migrants, ordinary non-Chinese Australians who have no firsthand knowledge of the changes in both China and in their own county are inclined to blame Chinese migrants for driving up house prices in Australia. The significant economic benefits that Australia has reaped from China’s economic

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growth since the late 1980s and early 1990s have not been very helpful in changing the way that Australians see China and its people. Outdated and ill-informed media coverage and intellectual explanations about China have misled, if not deceived, Australia’s general public and politicians for decades. Many Australians are also unable to see that Chinese migrants are often inspired by what has taken place in China, where many people have achieved rapid and significant upward social mobility, and that new Chinese migrants are driven by similar aspirations in Australia. This has contrasted sharply with the laid-back attitude cherished by many Australians. All these have clouded the mind of many Australians, including a proportion of journalists and other educated elites, with confusion and distrust. The housing price issue has, therefore, been unwisely included in the China debate, exposing the problem confronted by White middle-­ class Australians. What the rising housing price concern has further revealed is a rapidly emerging change in the composition of Australia’s middle-class and upper-­ middle-­class. Precisely, a reasonably stable social class structure that has largely resulted from Australia’s laid-back culture has been shaken by various new merit-based immigration programs created by successive Australian governments. This has accelerated the middle-class replacement in Australia. Historically, middle-class status was well protected in Australia and distributed largely among those of Anglo-Celtic backgrounds. A thin layer of ‘ethnic middle-class’ appeared in the late 1960s and 1970s, but it did not fundamentally affect the ethnic composition of the middle-class nationwide (Andrew Jakubowicz cited in Colic-Peisker 2011, p. 568). Up to the mid-2010s, Australia had been transformed profoundly by various new merit-based immigration programs. As will be further analysed in Chap. 7, such demographic and social structural transformations have disturbed White middle-class Australians more severely than others, creating anger and hostility in middle-class groups. The latter has also voiced their unhappiness over the role of cashed-up Chinese in the housing market. Figure 4.3 is based on an analysis by Shane Oliver, Australia’s front-line economist, indicating that Australia’s real estate market has recently lost its momentum, while the country is thoughtlessly and furiously debating Chinese interference. The market mood, as well as public mood, has also been slowly changing, the turning point of which was signified by the downfall of Malcolm Turnbull’s troubled prime ministership in late August 2018. One of

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Fig. 4.3  Declining housing prices in Sydney and Melbourne. (Source: Based on Oliver (2019))

Malcolm Turnbull’s most notable actions as prime minister was to stand up against China’s influence. Chinese property buyers have left Australia’s property market, and new socio-political dynamics have also emerged in the country, as demonstrated by the shocking victory of the Scott Morrison–led Coalition in what was widely predicted to be an unwinnable federal election.7 In actual fact, shortly before the May 2019 election, socio-economic pragmatism started returning to politics, overpowering various idealist ideologies among a small group of opinionated critics, journalists, researchers and other educated elites. There were even some new evidence-based empirical studies, such as the one conducted by Chris Doucouliagos, Deakin University, confirming that areas with bad attitudes to immigration experienced less house price growth than the suburbs with more accepting attitudes. In his critical words, ‘anti-immigrant communities were excluding themselves from this [house price growth] benefit’ (cited in Malo 2019, n.p.). Now, while Australia’s economy is hovering near the brink of a recession after 28 years of recession-free growth, many Australians are once again hoping that Chinese investors and new migrant buyers will return. However, analysts have recently realised that Chinese investors have become far less interested in Australian properties, and that ‘Chinese won’t return’ any time soon (Conisbee 2019, n.p.).

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Notes 1. Because of the proactive role of the media in provoking and spreading the Chinese question and then the Chinese problem in Australia, it is worth noting that The Argus was a Melbourne-based morning daily newspaper that was established in 1846 and closed in 1957. Before adopting a left-leaning stance from 1949, The Argus was known as a conservative newspaper. Its main competitor was The Age, another Melbourne-based daily newspaper that has been published since 1854. Both The Argus and The Age were active in making use of anti-Chinese campaigns for commercial gains. Edmond Fung and Colin Mackerras pointed out that these newspapers ‘warned, time and again, against the social and economic dangers of massive Chinese immigration’ in their 1985 book (Fung and Mackerras 1985, p. 15). In her 2005 book, Elizabeth Morrison wrote that ‘the papers were linked into a press network that used improved transport and communication facilities, in particular telegraph, to spread the anti-Chinese views around almost all of settled Victoria’ and Melbourne (Morrison 2005, p. 106). Victorian politician John Pascoe Falkner openly appealed for control of Chinese labourers to ‘prevent the gold fields of Australia Felix from becoming the property of the Emperor of China and of the Mongolian and Tartar hordes of Asia’, as reported by The Argus in 1857 (Mountford 2016, p. 58). For more information about the role of the Australian media in spreading Sinophobic sentiments, see Markus (2001a), Fung and Mackerras (1985), Morrison (2005) and Mountford (2016). 2. The full name of Edward William Foxall’s famous book is: Colorphobia: An Exposure of the White Australia Fallacy, which was published in 1903 under the pseudonym Gizen-no-Teki. Foxall was born in England in 1857, but educated at Sydney Grammar School and trained as an accountant with a business firm (Kemp 2011). Foxall was actively involved in liberal circles in Sydney as a liberal intellectual and activist in the 1880s and 1890s before taking up the position as English Secretary to the Japanese Consul-General in Sydney. Along with Bruce Smith (the author of Liberty and Liberalism, 1887), Edward William Cole (the author of The White Australia Question, 1903), Edward Pulsford (the author of Commerce and the Empire, 1903) and few others, Foxall was one of the strong critics of Australia’s prejudiced Immigration Restriction Act 1901 that limited immigration to Australia and formed the basis of the White Australia policy. Foxall’s book is regarded as ‘one of the most considered attacks upon racial prejudice of its period’ (Walker and Collins 2008, p. 8), ‘one of Australia’s liberal classics’ (Kemp 2011, p. 35) and ‘the most significant jeremiad against the White Australia’ (Berg 2016, p.  37). For more information about Edward W. Foxall, his well-known book and the debate over the legislation for the White Australia

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policy, see Walker (1999), Lake and Reynolds (2008), Kemp (2011) and Berg (2016). 3. Indentured labour was a form of bonded or contract labour that was used worldwide after the abolition of slavery in the early 1830s. The abolition of slavery took place at different times in different countries. In the case of Australia, colonies were part of Britain, and, therefore, slavery became illegal as a result of the passing of Britain’s Slavery Abolition Act 1833. However, the expansion of globalised capitalism in a post-slavery world has, for better or worse, been unstoppable, and it soon led to the creation of a new and more legally justifiable, if not defensible, system. This new system was the indentured labour system, which has been considered a new form of slavery by many critics, but has somehow continued in many immigration countries and regions. The key difference between the slavery system and the system of indentured labour is the legal facade that has been politically and lawfully crafted. This newer system has, to a great extent, satisfied the needs created by worldwide capitalist expansion for cheap and flexible skilled and unskilled labourers. For more information about the indentured labour system and its historical background, see Northrup (1995), Curthoys (2003), Koser (2007) and Hirst (2008). 4. Harold Edward Holt (1908–67) became Australia’s 17th prime minster in January 1966 and the leader of the Liberal Party at the same time, as a result of the early retirement of Robert Menzies, Australia’s longest-serving prime minister of over 18 years. In November 1966, Harold Holt led the Liberal-­ Country Party Coalition to a landslide victory. Before becoming the prime minister, Holt was the minister in charge of labour and national service, and then immigration after 1949, and he became Treasurer after 1958. On 17 December 1967, after less than two years in office as prime minister, he disappeared while swimming out into deep water in rough conditions at Cheviot Beach, Portsea, Victoria. His body was never located, and his disappearance gave rise to a string of conspiracy theories, including suicide and assassination. The Chinese submarine story was another one of the theories, which caused some Australians concern. Interested readers are encouraged to consult Renouf (1979) and Frame (2005). 5. The selective school system was introduced in Australia in the 1980s as part of its public or government school system at secondary level. There are three types of school in Australia: publicly funded state schools or government schools, Catholic schools, and independent or what is customarily called private schools. In 2016, the approximate proportions of students enrolled in each type of school were 65 per cent, 20 per cent, and 15 percent respectively. Behind this relatively stable distribution, there has been a growing number of selective public schools in all major urban centres since the early

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2000s. This has partly been a policy response to the country’s demographic change resulting predominantly from the merit-based migration selection system. The so-called selective schools are special government schools that admit students based on open entrance examination results, regardless where they live or whether they live within a specific school zone. Most students enter a selective government school in Year 7, while some just cater for students from Year 9 to Year 12, such as the two most famous selective government schools in Victoria: Melbourne High School (for boys) and Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School. For more information about selective public schools in Australia, see Bonnor and Caro (2007), Yates et al. (2011), Crossley et al. (2015), and Ballam and Moltzen (2017). 6. Bob Carr has been such an active participant in Australia’s recent China debate that his career is worth some attention. Bob Carr was the longest continuously serving premier of New South Wales (1995–2005) in the state’s history. He entered the NSW Legislative Assembly in 1983 and became a state minister in 1984 before serving as Leader of the Opposition from 1988. He led the Labor Party in NSW to victory in the state election in 1995, and he was then re-elected in 1999 and 2003. He retired from politics in 2005. In March 2012, he was designated by the prime minister, Julia Gillard, as Australia’s foreign minister and remained in federal politics for less than two years. In 2014, he took up the directorship of the Australia-­ China Relations Institute (ACRI) at UTS, which has dragged him into the recent debate about China and relations between Australia and China. Although on its website, ACRI states that it ‘relies on a mix of funding sources’, it has been troubled for several years by the report ‘a $1.8 million donation in December 2013 from Founder and Chairman of the Yuhu Group, Mr Xiangmo Huang enabled UTS to established ACRI’ (ARCI 2015, n.p.). As a result, Bob Carr has been caught in the spotlight of political attention, and has also been actively involved in Australia’s current China debate. Interested readers can read Carr’s own books, including Thoughtlines: Reflection of a Public Man (2002), What Australia Means to Me (2003), My Reading Life (2008), Diary of a Foreign Minster (2014), and Run for Your Life (2018). See are Dodkin (2003) and West and Morris (2003). 7. Australia’s 2019 federal election was widely seen as an ‘unwinnable election’ for the Liberal-National Coalition, because it had been in government for two terms since its victory in the 2013 election. Over those two terms from September 2013 to May 2019, the Liberal Party’s internal divisions resulted in four leadership spills and three prime ministers: Tony Abbot (September 2013 to September 2015), Malcolm Turnbull (September 2015 to August 2018), and Scott Morrison (August 2018 to the present). Because of these divisions, all opinion polls placed the Coalition consistently behind the

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Labor Party for almost three years. At the same time, Australia’s economy was slowing down, but the Malcolm Turnbull–led government decided to pick a fight with China, the market of which absorbed more than one-third of Australia’s total exports. The debate over China’s interference in Australia had also made many Australians believe that the 2019 election would be unwinnable for the Coalition. For further information, see Karvelas (2019), Murphy (2019) and Scott and Scott 2019).

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Devine, A. (2017). ‘Sydneysiders blame Chinese and other foreign buyers for high home prices’, Daily Telegraph, 17 May 2017, www.news.com.au/finance/realestate/sydney-nsw/sydneysiders-blame-chinese-and-other-foreign-buyers-forhigh-home-prices/news-story/db19c1cde71a7d6b1657e5422bd35b6e. Accessed 1 June 2019. Dobbin, M. (2009). ‘Chinese wealth boosting property market’, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 June 2009, www.smh.com.au/national/chinese-wealth-boostingproperty-market-20090605-bylh.html. Accessed 1 June 2019. Dodkin, M. (2003). Bob Carr: The Reluctant Leader. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Earl, C. (2016). ‘They’re doing it tough in the country too, Tony’, Spectator, 15 December 2016, www.spectator.com.au/2016/12/tough-tony/. Accessed 18 April 2019. Errington, W., and P.  Onselen (2007). John Winston Howard: The Definitive Biography. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Feniger, Y. and A.  Lefstein (2014). ‘How “not” to reason with PISA data: An ironic investigation’, Journal of Education Policy, 29(6): 845–855. Frame, T. (2005). The Life and Dearth of Harold Holt. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Fung, E. (2007). ‘Book review on Ways of Seeing China’. China Journal, 57: 249–250. Fung, E., and C. Mackerras (1985). From Fear to Friendship: Australia’s Policies towards the People’s Republic of China 1966–1982. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press. Gao, J. (1999). ‘The patterns and processes of family wealth accumulation among mainland Chinese migrants in Australia’. Population and Economics, 2: 47–56. Gao, J. (2011). ‘Seeking residency from the courts: The Chinese experience in the post-White Australia era’, Journal of Chinese Overseas, 7: 187–210. Gao, J. (2015). Chinese Migrant Entrepreneurship in Australia from the Early 1990s: Case-Studies of Success in Sino-Australian Relations. Oxford: Elsevier. Gao, J. (2018). ‘Chinese Australians face a foreign influence panic’, Current History, September: 229–234. Glynn, J. and R. Kelly (2013). ‘Chinese buyers sway Australia property market’, The Wall Street Journal, 26 June 2016, www.wsj.com/articles/ SB10001424127887324328204578568960003796852. Accessed 1 June 2019. Hanson, P. (1996). ‘Pauline Hanson’s 1996 maiden speech to parliament: Dull transcript’, Sydney Morning Harald, 15 September 2016, www.smh.com.au/ politics/federal/pauline-hansons-1996-maiden-speech-to-parliament-fulltranscript-20160915-grgjv3.html. Accessed 18 April 2019. Harris, S. (2016). ‘Pupils let down by their parents’, Daily Mail, 4 April 2016, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3521989/Betrayal-white-pupils-16-whiteBritish-children-lag-12-ethnic-groups-alarming-report-says-let-schoolsparents.html. Accessed 1 June 2019.

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Hirst, J. (2008). Freedom on the Fatal Shore: Australia’s First Colony. Melbourne: Black Inc. Ho, C. (2011). ‘“My school” and others: Segregation and white flight’, Australian Review of Public Affairs, May 2011, www.australianreview.net/ digest/2011/05/ho.html. Accessed 1 June 2019. Ho, C. (2017). ‘Selective schools increasingly cater to the most advantaged students’, The Conversation, 9 March 2017, http://theconversation.com/selective-schools-increasingly-cater-to-the-most-advantaged-students-7415. Accessed 1 June 2019. Ho, C. (2019). Ethnic Divides in Schooling: In a Class of Their Own. Sydney: Centre for Policy Development. https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/ resource-files/2019/05/apo-nid239151-1362816.pdf. Accessed 1 June 2019. Horne, D. (1964). The Lucky Country. Melbourne: Penguin Group. Jayasuriya, L. (2003). Australian Multiculturalism Past, Present, and Future. Perth: School of Social and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia. https://laksirijayasuriya.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/australian-multiculturalism-past-present-and-future.pdf. Accessed 1 June 2019. Joye, C. (2015). ‘Housing boom is out of control’, Australian Financial Review, 2 March 2015. www.afr.com/real-estate/residential/housing-boom-is-out-ofcontrol-20150302-13sluf. Accessed 1 June 2019. Jupp, J. (2007). From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Karvelas, P. (2019). ‘Election 2019: Scott Morrison turned Labor’s strategy into perfect weapon to defeat them’, ABC News, 19 May 2019, www.abc.net.au/ news/2019-05-19/federal-election-result-morrison-turn-labor-strategy-intoweapon/11116468. Accessed 8 August 2019. Kemp, D. (2011). ‘Edward William Foxall: A classical liberal in a racist age’, Policy, 27(3): 35–43. Kendall, T. (2005). Ways of Seeing China: From Yellow Peril to Shangri La. Perth: Curtin University Books. Koser, K. (2007). International Migration: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lake, M., and H. Reynolds (2008). Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality. London: Cambridge University Press. Lau, S. (ed.) (1996). Growing Up the Chinese Way: Chinese Child and Adolescent Development. Hong Kong: The Chin ese University Press. Liu, H., and G. Benton (2004). ‘Introduction’. In G. Benton and H. Liu (eds.), Diasporic Chinese Ventures: The Life and Work of Wang Gungwu (pp. 1–8). London: RoutledgeCurzon.

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Malo, J. (2019). ‘Areas with poor attitudes to immigration have weaker house price growth, new research shows’, Domain, 2 July 2019, www.domain.com. au/news/new-research-shows-areas-that-are-anti-immigration-have-weakerhouse-price-growth-854796/. Accessed 8 August 2019. Mackay, H. (2018). Australia Reimagined: Towards a More Compassionate, Less Anxious Society. Sydney: Pan Macmillan. Markus, A. (2001a). Fear and Hatred: Purifying Australia and California, 1850–1901. Sydney: Hale & Iremonger. Maud, J. (2008). ‘“White fight” in Australian schools’, Culture Matters, 10 March 2008, https://culturematters.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/white-flight-inaustralian-schools/. Accessed 1 June 2019. Morrison, E. (2005). Engines of Influence: Newspapers of Country Victoria, 1840–1890. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Mulligan, M. (2016). ‘Our complex relationship with Chinese Australians’, Australian Financial Review, 9 January 2016, www.afr.com/business/ourcomplex-relationship-with-chinese-australians-20151227-glvgml. Accessed 18 April 2019. Murphy, K. (2019). ‘Scott Morrison won the unwinnable election. Now the hard part begins’, The Guardian, 22 May 2019, www.theguardian.com/australianews/2019/may/22/scott-morrison-won-the-unwinnable-election-now-thehard-part-begins. Accessed 8 August 2019. Mountford, B. (2016). Britain, China, and Colonial Australia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Northrup, D. (1995). Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism, 1834–1922. New York: Cambridge University Press. Oliver, S. (2019). ‘Australian housing downturn Q&A – how bad will it get?’, Live Wire, 24 January 2019. www.livewiremarkets.com/wires/australian-housingdownturn-q-a-how-bad-will-it-get. Accessed 1 June 2019. Onselen, L. (2013). ‘Chinese buyers pushing-up Aussie property values’, Macrobusiness, 27 June 2013, www.macrobusiness.com.au/2013/06/chinesebuyers-pushing-up-australian-property-prices/. Accessed 1 June 2019. Ortan, J. (2016). Building Chinese Language Capacity in Australia. Sydney: ACRI, UTS. Pash, C. (2018). ‘Here’s a look at the widening gap between wages and house prices’, Business Insider, 6 March 2018, www.businessinsider.com.au/chartaustralian-wages-house-prices-2018-3. Accessed 1 June 2019. Patty, A. (2008). ‘White flight leaves system segregated by race’, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 March 2008, www.smh.com.au/national/white-flight-leaves-system-segregated-by-race-20080310-gds4i7.html. Accessed 1 June 2019. Renouf, A. (1979). The Frightened Country. Melbourne: Macmillan.

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Scott, J., and M. Scott (2019). ‘Australia Conservatives Ride Economy to Shock Election Victory’, Bloomberg, 19 May 2019. www.bloomberg.com/news/ articles/2019-05-18/australia-conservatives-snatch-unwinnable-election-oneconomy. Accessed 8 August 2019. Strahan, L. (1996). Australia’s China: Changing Perceptions from the 1930s to the 1990s. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Sun, W. N. (2018). ‘Megaphone diplomacy is good for selling papers, but harmful for Australia-China relations’, The Conversation, 29 May 2018, https://theconversation.com/megaphone-diplomacy-is-good-for-selling-papers-butharmful-for-australia-china-relations-97076. Accessed 18 April 2019. Talbot, J. (2019). ‘Wealthy white parents are turning away from selective schools because they fear their children will be an ethnic minority’, Daily Mail, 31 May 2019. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7089211/Rich-white-parentsworried-sending-kids-selective-schools-fear-theyll-minority.html. Accessed 1 June 2019. Wade, M. (2015). ‘The Sydney schools becoming Anglo ghettos’, Sydney Morning Harald, 24 August 2015. www.smh.com.au/education/the-sydney-schoolsbecoming-anglo-ghettos-20150824-gj69tv.html. Accessed 1 June 2019. Walker, D. (1999). Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1850–1939. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press. Walker, D., and K.  Collins (2008). ‘Other voices, other traditions: Swimming against the mainstream in Australian history’. In G. Davis et al. (eds.), As Others See Us: The Values Debate in Australia (pp.  3–14). Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing. Wang, L.  C. (2005). ‘Chinese in United States’. In M.  Ember et  al. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures around d the World (pp. 769–785). New York: Springer. Wang, J., and C. Weisfeld (2018). ‘The changing family in China’. In C. Weisfeld et al. (eds.), The Psychology of Marriage: An Evolutionary and Cross-Cultural View (pp. 107–125). Lanham: Lexington Books. Wang, M., P.  K. Kee, and J.  Gao (2014). ‘Challenging development in urban China and emerging theoretical perspectives’. In M.  Wang et  al. (eds.), Transforming Chinese Cities (pp. 1–14). Abingdon: Routledge. Watkins, M., C.  Ho, and Rose Butler (2017). ‘Asian migration and education cultures in the Anglo-sphere’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43(14): 2283–2299. Weale, S. (2018). ‘“An education arms race”: Inside the ultra-competitive world of private tutoring’, The Guardian, 5 December 2018, www.theguardian.com/ education/2018/dec/05/an-education-arms-race-inside-the-ultra-competitive-world-of-private-tutoring. Accessed 1 June 2019. West, A. and R. Morris (2003). Bob Carr: A Self-Made Man. Sydney: HarperCollins.

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Willard, M. (1967). History of the White Australia Policy to 1920. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Williams, P. (2010). ‘From atomized to networked: Rural-to-urban migrants in twentieth-century Chinese narrative’. In P.  Williams (ed.), Asian Literary Voices: From Marginal to Mainstream (pp.  41–52). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Yan, Y. (2016). ‘Chen Jing: Jingneiwaide chenggong nuxing (Chen Jing: A successful woman inside and outside the camera)’, 15 December 2016, People’s Daily (Overseas Edition). http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrbhwb/ page/2016-12/15/12/rmrbhwb2016121512.pdf. Accessed 1 June 2019. Yates, L., C.  Collins and K.  O’Conner (eds.) (2011). Australia’s Curriculum Dilemmas: State Cultures and the Big Issues. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.

CHAPTER 5

Chinese as Voting Blocs in Australian Politics

This chapter focuses on the first of two key political reasons that have largely been misunderstood, but have driven Australia’s China debate. This reason can be defined as the political party-related cause. The second key political reason will be examined in Chap. 6. As outlined earlier in this book, the role of both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party, if we could set other parties aside, in mobilising Chinese Australians for support and to participate in their politics is the first political reason behind the Chinese Australian community’s high level of political activity. However, it has, intentionally or not, been hidden from the recent China debate, not only making it absent from almost all available analyses of Chinese Australians’ political conduct, but also making many Australians believe that the Chinese migrant political activism in Australia has been guided, if not directed, by China’s ruling party. This obvious omission has also skipped the attention of a group of investigative journalists who have for years devoted their attention to the China debate (Uhlmann 2016; McKenzie et al. 2017).1 This omission has further exposed how unpleasant politics can be for many people who are non-political. Many Chinese groups were strategically used by political parties, but the political utilisation of this particular ethnic group has lately been totally disregarded when the international political climate changed.2 Academically, however, this is a unique case to analyse Australia’s debate on Chinese interference and the political behaviour of major Australian political parties, as well as the country’s changing © The Author(s) 2020 J. Gao, Chinese Immigration and Australian Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5909-9_5

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political culture. The latter has undeniably been shaped by both the political enthusiasm of new migrants recruited through various merit-based migration schemes and the inadequate knowledge of the existing elites about migrant groups and communities. This is a preliminary analytical effort to call attention to one of the problems of Australia’s debate over Chinese interference. This exploratory effort is important because Australian politics is inching towards being more inclusive of ethnic minorities, or immigrant groups, though it is still dominated by Anglo-Celtic Australians. More importantly, the recent China debate has exposed the problems in Australia’s readiness to deal with various changes in its political life. Australia’s anxieties over the increasing influence of China partly originate from a lack of understanding of the rapidly changing China, and inadequate skills for handling the subsequent challenges. Australia has been doing very well in terms of utilising merit-based migration schemes, but there appears to be no awareness of other related changes and no preparations for post-settlement non-­ economic integration activities that would benefit these new migrants. As a preliminary analysis of this overlooked issue, this chapter consists of three sections with a focus on an overall review of how the two main political parties have reached out to Chinese Australians in an effort to involve Chinese in their activities. Special attention will be devoted to activities orchestrated by the two parties while they are coping with dwindling membership. The first section will address why the Chinese community in Australia has appeared to have a pro-Labor tendency, which has been used by a number of analysts to explain why the Malcolm Turnbull-­ led Liberal government intensified the anti-Chinese campaign shortly before a by-election in the seat of Bennelong in December 2017. The second section will look at several electorates with a high proportion of ethnic Chinese, where greater political efforts have been made by parties to attract voters. The efforts are made both by party organisations and other groups, and Chinese Australians have attended many such political events. This discussion is to indicate how widespread the issue is, and offer an explanation how such activities have been misinterpreted by some mainstream journalists and critical analysts as evidence that China wants to influence Australian politics. The third section concerns the case of the Bennelong by-election, which was one of the main triggers of Australia’s recent debate over China, because the Turnbull-led Liberal government held only one seat more than Labor. Because there are a large number of ethnic Chinese living in the electorate, Bennelong became the main battleground in 2017 for winning the opportunity to be in government.

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Chinese Voters as Pro-Labor It has been several decades since Australia’s ethnic voting, or ‘the impact of non-Anglo ethnicity upon the vote’, was identified in the late 1960s and 1970s (Jupp 1981, p. 6). Australia’s ethnic transformation started in the 1950s, and the proportion of voters who were of non-Anglo-Celtic origin had increased as an outcome of naturalisation and the second generation. In this early multi-ethnic period of postwar Australia, the ethnic vote was mainly concerned with various Mediterranean ethnic groups. They tended to live in a handful of Labor electorates, and were also found to mostly vote Labor (Jupp 1981). A similar voting pattern of other new migrant groups, including Asian migrants, was found to have been maintained in the 1980s, and studies established that ‘Labor is net beneficiary from the ethnic vote’ (McAllister 1988, p. 11). Ethnic Chinese migrant groups from South-East Asian countries in the late 1970s and 1980s were also found to be pro-Labor (Forrest 1988). The pro-Labor voting tendency was maintained among the ethnic Chinese population in Australia in the 1990s,3 which was in large part because of the rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and the Liberal leader John Howard’s initial refusal to openly criticise Pauline Hanson’s anti-Asian rhetoric (Ip et  al. 1998; Gibson et al. 2002). In fact, Australia’s political landscape has since started its profound transformation, which is unfortunately often believed to have been represented by the rise of Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party, as well as by the victory of the Howard-led Liberal-National Coalition party in the 1996 federal election, ending 13  years in the political wilderness of Opposition. As shown in Fig. 5.1, Australia’s workforce had been fundamentally transformed during the same period, and the decline of trade unions, Labor’s key support base, started accelerating. All these were a consequence of the economic restructuring as detailed in Chap. 2, but they were more fundamental in nature than the superficial representation of both Pauline Hanson and John Howard. A special factor in maintaining the pro-Labor voting tendency, perceived or real, among Chinese Australians in the 1990s was the Chinese student issue resolved predominantly by the Hawke–Keating Labor governments. As introduced in Chap. 1, and discussed in my 2013 book as well, the settlement of thousands of Chinese students post-1989 was completed by the Howard-led Liberal government after the 1996 federal election (Gao 2013a). However, the grateful feeling of former students and

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50.0% 45.0% 40.0% 35.0% 30.0% 25.0%

Professionals

20.0%

Blue-collar workers

15.0%

Union density

10.0% 1986

1991

1996

2001

2007

2013

2016

Fig. 5.1  Changes in Australia’s workforce and declining union membership. (Source: Based on Bowden 2017)

many other members of ethnic Chinese groups towards the Labor Party, even towards Bob Hawke himself, seemed to have been well maintained, until fairly recently, by many former Chinese students. This will be further analysed because it has posed some challenges to the Liberal Party. One of the main reasons leading many people to believe in the pro-­ Labor tendency of new Chinese immigrants has to do with the community media, which has mostly been owned, or directly managed, by some post-1989 Chinese migrants. My survey in the early 2000s found that there were more than 15 new Chinese-language newspapers (mostly weekly) and magazines to have emerged in the community media market from 1990 to 2000 and circulated in big cities, but mostly in Sydney and Melbourne (Gao 2006; Gao and Zhang 2017). One theme that they regularly wrote about to boost sales of their newspapers was their good fortune to be given the great opportunity by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments to stay permanently in Australia. While many new Chinese migrants were thankful to Labor, the above-­ mentioned fundamental socio-economic and socio-political changes started transforming one of the most dynamic and interesting political relationships in modern-day Australia, which is the relationship between non-Anglo-Celtic migrants and their communities and the main Anglo-­ Celtic-­dominated political parties in Australia.

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As a reflection of this transformation, many studies since 2001 have established that ‘non-European migrants from skilled backgrounds are less likely to vote for the ALP than those from non-skilled backgrounds’ (Pietsch 2017, p.  2464). The new trend has prompted researchers to believe that the ethnic vote has almost disappeared and that migrants now tend to vote in a similar manner to the rest of Australia’s population, according to usual class distinctions. Some have even concluded that there has been ‘a convergence in voting patterns’ between people from English-­ speaking backgrounds, non-English-speaking backgrounds and non-­ migrant Australians. Voters across the three subgroups have shown a near-identical voting tendency to support what they believe to be worth voting for (Jiang 2016). More specifically, ethnic Labor voting peaked in the 1990s, when the proportion of overseas-born citizens voting for Labor was far higher than that of the Australia-born population, and ‘in the 2000s the proportions of ethnic minority citizens and native-born citizens voting for Liberal and Labor had become more similar’ (Jiang 2016, p. 421). As for the reasons, almost all researchers believe that it is a result of ‘the growing numbers of high skilled migrants to Australia over recent decades’, which has certainly changed the demographic and socio-­ economic composition of Australia’s growing population (Pietsch 2017, p. 2464). Labor conducted two national reviews in 2002 and 2010 in order to find out its ways to modernise the ALP, Australia’s oldest political party, established in the 1890s. However, the 2010 review is widely believed to have actually painted a very bleak picture of a Labor Party that is structurally in decline (Manwaring 2011). Part of the bleak picture was reported in the media as follows: The review estimated the party had 36,000 members, a drop of over 10,000 since the 2007 federal election … It is a supreme irony of Australian politics in the last decade that the Australian Labor Party, the original mass-party which peaked at 400,000 members in the 1940s, has struggled more than most with declining membership … the ALP reputedly grew to 44,000 in 2012 … but still leaves the ALP small by national, international and historical comparison … The Liberal Party now dwarfs Labor with 78,000 members. The Nationals can claim 100,000. (Lelliott 2013, n.p.)

Labor’s 2010 review was carried out when it was in power, but too much attention was given to its internal tensions caused by the two Labor

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leaders of the period. Kevin Rudd’s prime ministership from November 2007 was terminated in a party room coup in June 2010, and Julia Gillard’s subsequent prime ministership was frequently challenged and ended in a similar way in June 2013. In a phrase used by the ABC’s three-­ episode program about the ALP’s chaotic leadership issue, this was the killing season, the most turbulent period of contemporary Australian political history (Ferguson 2015). What the internal reviews and numerous analyses failed to consider is the demographic change caused by a series of new merit-based migration policies and intake programs. The ALP did not lose the sense of where it came from, but lost the sense of direction regarding the demographic change and where to place its efforts. While it was devoting attention to how to share or distribute its political power and influence internally, people started moving away from Labor. Many left-leaning voters from inner-urban areas were attracted to the Greens, while some in outer-urban areas and some rural areas become supporters of One Nation. Figure 5.2 is based on an analysis conducted by several public-policy analysts of the Grattan Institute, an independent think-tank focused on Australian public policy. While its analysis indicates a growing number of registered parties in Australia, it also confirms where the real threat to the major political parties, especially the ALP, has come from. Of course, the Labor Party has made an effort to reform itself and rebuild its social base. As a result, many new Chinese migrant groups that had continuously expressed gratitude for the permanent residency granted by the Hawke–Keating Labor governments in the early 1990s have consequently become some of the ALP’s key targets for not only expanding its support network, but also recruiting more members. For example, Labor’s 2010 national review led to an operational strategy to recruit 8000 new members in 2012. Its target was well met within a year, and in the state of New South Wales alone, it recruited more than 4000 new party members (Lelliott 2013). Such a surprisingly proactive tactic by Labor and a high level of enthusiastic cooperation by numerous Chinese community groups have indeed confused many non-Chinese Australians, leading some of them to simply think the pro-Labor tendency of ethnic Chinese migrant groups is a natural fit. The latter has prompted Labor’s rivals to react in two different ways. One is to do what Labor has done, which is not easy as a huge proportion of Australians are still unable to readily put their racial prejudices aside to face the post-multicultural reality of Australia. The other way is to adopt a confrontational approach, which is to attempt

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Fig. 5.2  Number of minor political parties in Australia. (Source: Based on Wood et al. 2018, p. 28)

to scare the Chinese by demonising what they have done and what they are going to do. After the 2007 federal election, when it was believed by major political party strategists and the media that the local Chinese population in Bennelong assisted Labor’s victory,4 there has been a strong push by a number of Chinese community groups and individuals to promote the idea of integration and political participation in Australia. The impact of the ethnic Chinese vote on the 2007 Bennelong election result made ethnic Chinese community activists very excited. This response is understandable, considering that John Howard, as the country’s second-longest serving prime minister, was voted out of office after representing the Bennelong electorate for 34 years, the reasons for which will be further analysed in the third section of this chapter. The 2007 Bennelong election was followed by a period of high levels of enthusiasm in political participation in Australia among a large group of ethnic Chinese activists, old and young. While they were strongly critical of their community for lack of political activism, such as expressed in the

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front-page headline in The Age, ‘Exploring the China syndrome: prosperity without profile’ (Hyland 2012, n.p.), a wide range of activities was organised and used to drive political participation of Chinese community members, which was promoted as part of integration into mainstream society. Many researchers and observers have, in fact, been making efforts to understand such unprecedented changes in the community, which was described by some as the community on steroids or under the influence of stimulants. However, different observers and analysts have formed different understandings about the higher-than-usual level of political activism of ethnic Chinese groups. Having never taken Chinese community groups seriously in the past when it comes to politics, the lack of deep understanding has led some analysts to a highly conjectured assumption of this real-­ life situation, focusing too on factors irrelevant to everyday lives in Australia. Post-2007, I was invited to attend a number of activities in both Sydney and Melbourne organised by the Chinese Community Council of Australia (CCCA) and other groups.5 My observations suggested that the influence of the Labor Party in the community could be clearly seen, but since the late 1990s and early 2000s, the community as a whole was on its way to becoming a middle-class community. This was the reason I had tried to look at the connection between the middle-class status of Chinese Australians and their demand for political involvement, based on the changes after the 2007 election, especially in Bennelong (Gao 2013b). Leaving certain details aside, the long and widely assumed existence of pro-Labor tendencies among Chinese Australians is found to be no longer accurate. At the same time, two analytical clues have emerged from discussions and debates that attempt to understand the heated enthusiasm of Chinese Australians for political participation. Specifically, a clear picture needs to be established, drawn from both an historical, or temporal, perspective and a contemporary perspective. The political tendency of a community is caused and shaped by many temporal and spatial factors, so understanding this political tendency has to be developed within a temporal–spatial framework. From the temporal perspective, the ethnic Chinese community is not always the primary target of major political parties or forces. As noted, the number of ethnic Chinese living in Australia in 1996 was around 343,500, and the 2001 census found that the number reached more than half of million (555,500), a number great enough to be significant for Australia’s politics. The range of merit-based migration programs has meant that the

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growing Chinese community has been evolving since the mid-1990s. At the time, the so-called Chinese student issue was finally resolved, and Australia’s migration policy and programs were also re-oriented towards the recruitment of better educated and skilled migrants. Since the late 1990s, the voting behaviour of Chinese Australians has been changing, although their ethnic minority status has meant that people sometimes have not paid close attention to the changes. A majority among the Chinese community I have spoken to believe that the voting trend among the community since the mid-1990s has changed over three stages. The first stage refers to the decade 1997–2007, during which the Chinese community was believed to be pro-Labor. One former community activist told me of the following analysis about the community’s early political inclination before 2007. Before the 2007 [Bennelong] election, new [Chinese] migrants had for years been in relian (mad love) with Labor. This was their first period of living in Australia, and they were full of thankfulness to Labor, due to its decision to allow so many Chinese to stay in 1993. To some extent, new [Chinese] migrants were still outsiders, knowing little about Australia’s [political] parties … Yet, externally, the racism of Pauline Hanson and John Howard’s tolerance of Pauline Hanson were also factors pushing them towards the Labor side [of politics]. But things were slowly changing as many families had become small business owners, investors and so on during this period. (Respondent 3, July 2018)

The second stage was a short period of time that resulted from the changes that were revealed by the above interviewee, but symbolised by the decisive role played by many Chinese voters in the 2007 federal election outcome in Bennelong. At first glance, this was not significant in terms of shifts in voting tendencies, as Chinese voters helped vote John Howard out of office and support the victory of Labor’s candidate Maxine McKew, some details of which are provided in Note 4 of this chapter. In fact, this period was the hugely significant moment of the realisation by the Chinese community of the importance of their vote. This has provided them with confidence in themselves as a minority group, and started the decline of the community’s tradition of simply following, if not flattering, powerful dominant groups. Specifically, though many ethnic Chinese voters still voted for Labor’s candidate in the Bennelong election, showing no difference from the previous stage, their decision was not based on

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gratitude to Labor, but on wanting to show their voting power. As a result, Chinese community groups had suddenly become very active and more aware of their voting power (Brett 2007; Coorey 2007; Santow 2007). This also strengthened the misconception about the connection between the Labor Party and the ethnic Chinese population, long held by many analysts not familiar with the community. The third and current stage started shortly after the 2007 election, or symbolically in 2010, when Labor’s Maxine McKew was defeated, losing the seat of Bennelong to John Alexander of the Liberal Party. The change in voting decisions by many Chinese Australians in 2010 did not only take place in Bennelong, but also in other electorates. The driving forces are what I call the middle-class status, and their awareness of their own interests and their voting power. All these eventually push some of the ethnic Chinese population away from the left-leaning ideologies of Australian politics. This is the result of merit-based migration policies, and the community has been going through this transformation, but it has taken place with a high level of activity by Labor supporters. The details of this change will be analysed in the following sections. From the contemporary perspective, the long-term pro-Labor inclination and the emerging changes have existed alongside each other, exerting their influence in different ways. This is why people have explained the community’s political inclinations differently. In fact, there are three key elements that should be taken into consideration when examining the voting tendency of the ethnic Chinese population, as well as their general political inclinations. First, the pro-Labor tendency did exist in the past. This is historically correct, but it could be a huge conceptual trap, leading people to think that it applies Chinese migrants forever. Second, owing to the changes in socio-economic status, the political inclinations of Chinese Australians as a whole have been shifting, as shown in not only Bennelong, but also other electorates, such as Chisholm in Victoria.6 These changes have, unfortunately, been disregarded by those who view Chinese migrants as ‘others’, and those who have no real knowledge about the community. The misunderstanding resulting from this unfamiliarity has, for years, been haunting the mainstream elites with notions that Chinese Australians are natural supporters of left-leaning ideas, including the Chinese ruling party. Third, what has led to the misconception of Chinese migrants’ pro-­ Labor tendency is the higher-than-expected level of activity by Labor as it identified and utilised the ethnic vote for its political advantage. In other words, what people have observed is more about the level of activity than

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about the voting intentions themselves. The above-noted ABC analysis has demonstrated that Labor has been making a bold effort to recruit members and supporters from ethnic groups (Lelliott 2013), and the widespread impression of the pro-Labor tendency of ethnic Chinese is just a peripheral and intuitive response to the many activities in the Chinese community.

The Community Disrupted by Major Political Parties In Chap. 6 we will consider a new wave of activism among Chinese Australians, offering an interpretation of why the Chinese community has recently become so active that many new groups and associations have been created and party politics-related activities have been frequently held in the community. Proactive campaigns for securing more votes have profoundly disrupted the community and dragged many new Chinese migrants into Australian politics, an arena with which they are not familiar or comfortable. What is worse is that their participation could be suspected of being attempts to manipulate Australian politics on behalf of China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Having been inspired and pushed by the idea of integration into mainstream society, many Chinese community members have been dragged into various activities organised by major Australian political parties, since the importance of their votes has been realised after the Bennelong election. Demographically, as mentioned earlier, the Chinese Australian population grew from around 555,500 in 2001 to about 669,900 in 2006 (Gao 2015). Australia’s 2006 Census data also revealed that the country’s largest groups of overseas-born were still those who were born in Britain and New Zealand, but the China-born people had moved up rapidly, from seventh place on the 1996 list to third place in 2006. Five years later, the number of Australian residents claiming Chinese origin had increased to approximately 866,200, according to the 2011 Census results. This rapid upward trend has taken place as a result of the series of migration policy changes centred on attracting educated and skilled migrants from some Asian countries. The latter has attracted a great deal of policy interest in Australia at both federal and state levels because some Asian countries have a massive well-trained labour force and fast economic growth. As mentioned in Chap. 2, also according to the 2011 Census, the meritbased migration measures and requirements had raised the number of

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Chinese Australians with a tertiary qualification to more than 38 per cent while the national average was about 14 per cent. It would also be useful to offer an explanation for why a high level of interaction between major political parties and ethnic Chinese groups has become a reality in the contemporary socio-political life of Australia, besides the growing size of the community population. This explanation is needed if taking into consideration the racial discrimination that still exists in Australia, which has also long included Sinophobic sentiments. The context seems to have been influenced by two key emerging societal demands: the aspirations of middle-class Chinese Australians and the pressing need of political parties for more votes. These needs have been causing and driving the changes, turning the community into new voting blocs for a few political parties in Australia’s politics (Bowe 2019; E. Cook 2019; Lo 2019; Taylor 2019). The first key demand is a result of Australia’s merit-based migration policy that has been implemented since the mid-1990s and has attracted a large group of young and ambitious migrants from China. In my 2013 book, a different kind of socio-political activism shown by tens of thousands of Chinese onshore residency aspirants in Australia was analysed (Gao 2013a). Since they were all granted permanent residency in Australia in the first half of the 1990s, almost all of them have speedily returned into a normal non-political life, except a small group of supporters of the Falun Gong movement.7 That is, despite the fact that the first big group of new Chinese migrants is clearly equipped with a high level of political skills, the community has entered a phase of entrepreneurship, making many families economically secure, and facilitating closer economic links between Australia and China (Gao 2015). As an outcome, the above-mentioned pro-Labor attitudes of many Chinese Australians have changed slowly, prompting Labor to more action than before. At the same time, what has emerged in the Chinese Australian community in the last 15 or 20 years is a growing number of well-off, if not middle-class, families as a consequence of both the community entrepreneurship and the large number of well-trained and skilled new migrants. While Chap. 6 will form a closer examination of this, a few key points have to be considered here to understand why many new Chinese migrants become involved in events and activities organised by major Australian political parties, which has sometimes been mistaken by some professionals from Australia’s mainstream organisations to be the activities of Chinese agents in Australia. A handful of community members have blamed part of

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modern Chinese culture, which is to flatter the people of European heritage. This is called chongyang meiwai, ‘to fawn over and idolize all things foreign’ (Brady 2003, p. 28). Some others believe that the Chinese community as a whole has been pressured by the widely promoted idea of integration into the mainstream, which has, since the early 2000s, become a popular belief among Chinese migrants. However, the concept has shown its limits and hidden boundaries since the beginning of the current China debate, warning Chinese migrants where not to go and what not to do. There are also two more considerations that are more relevant to the community’s life than cultural perspectives. Many community members agree that the community has changed, and more members are driven by their aspiration to climb the social ladder, which is very similar to what has happened in China, where hundreds of millions of people have achieved upward social mobility and become middle-class. It is evident that the participation of the Chinese in numerous public events is partially driven by the business interests of many community members, especially business owners who need to build networks and contacts. All these accounts are from the community, different from conclusions presented by professional analysts. However, there are very few community members who explain all this to geopolitically-minded critics. A self-described ‘professional attendee’ of many activities explained it as follows: Most people attend activities because of peer pressure, or turn up to shua cunzaigan (to refresh one’s own sense of existence). [Non-Chinese] Australians couldn’t understand what we have been doing for years, and few Chinese could explain things in English. We know how bad the [China] debate is, regarding us as China-sent agents, but those [community members] wishing to stand out are often without good English [language skills] to argue for us. So, the Chinese community has no such thing as integration, but to be used by [political] parties as their voting numbers. (Respondent 28, November 2018)

Despite the above criticism, it is undeniable that the ambitious population of Chinese Australians has attracted the attention of the major political parties. However, it has not taken place in the manner alleged by geopolitically-minded specialists and journalists, namely exerting influence on behalf of China, but has occurred as part of the community development process. According to the four-year of research conducted by

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Qiuping Pan, one of my PhD students, who has just been awarded her doctorate, the Chinese community has been experiencing a reorganising process to respond to many changes in the community. Figure 5.3 shows that that there have been major structural changes to the organisational landscapes of the Chinese community. In Victoria alone, hundreds of associations have been established, and numerous business associations have become dominant. The largest association claims to have 2000 registered members and has even named itself ‘Elite Chinese Association’, showing how eager many new Chinese migrants are to demonstrate their middle-­ class status (Pan 2019, p. 321). The second crucial dimension for considering how the Chinese community has become a key battleground for both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party is the pressing need of these major political parties for more votes and their efforts to achieve this. This is where ethnic Chinese members and groups are pulled into political activities in Australia. In the eyes of some young, ambitious and determined members of the community, this could be something they feel proud of, because this is often regarded as an indication of their integration—from an idealist perspective—or an achievement in building new social networks in their host country—from a pragmatist perspective. On the other hand, as mentioned in the earlier quotation, many mature-aged and politically experienced members of the community have realised the utilitarian nature of these kinds of activities. Even with such huge differences, there is still a relatively large number of community members who have been influenced and mobilised to be used 800

715

700

574

Number

600 500

386

400 300 200 100 0

2

15

1983

1985

61 1990

127

1995

197

2000

276

2005

2010

2015

2017

Fig. 5.3  Number of Chinese community organisations, Victoria. (Source: Based on Pan 2019, p. 203)

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as a new voting bloc. For the purpose of this analysis, the vote-seeking efforts of Australia’s two main parties can be considered at both micro and macro levels. At the micro or community level, there has been an amazingly high number of community activities held in different sections of the Chinese community, and many such activities are organised either for the Labor Party or the Liberal Party, or attended by people from those parties. As noted in the above section, Labor’s membership has been declining drastically for several decades. In recent years, the Liberal–National Coalition has also started losing support from its traditional followers (Leyonhjelm 2016), and its membership has decreased from roughly 100,000 as reported in 2013 to around 50,000  in 2017 (Lelliott 2013; O’Malley 2018). There has been perceptible and mounting competition between the two major political parties to expand their social bases. Their activities have made the community very busy. One occasional participant made the following comments: The frequency of [community] activities has sometime made you suspect some [non-Chinese] Australians turn up for more delicious [Chinese] food, or maybe even for dating purposes. All these years, I often feel my numerical skills are tested as I have become unable to clearly count how many events are being held in the community according to the reports in [Chinese-­ language] newspapers since several years ago, or in WeChat-news bulletins lately.8 (Respondent 46, December 2018)

As for how these community activities and their links with two major Australian political parties have been initiated and evolved, there appear to be at least two ways to set up and sustain the close connections if considering the matter abstractly, while many other possibilities exist. First, many such activities are the initiatives of the political parties themselves via their local branches. As discussed, in spite of the first federal parliamentarian of Chinese ancestry being a Liberal, Labor has been more active than the Liberals in the Chinese community. Second, there are numerous activities that are indeed initiated by Chinese community groups. Their proactive approaches and styles have caused confusion regarding their motivations not only for professional analysts and journalists from the mainstream English-language media, but also for many community members. The enthusiasm of different new Chinese migrant groups in all these events will be further analysed in Chap. 6, but it should be analytically

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viewed as a wave of new community activism. As for the motivation of major political parties, it has been very apparent that both Labor and Liberal want to secure votes from the expanding Chinese community, but the efforts they have made to either hold or attend such community activities have always appeared to be greater than the goal of attracting votes. One regular participant of such activities offered the following insights: There seems to have three purposes behind their activities: securing more votes; collecting donations; and identifying business opportunities for some individuals themselves. The first one also means two different things: besides promising them your own vote, they also want to have your networks, asking you to introduce more [voters] to them. All these have become frequent after voting out John Howard in Sydney [in 2007]. Liberal people have then also started organising some events in the community, but they seem too proud to be with Asians. Labor people are a bit different, making many believe they work for you. (Respondent 41, December 2018)

In fact, both big Australian political parties have been exploiting the Chinese community as voting resources in different ways, the point of which has been totally absent, if not deliberately omitted, from the current China debate. Instead, various community-based activities have been interpreted to be more closely, even directly, connected with China’s ruling political party than with Australian political parties, making the debate highly problematic, while revealing the country’s deep-rooted subconscious anxious feelings as a stranded nation (Walker 2019). In addition to being utilised as voters, donors and business connections, a few ethnic Chinese people have also been chosen by the two parties to represent them in a few electorates in recent elections. Therefore, the misinterpretation of ethnic Chinese community activities appears to have two components. In the first place, it is a reaction by the mainstream Australian society to the idea of immigrant integration that has been faithfully followed by many Chinese Australians, without offering the level of acceptance offered to earlier settled groups. In other words, it is an awkward warning telling active Chinese community members to back off, as many Australians of Anglo-Celtic descent have never contemplated, or expected, such an intrusion into their political territory. In the second place, the misinterpretation shows that a large proportion of Australians do not really know what the two major political parties have been doing to cope with rapid social transformations.

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At the macro level, the two major Australian political parties have been stirred by both their rapidly dwindling memberships and the fast growing Chinese Australian population and decided to adjust their approaches to securing new votes. It has been proven to be a strong political tactic, because many Chinese Australians have been keen on the idea of integration into the mainstream of society, and they are also relatively compliant due to their long tradition of conforming with the majority. There are different ways to look at the organisational responses by major political parties, and one of them is based on publicly available figures and the total number of candidates of Chinese origin in Australia’s recent federal elections. By the end of the 2007 federal election, Australia had provided only three people of full or partial Chinese descent with a chance to be federal senators: Bill O’Chee (1990–1999, the National Party), Tsebin Tchen (1999–2005, the Liberal Party), and Penny Wong (2001 to now, the Labor Party). There have also been a few Australians of Chinese origin to be elected to both lower houses and upper houses at the state level (Kwok 2008; Liu 2016). The 2007 federal election saw a sudden and large increase in the number of candidates of Chinese descent. According to the online records of the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), seven Australians of Chinese origin had joined the election campaign, including Godwin Goh (Christian Democratic), John Lee (Christian Democratic), Jenny Leong (Greens), Gary Ong (Family First), Wayne Tseng (Liberal), Joyce Khoo (Family First) and Ka-ren Chew (Christian Democratic) (AEC 2007). This total increased to 21 in the 2019 election as listed in Table 5.1. Before the 2019 surge, the number decreased to only three candidates in the 2010 federal election: Gary Ong (Family First), Wayne Tseng (Liberal) and Ka-ren Chew (Christian Democratic) (AEC 2010). The number grew to seven candidates once again in 2013, including Jason Yat-­ Sen Li (Labor), Ricky Yue Mun Tang (Palmer), David Lin (Liberal National), Jin-oh Choi (Secular Party), Wesa Chau (Labor), Joyce Khoo (Rise up Australia) and Daryl Tan (Labor) (AEC 2013). The 2016 federal election saw another small decline in the number of Chinese Australian candidates, when there were six of them representing four political parties. Among these six candidates, three of them were from minor parties, including Chris Kang (Christian Democratic), Peter Xing (Science Party) and Daniel Kwon (Greens). The other three candidates (George Hua, Philip Liu, and Kevin Hong) were all campaigning for the Liberal Party (AEC 2016).

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Table 5.1  Federal election candidates of Chinese origin, 2019 Electorate/state

Candidate of Chinese origin

Political party

Banks, NSW Barton, NSW Bennelong, NSW Berowra, NSW Boothby, SA Boothby, SA Calare, NSW Chisholm, Vic. Chisholm, Vic. Deakin, Vic. Fraser, Vic. Grayndler, NSW Hotham, Vic. Hotham, Vic. Hughes, NSW Lyne, NSW Macquarie, NSW Menzies, Vic. Shortland, NSW Swan, WA Watson, NSW

Ki Man Ho Ben Tung Liu Qiu Yue Zhang Monica Tan Adrian Cheok Carol Wong Shuyi Chen Gladys Liu Jennifer Yang Sophia Sun Vinh Van Chau Gui Dong Cao George Hua Jin Luan Leo-Ning Liu Catherine Zhao Kingsley Lu Stella Yee Xing Yu Tshung-Hui Chang Raymond Zeng

Christian Democratic United Australia Greens Greens Conservative National Rise Up Australia Christian Democratic Liberal Labor Greens United Australia Christian Democratic Liberal United Australia Christian Democratic Christian Democratic Greens Labor Christian Democratic One Nation Science Party

Source: Based on AEC (2019)

It is worth pointing out that all these numbers would be doubled if including all the Chinese Australian candidates for the federal senate over the same period, from 2007 to 2019. Even just based on the above sets of numbers, there has been a significant upward trend in electoral participation by Chinese Australians. As shown in Fig.  5.4, a surprising surge occurred after 2016, partially explaining why some Chinese community members have become the target of the anti-Chinese campaign. Before turning attention to the 2017 Bennelong by-election, an exemplary instance of the impact of party-electoral politics on the ethnic Chinese community, two points have to be mentioned. First, the above statistics appear to suggest the emerging power or political influence of several minor political parties, which is very different from the focus of this discussion on two-party dynamics. For example, Table 5.1 shows that two small parties, the Christian Democratic Party and the Greens, had selected more candidates of Chinese origin to contest the 2019 federal election.

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Number of Candidates

25

171

21

20 15 10

7

6

3

5 0

7

2007

2010

2013

2016

2019

Fig. 5.4  Number of federal election candidates of Chinese origin. (Source: Based on AEC 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019)

They appeared far more active than both the Labor and the Liberal parties in the Chinese community, as their names appeared in more electorates. However, this carried little to no electoral meaning to date, and its main real impact appeared to be that their active approach had stirred up the two leading political parties, driving their activities in the Chinese community to a higher level. A brief comment has to be made about the possible role of other political forces, besides Labor and Liberal, in activating various activities among Chinese migrant groups in recent years. In other words, the above micro and macro analytical clues are not a rejection of the existence of other factors and driving forces behind some activities, but empirical evidence suggests that not all factors or observable phenomena contribute to social processes. The fundamental mistake of Australia’s recent China debate has been made when many analysts have misread and misjudged what has truly been driving ethnic Chinese groups into the new wave of activism. Many analysts have failed to identify and accept the probable interactions between the transformed Chinese community and two major political parties, and they have, therefore, also failed to consider many activities of the community at the intersection of the upward social mobility of educated Chinese migrants and the vote-seeking efforts of major political parties. The historical mistakes Australia made in the past, such as the discriminatory practices in the late nineteenth century, do not appear to have provided lessons for the way in which Australia’s elites of the twenty-first century have reacted to the so-called Chinese problem.

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Second, and more importantly, the trend revealed by the figures in Table  5.1 and Fig.  5.4, has multiple implications for Australia’s major political parties. It resulted in the attention of major parties, and government agencies as well, being paid to the ethnic Chinese community. However, it also coincided with frequent flare-ups of factional infighting within the two major parties after the 2007 federal election, and a string of small-majority federal governments under both the Labor and the Liberal parties. What is significant is that all these coincided with the fact that the one-seat majority held by Turnbull’s Liberal government was challenged by the dual-citizenship issue of many sitting parliamentarians. Two lower house members of the Liberal–National Coalition government, Barnaby Joyce and John Alexander, were ruled ineligible by the High Court of Australia in the second half of 2017, making the Liberal government lose its majority. This was the so-called 2017–2018 Australian parliamentary eligibility crisis. Of the two by-elections that the Liberal government had to win, Barnaby Joyce held a safe rural seat in northern New South Wales, which is still largely free from the influence of non-­ European migrants, but the seat held by John Alexander, the Bennelong electorate, was different. This was the electorate where former Liberal prime minister John Howard was voted out in 2007 by migrants of Asian origin, especially those of Chinese origin. Malcolm Turnbull, who was desperate to win the seat in order to keep the Liberals and himself in power, decided to take a risky approach and deal the anti-Chinese interference card.

The 2017 Bennelong By-Election The federal electorate of Bennelong was created in 1949, and it is located in the inner north-western suburbs of Sydney. The area covers around 60 square kilometres, ranging from North Epping in the north to Gladesville and Putney in the south, from Carlingford and Ermington in the west to Chatswood West in the east. Since its creation, the Bennelong seat had been safely held by two prominent Liberals: Sir John Cramer from 1949 to 1974 and John Howard from 1974 to 2007. Because of its handy location, the area has attracted many migrant families and groups to settle in its suburbs in recent decades. The demographic change, especially the growing ratio of Asian migrants in the area, has been used to explain why John Howard was voted out in 2007 after representing the electorate for more than three decades, and why the Labor Party won the seat with

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Maxine McKew, former ABC anchor. In fact, Labor’s victory in Bennelong in 2007 was also partly because of the electoral boundary change. According to the analysis provided by Anthony Green, the ABC’s chief election analyst, the electorate has been drifting westward, which should really be described as north-westward, away from Sydney’s lower north-­ shore areas (Green 2019). Since 1969, there had been five electoral boundary changes, occurring in 1977, 1984, 1993, 2001 and 2007. Like the electorate of Chisholm in Melbourne’s east, details of which are set out in Note 6 of this chapter, there is a comparatively high proportion of residents of Chinese origin living in suburbs of the Bennelong electorate. According to the 2016 Census, out of the total 168,948 residents in Bennelong, the most common ancestries were ‘Chinese 21.0%, English 15.2%, Australian 14.1%, Irish 5.7% and Korean 4.7%’ (ABS 2019b, n.p.). More importantly, 13.3 per cent of Bennelong residents were born in China, excluding those born in Hong Kong and Taiwan. In 2007, voters of Chinese ancestry in Bennelong made up about 18 per cent (Gao 2018). This increasing proportion and the fact that the 2017 by-­ election was to be ‘contested using the same boundaries on which John Howard was defeated in 2007’ once again turned the attention of Liberal leaders to ethnic Chinese voters when the 2017 by-election was forced upon them (Green 2019, n.p.). Despite the prediction that was made about the Liberals’ better chance of winning ethnic Chinese votes if they could recognise or accept the middle-­class status of many Chinese Australians (Gao 2013b; Jupp 2015), and despite the fact that the seat of Bennelong had already been won back by the Liberals since the 2010 election, the higher-than-expected percentage of voters of Chinese origins still apparently scared the Liberal Party and its leader. It is fair, however, to say that the Liberals’ concern about Chinese votes was caused by its own poor judgement on a range of issues. At that time, the possible political alliance between the Liberal Party and middle-class Chinese Australian groups was assumed to have been weakened, if not ruined, by the Sam Dastyari saga of 2016–2017. As mentioned in Note 1 of Chap. 1, Dastyari was found to have asked the Yuhu Group, a business owned by Huang Xiangmo, a new billionaire migrant from a region in China’s Guangdong province, to pay his legal bill. Based on this revelation, the Turnbull-led Coalition government initiated and conducted an intensive political campaign ‘against Labor senator Sam Dastyari, raising a series of questions about his links to Beijing’ (Henderson and Anderson 2017, n.p.). As mentioned at the start of Chap. 1, and at

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the end of Chap. 3, Turnbull decided to conduct an investigation into the extent of Chinese interference in Australia in 2016, which has also been called the [John] Garnaut-ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) inquiry and report (McKenzie et  al. 2017; Borys 2018; Uren 2018). Turnbull failed to manage the inquiry and all the likely manipulations of his judgment. Up to late 2017, when the by-election was forced upon the Liberals, a large number of active Chinese community members were already implicated in the inquiry as Chinese agents. The Liberal Party under Malcolm Turnbull had placed itself between the devil and the deep blue sea. On the one hand, many American officials ‘have seized on the Sam Dastyari scandal to highlight the threats posed by Beijing to Western democracies’ (Greene 2017, n.p.) and the Australian Government had no option but to act on it. On the other hand, an unparalleled level of media coverage of the Chinese meddling, especially the deliberate leaking of intelligence secrets about ‘a growing number of spies and agents working for Beijing in Australia’ had made many Chinese Australians angry and upset, but also scared (Greene 2016, n.p.). However, these people had voting rights, which could be used against any political party that defined and treated them as enemies. Jieh-Yung Lo, an active observer of ethnic Chinese communities, wrote in December 2017 that the Sam Dastyari saga and Huang Xiangmo’s conduct have made many Australians perceive Chinese community members as agents of the CCP wanting to exert influence in Australian politics (Lo 2017). As argued in Chap. 3 and the first section of this chapter, Turnbull’s government then decided to take an aggressive and bold approach, which was to publicly raise concerns about the CCP’s influence in Australia’s domestic politics, and also to strike out at China, ‘speaking Mandarin to declare he will “stand up” for Australians with his tougher foreign interference law’, which was still being debated at the time of the 2017 Bennelong by-election (Gribbin 2017, n.p.). The intent of Malcolm Turnbull’s imperfect recitation of the rumoured slogan of Mao Zedong in Bennelong in the days leading up to the by-election was apparent: to warn ethnic Chinese voters that his government had evidence of foreign interference in Australia’s domestic politics and that people should act vigilantly. Turnbull not only recited one of the most widely used but dated Chinese communist propaganda slogans in Chinese, ‘The Chinese people have stood up’, but also altered it, by mistake, into his own slogan in Chinese in the present tense: ‘The Australian people stand up [to China’s

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meddling]’ (Phillips 2017, n.p.). As noted, his own slogan served his objective well, warning the Chinese to back off. While this warning had almost no apparent effect on voters in Bennelong, the nationwide anti-­ China sentiment was given a huge boost. Two journalists from The Australian Financial Review then wrote the following comments: If Malcolm Turnbull loses the crucial Bennelong by-election on Saturday, he will likely rue a piece of calculated cleverness on the campaign trail that was designed to cut through to the huge bloc of Chinese Australian voters that could decide the seat … Last Saturday, Turnbull went to Bennelong to attack the ALP and Senator Sam Dastyari for its toleration of the Chinese interference in Australia’s political system that was revealed by donations paid to Senator Sam Dastyari by Beijing-linked millionaire Huang Xiangmao [sic]. (Winestock and Tan 2017, n.p.)

In the eyes of Kevin Rudd, the Labor prime minister in the previous electoral cycle of voting, Turnbull’s ‘foolish, amateurish and potentially dangerous’ anti-foreign meddling campaign wanted to target ‘explicitly at Labor, the Australian Chinese community and the Chinese state’ (Rudd 2018, n.p.). As the person who had possibly motivated Turnbull to show off his Chinese-language skills in front of television cameras, the Chinese-­ speaking Rudd did also point out that Turnbull falsely assumed his three targets were somehow ‘umbilically linked’ (Rudd 2018, n.p.). According to a number of media reports published afterwards, however, Turnbull’s anti-China meddling campaign seemed to have another target to hit: Peter Dutton. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton was then promoted to head a new federal super-ministry of Home Affairs after serving as Minister for Immigration for about three years from 2014 to 2017. Over the years, Dutton ‘built his standing among the party’s conservatives by signalling that he shared their values on a range of issues’, such as the ‘safe-schools’ program to create safer and more inclusive environments for homosexual, intersex and gender diverse students, and the widely debated same-sex marriage law (Hartcher 2019, n.p.). Turnbull’s ‘left-leaning inner-city progressive’ view had turned Dutton into a popular conservative leadership candidate (Patrick 2018, n.p.). A new internal division was then emerging among the Liberals. Just before the 2019 federal election, the ABC’s Four Corners program revealed another result of the investigation into Chinese meddling in

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Australia, through which Dutton was named. In addition to numerous nationwide newspaper headlines linking the names of Peter Dutton and Huang Xiangmo, the analysis on the ABC website also revealed the following details: An investigation [into China’s meddling] by Four Corners, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald can also reveal that in 2015, Mr Dutton gave approval for then-Labor MP Sam Dastyari to conduct a private citizenship ceremony for Mr Huang’s wife and two children … In early 2015, months before Australia’s political parties were warned by ASIO that Mr Huang posed a risk of engaging in foreign interference on behalf of Beijing, Mr Dutton used his power as immigration minister to authorise Mr Dastyari to hold a private, expedited citizenship ceremony for Mr Huang’s wife and children. (McKenzie and Koloff 2019, n.p.)

This revelation seems to show that while the investigation into China’s interference has been part of a wider push by several Western countries, it has also been used by Turnbull and his supporters to fight against direct political rivals inside and outside the Liberal Party. Active Chinese Australians and some of their groups were being used in a different way in Australia’s party politics this time. They had become both the target of a new government-orchestrated anti-China sentiment and the voting bloc that the one-seat majority government desperately needed. Having been confronted with the difficult one-seat majority in the lower house, which cost $1.75 million of his own money on the 2016 federal election campaign (Beech 2017), Turnbull wanted to use the China-meddling issue to hit a number of birds. His declaration to stand up to China’s interference had at least one more actual target than what Kevin Rudd summarised in his analysis, but also one more than those possible pro-China voters in the electorate of Bennelong. The electoral panic and uneasiness that the Liberals, especially Turnbull, felt in late 2017 overloaded the party’s nervous system, making them unable to clearly understand their voters in the Bennelong electorate. The 2017 by-election was the most difficult time in Turnbull’s prime ministership, but the party was scared by the ghost they created themselves. The fear made them unable to recall that the Bennelong seat had been relatively easily won back by the Liberals’ John Alexander from Labor’s Maxine McKew in 2010, and that Alexander had also retained the seat in 2013 and 2016 elections. The media had also failed to take the local

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demographic into account until the 2017 by-election day, when ABC reporters finally gathered the following information: Despite much being made of the Dastyari saga during the [Bennelong by-­ election] campaign, community leaders are quick to point out Chinese Australians are not a monolithic voting bloc. ‘Our community is not really bothered too much about the international politics’, Tony Tang from the Ryde Community Forum told the ABC. ‘We’re more concerned with local issues and policies’. (Doran et al. 2017, n.p.)

Despite the panic and the panic-driven escalation of anti-China sentiments, John Alexander won the 2017 Bennelong by-election with a 5.37 per cent swing against the Liberals, which prolonged Turnbull’s prime ministership for a few more months. His ineptly handled anti-China manipulation satisfied the xenophobic general public, but missed the intra-party target of what he needed to fight against. While Turnbull was making himself a global vanguard in challenging China’s interference and pursuing Chinese agents, the intra-party leadership challenge targeted at him was brewing. As a consequence, Turnbull was dumped as prime minister in late August 2018 before he could turn his attention to the real political threat imposed on him by Peter Dutton and supporters. That is, the leadership spill removed Turnbull as prime minister before he was able to use the above-mentioned accusation of linking Peter Dutton and Huang Xiangmo. Turnbull’s carelessly authorised inquiry into Chinese meddling in Australia did not help him politically, but has unfortunately turned himself into a figure in Australia’s anti-Chinese history. Throughout all these troubles, the ethnic Chinese voters in the electorate of Bennelong, and Chinese Australians as a whole, have become the scapegoat for Australia’s party politics. In fact, Australia’s main political parties have been found to be rather unfamiliar with a changing Australia, especially the changes resulting from the wide range of merit-based migration intake policies and programs. After the Bennelong-related overreaction to the Chinese problem in late 2017, Australia’s established elites of multiple persuasions all failed miserably to predict the 2019 federal election outcomes. Surprisingly to mainstream pollsters, politicians and analysts, only two Chinese community media online surveys predicted a Liberal win (Han 2019). The News Corp-owned Australian revealed this fact in its Chinese-language edition, but had no influence on those who made the mistake. This case may well

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show that even if many Chinese Australians have been dragged into Australian political party activities, they have been found, in both the 2017 Bennelong by-election and the 2019 election, to have acted in accordance with their own socio-economic interests.

Notes 1. As briefly mentioned at the start of Chap. 1, Australia’s ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) and Fairfax Media Limited had jointly formed an investigation team sometime in late 2016 or early 2017, some months before Fairfax Media was merged with Nine in late 2018. This joint team produced a shocking episode of television for ABC’s Four Corners, ‘Power and influence: The hard edge of China’s soft power’, shown on 5 June 2017. Reported by Fairfax’s Nick McKenzie and the ABC’s Chris Uhlmann, this investigative episode took them about five months to make. That is, it was made almost instantly after the so-called (John) Garnaut-ASIO dossier or report, which was ‘commissioned by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in late 2016 and investigates clandestine interference in Australian politics’ (Uren 2018, n.p.). The team did not have the Chinese-language skills to undertake this difficult project, resulting in the ABC’s special website, China Power (Zhongguo Yingxiangli), being first translated as China Electricity (Zhongguo Dianli). Such a simple mistake indicated that the program was created without help from Chinese speakers, despite the fact a few China specialists were interviewed and appeared in the episode, including John Fitzgerald of Swinburne University of Technology, Feng Chongyi of UTS, and John Garnaut himself. The ABC–Fairfax team has played a vital role in Australia’s recent China debate, leaving their mark on the history of Australia–China relations. In addition to Uhlmann (2016), McKenzie et al. (2017), and Uren (2018), interested readers can also read Garnaut (2018) and Kehoe (2018). 2. Just in case some readers are unable to understand the meaning of what is generally referred to as the change in the international political climate, it is worth briefly mentioning what has happened internationally in relation to Chinese diaspora communities and Sino-Western relations. In additional to various visible parts of the international tensions or dramas, such as Donald Trump’s presidency in the United States, the chaotic Brexit process, and the trade war between the United States and China, there has been another major political battle over Chinese interference and espionage in a few Western countries. A number of prestigious American universities have even made their statements about the situation. The President of Yale University, for instance, acknowledged the sense of unease among many international

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students and scholars at Yale and other universities, which has been caused by tensions in United States–China relations and increased scrutiny of academic exchanges. The President publicly affirmed Yale’s steadfast commitment to international academic exchanges (Salovey 2019). In Australia, Kevin Rudd, former prime minster of Australia, regarded the Malcolm Turnbull-led Liberal government’s crackdown on China’s influence as a form of new McCarthyism or anti-Chinese jihad (Karp 2018). However, what Rudd did not mention, is that a new McCarthy-style purge of alleged Chinese spies, scientists and other academic researchers working in the United States has been widely reported in social media and the Chinese media (Fowdy 2019). For example, China Daily, a Chinese state-controlled English-language newspaper, ran a headline warning of the ‘Purge of Chinese researchers by US new McCarthyism’. In this particular report, the editor noted that ‘a number of Chinese American scientists, researchers and engineers have been investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation since late 2017 on the ‘suspicion of working for China in the United States’ (China Daily, 8 July 2019). Australia’s mainstream media has, so far, completely ignored this new development in the United States, as well as similar actions that have taken place in Australia, according to the rumors circulating among some Chinese Australians. According to my own observation in the Chinese community in Australia, there has been a general panic among Chinese Australians, but as I mentioned in my Current History commentary, ‘Chinese Australians have been coping with anti-China sentiment in several ways. Those who are familiar with the history of the Maoist political purges in China keep silent because they believe that no political madness can last long’ (Gao 2018, p.  234). To understand what McCarthyism was in the 1950s and what it means to ordinary people, see Griffith (1970), Herman (2000) and Oshinsky (2005). 3. To understand the historical background of this political tendency among many ethnic Chinese migrants from South-East Asia, it is worth mentioning that a high proportion of postwar Chinese immigrants to Australia were from South-East Asian countries, where many people were heavily influenced by Chinese revolutionary ideas and left-wing Malay nationalists. This group was one of the three major groups of Chinese immigrants to Australia before the mid-1990s. That is, they were alongside two other major groups: the Vietnamese boat people of Chinese origin and the post-1989 Chinese residency seekers. However, those from South-East Asian countries, namely Malaysia and Singapore, were English-speaking immigrants, and they played a more influential role in the Chinese Australian community than other groups. As early as 1970, Wang Gungwu, a prominent scholar and historian on overseas Chinese, pointed out that the Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore ‘have earned the attention of governments, journalists and scholars alike.

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They form the largest concentration of Chinese outside of Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong; their economic life is among the most sophisticated in Asia; their social and cultural life probably the most complex that Chinese any-where have ever known; and, above all, their political life has been more open and exposed than that of any other kind of Chinese’ (Wang 1970, p. 1). One of Wang’s explanation was that the Chinese are more politically alert than has been realised, while other analysts argued that many people there ‘were anti-imperialist and left-wing in orientation’ (Verma 2002, p.  30). Interested readers can refer to Godley (1981), Freedman (2000), Game (2000) and Nonini (2015). 4. This was a dramatic election outcome that happened as part of the Labor’s landslide victory in the 2007 Australian federal election, which marked the end of the 11-year John Howard-led Liberal-National Coalition government and the start of the Kevin Rudd–Julia Gillard Labor government. The Labor under Kevin Rudd won 83 seats in Australia’s 150 seat parliament. One of the most dramatic outcomes was the win by Maxine McKew, former ABC journalist and presenter, in the Bennelong election. The seat had been held by John Howard since 1974, and after holding it for 33 years, John Howard as the second-longest serving prime minister was voted out, making him the second prime minister to lose his seat in the lower house. This outcome was partially because of the support by ethnic Chinese and Korean voters. The then Fairfax journalist Chris Johnston wrote that ‘the suburb of Eastwood in Bennelong has the second-largest Chinese-born community in Australia—12,000 people—and 5000 Koreans’, many of them did not like Howard’s policies on immigration and asylum seekers (Johnston 2017, n.p.; see also Coorey 2007; Santow 2007). For more information, interested readers are also referred to Note 4 of Chap. 1, and Markus (2001b) and Errington and Onselen (2007). 5. The Chinese translation of the CCCA (Chinese Community Council of Australia) disturbed me from the beginning, because the term ‘council’ has been translated into Chinese as ‘parliament’, ‘congress’ and the like. Although it was translated and widely used well before the ‘third chamber’ reaction by Barnaby Joyce, former Nationals leader and former deputy prime minister, to the proposal for including an Indigenous voice in parliament (Bolger 2019, n.p.), the Chinese translation of the CCCA seemed to be controversial and may be provocative to some members of mainstream Australian society. Apart from what will be discussed in Chap. 6, regarding organisations such as the CCCA as part of integration-inspired migrant community activism, it is worth here noting that the CCCA defines itself as ‘the peak advocacy body for the Chinese community in Australia’ and that its ‘mission is to ensure that the needs of Chinese-Australians are recognised in official policies and in the provision of services at all levels of government;

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and in the non-government sector’ (CCCA n.d., n.p.). In the eyes of the media, it has been described as ‘an independent non-profit organization representing Chinese-Australian’ (Mo 2018, n.p.). For further information, see the CCCA website, Ang (2015) and Pun (2019). 6. The federal electorate of Chisholm is in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, and it covers about 65 square kilometres, ranging from Box Hill in the north to Clayton in the south, from Ashwood in the west to Forest Hill in the east. It has, for several decades, been a marginal seat, swinging between the two major political parties. From 1987 to 1998, the seat was held by the Liberals; then by Labor from 1998 to 2016. According to the 2016 Census, out of the total 164,433 local residents, the most common ancestries in Chisholm were ‘Chinese 19.7%, English 16.8%, Australian 14.6%, Irish 6.3% and Scottish 5.0%’ (ABS 2019a, n.p.). More interestingly, 14.2 per cent of them were born in China, excluding those born in Hong Kong and Taiwan. According to James Jupp, ‘in 2013, 42 per cent of Labor lower house seats were from the two “ethnic heartlands” [Sydney and Melbourne], most with large Chinese communities’ (Jupp 2015, p. 336). Jupp also predicted that if the Liberals could persuade those new Asian migrants to consider themselves as prosperous and accepted members of the middle class, then Labor would be in serious trouble in 2016. His predication was proven correct, and the seat was won back by the Liberal’s Julia Banks in the 2016 election, and held by Gladys Liu in the 2019 election. For more information, see Jakubowicz et al. (2016), Bowe (2019) and Taylor (2019). 7. The Falun Gong movement is a politicised development of the Falun Gong issue. Since the early 1980s, the different types of gong (qigong-related practices) masters appeared all over China. In the first half of 1992, Li Hongzhi started teaching Falun Gong, and in 1993 it was soon developed into a nationwide network. The number of its followers had also increased dramatically, ranging from 10 million to 70 million. In 1996, its publications were banned, and the government started investigating it as an ‘evil cult’. As a result of the tension between the CCP and the Falun Gong practitioners, the latter staged a huge demonstration in Beijing in 1999, which forced the Chinese government to decide to outlaw Falun Gong, turning it into a new political movement. As I discussed in my 2013 book, the Falun Gong movement became established outside China after 1999, and has been active in garnering support from a number of Western countries, including Australia (Gao 2013a). Interested readers are referred to Chang (2004) and Ownby (2008). 8. WeChat is a multi-purpose messaging, social media and mobile payment app developed by Tencent and released in 2011. It can also be used to publish and circulate mobile newsletters. Currently, in 2019, there are no less than 30 WeChat-based news bulletins being widely distributed to Chinese

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Australians. In one of my 2017 publications, my co-author and I wrote the following about the changes to the Chinese-language community media landscape as a result of new communication technologies: The community has also witnessed the emergence of new players, who no longer publish paper-based newspapers, but deliver news online first and now on Chinese-language social media platforms. When Tencent QQ, a Chinese instant messaging service, became very popular in China in the 2000s, there was almost no response from the community media to this type of new technology. Also, Sino Weibo, which was launched in 2009 as a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook, has not only caught the attention of young Chinese migrants, but has also been promptly adapted for use in the community media. However, even before the adoption of Weibo, WeChat emerged as a disruptive and popular micro-messaging service with almost no limit on words, photos, videos and audio. The advertisements that have disappeared from paper-based newspapers have been taken away by those who have made smart use of WeChat’s new functionalities and created their own mobile news media. (Gao and Zhang 2017, p. 76)

For more information, see Wang (2016), Sun (2016), Chen et al. (2018) and Schneider (2018).

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Rudd, K. (2018). ‘Turnbull’s grovelling mea culpa on China risks harming Australia’, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 August 2018. www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/turnbull-s-grovelling-mea-culpa-on-china-risks-harming-australia-20180810-p4zwov.html. Accessed 8 August 2019. Salovey, P. (2019). ‘Yale’s steadfast commitment to our international students and scholars’, Office of the President, 23 May 2019. https://president.yale.edu/ yale-s-steadfast-commitment-our-international-students-and-scholars. Accessed 8 August 2019. Santow, S. (2007). ‘Chinese community delivers Bennelong’, The World Today, 17 December 2007, www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2007/s2120593. htm. Accessed 8 August 2019. Schneider, F. (2018). China’s Digital Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sun, W.  N. (2016). Chinese-Language Media in Australia: Developments, Challenges and Opportunities. Sydney: ACRI, UTS, www.australiachinarelations.org/research. Accessed 18 November 2018. Taylor, R. (2019). ‘Chinese immigrants emerge as key bloc in Australian election’, Wall Street Journal, 16 May 2019, www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-immigrantsemerge-as-key-bloc-in-australian-election-11557999001. Accessed 8 August 2019. Uhlmann, C. (2016). ‘Chinese influence “challenging fundamentals” of Australia, said Stephen FitzGerald’, ABC News, 28 September 2016, www.abc.net.au/ news/2016-09-28/former-australia-ambassador-to-china-warns-governmentof-beijing/7885140. Accessed 8 August 2019. Uren, T. (2018). ‘Declassify the Garnaut ASIO report’, Australian Financial Review, 27 June 2018, www.aspi.org.au/opinion/declassify-garnaut-asioreport. Accessed 8 August 2019. Verma, V. (2002). Malaysia, State and Civil Society in Transition. Boulder: Lynne Reinner. Walker, D. (2019). Stranded Nation: White Australia in an Asian Region. Perth: UWA [University of Western Australia] Publishing. Wang, G. (1970). ‘Chinese politics in Malaya’, China Quarterly, 43: 1–30. Wang, X. Y. (2016). Social Media in Industrial China. London: UCL (University College London) Press. Winestock, G. and S.  Tan (2017). ‘Bennelong byelection becomes a test of Chinese Australian values’, Australian Financial Review, 15 December 2017, www.afr.com/politics/bennelong-byelection-becomes-a-test-of-chinese-australian-values-20171214-h04elx. Accessed 8 August 2019. Wood, D., Daley, J., and C. Chivers (2018). A Crisis of Trust: The Rise of Protest Politics in Australia. Grattan Institute, https://grattan.edu.au/ report/a-crisis-of-trust/. Accessed 8 August 2019.

CHAPTER 6

Integration-Inspired Community Activism and Pushing the Bamboo Ceiling in Australia

The discussion in this chapter is a continuation of that in Chap. 5, where the first political party–related reason that is virtually absent from Australia’s debate over China’s influence was explored. This chapter focuses attention on the second political reason, which can be described as integration-inspired community activism, and its related push to break through the glass, or bamboo, ceiling above a large number of Chinese Australians. As already pointed out in the previous chapters, especially Chap. 5, this second main political reason has also been misread and misinterpreted by many political, bureaucratic and intellectual elites in Australia, who have used the community activism as evidence for the need for the current campaign against China’s political meddling in Australian politics, or the anti-China hysteria over ‘reds under the beds’ (Rudd 2019, n.p.). Readers who are interested in more on this topic can refer to two of my previously published books. Chinese Activism of a Different Kind (2013), is a behavioural analysis of how 45,000 or so Chinese students organised and fought to obtain their right and opportunity to stay permanently in Australia after the Tiananmen incident of 1989, or the ‘June 4 [incident]’ as it is usually called among Chinese-speaking populations (Gao 2013). My second monograph on the new Chinese community in Australia, Chinese Migrant Entrepreneurship in Australia from the Early 1990s (2015), focuses on economic activities undertaken by new Chinese Australians. These books offer explanations about new Chinese Australians, © The Author(s) 2020 J. Gao, Chinese Immigration and Australian Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5909-9_6

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which are very different from many long-held understandings, if not stereotypes, about Chinese migrants and their communities. A level of Chinese community activism in Australia, higher than previously believed, and the demand by many activists for a public voice and profile on top of prosperity are inevitable outcomes of Australia’s merit-­ based migration policies and programs (Hyland 2012). However, all these factors and changes have not only been misunderstood from time to time, but have also been politicised as China’s interference and influence operation in Australia in recent years (McKenzie 2018). As noted in Chap. 1, this book looks at waves of Chinese migration to Australia since the late 1980s and their lives in their host country at the intersection of two major socio-economic transformations that have taken place in the Asia-Pacific region: Australia’s strategic move towards profiting from Asia’s rapid economic expansion, and China’s post-1978 reform and opening up. At the level of community life, such transformations have made two general tendencies problematic in Australia. On the one hand, many ill-informed Australians still consider Chinese Australians, old and new, to be destitute, passive and apolitical. The Chinese are assumed to behave within the long-­ established expectations held of them by certain Australians, and otherwise, their actions would be judged, according to the political notions familiar to established elites. On the other hand, China’s post-1978 reforms have not only changed people’s material life, but also their perceptions of themselves and their attitudes towards other people and challenges. As set out in Chap. 1, this chapter examines the community-bred social and political activism from a community standpoint in four sections. The first section will elaborate on what was mentioned above, looking at key behavioural characteristics of recent Chinese migrants. Since the first large group of Chinese students settled in Australia in the early 1990s, there has been a new breed of Chinese migrants growing in the country, but hardly any effort has been made to examine how their attitudes and behaviours differ from what earlier studies have presented. The second section will consider the enthusiastic responses of Chinese Australians to the ideas of multiculturalism and integration, which have inspired many of them to be active in recent years. The third section will analyse the needs of many business migrants for local networks and regular meetings with established local elites for the purpose of ensuring positive business conditions and forming new local networks. The fourth section will discuss the extent to which Chinese Australian activism is related to the Chinese state and its geopolitical strategies, and how the long-expected role of ethnic Chinese

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in bridging Australia and China has not only been largely forgotten, but also reinterpreted as Chinese interference in Australia’s politics, staging a typical tragic play of what is described in Chinese as tushi goupeng (killing and cooking hounds after the hunting), or its everyday version, xiemo shalü (killing the donkey right after it finishes work and leaves the millstone).1

A New Breed of Non-timid Chinese As mentioned above, cohorts of Chinese migrants arriving and settling in Australia since the late 1980s and early 1990s are a new type of ethnic Chinese population, by every standard of assessment. They are not only very different from those who came to Australia in search of gold in the second half of the nineteenth century, but they are also different from those who came to Australia from several South-East Asian countries from the early 1950s, such as those who came to study in Australia under the Colombo Plan. Many of the Colombo Plan students were privately funded and have since stayed on in Australia after their education. Based on my earlier studies of new Chinese Australian groups and recent observations, it seems reasonable to divide the new Chinese migrant population into three major categories, which are also characterised by slightly different levels of training and skills, experience, economic security, attitudes and aspiration. The first large group of new migrants from China came during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and includes those who came under Australia’s new merit-based migration policies and programs, and those who came under its acquisitive and capital-based business and investment migration programs. The second group refers to the young, well-educated and adequately skilled people who have come to Australia since the late 1990s under various merit-based migration programs. The third group refers to those who have come to Australia under business and investment migration programs. In this section, we will discuss each group in turn. The first large group of new Chinese migrants was the so-called Tiananmen group, referring to those 45,000 or so students-turned-­ migrants of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It is worth emphasising that these students have usually called themselves ‘language students’, showing their clear awareness of the difference of their student status from those enrolled in university programs. They were recruited by Australia’s colleges and institutes under its new English Language Incentive Course for

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Overseas Students scheme (ELICOS), which was introduced by the Labor government in the mid-1980s to export English-language education as both a foreign money earner and a mechanism of resolving the unemployment issues emerging among Australia’s urbanised population since the mid-1970s. The Chinese coming to Australia to take short ELICOS courses were a sizeable majority, totalling well beyond 70 per cent of the Chinese student population in Australia at the time. Many of them were not fully qualified for studying in the US, the preferred country of prospective Chinese students. At that time, the US primarily accepted postgraduate students only (Gao 2013). As noted in Chap. 2, Australia became confused about these Chinese students, which was typified by the different ideas about these students by two ministers for immigration, Gerry Hand (1990–93) and Nick Bolkus (1993–96). While Gerry Hand was worried about the burden and problems of allowing the students-turned-asylum-seekers to stay permanently, Nick Bolkus regarded the students as ‘the crème of young China’ after his department had re-assessed their qualifications and work experience (Bourke 2009, n.p.). In spite of the commendation by Nick Bolkus, and in spite of the fact that almost all of the students were allowed to stay in Australia, it is inaccurate to assert that the first group of new Chinese migrants was a group of Chinese elites. They were perfect in terms of meeting migration selection criteria, but their education and skills training, as well as English-language skills, were not as good as those young Chinese migrants who came to Australia after the late 1990s. However, due to their age composition, the first cohort of new Chinese migrants is characterised by their rich social and political experiences. Most of them went through China’s chaotic Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976, as well as the early period of China’s post-1978 reform. They all remember the brainwashing by various theories or ideologies and the official media, and they all welcomed, if not embraced, the emancipation of thought that was once defined by the leftist faction of China’s ruling CCP as a crisis of belief or faith.2 Their generation had since become rather sceptical about ideology and idealist politics, while adopting more pragmatic attitudes towards many issues. What had been practically helpful to them was their political minds, experiences and skills in dealing with difficult situations and personalities as most of them grew up in the midst of Maoist class struggles. Their strong socio-political experiences were also because the following reason:

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[The student community] included former mid- and high-mid-ranking policy advisers and bureaucrats who had worked in China’s state-party systems at central and provincial levels. It also included mid- and higher ranking researchers, professors and other kinds of professionals such as journalists, from the top Chinese universities, research institutes … There were also a number of individuals, who were not connected with big institutions in China, but had strong political skills, experience and confidence because of their family backgrounds or personal experience in China. (Gao 2013, p. 174)

Many Chinese students had grown up in a China that had been highly politicised and emotionally charged for a few decades, and they were very good at identity politics and also strong in terms of socio-political skills. Their strong socio-political experiences were used in not only their collective campaign of lobbying for the right to permanently stay in Australia in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but also their post-settlement commercial activities. In addition to their age, the pre-migration positions of some students were apparently helpful to their learning and knowledge, which had made some of them familiar with politics in Western countries, including the main defects in the Western system. The problems of the latter, such as the commercial nature of attention-grabbing media and its profit-­ oriented biases, the self-importance of the legal profession, and the non-­ cooperative political party system, were all identified and made use of in their campaign. The above past experiences and institutional links of some new Chinese migrants were not understood and tolerated by various geopolitically minded Australians, who regarded their past experiences as evidence for what they believed, what their political leanings were, and where their loyalty was placed. What some Australians could not understand was that migrants’ past work experiences are suggestive of their general competence and active role in social and political life. The politicised thinking, as well as related discriminatory treatment, that these new Chinese migrants had suffered during Mao’s Cultural Revolution had unbelievably struck them again. What disturbed them was that this time, political attacks, or politicised smears if taking it lightly, were not by Maoist radicals in China, but by a coalition of supremacist Australians. These attacks were also, regrettably, sanctioned by some political parties and their leaders, and even by the country’s major spy agencies including ASIO (Carr 2018; Uren 2018; Menadue 2019). The latter has therefore been critically called the ‘spy-gate’, which will be discussed in Chap. 7 (Tan 2018, n.p.).

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The second group of new migrants from China refers to those young, well-educated and adequately skilled people who have come to Australia since the late 1990s under various new merit-based migration programs. As mentioned in Chap. 2, after the 1996 election, the Liberal Howard government started reforming what it inherited from the previous Labor government, and shifted the focus of immigration policy away from the family reunion and other humanitarian programs. At the implementation level, the old points system that was attempted and then abandoned in the 1970s was reintroduced and has since remained the key mechanism and procedure for identifying and selecting migrants. As shown in Fig. 2.2 in Chap. 2, there have since been more skilled migrant intakes to Australia than family-reunion and humanitarian intakes. Fig. 1.2 of Chap. 1 also revealed that Australia’s new merit-based migration strategies and policies have not only turned more attention to the Chinese mainland, but have also attracted far more young, educated and skilled migrants from there than from Hong Kong and Taiwan, previously the two primary sending regions of ethnic Chinese migrants to Australia. As also shown in Fig. 1.2, the number of migrants from the Chinese mainland reached about 120,000 in 1996, more than the combined intake from Taiwan and Hong Kong. In 2016, the same ratio increased by almost five times. In technical terms, the second main type of new migrants from China are migrants of independent and nominated categories, and because of the selection criteria, especially the skilled points test, they have become young, better educated and sufficiently skilled members of Australian society. In addition to education and skills, the Chinese Australian community, with around 1.2 million people, has become a demographically young community, and its median age is only 33 years (ABS 2018). Significantly, this median age is two years younger than they were in 2011, and five years younger than that of the total Australian population (DHA 2018). Among the changes caused by the growth of this group of young educated Chinese migrants are new dynamics, creating the basis for settlement-­ focused and communitywide activism. The most noticeable characteristics of this second group of new Chinese migrants are their much stronger wish and determination, compared to the first group, to climb up the social ladder. Because of age and English-­ language factors, the second cohort has been far more determined, if not ambitious, than the first group, though the latter is more experienced socially, politically and strategically. In their conversations, they have always compared their current socio-economic conditions in Australia

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with their old friends and classmates in China, where an unbelievably large number of people have achieved upward social mobility. To a large extent, they have indeed been driven by what has happened in their home country. This aspect of the so-called China’s influence in Australia does not appear to be a negative to their host country. In fact, the successful recruitment of such a large number of educated and skilled Chinese into Australia is the influence that Australia would like to have as part of its strategic shift towards Asia. As shown in Fig. 6.1, Australia has correctly identified China as a key migrant-sending country, as China has trained millions of university graduates every year since the mid-1990s. It is also because many new Chinese migrants are among those millions of educated Chinese that these migrants appear to be very confident in what they have achieved and what they will realise in their adopted country. Specifically, as will be analysed in the next two sections, they have, therefore, more enthusiastically embraced the idea of integration than the first cohort of Chinese migrants. Unlike the first cohort, these post-Mao young Chinese did not suffer from the trauma and ordeal caused by the Maoist Cultural Revolution, and they are less conversant, and therefore less cautious, about the possible enmity that could emerge if their activities alter the existing structure and pattern of the distribution of resources and interests in their newly adopted country. As a result, they have been the key driving force behind not only the enthusiastic seeking of the goal of integration, but also the recent efforts to break the bamboo ceiling. As I examined in my 2015 book on the entrepreneurship of new Chinese

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migrants, many from this second big group have also been involved in various business ventures as the method to survive and prosper in Australia. This option has, in part, determined their need to build more extensive networks of contacts than some long-settled groups. To a great extent, a high degree of activism among these new Chinese migrants is a product of a combination of their education background and their determination to retain or achieve their middle-class social status in their host country. Unfortunately, their visible determination has set them on a collision course with some people from other communities, even though migrants’ optimistic attitudes towards integration should be encouraged, in theory. The third group of new Chinese migrants is those coming under business and investment migration programs. The total number in this category is not big compared to the first two categories, but they are more financially able. The Chinese community in Australia has, for more than a decade, been called a cash cow being milked by some political groups, but predominantly by two major political parties (Grigg 2016; Dziedzic 2019; Tobin and Power 2019). However, not everyone can afford to be a cash cow to satisfy the greedy and endless demands of leading political parties. As a result, many thousands of comparatively new investment and business migrants have become the real targets to be used as cash cows. At the same time, this particular type of migrant, brought in by the investment and business migration schemes, has become one of the attention-grabbing tools of the struggling media. In addition to Zhou Zerong, or Chau Chak Wing, who has been well known for many years because of his defamation case against The Sydney Morning Herald,3 Australia’s story-hungry media has also dug out personal information of rich migrants from the Chinese mainland, such as Zeng Wei, Xu Jiayin or Hui Ka Yan, and Huang Xiangmo (Garnaut and Carson 2010; Li 2016; Marsh 2017). Wealthy Chinese migrants have attracted more attention from the struggling mainstream media than have skilled independent migrants. While disclosing the human nature of disliking or even hating rich people, the media has also set up a new political battleground in Australia to fight against rational migration policy choices through its sensationalist headlines and other politicised issues. Despite the attention from the media and political parties, however, this class of wealthy migrants is clearly not as politically skilful as the first group of new Chinese migrants. This is not only because of their wealth, which has made some of them politically imprudent, but also because many of them are less educated than the first two groups.

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There has long been a confusion over China’s new rich among Chinese and non-Chinese. The latter has for years simply repeated the effortless and angry comments made by less well-off Chinese, believing that China’s new rich are the princelings, or children and relatives of senior officials and other revolutionary veterans. Such assumptions have lately been found to be false as owners of many business operations, especially rural entrepreneurs, are the biggest majority of the new rich. Figure 6.2 offers another perspective for thinking about how the new rich have emerged in China, and why owners of small and medium businesses, many of whom are from rural backgrounds, can become rich. In more recent years in Australia, the uneven benefits from the donations made by rich Chinese migrants have been politicised in battles among political parties, which has since deteriorated into a key part of an evolving geopolitical confrontation. In other words, the donations from rich Chinese migrants and their ways to donate have not only been regularly exploited by some political parties or groups, but have somehow also disturbed the existing balance and structure of power in Australian politics. Considerable tension has emerged as some Chinese migrants want to make use of donations for a quick and straight access to mainstream socio-­ economic and socio-political chances, but numerous mainstream monopolists are more concerned with probable intentions to destabilise or weaken their grip on politics than with other issues, including Australia’s current economic conditions and future development. To a degree,

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Australia’s China debate is more like social tensions between two active and strong-willed groups or social classes within its population: economically active Chinese Australians and politically dominant Australians of Anglo-Celtic ancestry. This fundamental tension is very real and tangible if considering it from a historical and nation-building standpoint, but it has not only been overlooked by many analysts, it has also been badly misinterpreted.

Enthusiastic Responses to Integration in Australia The above-mentioned tension between some of the recently arrived Chinese migrants and the earlier settled communities in Australia is also caused by the historical discrepancy and interplay of two sets of thinking and ideas about migration selection and migrant settlement. They are the idea of integration and the merit-based migration strategy. They are both good ideas on their own, but in Australia, there has not previously been a time when these two policy ideas were put into practice simultaneously, especially with a large group of migrants from non-English-speaking areas. The integration idea was enthusiastically promoted when Australia was attracting many blue-collar workers and refugees from non-English countries or regions. In fact, this idea was called assimilation for a long time, which was intended to make the less-educated and low-skilled non-­ English-­speaking migrants more adaptive, flexible and productive in the Australian labour market. At the time, the ethnic and socio-economic background of migrants did not seem to pose any potential risk or threat to the existing balance and structure of power in Australian society. The merit-based migration policy has brought in rather different types of migrants, ranging from skilled people to wealthy entrepreneurs. However, the earlier concept and policy of integration has never been adequately reconsidered and debated to prepare many existing Australians for the possible pressures and challenges presented by merit-based migrants. The latter has been more disruptive to Australia’s existing patterns in the distribution of work opportunities, wealth and political influence than earlier generations of non-merit-based migrants. New disruptive forces that have been generated by new merit-based migrants in Australia have taken different forms. In the context of new merit-based Chinese migrants, they have been observed to be able to accumulate family wealth faster, and therefore have bigger purchasing power in the real estate market than many other Australian families. They

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have also performed very well in educating their children in Australia’s school systems, some details of which can be found in Chap. 4. What has also attracted much attention, and has thus disrupted the existing status quo between new Chinese migrants and many other Australians, is the positive and zealous response by new Chinese migrants to the ideas of multiculturalism and integration, inspiring many of them to be socially active in Australia for almost 20 years. Various forms of their responses have been a crucial part of the new Chinese community activism, which can be observed and examined from a number of perspectives. According to easily observable forms of their responses, there have been countless ongoing discussions and debates among new Chinese migrants concerning integration, which have occurred alongside numerous community events and activities aiming to promote social integration into Australian society. Different forms of internet-based online communications, such as forums, blogs, bulletins and chat rooms, have recorded keen and endless discussions and debates on the topic, and many events across various community segments. A quick online search using Chinese keywords, such as ‘integration of new Chinese migrants in Australia’, returns millions of results. While many of them have been reposted a few more times, the number of original posts and the range of websites and webpages for the posts have been enormous and are still growing. All these online accounts have truthfully reflected what has been discussed and debated about the integration issue in the Chinese Australian community. Just like what has happened in the everyday life of the Chinese community, online records have shown temporal characteristics of the responses of Chinese migrants to their integration in Australia. There are a few straightforward points that are worthy of attention. First, these newly arrived migrants are more concerned about their opportunities to be accepted by the mainstream groups and integrated into Australian society. Second, migrant integration has been a key concern of the new Chinese migrant population throughout the whole process of their migration and life in Australia, but it was more troubling for many community members before the mid-2000s, when there were fewer ethnic Chinese living in Australia. As their numbers increased, integration became less of an active concern. Third, because of different sizes of subgroups in the community, the first two of the three main groups of new Chinese migrants, as detailed earlier in this chapter, are more concerned with integration-related issues than the third type. Lastly, despite the fact that the first two large groups

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have played a vital role in creating and upholding the community’s interests in the integration issue, there is also an age difference, because younger migrants, such as the students-turned-migrants, are more interested in asking and debating questions regarding integration. Numerous online publications on this topic are written by young Chinese migrants. Despite the age and subgroup differences, the collective desires and expectations many new Chinese migrants have had for integration have been so strong and widespread that a community-wide anxiety over integration has developed and taken over many people’s minds and lives from the mid- to late 1990s. This anxiety has become even more palpable and severe since the early to mid-2000s. During the early years of the current millennium, an increasing number of educated young Chinese were attracted to Australia under a few new merit-based migration schemes. They do not suffer from what the Chinese have normally called the ‘runaway mentality’,4 which was a very negative result of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and once badly clouded the minds of many onshore Chinese asylum seekers of the first large group. For many from the third group, the permanent settlement in Australia has already satisfied them considerably. However, the newcomers are young, and the establishment of their careers has largely taken place in Australia. As a result, these young and educated migrants have suffered from greater pressure than the other two types from what I call ‘integration anxiety’. What has made their anxiety even worse is that integration has never been effectively defined in Australia, as was once pointed out by James Jupp, who believes that integration ‘may simply describe a preferred situation’ (Jupp 2011, p. 41). In reality, giving no formal definition has not stopped new Chinese migrants from creating their own explanation and criteria to assess integration. Because this self-defining effort is largely affected by Chinese notions of social status and upward social mobility, there has even been an ongoing debate about it among Chinese migrant communities and groups. In a repeatedly reposted online article, this definition-­making effort is criticised as follows: It has been a big headache for overseas Chinese whether they are capable to integrate into the mainstream society, because some have even regarded ‘integration’ as a symbol of success and the goal of their endeavour. Whenever overseas Chinese talk about the ‘integration into the Western mainstream’, they often complain that they are unable to enter the management level of enterprises or high society … Such misguided beliefs are clearly

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branded with the mark of abnormal Chinese social structure and the worship to power. (Xie 2011, n.p.)

Other critics have regarded the integration question as a massive lie to fool those living in host countries. There was angry and emotional condemnation when the criteria used to measure integration into mainstream society was revealed as being based on whether a new Chinese migrant works for non-Chinese businesses or institutions, how closely they work with non-Chinese people, how many non-Chinese friends or colleagues they have, how often they are in contact with non-Chinese friends, and whether their child or children have more non-Chinese friends than Chinese ones. All these evidently prejudiced topics had been very common in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As pointed out in Chap. 5, these criteria are culturally linked with the modern Chinese mentality and mindset called chongyang meiwai, to worship everything foreign. However, regardless of whether these new migrants groups are driven by the this mentality or by their determination to achieve upward social mobility or by some other motivation, the accretion of community-wide integration anxiety has largely altered the way in which many migrant groups consider their own integration in their new country. Their pragmatic attitude towards life and social norms, typically illustrated by the traditional Chinese saying luodi shenggen (literally ‘growing roots where they land’ or ‘planting permanent roots in the soils of different countries’), has converted their collective anxiety into a clearly defined goal and a source of strength (Park 2009, p. 194). Generally speaking, a large majority of new Chinese Australians have appeared to be encouraging of the integration idea for two more important reasons than the above-mentioned irrational and even racialised explanations. The latter has been considered to be the emotional opinions of a noisy minority in the ethnic Chinese community. Although many nonsensical excuses and views have been put forward and debated widely, there are still at least two main forces driving their collective desires and expectations for integrating themselves into Australian society. On the one hand, the notion of integration is believed by many Chinese Australians to have its appeal in its ability to make migrants, especially newcomers, feel welcomed and embraced. On the other hand, racially prejudiced interpretations of the relationship between different migrant and ethnic communities in a multi-ethnic and multicultural society such as Australia are unable to alter the reality and general trend of continuous migration and

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age composition of the migrant population. Both latter factors have caused and upheld a range of social processes, a few of which are believed by many migrants to have maintained the relevance of the idea of integration. What has become most apparent in this process is that there are always new migrants who are at a stage of life where they require socialisation, through which young migrants can learn about and understand their new host society by themselves, not through others. The community’s interest in and enthusiasm for the integration idea have therefore been sustained by the ongoing demographic changes that are caused by various new merit-based migration schemes. What is also apparent is that new Chinese migrant groups have demonstrated a high level of entrepreneurship over the past few decades, which has been a very effective way to establish themselves economically in their host country. Any discussions of the Chinese migrant activism and Chinese influence in Australia, as well as elsewhere, have to take into account not only the migrants’ way of making a living, but also the constrictive role of their entrepreneurialism in Australia’s economy that has thus far been closely connected with China’s rapid economic development. Entrepreneurial activities of migrants require good and reliable networks in both home country and host country. From the integration viewpoint, such needs have resulted in different forms of integration activities. Of course, it is also true that new Chinese migrants’ pro-integration activities and their pragmatic life attitudes behind such activities have also been inspired, and therefore reinforced, by the active promotion of both multiculturalism and integration in Australia, although integration has never been clearly defined. According to in-depth analysis of various integration activities, there are a few key points that appear to have typified the Chinese migrants’ responses to integration in Australia. First, there is very much a self-driven process in the Chinese community to actually put the integration idea into practice. This is because the governments in Australia could only propose and promote certain policy ideas, such as integration, but they are usually unable to do anything further for new migrants. This has long been regarded as one of the most difficult aspects of Australian way of life from the standpoint of new migrants. This is especially inconvenient to the newcomers from China, who are unable to seek any assistance, or even simple advice, from the government after arriving Australia. This is why many of them view Australia as a non-governed place in comparison to their home country. For the same reason, a societal vacuum is created,

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which is then left open for community groups and other organisations to fill. In other words, with virtually no government support, there has been a self-governing community emerging among the rapidly growing ethnic Chinese population. Fortunately, migrants selected based on merits do not only have a strong desire to be integrated into the host country, but they are also competent to achieve part of their goals. Among various activities to implement the integration idea for themselves, the community-­ based reorganisation process should be considered the most relevant. As shown in Fig. 5.3, a large number of new community groups and associations have emerged, laying an organisational basis for implementing integration tasks (Pan 2019). Second, as a unique feature of the above process, new Chinese migrant groups have taken a proactive approach to implementing integration initiatives, which is to actively seek opportunities to involve non-Chinese Australians in their activities. Basically, because many mainstream groups are less interested in interacting with new migrants from non-English-­ speaking backgrounds, Chinese groups who would like to form and develop local networks as part of their integration have decided to invite and include them. Consequently, the role of initiating and maintaining integration activities has been switched into an atypical position, in which the hosting population becomes quite passive, becoming an object of a migrant-led integration push. Some critics from the community have even defined such unusual situations as self-made integration in Australia, through forming their own associations and leadership. Third, many integration activities have been characterised by a community-­wide intention to develop local networks in Australia, which also helps explain why so many Chinese groups have taken the proactive approach and why many of them have also involved non-Chinese Australian in their activities. This is not a complex or sophisticated activity, but traditional Chinese moral values have prevented many from openly talking about their intent from such a utilitarian viewpoint. A few have discussed it publicly, including Wesa Chau, who was the Labor candidate for the blue-ribbon Liberal seat of Higgins in Melbourne’s leafy inner-eastern suburbs in the 2013 Australian federal election. When commenting on how to integrate into mainstream Australian society, she wrote the following in rather broken Chinese: The third [point] is [the importance of] social networks. They exist everywhere in this world, which is necessary. Although their influence [in

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Australia] may not be as severe as in Asian countries, they do [exist and have its impact in Australia]. … Participation in Australian politics is to expand social networks. If there is a good job vacancy, if you have friends working in the company, you could [therefore] have some advices though they are not decision-makers. I have many friends who have improved their chances like this. (Chau 2016, n.p.)

Lastly, the integration efforts of many new Chinese migrants have often been accompanied by a frustration with being cold-shouldered by non-­ Chinese Australians, or by the general social manners and attitudes towards all migrants of non-Anglo-Celtic origin. This has given rise to the tendency among some new migrants to turn their attention away from making efforts to integrate in Australia, and towards forming links with networks, old and new, in China. It is at this point that their choices have come to the attention of observers, analysts and critics from Australia’s mainstream institutions and headline-hungry media outlets. While the latter has hardly cared to find out how to improve integration services, the loyalty of some migrants to Australia has become their main concern. Two more points are worth noting in this section. In theory, migrants’ effort to reconnect with their old networks in the home country may be defined as the transnational nature of migrant communities, but such a nature or characteristic has in fact been associated not only with current migrant populations, but also with all human groups and communities. The transnational nature of migrant groups has been a concerning issue for some host countries because of the increasing ratios of migrants in those countries. In the context of Chinese Australians, their efforts to be reconnected with home-country networks were defined as transnationality in the late 1990s and early 2000s (Ong 1999; Gao 2006). In recent years, both homeland-engaging and host-country-embedding practices are considered trans-local self-positioning tactics adopted by more migrants (Pan 2019). All these have been partially inspired by Australia’s transformation into a trade-dependent country. In practice, the transnational trait is not a rejection of Chinese migrants’ enthusiasm for integration. As a matter of fact, Chinese Australians as a whole have a strong desire, and have made enormous efforts, to integrate themselves into Australian society, which is a fundamental aspect of their community life. Their positive and active responses towards integration have, however, been compromised by various structural problems in Australia’s economy. Some of them have to earn their living from the

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Chinese market. That is, their trans-local life or transnational life could be only considered as a community response to the failures of the Australian government in managing migration programs, which have made many migrants unable to depend on the domestic economy.

Protecting the Rights of Migrants and New Tensions There have apparently been different but related unsettled feelings and emotions going through the minds of a large group of Chinese Australians, which at the same time push them to make every effort to have a better life in their adopted country. The better life in their minds has always been measured against the standard of living reached in China. In terms of this, China has indeed had a rather direct and significant influence on part of Australia, or part of its population. The strong integration anxiety that was considered in the previous section has been of a worrying but propulsive type that it has made many new Chinese migrants feel satisfied with their own efforts at integration. Among their complex feelings and internal pressures, there appears to be an increasingly strong awareness among new Chinese migrants of the cost of their decision to leave China as a rapidly growing economy, and to live permanently in Australia with a much slower economy and fewer opportunities to be well-off. With this strong understanding, a new awareness about their own interests and rights has been slowly emerging among many new migrants, especially among those from the second and third major groups of the new Chinese migrant population, which were noted earlier in this present chapter. A number of people from the new Chinese migrant community have talked to me about this emerging awareness when discussing why this usually quiet community has become so active and why the integration idea has been so widely talked about. One of them explained it as follows: These [Chinese migrant] people have been making far bigger efforts in achieving what they have long longed for in [both] China and Australia than many others. What they do not want to see, nor suffer, after so many years of hard working is that they are in the end rewarded far less than those less qualified and those making no efforts … This feeling has been brewing among many young and university-trained migrants for many years. Now, there are more skilled and business migrants, and more people are all

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t­ herefore worried and thinking about how to protect their own interests and the rights, if not achieving anything more. (Respondent 7, January 2019)

The similar realisation has been repeated and echoed, indirectly and directly, in many other conversations. All these have somehow revealed a fundamental change taking place in the community as a result of the community’s changing population composition over a couple of decades. Evidently, merit-based migration schemes have brought into Australia a huge number of able migrants from China, who have all, one way or another, invested considerably in their own human or personal capital. Consequently, they all have a much stronger awareness than other groups about what efforts they have made and what return they should expect. In recent years, many of them have even started talking about the cost of their migration to Australia in public occasions, with an intention to make dominant groups and ruling elites aware of their interests. At a big community forum themed ‘Migration Rights’ in early June 2017, held in Springvale in south-east Melbourne, an Asian settlement area, Angela Pu as a qunzhu (a WeChat group leader) of the Permanent Residents’ Rights-­ Protection WeChat Group told her audience the following: Most of these tens of thousands of new Chinese migrants are successful elites in China. They have now come to Australia, and for this purpose, they have given up their businesses, real estates, China’s education system, and their elderly parents … All these sacrifices and efforts are made in order to respond to Australia’s migration policy to encourage and welcome more successful business people to contribute to Australia … Despite numerous difficulties, the new Chinese migrants have fulfilled all the requirements of the government, fulfilling more duties and responsibilities than other citizens … It is because of that, new Chinese migrants reject the new policies that violate the universally accepted rules, reject the arrogance and apathy of the government towards new migrants, reject the discrimination of migrants of non-English-speaking backgrounds, reject the inconsistency of migration policy, and its impact and damages to thousands of migrant families. (au123. com 2017, n.p.)

The above powerful speech was made in the aftermath of some major migration policy changes being put forward by the Liberal Turnbull government, including the abolition of subclass 457 short-term visa scheme and the initiation of a new English-language test (Karp 2017; Stiles 2017). Such unfavourable changes provided a group of active business migrants

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with an opportunity to vent their concerns. The speech, especially its original form, may well be misunderstood by some Australians as the influence exerted by someone or something related to China, the vague definition of which has been kept ambiguous and undefined for flexible use in Australian politics. However, the speech and the gathering also clearly demonstrate that the rights awareness of new Chinese migrants has become very strong. This change in awareness has been obvious if one is familiar with everyday conversation and discussion topics of the community over the past two decades. A discussion thread extracted from an online forum called Xin Zuji or Oursteps shows that some Chinese community members actively promoted their rights as migrants in 2006 when the Liberal Howard government proposed a citizenship test while also considering extending the waiting period for citizenship (Oursteps 2006). The discussion shows that the Chinese community seemed to have already completed its transformation in 2006 and 2007  in terms of developing their own rights awareness. Before this period, the migration reform attempted by the Howard government after 1996 had made skilled intakes a significant majority of the new migrant population, as revealed in Figs. 2.2 and 2.3. The Chinese community had also subsequently been reconfigured, as indicated in Fig. 5.3. At the same time, the Chinese-language community media had also gone through a restructuring process (Sun 2016). This process had seen several takeovers and new ventures by new migrants, both skilled and via business investment, to revitalise the Chinese-language media market in Australia (Gao and Zhang 2017). The changes in media landscape have provided community members with a more united platform rather than a fragmented environment for promoting and forming rights awareness. Therefore, the new media landscape has escalated the pace of the formation of the shared awareness of their own interests and rights in the new host country, and has also deepened the depth of the awareness as well. Shared consciousness is a prerequisite for collective beliefs, desires and actions, and the one Chinese migrants have developed appears to be caused by external denials of certain rights, and their own self-esteem and self-confidence. The first cause is easily observed; for example, the harsher requirements for citizenship, including English-language proficiency tests. The second factor is often overlooked, which is about who they are. In addition to their qualifications and skills, required by new merit-based migration policies, many new Chinese migrants are also unknowingly characterised by their pre-migration ethnic status in China. Almost all new

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Chinese migrants are ethnic Han Chinese,5 who are part of the mainstream society in China. This ethnic-cultural background means that they have a strong tendency to want to be part of the mainstream and feel uneasy being marginalised. This deep-rooted self-esteem has, of course, been enhanced by their other achievements, including their qualification and skills. All these have played a major role in both the enthusiasm of many Chinese migrants for integration and the growing awareness of their rights as migrants. The turning point of the political participation of a significant group of Chinese migrants is, as mentioned several times already, well represented by the 2007 Bennelong election. What has changed since then are the two-step advancements taking place in political participation. The first key step was to boost the general community enthusiasm among many new migrants for integration to a higher level and a wider range of local socio-­ political participation. This change is believed to have been driven by active promotion of migrant rights awareness within the community, and organisation of many new community-based groups and networks. The latter process, has served different groups in different ways. Young skilled migrants have a strong need for new community groups and associations, while business and investment migrants want to establish non-Chinese political networks and regular meetings with various non-Chinese elites in order to ensure business conditions are good and the investments are secure. The second key step was to raise their requests to an idealist level, at which political participation had been advocated and tried with the aim of breaking the bamboo ceiling. Their enthusiasm for challenging the bamboo ceiling has been clearly restrained a little bit by the prolonged debate over China’s alleged interference in Australia’s politics. However, it is also undeniable that the enthusiasm for integration by many new Chinese Australians and their awareness of migrant rights have already been elevated from an intangible idea to a level of action, in terms of ‘cracking the bamboo ceiling’, in the words of Australia’s former Race Discrimination Commissioner (Soutphommasane 2014, n.p.). Tim Soutphommasane was appointed to be part of the Australian Human Rights Commission in the midst of a Labor-led push for cultural diversity. As a reflection of the diversity agenda, and before the current China debate became politically charged for some Chinese Australians, the post-2007 socio-political climate in Australia had made many of them excited, and their groups were very prolific in organising various activities.

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As mentioned in Chap. 5, the CCCA (Chinese Community Council of Australia) held a big national conference in Sydney in early April 2011. This conference, themed ‘Finding the Chinese Australian Voice’, aimed at bringing members together to take a look at strengthening the Chinese Australian voice in public life (CCCA 2011). Soon afterwards, some activists also made the same request appear on the front pages of several big newspapers, stating the community’s need for recognition and a profile (Hyland 2012). According to Dr Liu Luxin, a Melbourne-based researcher, there were then other groups promoting political participation, and three of them were as follows: Gladys Liu, a Victoria-based Liberal Party activist, set up the ‘Chinese Liberals Association’ in 2007, and attracted a group of ethnic Chinese professionals through its slogan of ‘uniting Chinese Australians, building a political bridge’ … Ernest Wong, an ALP member of the NSW Legislative Council, has established ‘Australian Institute of Future Leaders’, aiming at unifying ethnic Chinese groups and training young leaders … Melbourne-­ based ‘Australia Chinese Leadership Foundation’ was set up by Kevin Ho, a migrant from Hong Kong … aiming at encouraging political participation. (Liu 2016, p. 60)

The CCCA held another conference in Melbourne in 2015, and this conference was themed ‘Piercing the Bamboo Ceiling’, which was also aimed at identifying all the challenges and looking for all possible solutions to the political underrepresentation of the Chinese Australian community. According the SBS Mandarin news, however, the conference attendees were bluntly warned by Jenny Leong, a Greens member of the NSW Legislative Assembly, that the situation was not optimistic since ‘there is a real anti-Chinese sentiment going on’ (Wu 2015, n.p.). She listed several incidents of that time to demonstrate that some Australians were developing a more negative attitude towards China. The above warning has since not only been proven accurate, as the current China debate was then brewing, but has also indirectly reflected a range of new tensions resulting from the community’s activism, especially new demands for socio-political participation and profiles. Earlier generations of Chinese Australians have been sidelined in this process, as gaps have appeared not only between the long-settled Chinese communities and the newcomers, but also between so-called Colombo student migrant groups and a few other groups. Political participation of ethnic Chinese

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has also been clearly correlated with English-language skills. Although regional Chinese dialects are no longer crucial to the community’s leadership, all the activists mentioned in the previous two paragraphs are migrants from Hong Kong. Clearly, the Chinese community is divided into the English-speaking group and the Chinese-speaking group, the latter of which is a huge majority. Importantly, a new division has also become apparent between followers of the Labor Party and followers of the Liberal Party. Even among new migrants, some do not like what community activists have been doing in Australia, and some have even attempted to politicise the activities of their fellow migrants. The ties that some migrants have formed with Chinese businesses and institutions have become a new issue for politics.

The Double-Edged Bridging Role The active attempts expressed by Chinese Australians to break the bamboo ceiling have further threatened the stability of the existing structure of the distribution of resources, power and interests in not only broader Australian society, but also in the Chinese community. However, not all tensions that have appeared between different groups could be used as the basis for politics. There are many issues that are well shielded by what is now generally called political correctness, which has dominated the cultural, social and political discourses in Australia for several decades, but has hardly been applied beyond national borders. As a result, anything that could be categorised as geopolitics and international tensions has been free from the constraints of political correctness. Many racially and culturally prejudiced comments or analyses that could actually unmask a serious lack of basic human empathy, if not humanity, have been freely made on the matters of international disagreements or tensions. In the case of the Chinese Australian community that has upheld integration as their aim, their wish to break the bamboo ceiling could hardly be a target for suppressing annoying changes to existing social norms, though Chinese migrants were portrayed in the mainstream media as being guilty for rising housing prices and competitions in schools. However, one common aspect of new Chinese migrants can be an inimitable topic—their connections with China—because it satisfies the needs of international politics and hidden Sinophobic sentiments among Australia’s general population. This is a very sad aspect of present-day cross-ethnic and cross-cultural international migration, in which many migrants decide to settle down in

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a host country and call it home, but have somehow become a target of popular racism and hatred, both noticeable and hidden, while working as supplementary workers at the grassroots level. What is more disturbing than listening to countless vilifying comments is that the wish to develop close links with China’s big economy and market through Chinese migrants was actively promoted by successive Australian governments for a few decades, at least until the Liberal Turnbull government, but geopolitics has recently turned it upside down. Since the time when Malcolm Turnbull was prime minster, the national political leadership in Australia has become less decisive and influential in a range of policy areas than a small group of spy agency bosses and activist reporters. As a consequence of the fact that ‘intelligence agencies are out of control’ (Menadue 2019, n.p.), the bridging role that ethnic Chinese could play in helping Australia’s economic re-positioning has been, intentionally or otherwise, reinterpreted or even used as a sweeping accusation or allegation of geopolitical crime. As pointed out by Su-Lin Tan, a correspondent for The Australian Financial Review, there has since been an evolving belief that ‘any Chinese, Chinese-looking or Asiatic person, or any Asian who has money, is a spy for China’ (Tan 2018, n.p.). Some strong-minded but less-sophisticated Australian analysts and reporters have even exaggerated the belief into fear that there are not only networks of Chinese agents or spies living and working in Australia (Wallace 2017; Molloy 2018), but also as many as a few thousands of what are called ‘citizen spies’ (Patrick 2016, n.p.). Such political attacks have also been targeted against new Chinese migrants, as observers and journalists believe that such problems have been partly caused by ‘a recent wave of Chinese migration’ (Welch 2018, n.p.). As hinted by the above spy stories, based partly on the claim made by Chen Yonglin, a former Chinese diplomat who defected from the Chinese consulate in Sydney in 2005, these spy allegations are in large part also a reflection of the tensions among different Chinese migrant groups and individuals. The debate over China’s meddling in Australia has actually brought various hidden conflicts caused by integration efforts, including the wish to break the bamboo ceiling, into politics. It has long been a divisive theme in the Chinese community that some members have set up closer and more beneficial relations with Chinese businesses and institutions than others, which has made some other members feel jealous and uncomfortable. A small group of angry community members have regularly accused some of the better-connected community members of being

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China’s bootlickers or agents. The nationwide China debate tolerated and also participated in by Australian government minsters, governmental agencies and mainstream media outlets, has offered some Chinese Australians an opportunity to voice their discontent, but at the same time denounce Australia’s long-time strategy to be closely linked to China’s economic development. It has to be pointed out that some Chinese Australians have, in more recent years, become far too excited about how they have or could have benefitted from their ties with Chinese institutions and businesses, and many even have forgotten the actual transnational nature of their residency status, let alone its geopolitical character. Such ignorance has resulted in many community activities that are seen by quiet members as inappropriate or insensitive. As noted in Chaps. 3 and 5, there have been countless activities occurring in the community over the past two or so decades, aiming at, at least partially, developing new networks and reorganising the community power structure. A high fraction of such events are used to support and promote the ties with Chinese businesses and organisations, among which include many gatherings or activities that are not directly relevant to the business interests of individual migrants or groups, but aimed at promoting China’s new policies. The latter activities and active participants have been criticised by other migrants, despite the recognition that not all involved are politically motivated, but are only seeking to position themselves in a more economically and socially advantageous place. This less-geopolitical account of what active Chinese migrants have done with their Chinese links, compared to what has been speculated by some security analysts and journalists, is based on demographic changes taking place in the Chinese Australian community. One pre-1990s migrant reflects it from the following viewpoints: There seem to be two types of people participating in all these activities. Those born to families of so-called revolutionary backgrounds did not experience any political persecutions [in China]. Not only do they not dislike the communist party, but have also never realised the political sensitivity of what they say and do … There are also many young migrants, and even those born in the early 1960s have no memory of the Maoist [political] trick of yinshe chudong (luring the snake out of the hole). They all are so utilitarian and so desperate to be friends of Chinese officials that they do not care

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about what damage they do to the community. (Respondent 17, March 2019)

The analysis has suggested the existence of another type of Chinese migrants who, just like the above respondent, are aware of the geopolitical differences between Australia and China, and have behaved carefully to avoid being trapped in any tensions between two countries, and two geopolitical systems. Despite such awareness, as noted repeatedly, Australia’s declining manufacturing sector, especially its diminishing job opportunities, has long been a factor in forcing migrants to prevent themselves from being marginalised in both the host society and the home country. They are found to have made ongoing efforts over a few decades in countering the marginalisation and staying relevant to both Australia and China. The intent of deploying such a strategy is to make their life secure. In one of my own studies published in 2006, I argued that transnationality or transnationalism is the typical feature associated with cross-border migrants, and their two-way efforts can therefore be defined as the dual-track de-­ marginalisation of migrants (Gao 2006). Of course, Australia’s national security establishment has kept hinting in recent years that there are some Chinese agents or spies living and working in Australia. The problem has been that having publicly talked about it for years, the inaction in showing any real evidence has made many Australians suspect the motivations of the country’s national security agencies. The secretive nature of these national agencies and their inaction in proving their claims, as well as the media’s ongoing coverage of the issue, have given rise to much speculation, including over America’s role in Australia’s China debate. One theory about their inaction has recently emerged among many Chinese Australians, who believe that there is nothing wrong with their links with China, but that their effort to break the bamboo ceiling has triggered strong responses of established elites. Specifically, it seems to many Chinese migrants that a small group of politicians, nationalistic patriots and journalists have been trying to safeguard various xenophobic groups from any challenges by new migrants. They have therefore placed Chinese migrants on a collision course with some Sinophobic forces in Australia. More fundamentally, as I argued in my 2018 article in Current History, misunderstandings about the high level of social activism and political participation among many Chinese Australians are at the heart of Australia’s China debate (Gao 2018). The continuing debate and media coverage of

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the networks of Chinese agents and spies in Australia, without any convincing evidence, could only be considered as a socio-political campaign. What some campaigners and supporters have not realised is that they themselves are misusing the institutional power in their hands, and engaging in a race-based political oppression. Though it is too early to predict the long-term consequence of the current tide of anti-Chinese sentiment, the fear-mongering about ethnic Chinese has revealed the social structural division hidden in Australian society, as well as the anger of many ethnic Chinese who have been demonised after making significant contributions to Australia’s economic survival (Lawson 2019). In fact, the government-sanctioned gossip of Chinese spies in Australia has been around for years, but had mostly been focusing on ethnic minorities until the second half of 2019. It has given rise to a racialised perspective on the spy issue on top of the bamboo-ceiling theory. In late 2019, a few non-Chinese names were linked by the mainstream media to a few serious scandals, including NSW Labor politicians’ association with Chinese donation scandals and the case of Roger Uren, a former Australian intelligence officer (Whitbourn 2019b; McKenzie 2019). Despite these late events, many Chinese Australians still believe there is racial prejudice in the China debate, and one of them told me the following: Apart from a few [ethnic Chinese] appearing in various food shows on TV … many of those who have since the late 2000s and early 2010s jumped up and down for cracking the glass ceiling are all in trouble, except they have stopped doing [or talking about] it. More Chinese names have one after another appeared in newspapers, TV news and other TV programs for various ‘bad’ reasons. [This means that] they have all been investigated by journalists, even including a surgeon who was lately also ‘unmasked’ by the Sydney Morning Herald. All these are to warn ambitious [Chinese] migrants to remember who is in charge [in Australia]. (Respondent 20, September 2019)

This does not sound politically correct as it was refers to the ethnic backgrounds of those being dragged into all these troubles and controversies. However, a considerable number of Chinese Australians insist that the above observation is accurate. In mid-2018, when I was writing the essay for Current History to analyse Australia’s debate on China, panic was the expression that most accurately described what I observed and how some Chinese Australians felt (Gao 2018). One year later, a team of

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reporters from The Australian, the only national Australian newspaper, found that the community was ‘hurt by politics of suspicion’ (Ferguson et al. 2019, n.p.). In this feature piece, which is unusual for being sympathetic to the people of Chinese origin in Australia’s current divisive and militant political climate, a more sensible understanding of the Chinese interference emerged. Finally, a few more Australians were realising, if not totally accepting, that ‘the local threat to the hip pocket’, rather than strategic military threats, has been behind the recent strong, politically charged reactions to China’s influence in Australia (Ferguson et  al. 2019, n.p.). As a result of such a slowly evolving rational awareness, some efforts have been made in the second half of 2019 to redefine the target of the anti-Chinese interference campaign to be the Chinese Community Party, not the people of China and the tens of millions of overseas Chinese living all over the world. However, the domestic rationale or aspect of this entire Sinophobic campaign, as hinted in the above-mentioned local threat viewpoint, has yet to be taken into serious consideration by Australia’s established ruling classes and other elite groups. Meanwhile, Australia’s public discourse is still largely inundated with what is now called the neo-­ securitisation of Chinese migrants and their enthusiastic participation in Australian public life. According to the analysis conducted by Baogang He, a Melbourne-based political scientist, the political push to securitise Chinese communities and their integration activities is destructive, pulling Australia in a wrong direction and away from multiculturalism (He 2019).

Notes 1. A number of Chinese Australians have used this ancient Chinese saying to express their frustrations about being demonised in Australia’s mainstream English-language media as Chinese agents after living in Australia for many years and helping the country establish links with China’s economic activities and market. This ancient Chinese saying has different translations. Andrea Breard’s translation is ‘Once the smart hare is caught, the hunting dog is fried’, which is translated according to a long version of this saying: jiaotusi, zougoupeng (Breard 2002, p. 59). As noted by Breard, this saying has another longer version: niaojin gongcang, tusi goupeng ‘When the bird is beaten, the arms are put aside. When the hare is killed, the dog is fried’ (Breard 2002, p. 59). Gyula Paczolay’s translation is ‘The hound is cooked when the hare (caught) is dead’ (Paczolay 2009, p. 129). This is a very old saying dated back to China’s Spring–Autumn period from 770–476 BCE,

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condemning those who ignore the contributors after achieving their immediate goal, and advising that this is not only immoral, but also very shortsighted. This ancient saying has a few modern colloquial versions, including xiemo shalü (killing the donkey right after it finishes work and leaves the millstone). For more information about this everyday version of the saying, see Yang (2007, p. 101; 2014, p. 55) and Zhu (2018, p. 240). 2. The crisis of faith or belief was called xinyang weiji in Chinese, and it took place in China in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It has been predominantly defined from two perspectives. In the eyes of orthodox Chinese communists, after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, many young Chinese no longer believed in Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong thought, as well as socialism, the prospect of communism, and even the leadership of the CCP. From the reformist perspective, Maoism and their radical practices had lost public support since the September 13 [1971] incident, when the CCP’s Vice-Chairman Lin Biao, Mao’s appointed successor, went to his death on his flight to Mongolia. After 1978, because more Chinese people were influenced by Deng Xiaoping’s ideas, such as ‘seeking the truth from the facts’, the ‘liberation of thoughts’ (sixiang jiefang), and the abolition of ‘forbidden zones’ (dapo jinqü), young people in China started embracing various new ideas. A pessimistic theory believes that this crisis created something of an ideological vacuum in China, but moderately speaking, this was a widespread reaction of young Chinese to the early stage of China’s reform. This process helped people clear up various ideological confusions and be ready for new ideas and views. Interested readers can read more in Fewsmith (1994), Goodman (1994), Li (1997), Chen (1999) and Solinger (2015). 3. This Federal Court case is recorded under the title of Chau v Fairfax Media Publications PL [2019] FCA 185, which is available at the websites of the Federal Court of Australia and the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLii). According the court summary, Chau Chak Wing alleged that the Fairfax Media and John Garnaut defamed him in the article titled ‘Are Chau Chak Wing’s circles of influence in Australia-China ties built on hot air?’, which appeared in the then Fairfax-owned Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. The article described Chau’s supposed connection with what was said to be an unfolding international bribery scandal. Chau claimed that as a result of the defamatory article, his business, and personal and professional reputation had been brought into public disrepute. He won the case and the Federal Court awarded him $280,000 in compensatory damages. In addition to the above-mentioned original court ruling document, interested readers can read more about it in Griffiths (2018), Han (2018) and Whitbourn (2019a). 4. It has to be admitted that the so-called runaway mentality is not in popular use, and instead, it has often been expressed in a few alternative expressions,

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such as Chuguochao or Chuguo chao (the tide of going abroad), and even Aozhoure or Aozhou Re (the Australia fever) in the context of Australia. As I introduced in my 2013 book, ‘The tide of going abroad’ was originally the name of a long feature report published in 1987, which vividly described the attempts of young Chinese people to leave China (Gao 2013, p. 5). This social phenomenon emerged as a negative response to the first major setback to China’s reforms in 1984 and 1985. This expression is also translated as ‘emigration fever’ (Nyiri 2010). The so-called Australia fever (Aozhoure) was part of the emigration fever that emerged in China a few months after the introduction of the ELICOS scheme in Australia in 1986 (Gao 2013, p. 6). The runaway mentality was widely shared by Chinese in the 1980s and 1990s, including some senior leaders of China’s ruling CCP. In addition to my 2013 book (Gao 2013), interested readers are referred to Cherrington (1997), Nyiri (2010) and Bregnbaek (2016). 5. The Han nationality or ethnicity, Hanzu in Chinese, is the largest ethnic group in modern-day China, and accounts for about 91 per cent of China’s total population. This percentage has been slowly declining from about 93 per cent in the early 1980s as a direct result of the birth-control policy that started in 1979 and the ethnic identity shift. China has 56 ethnic groups in total, and the other 55 are defined as ethnic minorities, the population of which accounts for just over 8 per cent of the total population. The dominance of Han people in China is not simply due to numbers, but also its long history. Although some have argued that the Han nationality is an entirely modern phenomenon, many Chinese scholars insist that the Han nationality is a historical result of mergers of numerous ethnic groups or tribes, and the people of Han as a nationality have been named in association with the Han dynasty, the second imperial dynasty of China (206 BC–220 AD). This was a very powerful dynasty, and paralleled the Roman Empire in the West. For more information about the Han nationality and its historical and cultural formation, see Hardy and Kinney (2005), Lewis (2007) and Schneider (2017).

References ABS (2018). ‘ABS reveals insights into Australia’s Chinese population on Chinese New Year’, www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/mediareleasesbytitle/D8C AE4F74B82D446CA258235000F2BDE?OpenDocument. Accessed 28 November 2018. AU123.com (2017). ‘Xinyimin jisheng huyu yingyou quanli (New Migrants urge for the promised rights)’, Aozhou Wang (au123.com), 6 June 2017, www. au123.com/news/australia/community/20170606/407014.html. Accessed 19 October 2019.

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Bourke, E. (2009). ‘Post-Tiananmen migrants leave lasting legacy’, ABC’s PM Program, 4 June 2009. www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2589754.htm. Accessed 8 January 2019. Breard, A. (2002). ‘The problem of pursuit: Recreational mathematics or astronomy’. In Y.  Dold-Samplonius et  al. (eds.), From China to Paris: 200 Years Transmission of Mathematical Ideas (pp. 57–86). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Bregnbaek, S. (2016). Fragile Elite: The Dilemmas of China’s top University Students. Stanford: Stanford University of Press. Carr, B. (2018). ‘ASIO and the China scare’, The Australian, 14 August 2018, www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/opinion/asio-and-the-china-scare/ news-story/95709436666bb27df9d6e84802398c12. Accessed 19 October 2019. CCCA (Chinese Community Council of Australia) (2011). Finding the Chinese Australian Voice, www.chineseheritage.org.au/pdf/20110321ccaanationalcon ferencemr.pdf. Accessed 19 October 2019. Chau, W. (2016). ‘Zenyang caineng rongru Aodaliya zhuliu shehui (How to integrate in mainstream Australia)’, https://wesachau.com/2016/06/10/mainstream/. Accessed 19 October 2019. Chen, F. (1999). ‘An unfinished battle in China: The leftist criticism of the reform and the third thought emancipation’, China Quarterly, 158: 447–467. Cherrington, R. (1997). Deng’s Generation: Young Intellectuals in 1980s China. London: Macmillan Press. DHA (2018). China-born: Community Information Summary. www.homeaffairs. gov.au/mca/files/2016-cis-china.pdf. Accessed 18 January 2019. Dziedzic, S. (2019). ‘Chisholm: Gladys Liu, Jennifer Yang vie to make history as first female Chinese-Australian MP’, ABC News, 18 April 2019, www.abc.net. au/news/2019-04-18/chisholm-seat-profile-gladys-liu-jennifer-yang-historymaking/11023902. Accessed 19 October 2019. Ferguson, J., A. Blain and E. Ritchie (2019). ‘A community hurt by politics of suspicion’, Weekend Australian, 5 October 2019, www.theaustralian.com.au/ author/Alex+Blain. Accessed 28 February 2019. Fewsmith, J. (1994). Dilemmas of Reform in China: Political Conflict and Economic Debate. New York: M.E. Sharpe. Gao, J. (2006). ‘Migrant transnationality and its evolving nature: A case study of mainland Chinese migrants in Australia’. Journal of Chinese Overseas, 2(2): 193–219. Gao, J. (2013). Chinese Activism of a Different Kind: The Chinese Students’ Campaign to Stay in Australia. Leiden: Brill. Gao, J. (2018). ‘Chinese Australians face a foreign influence panic’, Current History, September: 229–234. Gao, J. and L.  Zhang (2017). ‘The changing Chinese community mediascape since the early 199os’. In J. Budarick, G.-S. Han (eds.), Minorities and Media (pp. 59–84). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Garnaut, J. and V. Carson (2010). ‘Sydney mansion link to Chinese elite’, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 October 2010, www.smh.com.au/national/sydney-mansion-link-to-china-elite-20101011-16g0n.html. Accessed 19 October 2019. Goodman, D. (1994). Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese Revolution: A Political Biography. London: Routledge. Griffiths, M. (2018). ‘Chau Chak Wing defamation case continues as journalist John Garnaut defends reporting’, ABC News, 14 June 2018, www.abc.net.au/ news/2018-06-14/chau-defamation-case-continues-as-journo-defendsstory/9871980. Accessed 19 October 2019. Grigg, A. (2016). ‘Chinese businessman complains MPs “not delivering” for donations’, Australian Financial Review, 29 August 2016, www.afr.com/ world/asia/chinese-businessman-complains-mps-not-delivering-for-donations-20160829-gr3xv8. Accessed 19 October 2019. Han, M. (2018). ‘PM’s ex-adviser John Garnaut accused of ‘gloating’ over Chau Chak Wing story’, Australian Financial Review, 13 June 2018, www.afr.com/ policy/pms-exadviser-john-garnaut-accused-of%2D%2Dgloating-over-chauchak-wing-story-20180612-h1199l. Accessed 19 October 2019. Hardy, G. and A.  Kinney (2005). The Establishment of the Han Empire and Imperial China. Westport: Greenwood Press. He, B.  G. (2019). ‘Diversity leadership multiculturalism: The challenge of the securitisation of Chinese migrants in Australia’. International Social Science Journal, 68(227–228): 119–131. Hyland, T. (2012). ‘Exploring the China syndrome: prosperity without profile’, The Age, 15 January 2012, www.smh.com.au/national/exploring-the-chinasyndrome-prosperity-without-profile-20120114-1q0o8.html. Accessed 8 August 2019. Jupp, J. (2011). ‘Politics, public policy and multiculturalism’. In M.  Clyne and J. Jupp (eds.), Multiculturalism and Integration: A Harmonious Relationship (pp. 41–52). Canberra: ANU [Australian National University] Press. Karp, P. (2017). ‘Australian government to replace 457 temporary work visa’. The Guardian, 14 April 2017. www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/ apr/18/australian-government-abolish-457-temporary-work-visa. Accessed 18 January 2019. Lawson, K. (2019). ‘Anti-Chinese views creating fear and tension, says Canberra’s Chinese community’, The Canberra Times, 10 October 2019, www.canberratimes.com.au/stor y/6430431/anti-chinese-sentiment-creating-fear/. Accessed 19 October 2019. Lewis, M. (2007). The Earlier Chinese Empires: Qin and Han. Boston: Harvard University Press. Li, C. (1997). Rediscovering China: Dynamics and Dilemmas of Reform. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

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Li, T. Y. (2016). ‘Chinese billionaire pays $13m for home in Sydney’, Daily Mail, 26 February 2016, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3463751/So-s-hugemansion-rich-neighbours-Chinese-billionaire-pays-13million-stunning-homeexclusive-Sydney-harbourside-suburb-area-good-feng-shui.html. Accessed 19 October 2019. Liu, L. X. (2016). ‘Aodaliya 2016 lianbang daxuan yu huaren canzheng pingshu’ (An analysis of Australia’s 2016 federal election and Chinese political participation), Overseas Chinese Studies, 2016(4): 53–66. Marsh, S. (2017). ‘China’s richest man once illegally owned $40 million worth of Australian property’, Nine Finance, 13 October 2017, https://finance.nine. com.au/personal-finance/chinas-richest-man-once-in-a-40-million-propertybattle-with-joe-hockey/78a5ee7b-2d84-40f3-9a20-4341a00c7396. Accessed 19 October 2019. McKenzie, N. (2018). ‘Publish and be free: A note to our politicians’, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 February 2019. www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/publish-and-be-free-a-note-to-our-politicians-20180214-p4z0bi.html. Accessed 19 October 2019. McKenzie, N. (2019). ‘Former Australian intelligence official charged with breaching secrecy laws’, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 October 2019. www.smh. com.au/politics/federal/former-australian-intelligence-official-charged-withbreaching-secrecy-laws-20191023-p533nc.html. Accessed 10 December 2019. Menadue, J. (2019). ‘Our intelligence agencies are out of control: An edited report’, John Menadue  – Pearls and Irritations, 17 January 2019, https:// johnmenadue.com/john-menadue-the-wrong-people-are-being-chargedover-the-bugging-of-the-east-timor-cabinet-an-edited-repost/. Accessed 19 October 2019. Ministry of Education (2018). 2017 Quanguo Jiaoyu Shiye Fazhan Tongji Gonggao (2017 Statistical Report on National Education Development), www.moe.gov. cn/jyb_sjzl/sjzl_fztjgb/201807/t20180719_343508.html. Accessed 19 October 2019. Molloy, S. (2018). ‘Australian inundated with spies, political interference from China’, News.com.au, 24 October 2018, www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/foreign-spies-are-infiltrating-australia-with-unprecedented-espionage-and-interference-activities/news-story/37893eaff531 64f054ba7c415139b91d. Accessed 19 October 2019. NBSC (National Bureau of Statistics of China) (2013). China Statistical Yearbook 2013, www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/. Accessed 19 October 2019. NBSC (2017). China Statistical Yearbook 2017, www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/. Accessed 19 October 2019. NBSC (2018). China Statistical Yearbook 2018, www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/. Accessed 19 October 2019.

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Nyiri, P. (2010). Mobility and Cultural Authority in Contemporary China. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Ong, A. (1999). Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham: Duke University Press. Oursteps (2006). ‘Xin Zuji’s archiver’, 16 September 2006, www.oursteps.com. au/bbs/archiver/?tid-35977.html. Accessed 19 October 2019. Paczolay, G. (2009). ‘The Chinese sources of common far-eastern proverbs’. In K.  McKenna (ed.), The Proverbial ‘Pied Piper’ (pp.  127–140). New  York: Peter Lang. Pan, Q. P. (2019). Overseas Chinese Communities in Transition: Capable Agency, Translocal Positioning, and Community Re-organisation. PhD thesis, University of Melbourne. Park, Y. J. (2009). A Matter of Honour: Being Chinese in South Africa. Lanham: Lexington Books. Patrick, A. (2016). ‘Australia is losing the battle against China’s “citizen spies”’, Australian Financial Review, 3 September 2016. www.afr.com/world/asia/ australia-is-losing-the-battle-against-chinas-citizen-spies-20160831-gr5rfq. Accessed 19 October 2019. Rudd, K. (2019). ‘Let’s cool it on the anti-China hysteria’, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 September 2019. www.smh.com.au/national/let-s-cool-it-onthe-anti-china-hysteria-20190905-p52o9r.html. Accessed 19 October 2019. Schneider, J. (2017). Nation and Ethnicity: Chinese Discourses on History, Historiography, and Nationalism (1900s–1920s). Leiden: Brill. Solinger, D. (2015). China’s Transition from Socialism: Statist Legacies and Market Reforms, 1980–1990. Abingdon: Routledge. Soutphommasane, T. (2014). ‘Unconscious bias and the bamboo ceiling’, www. humanrights.gov.au/about/news/speeches/unconscious-bias-and-bambooceiling. Accessed 10 October 2019. Stiles, J. (2017). ‘Government’s 457 visa crackdown “misses the core problem”’, The New Daily, 18 April 2017. https://thenewdaily.com.au/money/ work/2017/04/18/457-visa-crackdown/. Accessed 18 January 2019. Sun, W.  N. (2016). Chinese-Language Media in Australia: Developments, Challenges and Opportunities. Sydney: ACRI, UTS, www.australiachinarelations.org/research. Accessed 18 November 2018. Tan, S. L. (2018). ‘China-Australia trade: The real killer will be our hypocrisy’, Australian Financial Review, 10 July 2018, www.afr.com/work-and-careers/ management/real-threat-to-chinaaustralia-trade-and-investment-is-hypocrisy20180618-h11jak. Accessed 19 October 2019. Tobin, M. and J. Power (2019). ‘The Chinese-Australian community’s votes are a hot ticket, so why are politicians keeping them at arm’s length?’, South China Morning Post, 17 May 2019, www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/arti-

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cle/3010576/chinese-australian-communitys-votes-are-hot-ticket-so-whyare. Accessed 19 October 2019. Uren, T. (2018). ‘Declassify the Garnaut ASIO report’, Australian Financial Review, 27 June 2018, www.aspi.org.au/opinion/declassify-garnaut-asioreport. Accessed 8 August 2019. Wallace, C. (2017). ‘The art of influence: How China’s spies operate in Australia’, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 December 2017, www.smh.com.au/public-service/ the-art-of-influence-how-chinas-spies-operate-in-australia-20171203-gzxs06. html. Accessed 19 October 2019. Welch, D. (2018). ‘Chinese agents are undermining Australia’s sovereignty, Clive Hamilton’s controversial new book claims’, China Power, ABC News, 22 February 2018, www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-22/book-reveals-extent-ofchinese-influence-in-australia/9464692. Accessed 18 November 2018. Whitbourn, M. (2019a). ‘Chau Chak Wing wins defamation case against The Sydney Morning Herald’, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 February 2019, www. smh.com.au/national/chau-chak-wing-wins-loses-defamation-case-againstfairfax-20190222-p50zm1.html. Accessed 19 October 2019. Whitbourn, M. (2019b). ‘“Alternative facts and nonsense”: NSW Labor forfeits $100,000 donation’, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 September 2019, www.smh. com.au/national/nsw/alternative-facts-and-nonsense-nsw-labor-forfeits100-000-donation-20190918-p52sgu.html. Accessed 19 October 2019. Wu, Y. (2015). ‘Conference report: How to pie[r]ce the bamboo ceiling’, SBS Mandarin, 18 October 2015. www.sbs.com.au/language/english/audio/ conference-report-how-to-piece-the-bamboo-ceiling. Accessed 19 October 2019. Xie, T. (2011). ‘Rongru zhuliu shehui bingbunan (It’s not that difficult to integrate into the mainstream society)’, Vision Times, www.secretchina.com/news/ gb/2011/06/06/407152.html. Accessed 19 October 2019. Yang, J. (2007). ‘“Self-employment stars”: Language, gender and neoliberal restructuring in China’. In B. McElhinny (ed.), Words, Worlds, and Material Girls: Language, Gender, Globalization (pp.  77–106). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Yang, J. (2014). ‘The happiness of the marginalized: Affect, counselling and self-­ reflexivity in China’. In J.  Yang (ed.), The Political Economy of Affect and Emotion in East Asia (pp. 45–62). Abingdon: Routledge. Zhu, F. (2018). Gun Barrel Politics: Party-Army Relations in Mao’s China. Abingdon: Routledge.

CHAPTER 7

Established Elites Challenged by the Historical Shift Towards Asia

This chapter extends the analysis of the connection between Chinese Australians and Australian domestic politics to a number of key aspects that have informed Australia’s recent history of engaging with Asia, and also affected its current Sinophobic sentiment. The chapter will focus on how and why many Australian politicians, analysts and reporters have misinterpreted the integration efforts of many Chinese migrants, who have been attracted through merit-based migration schemes, as being the work of Chinese agents infiltrating Australia. This chapter will also seek to answer why a portion of educated Australians have tolerated or accepted numerous forms of politicised generalisations about their fellow residents of Chinese origin, who have assisted Australia’s economy for almost three decades. Part of this discussion involves some criticism of dominant groups in Australia and certain types of elites of the country, though the focus will be on their knowledge of Asia, especially of China. The need for an analysis of this knowledge issue has become more urgent recently, because a group of Australian politicians and other dominant elites, from chairman of the federal parliamentary joint committee to intelligence specialists and journalists, have all been deceived by a young self-proclaimed Chinese spy. This refers to the so-called Wang Liqiang spy case,1 which appeared in Australian media outlets towards the end of 2019. In reporting on and interpreting this very dubious defection case, the knowledge and analytical skills of some professional Australians have once again been exposed as © The Author(s) 2020 J. Gao, Chinese Immigration and Australian Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5909-9_7

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being problematic (McKenzie et al. 2019). In fact, Australia’s approach to this case is even more problematic than some previous ones. Implicit trust of some Australian elites was given to the claim of an unknown and unreliable person from a remote region of China’s Fujian province (Norington 2019), and yet concerns about the case’s legitimacy arose within 24 hours, as noted by David Brophy, senior lecturer in modern Chinese history at the University of Sydney. This incident has made many Australians feel a great deal of embarrassment, as it reveals a lack of knowledge in assessing the story made up by what Chinese call xiaozhen qingnian, a small-town youth. In terms of long-term consequences, David Brophy also made the following comments: [Commentary on China-related issues had been] running ahead of what the evidence allows us to say. In the case of Wang, unnamed security sources were cited as vouching for the truth of his story, but within 24 hours serious doubts were being raised … The foreign interference panic has given Andrew Hastie [Chairperson of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security] a valuable media platform to posture as a defender of democracy, and at the same time push for an increased role for unaccountable security agencies in Australian public life. I see a dangerous tendency here for journalists to collaborate with politicians and security agencies, when they should be holding them to account … If we’re not more careful, the narrative that China is undermining Australian democracy will end up doing precisely that—undermining Australian democracy. (Brophy, cited in Norington 2019, n.p.)

Because of the above case, elites’ knowledge of China has once again been found to be more crucial to Australian politics than ever before. As noted, Australia’s knowledge of China exists on least at two levels: the public level and the elite level. The latter is the focus of this analysis, as elites are able to influence not only the opinions of the general public, but also decision-making processes at different levels. This chapter uses three sections to consider the main issues. The first section reviews a historical appraisals of Australia’s postwar elites based on what was explored by John Douglas Pringle in the 1950s and Donald Horne in the 1960s. Australia has, since World War II, produced or even attracted a group of critics who have often reflected on past experiences, especially on basic issues about the educated and ruling classes of this nation. Such a brief review would provide this analysis with a socio-historical context. The second section focuses on how Australia’s attitude towards Asia has fluctuated in the past

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a few decades. Special attention is directed to Australia’s understanding and attitude towards post-reform China, which has exacerbated an already growing divide among Australian elites about how to deal with their country’s relations with some Asian countries. The third section looks at where misunderstandings have arisen in Australia’s current debate over China’s interference in its politics. Through examining media reports from the ABC, News Corp, and former Fairfax Media newspapers, as well as Nine Entertainment Company as the new publisher of the former Fairfax newspapers, this discussion analyses major conceptual complications that have prevented Australia’s political and intellectual elites from not only learning about what has actually happened in China, but also from forming new perspectives to see China and its influence.

The Persistence of the Pringle–Horne Phenomenon Despite often seeing rolling eyeballs and shaking heads whenever someone, including myself, makes critical remarks about Australia, it has to be admitted that this country has developed a strong tradition of self-­ reflection that helps shape and reshape its politics, history and identity. This trend has become very obvious since the end of World War II, when the vulnerability and powerlessness of the sun-never-set British colonial empire abruptly ‘accelerated the growth of Australian national consciousness’ (Seton-Watson 2019, p. 236). Precisely, it was the Fall of Singapore to the Japanese army in February 1942 that made the fear of invasion by the Japanese a real possibility, especially after the bombing of Darwin a few days later (King 2006).2 These two key wartime events made Australia realise that it could no longer rely on Britain for protection against any potential invasion, and Britain’s support eventually became ‘an unreliable myth’ (Wee 2017, p. xxii). It is also worth remembering that the shift in Australian national consciousness is seen by many historians and scholars to have happened in the 1910s, when the naivety of ‘obedience to the mother country was erased by the experience of World War I’ (Rayner 2003, p. 119). Leaving aside the extent of the effect of World War I on the awareness of nationhood among Australians, a clear shift in national consciousness emerged during and especially after World War II, when Australia started turning to the United States for new security ties. This new strategic option for national security combined with the postwar economic development to further boost Australia’s self-awareness as an independent

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nation-state. Figure  7.1 shows how the change in export market shares also occurred at the time, offering an economic reason for the shift. More specifically, besides the widely held belief that Australia moved away from Britain towards the United States because of its national security concern, there were also economic grounds for Australia to reconsider its geopolitical and economic strategy and policy in postwar years. According to a parliamentary report, Australia’s trade relationship with the UK started changing a few years after World War II. In the early 1950s, about 40 per cent of Australia’s exports were to the UK. However, ‘in the mid-1950s Australia’s exporters’ focus has increasingly moved away from the UK (and Europe more broadly) towards Pacific rim markets’, the latter of which, in the mid-1950s, referred mainly to Japan and the United States (Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade 2017, p. 17). Australia’s postwar search for protection and new markets for exports, as well as its other nation-building efforts, had once again renewed its prewar discussion, if not debate, within elite circles regarding its nationhood and related challenges. In the half-century leading up to World War II, there was not only a growing sense of a nation-state after Australia’s federation in 1901, but the nation was then disturbed by World War I. The trauma suffered by Australians during World War I ‘renders it an obvious choice as a crucial moment in Australian history’ (Crotty 2019, n.p.). A wide range of concerns were then raised and discussed, especially about Australia’s distinct characteristics (Willard 1967; Curthoys 2003;

Fig. 7.1  Australia’s merchandise exports to Europe (%). (Source: Bingham 2016, p. 8)

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Fitzgerald 2007). Because of far more crucial demands and pressure placed on Australia by the changing geopolitics, the post–World War II round of self-reflection started focusing on a critical issue about elites and the quality of various elite groups. This new focus appears to be a very logical step towards becoming a country truly independent from Britain. Among numerous critics and thinkers who have contributed to Australia’s effort of self-reflection, there are two who have not only been widely remembered, but have also influenced contemporary topics about what has prevented Australia from becoming a stronger and more successful nation-state: John Douglas Pringle and Donald Horne, although the former was born in Scotland. The focus on the viewpoints of these two important social critics in twentieth-century Australia is not a denial of the role of numerous other critics who are also part of Australia’s self-­reflection and search for a distinct national identity. At the risk of overlooking many well-known Australians, I may mention that my own knowledge of Australian society, past and present, has also been obtained from many other historians, scholars and critics, such as Manning Clark and Robert Hughes, Geoffrey Blainey and Hugh Mackay, and many others noted throughout this book. As already briefly discussed in Chaps. 2 and 4, John Douglas Pringle and Donald Horne touched on a set of critical questions about Australian elites and problems associated with ruling classes and elite groups in Australia. The focus of their analyses has been so relevant to both Australia’s self-reflection on its identity and the inherent difficulties in its current debate over Chinese interference that this study would regard them as responses to one phenomenon, defined as the Pringle–Horne phenomenon for the sake of analytical clarity. Of course, Pringle and Horne were brought up and trained in different parts of the English-speaking world, which has been seen by some researchers and commentators as the origin of different viewpoints, alongside their different socio-political inclinations (Stratton 2000; Hassall 2019). At the same time, they have also been regarded as a pair, one a precursor and one a successor, in the debate, as their ideas and thinking show a high level of continuity and persistence (Walter 2017). Since they are considered here as thinkers examining the same crucial aspect of Australian society and history, the main points of view and concern shared by Pringle and Horne may at least be summed up in the following way.

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First, Pringle argued in his book Australian Accent as early as 1958 that ‘what Australia badly needs is not a ruling class, but an educated class’ (cited in Roskam 2013, p.  36). His book is regarded as ‘a very astute observation of Australian society’ with an accurate sketch of Australians and their ways of life from a modern European perspective (Hassall 2019, p.  46). Though a few criticised Pringle for classifying Australians ‘as upholding an eighteenth-century Augustanism’ (McAuley 1962, p. 132),3 his judgment is believed to reflect his view of Australia as a country that ‘was wonderfully egalitarian, without an entrenched ruling class, but one lacking sophistication’ (Cater 2013, p.  28). Among other aspects of Australian society Pringle disparaged, the quality of politicians was his key point of concern. He argued that ‘the old saying that a country gets the politicians it deserves cannot possibly be true of Australia. No country deserves politicians as bad as these’ (cited in McGregor 2013, p.  10). Horne echoed Pringle by adding that ‘Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck’ (Horne 1964, p. 208). Despite the new development that there was an emerging class of tertiary-­ educated specialists in Australia in the 1960s, and that Gough Whitlam also made them a ruling class (Cater 2013), Horne disagreed that there was such a class, who may at best be seen as ‘native bourgeoisies as an ineffectual, small and parasitic class’ placing its existence on the role of transnational corporations (Turner 2015, p. 169). Second, both Pringle and Horne took their analyses a step further to explicate why they believe Australia is badly in need of educated people and why the existing educated class was unable to modernise Australia. While Pringle believed that the country has suffered from anti-­ intellectualism as an effect of its history, Horne puts it bluntly by pointing out that ‘Australia does not have a mind’ (Horne 2017, p. 96). Pringle’s appraisal of this specific problem was defined recently as an emptiness of the spirit by Greg Melleuish, a Wollongong-based political historian, who explains it as follows: [Pringle] claimed that ‘If then, culture is to be judged by the general standard of education and the arts among the population, once again it must be said that Australia has little or none.’ This was a not uncommon view of the intelligentsia of the time; although it was generally not restricted to any particular political party. Anti-intellectualism was seen to be a central feature of Australian life across the political spectrum. (Melleuish 2017, p. 7)

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Third, the problem with Australia’s educated professionals and their groups appears to be multi-faceted, but one of the worst problems of these elites is their simple reliance on ‘other people’s ideas’ (Horne 1964, p. 233), as an effect of its anti-intellectualism or being a nation without a mind. According to Horne, ‘most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise’ (1964, p, 233). What Horne believed to be the major deficiency of Australian democracy is ‘a victory of the anti-mind’, or ‘the failure of intellectuals and politicians’ to present the Australia people with ideas worth thinking about (Hesketh 2018, p. 284). That is, this is the problem concerning the intellectual capacity and creativity of Australia’s elites and whether they are capable to create something suitable for Australia. As early as in the 1950s, Pringle noted that ‘Australian intellectuals are extraordinarily bad at expressing their thoughts’, and many of them ‘simply have not bothered to acquire the skill necessary’ (Pringle 1957, p. 299). This lack of intellectual strength that is believed to be the cause of ‘the public emptiness of Australian politics’ as argued by Horne (1964, p. 192) is also partially due to the differences of Australian culture from British culture, according to Pringle, who explained it further in his 1958 book Australian Accent as follows: Much of the trouble, of course, is caused by the inability of the average British migrant to accept the fact that this is a different country, almost as strange and different as the United States or Italy, which should not be judged by English standards. For this reason the European migrant, knowing that everything will be strange and expecting nothing else, is often more successful in adapting himself. (Pringle 1958, p. 22)

Having been raised and discussed for more than half a century, what I have termed the Pringle–Horne phenomenon not only still exists, but also plays its undesirable role in Australian politics and society. This role has been ultimately responsible for the current debate over Chinese interference in Australian politics. As stated in Chap. 4, the warning offered by Pringle and Horne has made no fundamental impact on changing or eliminating the socio-cultural and socio-psychological conditions that have endlessly troubled Australian society. Even in the eyes of many optimist critics, Australia has been rather slow to mature into a nation with its own intellectual and cultural strength, although effort has been made,

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including its tradition of critical self-reflection. The persistence of the Pringle–Horne phenomenon has been observed by many critics and researchers from Australia and abroad. In fact, there are hardly any observers who would deny how lucky Australia has been over the past five or so decades, but Horne’s assessment still applies, as his argument ‘still has more truth to it today than many Australians would like to be the case’ (Enright and Petty 2013, p. ix). In terms of its innovation capacities and performances, Australia ‘still fares pretty badly’ (Donnison 2014, n.p.). When probing into the rise of Australia’s new ruling class, Nick Cater, one of Australia’s leading critics, also admits the persistence of the phenomenon as follows: Horne’s much-repeated gripe, ‘Australia is a lucky country, run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck’, may well be as true today as it was ever; indeed, respect for political authority is lower than it was when Horne accused Robert Menzies and Arthur Calwell of becoming ‘virtually exiles in the own century’. That is no reason for despair, however. That Australia has progressed, and continues to progress, in spite of political failings is a testimony to the resilience of its lucky culture. (Cater 2013, p. 23)

Among various points of view of the persistence of the Pringle–Horne phenomenon, three of them are worth paying close attention to here in this discussion. In the first place, the long-existing problems that were raised by Pringle and Horne have not been completely addressed, and major issues have remained largely unchanged, though there is evidence of a ruling class in Australia (Murray 2006; Cater 2013). The formation of the ruling class or ruling elite groups is based on capitalist networks and the political power structures of Australian society, but the latter has not fully reformed its long-existing anti-intellectualism and its approach of relying on other people’s ideas. As quoted above from Greg Melleuish, anti-intellectualism was a central feature of Australian life across the political spectrum, and now the country is believed by many critics to have sadly devolved into ‘a rabid anti-intellectualism’ (Brooks 2016, n.p.). Apart from many foolish behaviours occurring at the grassroots level, such as shock jocks, the erosion of intellectualism and critical independent thinking has become more widespread and serious at the elite level than other social classes. According to Karen Brooks, the evidence includes populist politicians, egotistical conservatives, a hysterical media, and a dumbed-down education system

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(Brooks 2016). The disparagement of intellectualism is not new in Australia, but it has been growing, and has been spread to many educated elite groups. A very damaging effect of the spread of anti-intellectualism in present-­ day Australia has been the spread of populism in politics, making politicians and political leaders subordinate to the agendas set by activist groups, individuals and financially troubled media outlets. This vulgar form of populism is believed to undermine the democratic system in Australia, but its mechanism appears to be making politicians incompetent. One example of showing such an obstinate persistence of the Pringle–Horne phenomenon is the inability, or ineffectiveness, of politicians in setting the public agenda, and letting media outlets and activist journalists take over. Such a problem was strongly criticised by Horne a few decades ago (McGregor 1994), but in recent years has become even worse as many have noticed that the media have pushed several key issues, including Australia’s China strategy, ‘in the opposite direction’ of the Australian government (Curran 2019, n.p.). In the second place, without making much progress in tackling the Pringle–Horne phenomenon, Australia’s long economic boom and its new level of prosperity have somehow, over recent decades, boosted many people’s confidence in what is called the Australian way of life. Therefore, the old problem has not only unsolved, but has also been distorted and fortified by a new misunderstanding of the connection between Australia’s fortunate and its own strength and capacity in economic management, industrial knowledge and intellectual creativity to provide the nation with fresh ideas and narratives. The wake-up call by Pringle and Horne has fallen on deaf ears, and what has been added to Australia’s lucky culture is a glorious feeling of self-admiration in a communal sense. To a great degree, national narcissism is a basic component of nationalism, and it is a form of collective narcissism, referring to a tendency to overemphasise the standing of your own group or culture and also enjoy the related privileges (Manne 2014; Mackay 2018; Zavala 2018). In recent decades, Australians have been ‘caught in a happy trap’ (Stark 2013, n.p.), and many of them have developed ‘an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration’ for what they have achieved and enjoyed (Squires 2013, n.p.). While Australia has enjoyed such a great feeling of being so comfortable and relaxed, without much effort to reform its economic structure, socio-­ economic advancements in many Asian countries has been slowly

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recognised by more Australians and has deeply disturbed Australia’s collective mind. Third, as an outcome of Asia’s economic expansion, the Pringle–Horne phenomenon has been coated with a patriotic cover and nationalist ideological elements, which has decelerated social transformations through linking a range of required changes to the national identity issue. Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Japan became an economic giant and a few smaller economies in Asia followed, there has been an emerging negative reaction in Australia to the developments in Asia. A stronger sense of ‘us’ has emerged among many Australians by means of creating a stronger sense of ‘them’ (Ang 1997; Butler 2013; Hassall 2019). Such a sense of Australian identity has since been used in different ways, and the worst is that a range of features of anti-intellectualism and collective narcissism have been defined as part of its fundamental national identity. The latter can be very politically sensitive, and it can also be very anti-progressive, slowing down the socio-cultural changes required by post-1970s Australia, or at least complicating its own national narratives.

Reluctance to be Part of Asia After World War II industrialisation resumed, or started off, so quickly in Asia that Australia was forced to confront a new global geo-economic landscape just years after its grim choice caused by the Fall of Singapore. That is, the historical shift towards Asia was forced on Australia at the time of the postwar economic recovery, which is somehow forgotten by younger generations, who tend to link the shift with the official end of the White Australia policy in the early 1970s. In fact, Japan’s postwar economic recovery had been so dynamic and extraordinary that Australia’s export market shifted within a few years after the war from exporting raw materials to European markets to countries more immediately north. Apart from what is revealed in Fig. 7.1, which shows a sudden and huge decline in Australia’s exports to Europe, Fig. 7.2 reveals where Australia has earned export income since the end of World War II. This has to be a major reason why white Australia started paying more serious attention to Asia after World War II. In his 2016 analysis published on the DFAT website, Frank Bingham mentions that Australia’s export market shift towards Asia has also gone through two distinct phases. The first phase was largely characterised by the demands of the Japanese economy, which has since been overtaken by

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Fig. 7.2  Australia’s merchandise exports to Asia (%). (Source: Bingham 2016, p. 8)

China’s expanding market demands (Bingham 2016). Because Australia is a trade-dependent nation and trade has always been a vital component of its economy, trade has therefore also influenced its growth and domestic socio-economic situation. As a result, Australia’s politics and public sentiment are also often impacted by its trade partners and changes in partners. What has been more troubling to Australia than the global geo-­ economic shift itself is the perspective to see and comprehend the changes. This is because the postwar economic system and order have often been considered from a geopolitical viewpoint, including the McCarthyist scare of the red menace of communist China (see Note 2 of Chap. 5) and the geopolitical importance of setting up and executing the Colombo Plan by the British Commonwealth of Nations (see section “Chinese in Australia” of Chap. 1). As detailed, the postwar era was predominantly characterised by a substantial global economic structural change until recent years, when China has emerged as a regional power holding both economic power and political weight. From either perspective, Australia has since been placed in a rather difficult position, and as a nation it has been suffering from its Asia problem, including the recently politicised China problem. Two of my institute colleagues, David Walker and Allan Patience, who hold honorary positions at the University of Melbourne, have identified the dilemma that Australia has found itself in. Walker sees Australia as a stranded nation (Walker 2019), while Patience describes it as ‘liminal Australia in Asia’ (Patience 2018, p. 1).

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In his 2019 book Stranded Nation, based on his examination of Australian history before and after World War II, Walker believes that Australia’s shift away from complete reliance on the declining British Empire, and its turn towards the rapidly industrialising nations to its north, need not only an adjustment in economic and political engagement, but also a recalibration of Australia’s cultural identity as a white European nation (Walker 2019). Even though Patience borrows and uses the notion ‘liminality’ to define Australia as part of both new and old worlds, both Patience and Walker emphasise the difficulty and importance of social attitude changes along with economic and political considerations. In other words, Australia’s efforts in dealing with its Asia problem, and the China problem in recent times, were originally made in at least three related areas: geopolitics and security, trade and economy, and identity and attitude. Interestingly, owing to Australia’s old identity as Anglo-Celtic, its postwar approach to the Asia problem was firstly influenced by the long-held attitude of British colonists who were accustomed to changing, if not reforming or modernising, other less developed countries or societies, according to their experiences or expectations. After World War II, the British retreat from Asia and the decline of European influence in the region had even sparked hope and courage among some Australian politicians to play a new leadership role in the region. In his 2019 book, David Walker records that Robert Menzies, the longest-serving Australian prime minister (1939–41, 1949–66), insisted that Australia must ‘regard herself as a principal’ in the region (Walker 2019, p. 44). Despite the fact that Menzies’ stance was not shared by all the elite groups, his words were typical thinking of Australia’s elites of the time, if their reactions can be apportioned into two main categories: elitist and grassroots. As pointed out by Joshua Bird, a China specialist, Australian politicians were far too naive to comprehend the region and its perceptions of Australia. He also comments on a consequence of Australia’s elitist misunderstanding as follows: Australian leaders hoped such a bridging role could see the country manage the transition from being a remote outpost of Britain to the leading western nation in the Asia-Pacific … it was conservative Robert Menzies in his first radio broadcast as Prime Minister who acknowledged that the ‘Far East’ was actually Australia’s ‘Near North.’ He, like many in the pro-Asia camp, were motivated by a belief that Asia was Australia’s best platform for the performance of white imperial prestige. (Bird 2019, n.p.)

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The above historical background is very useful for pinpointing where Australia’s Asia problem stems from, although it seems to deny the view that Australia is reluctant to be part of Asia. In fact, many troubles in Australia’s approach and attitude to Asia and China originated from the above misunderstanding and inadequate positioning of itself. Until now, Australia has been, in essence, troubled by whether it wants to be a leader or an ordinary member in the Asia-Pacific region. In terms of national mentality, much of its constant anxiety is related to dominance, superiority and prestige or otherwise. In the words of Allan Patience, there was a ‘potency of imperial nostalgia’ behind Australia’s thinking (Patience 2018, p. 105). Still, along with this elitist logic, before the reluctance became widespread among Australians, politicians in the pro-engagement camp, if not the pro-Asia one, made various efforts based on what has lately been termed ‘Menzies’ road map for Asia’ (Frydenberg 2015, p.  8). Josh Frydenberg, the current federal treasurer and the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, believes that Menzies’ road map could still guide Australia today, because of its correct emphasis on repositioning the nation among the rising powers of Asia. He made his comment in 2015, a few months before Malcolm Turnbull took the prime ministership through a party-­ room leadership spill (see Note 4 in Chap. 2), about one year before the current round of debate on China started. All these have evidently revealed the influence of Menzies’ road map and the ideological thinking of the Menzies era on the current elitist approach to a changing Asia and China’s growing influence. At the same time, its Asia policy based on anything beyond its true capacity seems to be the reason why more elites in Australia have become reluctant to engage with Asia. Of course, public figures like Frydenberg and other nostalgists have overlooked another aspect of Australia’s early Asia strategy, which is Menzies’ road map leading to its involvement in a number of wars. Its alliance with the US has made its relations with some Asian countries increasingly complex (Patience 2018). In the same speech, Frydenberg praised Menzies as a practical philosopher who epitomised Australia’s values and his Asia policy empowering the country to undertake a meaningful regional role in accordance with its core values drawn from both the Age of Enlightenment and its British heritage.4 He claimed that Paul Keating’s approach to Asia ‘demeans our core values’ (Frydenberg 2015, p.15). The following is Frydenberg’s criticism of Labor’s stance on Asia:

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Paul Keating is wrong to suggest that in order for Australia to achieve, in his words, our ‘destiny in Asia and the Pacific’ we must somehow change our national identity and the nature of who we are. Foreign policy is about advancing the national interest, and must never be a proxy for reshaping our nation’s identity by stealth. (Frydenberg 2015, p. 9)

The intention to play a principal role in the Asia-Pacific region because of its possession of Australian values has lately become a dividing line among Australian elites, separating them according to the differences between Menzies’ road map to deal with the issues related to Asia and Keating’s Asianisation approach. As stated, the bold intention outlined in Menzies’ road map has been a source of frustration to many elites, while the Asianisation strategy has also generated ‘considerable anxiety’ about Australia’s identity among many Australians who feel themselves to be very different from Asians (Capling 2008, p.  609). This difference in approaches to Asia has provided the whole country, especially the media, with a topic for discussion and conversation, but has also resulted in the spread of uncertainty and reluctance in doing anything more or different in engaging with Asia. There was a relatively long transition period after the Menzies era, but before the mid-1980s, when engagement with Asia became the main theme in Australian politics, and ‘the major framework of ideas in the structuring of Australia’s foreign policies and security understandings and relationships’ (Smith and Lowe 2005, p.  462). Over this period, both Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser further advanced Australia’s engagement with Asia, especially with China. Their skilful approach laid the basis for the broad engagement with Asia over the Hawke–Keating era. Of course, strong resistance was also voiced by some, such as Geoffrey Blainey who was at odds with the Hawke and Keating governments’ view that Australia should ‘enmesh’ or ‘engage’ with Asia (Patience 2018, p. 119). The basic distinction between Liberal elites and Labor elites became very visible. When discussing this period, however, two major factors need to be taken into consideration of Australia’s acceptance of engagement with Asia. These two factors, one external and one domestic, have influenced the thinking of Australian elites, widening the difference between the two major parties’ Asia policies even more. The country as a whole has, therefore, become even more hesitant about engaging with Asia. First, in terms of external factors, Australia’s attitudes towards Asia have been changed by the pace of industrialisation in several Asian countries. As

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stated, this new learning process of Australia started with Japan, followed by a few small economies in Asia, the so-called four tigers or little dragons (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea) (Wang 2012). The growth in China has, since the late 1980s and 1990s, provided Australia with unprecedented prosperity and many significant challenges. Leaving Japan and China aside, as the latter will be analysed later, Australia had become, since the late 1970s, the new target of criticism, if not ridicule, from several newly industrialised Asian economies. One of the cases on public record is the frank warning from former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew to Australia that it was destined to become the poor white trash of Asia. According to John Kerin, ‘they were words that stung Bob Hawke into action and helped transform the Australian economy’ (Kerin 2015, n.p.). Though Hawke maintained that Lee’s harsh comment helped galvanise his determination to reform Australian economy, most reform initiatives since the Hawke–Keating era have not only failed to develop a clever economy, but have also failed to retain manufacturing industries and production capacities in the country. The country’s economy has rapidly retreated to relying on exports of natural resources to Asian economies, especially China (Chau 2019). South Korea’s economic development over recent decades is a case that could make Australia’s political leaders and other elites embarrassed, more so than being compared to small Asian economies. South Korea has not only developed some of what has been called in Australia the ‘knowledge economy’, such as its sizable electronics industry, but it has also established a massive automobile industry. The latter took place while the same industry was disappearing in Australia. There are hardly any discussions in Australia about the South Korean experience, but it has inevitably affected the way many Australians understand their own economy and their confidence in their country’s competitiveness and political leadership. Under such circumstances, especially in the case of its dependence on China’s market, many non-economic issues have been raised and noisily debated more frequently as the way to divert public attention from the real bread-­ and-­butter issues of the country. The second factor, a domestic one, is the increasingly large number of migrants from Asia who have unobtrusively made many educated Australians become less idealistic about engagement with Asia. Menzies’ road map for dealing with Asian neighbours was formed before Australia started having significant numbers of Asian migrants. As noted, there are not only more Australians of Asian descent, but also more have been

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selected based on merit-based immigration criteria, such as those shown in Table 3.1. Asian immigrants caused various changes to Australian society, including the new demographic composition and growing levels of public concern. According to James Jupp, migration from Asia has traditionally been the most sensitive issue in Australia, as its desire of rebuilding a British nation in the South Pacific region dominated both the popular and official thinking (Jupp 1995). Pauline Hanson was elected to the federal parliament in 1996 and soon became ‘the figurehead’ for a growing number of disappointed or marginalised people (Blenkin 2019, n.p.). Hanson not only openly talked about Australia being ‘swamped by Asians’, but also claimed to be ‘frightened’ that ‘the yellow race will rule the world’ (Higgott and Nossal 2008, p. 625). That is, a large influx of Asian migrants to Australia has since changed the understanding of many Australians about engagement with Asia. As a result of both external and internal conditions, Australia’s public sentiment towards engagement with Asia has changed over time, and the division between pro-Asia and anti-Asia groups has been further outlined. While admitting that the commitment to Asia has been shared by both sides of Australian politics, Ann Capling also identifies different approaches as follows: Labor’s efforts to ‘relocate’ Australia to Asia was challenged and contested not only by other governments in the region but also by many at home, who rejected Keating’s attempts to reshape Australian identity through engagement with Asia. When Labor was swept from power in 1996, the conservative Coalition government led by John Howard repudiated Labor’s all-encompassing approach to Asian engagement. (Capling 2008, p. 602)

China was an important part of what was defined as the ‘Howard paradox’ in the words of Michael Wesley, which basically meant that Australia could foster ‘simultaneously close relationships with the US and China’ (Grattan 2007, n.p.). However, Howard’s tactic was just a pragmatic solution to the problems of his time, and is not a solution for the long-term issues troubling Australia, let alone post-Howard politicians who have become unable to adhere to the Howard approach. Among Australia’s Asian neighbours, China is very different from others, including Japan. Fear has been part of the psyche of European settlers in Australia since it was occupied by a group of colonies. Early settlers were far from their homelands, and China as a huge country in terms of land mass and

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population has long been considered a threat in the Australian imagination. At the same time, however, most Australians have made little serious effort to learn more about China and other neighbours in Asia, leaving them with a simplistic, imprecise and biased view of China and its people (Kendall 2005; Dobell 2018). Since the 1980s, China’s fast economic development has been realised as ‘great economic opportunities to Australia’ as the latter was unable to introduce new industries and job opportunities after its economic restructuring in the 1970s and early 1980s (Dittmer 2018, p.  245). In other words, despite seeing China as a threat, and despite unwillingness to interact with the Chinese people, Australia was forced by its own economic realities to link itself with China’s massive market. Therefore, it has been a reluctant, if not utilitarian, relationship in the view of some Australians, who often see China as its bad neighbour, if no longer a poor one, or likely invader. As a result, Australia’s attitude towards China has been fluctuating over the past several decades, and a periodicity has also been observed. Graeme Dobell, a veteran journalist and a fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, believes that the current deterioration of Australia–China relations should be defined as ‘the fifth icy age’ according to his analysis of ‘five icy ages’ (Dobell 2018, n.p.). Importantly, in addition to the first icy age –from 1949 to 1972, very much the Menzies era—all the other frosty relationships have happened since Australia established a profitable connection to the Chinese economy. The second icy period was from 1989 to 1991, during which Australia was influenced by the Tiananmen incident due to its schemes of exporting English-language education (Gao 2013). The third icy age was in 1996 before John Howard actually saw what China looked like and before he formed his two-handed approach to the United States and China. The fourth icy period was during 2008 and 2009, when the first ‘Mandarin’-speaking Australian prime minister misjudged the increasingly confident and arrogant China, telling Chinese leaders, both current and future, how to run their country. Each icy age occurred for its own reason, but the lack of knowledge of China, as well as its large number of migrants to Australia in the current icy period, has always been a major issue for Australian politicians and elites. Part of their ignorance and related resentment have recently found their way into Australian politics through the current China debate, in which unfair accusations and unprincipled disparagement about Chinese

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Australians and their communities have been freely made and spread, sowing seeds of new divisions in multi-ethnic and multicultural Australia.

Tackling the New Realities Without Understanding The key issue of the present chapter is how Chinese Australians and their integration efforts have been misunderstood by many Australian politicians and others who control public discourse and debate. This final section pays attention to where misunderstandings have emerged in Australia’s current China debate. It is important to introduce more background information about this complex matter, otherwise it is not possible to understand why many better trained and diligent Chinese Australians have become the target of public vilification and why there are not many Australians willing to defend or argue for them. Throughout the current China debate, Australians have been told by a group of politicians, journalists and critics that China is spying and interfering in Australian institutions, politics and public life. Clive Hamilton, a figurehead of this round of Sinophobia, even suggests that Australian institutions ‘are being penetrated and shaped by a complex system of influence and control overseen by agencies serving the Chinese Communist Party’ (Hamilton 2018, p.  12). In many other newspaper reports and articles, Chinese Australians are then portrayed as ‘a fifth column seeking to undermine Australia’s interests’ (Lo 2019, n.p.). Clearly, having benefitted from China’s growth for almost three decades, a set of new socio-­ economic and socio-political dynamics has emerged in Australia. Some theoretical and explanatory efforts have even been made to demonise some ethnic Chinese Australians and to set them apart from other Australians. No country can afford to be naive to changes in their region, including Australia’s alert about China’s geostrategic goals and plans, but the judgement on Australia–China relations has to be based on reliable and valid factual information, not on fantasies or amateurish imaginations. Recent waves of political allegations against a large number of Chinese Australians have been so serious and outrageous that rules and laws of anti-discrimination and anti-defamation seem no longer to apply to Chinese Australians. Many public comments are racially and politically discriminatory in nature, and it has been widely reported that there are even some government agencies behind the debate (McKenzie et  al. 2017; Carr 2018; Uhlmann 2018; Uren 2018; Menadue 2019). However, this

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analysis concentrates on the reasoning side of the problem or the intellectual basis of some anti-China and anti-Chinese arguments that have been spread in recent years. This analysis pays attention to the deep-rooted issues, focusing on where misunderstandings have arisen and what the conceptual problems are. This focus is intended to assist in finding solutions to this type of tension in the future. Australia has been suffering from a knowledge deficit problem, if not an intellectual one, over the course of the past decades. This specific problem has seriously affected its capacity to understand and assess its own position and importance in the Asia-Pacific region and the world, resulting in at least two broad misunderstandings. On the one hand, as mentioned above, it seems that apart from a small group of business directors, bureaucrats and researchers, there are not many people who are aware of a rapid and major transformation in Asia and China. This knowledge problem means that the general public does not realise the gradual decline of Australia’s socio-economic competitiveness, though its income level remains high. The latter fact is largely because of the foreign exchange earned from exporting resources to China. On the other hand, as a result of the above ignorance, a high proportion of Australians politicians and elites still keep a practice that has been passed down from the Cold War era, putting their faith in a set of ideological values, and believing that their values will prevail over the ones that are different from theirs. This new position has been formed or reinforced while more of Australia’s Asian neighbours are more influenced by China’s development practices, or Deng Xiaoping’s pragmatist approach. The key idea of Deng’s approach is to improve and boost state capacity and socio-political stability through economic restructuring and prosperity. What Australian politicians and elites have been doing in recent years, however, is very different, relying on the politics of values nationally and the diplomacy of values internationally. In between the above two broad issues, some other knowledge-related issues, as well as epistemological ones, have also occurred and been observed in the prolonged China debate. Due to the scope of this study and its focus, this analysis considers them from four perspectives. First, many domestic tensions resulting largely from Australia’s merit-­ based immigration programs have been misinterpreted by Australia’s ruling class as foreign interference or meddling, blaming international agencies and factors for their increasingly evident incapacity to lead Australia’s economic restructuring and industrial revitalisation. Leaving aside the possibility of intentional action, politicians and dominant elites

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have failed to understand Australian society, and much of their anger is due to the long-term consequences of their own decisions and policies, past and present, in addition to their lack of ability to improve Australia’s economic structure. In terms of their resentment towards China and Chinese Australians, much of public resentment has not only been caused by various ongoing migration programs, but also by an increasing number of Chinese immigrants recruited through the merit-based intake programs. These new immigration programs have added a large number of middle-class migrants and families to Australian society. These people and their families are parachuted in from China, a country that has various image problems among Australians, which is why both China and its people in Australia have all become the target of public anger in Australia. Throughout the China debate, there are many concerns being raised by Australian critics, including pro-China marches, donations to political parties, the ties of many Chinese Australians with Chinese institutions and businesses, as well as spying activities. While the last issue is beyond the scope of this study, all other complaints have reflected a lack of basic understanding by ruling elites in Australia of merit-based migrants and middle-class migrants. Without repeating what was discussed in previous chapters, the central issue needs to be re-emphasised for the purpose of this analysis. Specifically, many Australian critics and politicians appear to have no awareness of the main characteristics that middle-class migrants possess. The key challenge causing many Australians to become less friendly to new Chinese migrants is believed to be their high level of activism in a range of areas. Any behaviours displayed that extend beyond the limits of expectation of elites appear to have been considered in a range of negative ways. There are not many politicians and elites still remembering that educated and skilled, as well as entrepreneurial and wealthy, migrants have been attracted to Australia as a way of upholding their standard of living. Apparently, as argued earlier, many did not consider these effects, as well as the level of their own acceptance, when making merit-based immigration decisions some years ago, nor remember what they aimed to achieve. In addition, long-settled Australians seem to have difficulty understanding middle-class Chinese migrants in other ways, which may be considered from the following angles. From a social resource perspective, the transformed Chinese community appears to be more able to mobilise various resources than other Australians. This is not suspicious or worrisome if one takes into account the reality that they can not only access China’s

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huge and active market, but have also become accustomed to participating actively in society. Both their newly obtained status in China and the high level of entrepreneurship have confirmed that they are able to mobilise more resources. Any discussion of Chinese influence should bear in mind that Australia once badly needed Chinese people to play a bridging role between itself and China, and Chinese migrant entrepreneurialism has been very valuable to Australia’s economy. From a social mobility viewpoint, more competitiveness in potentially achieving upward social mobility has also been observed more among middle-class Chinese migrant groups than among many other Australian families. Even though there is no direct criticism of this, except critical comments on the schooling preferences of some Chinese families, the worries about this challenge have been intertwined with other concerns over well-off Chinese migrants. As argued throughout this book, a general lack of awareness of the effects of merit-based immigration programs is associated with incomprehension of its impacts on the existing population and social structures. Without such awareness, numerous changes caused by the impacts have then been considered only according to what new political leaders and juvenile elites are able to comprehend. As an easy point of view, geopolitics has been used to explain complicated domestic social changes. However, this time, they have overshot the mark, revealing many problems of their own. More Australians can now understand the connection between hostile reactions towards Chinese Australians and the demographic changes of their rapid-expanding community, instead of sympathising with a race-based vilification campaign. In other words, there are more Australians who have become aware that politicians and some elites are ultimately responsible for not only relying on foreign economies and imported talents, but also for various adverse responses. The second perspective is that China, as Australia’s largest trading partner and the target of its anti-Chinese meddling campaign, has been misunderstood by Australia’s Sinophobic political leaders and activists based on their outmoded and sometimes inaccurate understanding of China and Chinese Australians. Throughout the China debate, a number of politicised ideological arguments about why Australia has to be vigilant about China have been repeatedly mentioned by reporters, politicians and other critics. The frequency of these arguments suggests they have little confidence in their arguments being accepted by their audiences. What the media has been showing Australian audiences for years are politicians, analysts and young journalists who are apparently repeating from the same

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script, one that is focused on a few ideological labels, including China is a communist country with no democracy, no human rights and limited freedoms. While there are some truths in these highly politicised assessments and China, like many other countries including Australia, has a long way to go to make its people happy, the basic tone of the assessments is problematic, let alone the way these ideological labels are put forward. While it is not possible to analyse how these points have been mistaken in any detail here, one point that has been frequently used by politicians and commentators is worth discussing to highlight their knowledge problem. It is about the Chinese investments that are from state-owned enterprises, and are therefore blocked on political grounds because of their association with China’s ruling communist regime. This argument is not only ideological, but it is largely self-made by critics, as China does not have many of such enterprises. An analysis produced by the Alberta-based China Institute in 2018 pointed out that the media has overstated the importance of state-owned enterprises in China, the number of which ‘decreased from 149 in 2008 to 102 at the end of 2016’; and the capital structures of the enterprises have also been reformed, with as many as 66 per cent of these 102 state-owned companies now publicly listed on the exchange (China Institute 2018, p. iii). In one of my recent research projects, the concept of local state-owned enterprises was studied, and confirmed that, at the provincial level, China has reached a very high level of privatisation (Gao and Su 2019). What some Australian political leaders and critics have done in this case is described by a Chinese saying: if you are determined to condemn someone, there will always be a ready charge (yujia zhizui, hehuan wuci) (Savitt 2016). This simple case also discloses that busy Australian politicians and journalists have made no effort to validate their anti-China arguments. In fact, there were numerous research papers and reports published in English on the topic before Australia’s China debate was launched. In addition to many research articles on various aspects of China’s privatisation efforts and process, there are also some in-depth and comprehensive analyses of the rise of private businesses in China, including some analyses conducted by leading American research institutions (Lardy 2014). The third perspective is that Australia’s Sinophobic politicians and elites have been fed, and therefore influenced by, flawed information and problematic assessments of China and its migrants. There are multiple reasons behind this problem, and one of them seems to be their inadequate reliance on a small group of advisers, experts and some Chinese Australians,

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without consulting more widely. In the case of their connections with Chinese Australians, there are some ethnic Chinese community members who are resolutely, and even emotionally, biased against China. Just like their other knowledge about China, many non-Chinese politicians, journalists and critics have no idea about the fact that many new Chinese Australians are traumatised as a result of their earlier work and life experiences in pre-reform China. The one-sided reliance on them could well be a source of confusion as the quality of information could be affected to some degree, if not twisted, by their negative attitudes towards China and their pessimistic understanding of the current situations in their homeland. After promoting positive understandings of Australia’s multiculturalism and respect for new migrants for a number of decades, there seem to be few Australians who still remember how several early groups of Chinese immigrants obtained residency in Australia. Apart from my 2013 book on how the post-Tiananmen group of Chinese nationals obtained their right to stay in Australia through a community campaign (Gao 2013), my research about seeking Australian residency through the court system also shows how the lack of familiarity with Chinese politics and social life was tactically used in various court cases (Gao 2011). In recent decades, Australia has been under the influence of Chinese political ideas and forces, both pro-China and anti-China. As a result, Chinese politics has slowly been imported into Australia by not only Chinese communist sympathisers and pro-China activists, but also by some Chinese political opponents, such as Falun Gong practitioners and their groups. However, the decisive reason for making their political influences possible in Australia does not result from either pro-China loyalists or anti-Chinese activists, but from the ignorance of Australia’s ruling elites about China as their increasingly important trading partner. This has worsened since Malcolm Turnbull became prime minister as the Liberals were less familiar with the so-called China problem than Labor, despite John Howard’s approach. What has made the situation particularly difficult is that Australia’s recent approach has not only been influenced by the American attitude of ‘you’re either with us or against us’, but also by its renewed wish to let China follow the Australian way of life, which will be discussed next. The situation has been exacerbated by Australia’s lack of non-Chinese China experts, who would be able to offer information and analysis from a different view from people of Chinese origin. Two of my former colleagues, Daniel Kane and Jane Orton, believe that there are as few as 130

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or so non-Chinese Australians who can speak Chinese fluently. Australia’s ABC website ran the story with the following: At the recent launch of Labor’s plan to deepen ties with Asia, Mr Bowen said it was to Australia’s disadvantage that the number of Year 12 students studying Chinese had dropped significantly since 2005 … ‘Out of the 25 million Australians who populate this great country … 130 people can speak Mandarin at a level good enough to do business, who aren’t of Chinese background,’ he said. ‘We have a long, long way to go’. (Fact Check 2019, n.p.)

The fourth perspective to consider is that Australia’s current approach to China has no similarity to what was developed and implemented under the Howard’s Liberal government of the late 1990s and early 2000s, although some Liberal politicians have tried to define their hostile policy towards China as something similar to the Howard paradox. As noted at the start of this section, Australia’s China policy has slipped into the diplomacy of values or ideology. This results from a number of misconceptions about present-day China, geopolitics, and its own weight and status. One approach has even taken Australia one step towards implementing Menzies’ road map, which is their intention to play a leadership role in the region. The foundation of this stance is based on the confidence of the current generation of politicians and elites, who believe that Australia has very different values and they should stand up for them (AFR View 2018; Smith 2019). This strategy sounds very assertive and dogmatic, which is beyond John Howard’s approach of admitting differences between China and Australia and managing them in a practical way. What these politicians and supporters have failed to recognise is that China is no longer an ideological country, despite its recent efforts to tighten up ideological control. Because of its non-ideological character, it is rather strange for many Chinese to listen to Australian politicians talking about how their values are better than China’s. This has been one of the major differences of Australia’s present China approach from the Howard paradox. In Australia, the desire to have China act in an Australian way has been widespread, despite Australia having benefitted greatly from China’s growth for about three decades. Hugh White, one of the most influential Australian commentators, recently also mentioned it on the ABC’s 7.30 program:

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We don’t have, as a country, a lot of experience of being pressured by external powers. Now we are facing what is, in some ways, a much more normal experience for many countries. Of being subject to pressuring intrusion. You know, our hopes that China as it grew richer and stronger, would grow nicer, would become liberal, more like us, be less inclined to use its state power … to repress political debate within China. Those hopes are have proven to be illusionary. (White, cited in Tingle 2019, n.p.)

The high and unrealistic targets set by Australian political elites for their positioning in Asia have prevented them from accepting a role as an ordinary member of the region, or becoming true believers in being a comfortable and relaxed nation. The many dated elements of wishful thinking exposed in Frydenberg’s speech explain not only why many Australians became reluctant to be part of Asia a long time ago, but also why the heat of the current debate over China is not dissipating. There are attitude problems and mentality-driven constraints in Australia’s engagement with Asia, although Patience believes that Australia is an awkward partner in Asia due to its colonial and discriminatory history, and its current link with the United States (Patience 2018). In a general sense, as once commented by James Cotton, an expert in Australian international relations and security policy, Australian approaches to Asia were hesitant. It has also been confused by stereotypes left over from the colonial era (Cotton, 2019). The early hesitation about Australia’s relations with Asia has evolved into a fairly high level of ignorance of Asia.

Notes 1. Wang Liqiang reportedly sought political asylum in Australia in November 2019 based on his self-made case of having been a Chinese spy. At the age of 26, as a fine arts graduate from a fourth-tier regional university specialising in finance and accounting, Wang claimed that he had been involved in China’s intelligence and subversive activities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia. Soon after his story appeared in the media, many learned people were wondering who would be misled by such an incredible story. Alex Joske, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, publicly admitted that he played ‘a small role working with 60 Minutes, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age to help verify and analyse Wang Liqiang’s claims—and eventually met Wang himself’, but he quickly published his own commendatory piece, stating that ‘it was almost too good to be true’ (Joske 2019, n.p.). Joske’s main question is how a 26-year-old with no military, or

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­ overnment, background could find himself close to the centre of China’s g intelligence network in Hong Kong. Wong Yen-ching, a former deputy chief of Taiwan’s Military Intelligence Bureau, sorted out ten fundamental inaccuracies in Wang’s claims and dismissed him as ‘an outright liar’ (Wang 2019, n.p.). Through its media outlets, China also stated that Wang is a convicted fraudster. In Australia, however, he was portrayed by the media as a Chinese defector for about a week, during which all Australian political leaders, including Prime Minster Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese, expressed their concern about China’s interference and their own sympathetic views to Wang’s asylum claims. Apart from the above-­ mentioned publications, interested readers can refer to Bachelard (2019) and Maley (2019). 2. Both the Fall of Singapore and the bombing of Darwin are two pivotal moments in the history of Australia. The Fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942, also known as the Battle of Singapore, was one of the worst military defeats in the British Empire’s history. The Japanese army invaded Singapore on 7 February 1942 and it launched more attacks afterwards from air, sea and land, which forced the British garrison defending Singapore to surrender unconditionally to the Japanese army. About 130,000 troops, including almost 15,000 Australians, were captured and became prisoners of war. A few days after the Fall of Singapore, on 19 February 1942, the Japanese army sent more than 240 aircrafts to bomb Darwin’s harbour, airfields and town centre. ‘The bombing destroyed much of the town and most of the ships in harbor and many lives were lost’ (Martin 2015, p. 171). In addition to the information in King (2006), Martin (2015) and Wee (2017), interested readers can read more about the Fall of Singapore in Bayly and Harper (2005) and the bombing of Darwin in Grose (2009). 3. Augustanism may be a rather strange word to many people nowadays. From the late seventeenth century, socio-political conditions were created in England that idealised the peace and prosperity enjoyed by the Roman empire during the Augustan Golden Age, or ‘came to denote affection and sympathy for the achievements of Caesar Augustus’ (Weinbrot 1986, p.  286). The word essentially refers to ‘a return to sanity after civil war’ (Dowling 1991, p.  53). The concept and the quotation are used in this discussion for the purpose of showing both the socio-cultural closeness between Australia and the United Kingdom and the socio-cultural lag between them. Interested readers can read more about it in (Dowling 1991), Galinsky (1992) and Whitehead (1995). 4. There are at least two points worth making about this important historical period. First, the Age of Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason or simply the Enlightenment, refers specifically to the cultural, philosophical

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and intellectual movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was another significant turning point in the history of European thinking and spirit after the Renaissance era. The Enlightenment advocated reason as the primary source for authority, while promoting liberty, equality and the separation of powers. Second, although the Enlightenment has long been acclaimed as the foundation of modern Western political and intellectual culture, it is a common misunderstanding that Asian countries, especially China, have not been influenced by the spirit of the Enlightenment, which is called qimeng or qimeng yundong in modern Chinese. It is more problematic if using it as a theoretical and ideological foundation for current geopolitics or geopolitical positioning. China has not only been heavily influenced by the Enlightenment ideas since the late Qing Dynasty, which even resulted in Marxism becoming the official ideology in post-1949 China and one of China’s major hidden contradictories in its identity, but the traditional Chinese philosophies are also believed by many scholars to have influenced the Enlightenment movement in Europe. These particular viewpoints are well beyond the scope of this book, but it is worth pointing out this problem. It is also more than necessary considering that there has been a global tendency to use a set of ideas to differentiate ‘them’ and ‘us’ globally, on which the current China debate in Australia is partially based. Frydenberg’s mention of the Enlightenment ideas in his speech reflects, in essence, this global trend. For more information about the Enlightenment, see Pagden (2013) and Robertson (2015).

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CHAPTER 8

Conclusion: Getting Back on the Track of Nation-Building

In 2005, Australia’s largest internet provider, Telstra, launched its television advertising campaign that has since been nicknamed the ‘rabbits commercial’. It shows a father, an obviously less-educated bloke, driving with his son who is preparing for a school presentation. When being asked why China built the Great Wall, and also without suggesting the use of the internet, the dad explains to his son that the Great Wall was built during the time of the Emperor Nasi Goreng (a type of Indonesian fried rice) to keep the rabbits out. This television advertisement was very successful, becoming one of the most popular commercials in Australia after being shown on television nationwide. It clearly suggests that one can be embarrassed without the internet, but it also highlights the need to improve Australia’s Asia literacy at the time, when China was about to overtake Japan as Australia’s largest trading partner. To a great extent, this television advertisement suggests a vital task from the perspective of some business sectors, which is to pay serious attention to learning more about Australia’s nearest neighbours in Asia. What has since happened in Australian politics and public life, however, is very different from what was anticipated. Shortly after 2007, when China became its largest trading partner, Australia entered into what some may call ‘a wasted decade’, typified by a series of infighting within political parties (Crowe 2019, n.p.). Australia’s relationship with China has also moved backwards, because China’s economy has kept growing at a fast pace, but Australia’s understanding, if not knowledge, of its relationship © The Author(s) 2020 J. Gao, Chinese Immigration and Australian Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5909-9_8

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with China has moved in a different direction. As stated in the previous chapter, two of the five icy ages have hit Australia within the past decade (Dobell 2018). It is true that China has gradually become more arrogant and assertive, but Australia’s problem appears to be mainly due to its outmoded knowledge and inadequate discourse on China. After the Howard years, the Howard paradox was modified by Kevin Rudd, the Labor prime minister, who offered Australia with a new binary approach to China: to be a loyal listener to Australia’s wisdom or to be seen as a threat. When detailing his concept of the fourth icy age of contemporary Australia–China relations, Graeme Dobell offers the following analysis: The Rudd sharpness shaped the 2009 defence white paper. His various offerings on China were bookended by significant speeches, two years apart, in Beijing and Canberra. The Beijing University speech in April 2008, four months after taking office, was a hopeful, opening effort to dance with China. His Morrison Lecture in Canberra in April 2010, two months before he was cut down by caucus, showed signs of the frostbite … In Beijing, speaking in Mandarin, Rudd offered honest criticism and sought to be a zhengyou, a true friend … Two years later, reflecting on the icy age, Rudd described three chilly scenarios: China as threat; China as direct competitor with the United States for control of the international system; and China as self-absorbed mercantilist bully. (Dobell 2018, n.p.)

This change was the first early step towards the formation of Australia’s current political approach to its relations with China, As analysed in Chap. 7, its new approach is influenced by the American attitude of ‘you’re either with us or against us’, but this study has defined it as the diplomacy of values. What is evidently absent from Australia’s new cultural values-based, if not ideological values-based, approach to its relations with China is its own pragmatic version of a nation-building strategy. This lack of strategy has resulted in a profound collective confusion and anxiety among many political leaders and elites, among which the country’s high level of economic dependence on China’s huge market, and other related interactions, have been regarded as a major threat. What is more serious than this threat theory is the incorrect understanding of, and mishandled approaches to, new migrants recruited by its own merit-based migration programs. Geopolitical fear and uncertainty have been turned into domestic tensions. This analysis has explored in what way many Chinese Australians

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have been dragged into Australia’s current China debate. This historical episode is in fact another major feature of Australia’s so-called wasted decade along with fierce intra-party infighting. This concluding chapter has three main tasks. The first section will summarise what has been analysed in earlier chapters, with a focus on the importance of the historical political-economic approach to issues resulting from various merit-based immigration policies and programs. The second section will further consider a number of theoretical and analytical ideas based on discussions in earlier chapters. Through the discussion, this book will offer some analytical insights into how the merit-based immigration selection system, and its various policies, could be correctly considered and assessed. The third section will discuss some practical implications of this study, calling attention to the importance of positioning the debate in the context of Australia’s nation-building and enhancing the understanding not only of a rapidly changing world, but also of immigrants and their ways of living in Australia as their new host country. This discussion will also put forward some suggestions for future research on this topic.

Summary of Findings Australia has been developing and executing the new merit-based immigration policy and various migrant intake programs since the mid-1990s. This has not only helped maintain its socio-economic development without a recession for almost three decades, but has also been highly acclaimed by many, including Donald Trump, as the best policy option to improve existing immigration policies for better outcomes. In this study, I have defined Australia’s new merit-based immigration policies and selection system as a type of new policy tetralogy, focusing policy attention on immigrants who possess qualifications, skills, business experience, and financial resources for investment. This tetralogy has also been reformed, implemented and repeatedly revised. From a domestic socio-economic point of view, this tetralogy was created to deal with the domestic challenges from two major fronts: the industry’s growing demand for skilled workers, and restrictive immigration measures required by unions and other grassroots activists. Both of these have been more or less satisfied by the focus on merit-based selection criteria for new immigrants. From a historical political-economic perspective, this merit-based approach to immigration may well be seen as the best possible policy path, or a pragmatic alternative, to continue social-economic expansion before Australia

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becomes able to discover its way either to re-industrialise itself or develop the knowledge economy that has been anticipated for decades. However, it is because of this pragmatic policy alternative that new social tensions have emerged in Australia, directed at migrants who have come to the country under merit-based immigration selection programs. What is different this time is that strong resentments are mainly from non-­ blue-­collar communities, who have responded to the many unpleasant changes in Australian society in a sophisticated way—by politicising domestic troubles as geopolitical interference. Since the start of Australia’s current round of the China debate, some politicians and commentators have been experimenting with several geopolitics-­related words and ideas. This approach has even been applied to domestic cases, including donations from several Chinese community members, which are all being tied up directly with China’s top authorities. Such links are highly deceptive as no ordinary Australian can verify their reliability. Many such imaginary stories have implicated Chinese Australians as Chinese agents and, therefore, political threats to Australia. Leaving aside the critics’ knowledge about China and Chinese Australians, and their Chinese language skills, the long and frenzied debate over China’s political meddling has misled the general public and anti-China supporters into thinking that Australia is threatened by China and Chinese Australians. Ordinary Australians are also unable to understand and accept unexpectedly high levels of community activism of many Chinese Australians, their financial resources, and their transnational links. What critics and their sympathisers have forgotten, or never realised, is that new Chinese migrants are recruited and selected through merit-based immigration schemes. As stated in the Preface of this book, the reorientation of Australia’s trade towards Asia, especially towards China, has slowly changed established patterns in Australia in the distribution of job opportunities, wealth and political influence. These transformations have been further intensified by changes in immigration selection policies. The debate over China has been a misguided expression of resentment towards various major social transformations taking place within Australia. Chapter 1 emphasised the focus of this analysis on intellectual and analytical problems behind Australia’s China debate, through which this study positioned itself as a critical academic analysis of the fundamental issues that are behind the debate, not the sensationalist topics suggested by the tabloids. This analytical position made it feasible for freeing itself not only from commenting on numerous unimportant factoids and personal

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attacks, but also from guessing the motives of critics. The latter is complex and manifold, but populism in contemporary politics and the media appears to be responsible for the China debate, let alone commercial motivations and institutional arrangements. What this book reveals is that many Australians still look at post-multicultural realities in the country from the point of view of pre-multicultural ideologies, which is the crucial epistemic mistake of the current debate over China and Chinese Australians. This study focuses on intellectual and analytical aspects of Australia’s Sinophobic campaign, analysing where and how misapprehensions and misinterpretations have happened, and has identified and examined six main areas of misunderstanding. The most disturbing and damaging aspect of these is the denial of the successful integration of new generations of Chinese immigrants into Australian society and the apparently racist intent to link hard-working and proactive Chinese Australians with China’s geopolitical interests and aspirations. As noted, this highly politicised link has been defined as China’s infiltration at every tier of Australia’s socio-political system. This fundamental political mistake was found to be associated with misunderstandings in the following six areas: immigration policy, Chinese migrant entrepreneurialism, social reasons, party politics, community activism, and knowledge deficiency of ruling elites. In Chap. 2, the first major misunderstanding was considered, which related to Australia’s immigration policy tetralogy and the impact on population composition. This is the key knowledge and analytical blind spot for many Australians, as many are not familiar with what has occurred to the country’s main immigration policies, despite their attention being often drawn to some refugee issues. However, one thing has become increasingly evident: many of the newcomers have become better trained, skilled, experienced and even better financed than many of those who are born and brought up in Australia. Because of the size of the Chinese population, but predominantly because of the size and growth of the Chinese economy, decision-makers in Australia have paid attention to China while allowing the media and critics to keep repeating their outdated views on China. As a result, the new immigration policy tetralogy has been established and developed in Australia to compensate for the failure of its own economic restructuring. The lack of consensus among ruling elites on various issues to do with economic restructuring and the fading hope of reaching a consensus have made Australia more dependent on immigrant intakes. China has, therefore, become one of Australia’s top sending countries of immigrants.

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More importantly, the change in population composition is not the consequence of the new immigration policies, but its impact on the established social patterns is. The logic is that the immigration selection tetralogy has positively transformed the Chinese community in Australia, making it well positioned in Australia’s trade-dependent economy. The better position of many Chinese Australians in the economy than non-­ Chinese Australians has made them clearly better off in terms of financial and job security. Many from the dominant cultural groups are, at the same time, not well prepared for these transformations, and their limited knowledge of China has made the acceptance of the changes rather difficult. That is, such transformations have not taken place without angry responses, but this time the resentment is from non-blue-collar communities. Anti-­ China critics from both sides of politics have expressed anger over more recent waves of Chinese immigration through politicising what has taken place in Chinese communities as China’s infiltration of Australia. Chapter 3 looked more closely at the ways in which many new Chinese Australians have taken advantage of Australia’s trade-dependent economy and positioned themselves well in the market. This is about Chinese migrants’ entrepreneurialism, which had long been awaited when Australia was forced to trade more with China. But it has regrettably been turned into a negative feeling among Australia’s ruling elites towards entrepreneurs of Chinese origin. Based partly on my 2015 book, the analysis in this chapter emphasised that entrepreneurialism of Chinese Australians is not motivated by China’s ruling communist party and its geopolitical ambitions, but by the desire of new Chinese migrants to survive in Australia. If the link between their home country and host country has to be identified, entrepreneurial activities of Chinese migrants are the consequences of the historical shift in the global economy, under which many Chinese Australians are more prepared than many other Australians to take advantage of Australia’s strategic shift towards Asia and China’s open-door policy. Australia’s long and heated debate over China, especially on whether there are thousands of Chinese agents infiltrating Australia, has politicised economic activities of many ordinary citizens, sending out a message that could be very damaging to Australia’s economic future. In Chap. 4, the analytical logic of this study was expanded to another main area of misunderstanding of some Australians about Chinese migrants, which was in general defined as social reasons, but based largely on the alleged role of many Chinese migrants in increasing competition in schools and housing markets in major cities in Australia. It seems to be

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rather cruel and high-handed of some established elites to not only respond badly to the entrepreneurialism of some Chinese migrants, but even to become unhappy and discontent with the attitudes of many Chinese migrant families towards studying and spending their own hard-­ earned incomes. Of course, such damaging social attitudes, combining xenophobia and discrimination, exist everywhere in the world. A high degree of such unpleasant feeling in a society is the source of tension among social groups. The spread of tension in a society does not take place in isolation, but in a socio-historical context. Negative stereotypes about China and migrants of Chinese origin have a long history in Australia, making any behaviour or activity beyond the long-held stereotypes very culpable. Specifically, the debate over China’s meddling has been well prepared and buttressed by the xenophobic influence of Pauline Hanson. Misunderstandings about the high level of importance placed by Chinese migrant families on education and purchasing real estate have had a new dimension as a result of merit-based immigration policies and programs. There are more Chinese migrants who were already middle-class, or better, before leaving China. They are still motivated by what they achieved in China, and also by what is taking place in the home country, where a large number of people are achieving rapid upward social mobility. Aside from different mindsets, life circumstances and aspirations, there seems to be another deep-seated difference or analytical clue that explains the misunderstandings between Australian elites and new Chinese migrants. They are evidently in different modes, or at different stages, of life. While many Australians have long been comfortable and relaxed, many Chinese have recently started working diligently to create a good life. Abstractly speaking, the course of life of many Australians appears to be a flat line, but for many Chinese it shows a rising line, despite their low starting point. Therefore, they are at different levels of competitiveness, and see each other in a different way, which can lead to friction. Chapter 5 drew attention to a typical political process, in which many new Chinese migrants are dragged into political activities by Australia’s two major political parties, and then dumped when the participation of too many ethnic Chinese in their activities becomes a deterrent to attracting Sinophobic voters. Chinese Australians have been turned into new voting blocs for a few major political parties in Australia in recent decades. Ethnic Chinese voters have been used in several ways in Australia’s party politics, including their votes, donations and their community networks.

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Though some Chinese community members should also be responsible for their participation, as many of them are still driven by the worship of authority and power, or the vulgar belief in gaining privileges by linking themselves with people in power, politicians from both the Labor and Liberal parties should also take responsibility for drawing Chinese Australians into their party activities. It could be considered immoral to target ethnic votes when many Chinese Australians are then suspected for their partaking in Australia’s party activities. The pro-Labor tendency of many ethnic Chinese organisations and group seems to have, for a few decades, troubled the minds of some Liberals, which was a very likely reason for the Liberal government initiating the anti-China campaign before the Bennelong by-election in December 2017. According to these dynamics, Australia’s current debate over China’s meddling could be seen as another dimension of the fight between two major political parties, and China and its migrants are now being used by these political parties to trap each other for their own political gain. In Chap. 6, the fifth key misunderstanding regarding Chinese immigrants in Australian politics was examined, which was about the high level of Chinese community activism as an effect of a growing number of merit-­ based immigrants of Chinese heritage in Australia. This is the combined effect of the significant number of merit-based migrants and Australia’s approach to the integration of new migrants into Australian society. Both of these policies are rational and can be effective, but the combined effect can be rather disruptive to the existing social and political order, and could, therefore, trigger social reactions among those whose sense of socio-political order has been undermined. There appears to be a knowledge, or conceptual, gap in many Australians’ understanding of younger generations of Chinese, who are not timid, destitute, passive and apolitical newcomers in their host society. Since the late 1980s, Australia has attracted generations of new types of Chinese migrants, and their attitudes and behaviours are different from what many Australians had learned to expect from Chinese migrants previously. Because new Chinese migrants have been more confident than earlier cohorts, many of them are enthusiastic about Australia’s ideas of both multiculturalism and integration. Their enthusiasm for integration has contributed at least partially to the widespread confusion about why the Chinese community has become so active in Australia. This confusion has resulted in ignorant and inaccurate

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interpretations, connecting Chinese Australian community activities with China’s geopolitical strategies. The enthusiasm of new merit-based Chinese migrants for local integration has also been further misunderstood or misinterpreted because of other three steps taken by new Chinese migrants. First, the strong demands by those migrating to Australia under business and investment migration programs for local networks generate an increasingly high level of community activities. Second, the enthusiasm by many self-confident Chinese Australians for local political participation had reached a climax, or an idealist level in my own analysis, as a result of the 2007 Bennelong election, in which John Howard, the then Liberal prime minister, was voted out of his office by a large group of ethnic Chinese and Korean voters. Third, the integration was upgraded to a nationwide push and demand to break the glass, or bamboo, ceiling, which seemed to be an actual trigger for some Australian politicians and ruling elites to put brakes on such strong pushes. The integration in Australia’s public discourse is an abstract if not political idea, the focus of which seemed to be on calling for new migrants to follow established groups and rules. If the concept of integration is altered, societal tensions would arise. To a great extent, the anti-­ China campaign is nothing more than an exercise of such political action. Chapter 7 focused on the China-related knowledge deficiency issues confronted by many political elites in Australia. As noted, Australia’s China debate seems to be the reflection of the tension between two active and strong-willed groups in the Australian population: economically active Chinese migrants and psychologically superior Australians of Anglo-Celtic heritage. At the same time, it seems to look more like the effort of some political elites to help dying media outlets maintain their attractiveness and relevance in the changing market conditions. A range of issues raised throughout the China debate have, however, also revealed a serious knowledge deficit problem among the ruling elites in Australia. Specifically, due to its unsuccessful economic restructurings, Australia has become greatly reliant on a high immigrant intake as a sensible policy mechanism for sustaining and driving the growth of the country. However, the persistence of what I call the Pringle–Horne phenomenon is still noiselessly troubling the country, which is the lack of adequately educated people equipped with their own ideas and intellectual power and vigour in order to mitigate the effect of the anti-intellectualism tradition in Australia. Australia’s lack of knowledge of Asia, especially of China, has been further exacerbated by its unwillingness to be associated with Asia, and its

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infrequent desire to play a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, despite the fact that it has over and over again been forced to confront never-­ ending geo-economic changes since the Fall of Singapore in 1942. As a destructive consequence of its reluctance to be part of Asia, and its lucky-­ country culture as well, Australia’s knowledge about Asia has not improved suitably for the practical purpose of understanding and evaluating its rapidly changing socio-economic and socio-political environment.

Towards a Historical Political-Economic Approach Through the systematic examination of the above six main areas of misunderstanding that have bewitched Australia into its long anti-China campaign, it has become very evident that the new analytical approach deployed in this study is both theoretically and empirically sound and comprehensive. As set out in Chap. 1, this political-economic perspective places this analysis in the historical context of two macro-level transformations that have taken place in Australia and China over the course of the past three or so decades. Aside from the verification of the appropriateness of the approach adopted by this study, there are also several other analytical points that have arisen, and three of them deserve further elaboration in order to provide readers with a fuller version of the theoretical approach that this study has adopted and recommended. These three additional analytical points include the importance of the domestic conditions; the holistic nature of the research approach; and the practical focus on nation-­ building processes. Before discussing these three key points in detail, it is necessary to stress that the discussion in this section has to be read together with what was reviewed in the third section of Chap. 1, where a number of key analytical flaws and impediments of many previous studies were identified and set to be rectified in the study. Those significant analytical flaws include the narrow focus or one-sidedness of the research approach; the short-time span of average research projects; scapegoating ethnic minorities and migrants for domestic policy failures; and handling domestic racial tensions as foreign interference. While the above review remains very relevant and helpful to this study, the lengthy process of conducting this analysis has also revealed the need for further abstract and critical discussions of the analytical approach that may be helpful for future studies. Appropriate approaches are essential for future apolitical researchers and commentators to be well informed and up-to-date on their topic.

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The first significant analytical point is a philosophical issue, concerning the understanding of the external and internal conditions under which different social processes occur. In general, the internal conditions are believed to be far more influential than the external conditions in driving change. The external conditions only perform their function as far as they affect internal factors and structures. Such a basic understanding is found to not only be absent from Australia’s debate over China, but also turned upside-down. Australia’s economic growth has been in a slow lane for years. Slowing growth and growing dependence on exports to China, as well as no viable economic reform strategy in sight, caused resentment among sections of the population. It is strange, however, that blame has been turned away from several groups of Australia’s ruling elites who either governed, or would like to govern, the country. The blame has been customarily directed to China, for several reasons. In fact, many people seem to feel that there is a logical problem with many arguments used in the debate, but the hereditary knowledge gap, or many misunderstandings, has made many Australians feel unable to understand the logic of blaming China, as a foreign country, for the serious economic structural issues in Australia. Blaming external factors for internal problems, especially for a range of macro-economic management issues in Australia, is very cunning, but also confusing. In a number of discussions that I had with community members, this muddled logic was described by a rather vulgar popular Chinese saying, depicting such illogical reasoning as blaming the toilet for constipation. This particular Chinese saying sounds rude, but points out the basic logical problem in many Sinophobic arguments. The blame game based on such reasoning has not only taken the China debate out of the historical context of Australian society, but has also put Australia in a subordinate and dependent position, contradictory to the sovereignty argument raised by Sinophobic politicians and critics. To a large degree, such an illogical reaction is a misguided and politicised response to Australia’s fast transformation into a trade-dependent economy, but its logic is still based on a manufacturing-based economy. Under such circumstances, a dark smoke screen is therefore needed to mask both the responsibility of many political elites for such economic structural changes and their difficulties in turning the situation around. It is clear that the current economic structure has profoundly changed the job market, which is hurting numerous Australians of non-Asian

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backgrounds, while favouring some of the new migrants, especially Chinese migrants who came under merit-based immigration schemes. In addition to its trade-dependent economic structure, in which China is assumed to have some influence on Australia, the crucial problem confronting Australia is its ‘lucky country’ mentality. The favourable ratio of the small population to its massive land mass, and its past industrial experiences as well, have given rise to what may be called a ‘rich country syndrome’ as many Australian thinkers have already discovered. Ordinary Australians have always felt that they are very different from Asians, but many have no clear understanding about Asia and where they have earned most of their living in recent decades. On the other hand, when many have found it increasingly difficult to live in changing socio-economic conditions, they have been guided to place blame beyond their own country and ruling elites. Having lived in such circumstances, there are also few Australians who have reflected on why their country has been relying on one superpower after another for many generations, making it subservient, if not subordinate, to subsequent dominant economies. Some questions have been raised by thinkers, past and present, about this historical trait, and one of the questions is what kind of society Australians want to have. Not long ago, Hugh Mackay, one of Australia’s most respected social researchers, once again raised the question of what kind of country Australia wants to become, in a short online commentary. Though there is no direct mention of the China debate, outbreaks of racial tensions and the role of the media were considered. Importantly, he questioned what kind of society Australians want to construct, which includes the following: Like patriots everywhere, Australians like to brag about our achievements— and with some justification. It’s true that we’ve created such a harmonious society out of our mongrel diversity that when outbreaks of racial prejudice or ethnic tension occur, they tend to make the news … We like to say we punch above our weight when it comes to Nobel prizes, Olympic medals, Oscars and cricket … We’re not quite so keen to acknowledge that we also punch above our weight when it comes to carbon emissions. (Mackay 2020, n.p.)

The above quotation points out another aspect of what may be defined as the inadequate externalisation of domestic troubles. This is one of the main problems in Australia’s self-reflection tradition and practice, which

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can be seen often in cases of easily identifiable troubles. Aside from the ideological externalisation of various domestic tensions by using a few Cold War-related concepts to define China, the China debate itself has arisen partly due to the visibility of the country. The above quote may not be a typical externalisation, but shows a general tendency among Australians to allocate more attention to social issues than to fundamental economic structural challenges. What stands in opposition to this social progressive focus is what is defined by a few analysts as the securitisation of racial tensions in a multiracial society (He 2019). This is the other extreme of the severe externalisation: attributing domestic difficulties caused by largely incompetent ruling elites to foreign spying operations. Without intending to make any naive or idealistic comments, it is a very short-sighted act to turn domestic troubles into international tension by letting intelligence forces appear at the front stage. Many learned people can recollect what regimes made use of secret agencies in the past in domestic affairs. Politicians and critics in Australia are evidently in need of reading more about such an extreme externalisation and knowing that the securitisation of everyday life is very abnormal. The second key analytical point is about avoiding any form of one-­ sidedness approach to research and promoting a more holistic approach to examining migrant integration-related issues. Of course, this methodological suggestion has often been challenged by the question of how comprehensive research approaches can be. It has to be admitted that it is a rather difficult question to deal with. Throughout this analysis, the thorough consideration of the issues raised in the China debate was found to be difficult primarily because of two general tendencies in research into current and controversial social issues. As noted in Chap. 1, traditional research approaches have devoted too much attention to testing or developing a theory, rather than finding out how and why an issue has occurred. At the same time, political inclinations of analysts are a decisive factor in preventing many from understanding what has actually happened. Various other analytical and methodological problems or biases could also be derived from the above two types of problems, which could then affect the formation of comprehensive understanding of the concerns raised in the China debate. These secondary analytical shortcomings include different forms of binary logic and thinking, such as many forms of the black-and-white understanding of China and Chinese Australians. In the latter case, the transnationality of new migrant population seems hardly to be taken into account in many analyses and reports. The

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connections of Chinese Australians with some partners, either business, academic or personal, in China are perceived as suspicious. The bridging role that they were hoped to play by successive Australian governments in relating Australia to China’s growing market is no longer mentioned and welcomed. Instead, those who acted too enthusiastically may be suspected to be spies or agents meddling in Australia’s domestic politics. Without proper understanding of transnationality, limited thinking has then been expanded to other issues regarding immigrants, such as loyalty and identity. Many discussions of these topics are also unfortunately guided by the logic of ‘you are either with us or against us’, showing the immature nature of this limited thinking. Non-holistic approaches mean that only short periods of time or small sections of community-based activities and processes are investigated. It is true that the temporal aspect of research differs considerably and most studies can only focus on a particular time or portion of events. However, any reasonable analysis has to consider at least a small set of relevant antecedents to give some context for the conclusions drawn. A typical example in the China debate of critics selectively focusing their discussion is the Chinese donation issue, in which much attention was paid to donors, but hardly any was spent on those who used their influence to ask for donations. From a macro perspective, strong reactions of sections of ruling elites to a growing presence of ethnic Chinese in Australia have already indicated that they have forgotten the time when the country badly needed migrants and they themselves introduced various merit-based migration schemes. The third major analytical lesson that Australia’s current China debate has revealed is the absence of understanding of the rational connection between a political campaign and the nation-building process of the country. In normal circumstances, and among rational-minded citizens, politics serves a country’s economic interests and needs. The China debate, pursued by several groups of Australians, has been seen as a rather bizarre act that seems to indicate no sense of Australia’s shaky socio-economic structure and no concern about the damaging impact of their irrational attacks on Australia’s most important sources of national income. It is not ideal to heavily rely on one country for trade, but it is also illogical to wreck the current profitable trade relationship with China before establishing an economic structure of its own. It also seems that some critics have little idea about what they are criticising, as they were trained to regard China and its people, even those living in Australia, as an alien force. Though

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many have seen the changes in China, they are unable to work out the implications of the changes for their own nation-building agenda. Australia has nearly been derailed by its Sinophobic politicians and elites from its currently accessible economic track or the only profitable way to earn additional income. This has worried several industries. Towards the end of 2019, the chairman of Orica, an Australian multinational company, Malcolm Broomhead made a strong criticism of Australia’s current political culture and mindset, part of which is as follows: Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, where there was great hope for a future united world, we are now tearing ourselves apart in a frenzy of self-­ righteousness … The explosion of social media and communication technology has led to a proliferation of such single-sided views, where people simply listen to their own echo chamber, and are intolerant of the views of others … This phenomenon is widespread, be it through identity politics, the climate change debate or even Australia’s approach to China, where some focus solely on security without looking at the broader trading relationship. (Broomhead 2019, n.p.)

In fact, in late 2018, Malcolm Broomhead had already criticised the Turnbull government for its approach to China, identifying the key error as ‘opening up old divides around national security and trade’ (Grigg 2018, n.p.). Like many other business leaders, Broomhead believes that the decline in reasoned, articulate and positive debate and discussion at every level of society is a big ‘challenge to most Western economies’ (Gray 2019, n.p.), and that from Australia’s point of view, the relationship with China needs to be nurtured for further trade and economic cooperation. All these comments point to one serious issue confronting Australia, reminding its elites of their country’s economic life and the interests of the whole nation and its population. Such warnings are important because what has occurred in Australia in recent years is contrary to the widely held claim that the Liberals are better economic managers. The truth is that Chinese Australians as valuable contributors to the Australian economy have been alienated, and the revived focus on ideology is hurting the country’s standing in Asia. It is, therefore, worth pointing out that there is a misconception regarding the connection between Australian’s current approach to China and its migrants, and the one utilised by the Liberal Howard government after the late 1990s. Without any intention to eulogise John Howard’s approach

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to America and China, also regardless of whether he backs or disagrees with the current Liberal approach, it is necessary to mention that Australia’s China policy since the Turnbull government has become rather different from the so-called Howard paradox. The latter was developed with a focus on national economy and a view to make Australians comfortable and relaxed. In recent years, however, Australian political leaders have departed from this pragmatic stance and reasoning. They have paid more attention than any previous government to values, principles and norms that are believed to be absent in China and other Asian countries. This attention sounds superb, but has moved away from economic connections and benefits.

Practical Implications and Future Research What has been analysed in this book is another turbulent episode of Australian history, in which many Chinese migrants were recruited through a number of merit-based migration programs and then made contributions to Australia’s shift towards growing economies in Asia, but various aspects of their post-migration life in Australia have been misunderstood and even politicised by some Sinophobic politicians and elites. Regardless of whether it is part of geopolitics or racial tensions in Australia, there are some lessons to be learnt from what has unfortunately happened in Australia in recent years. As hinted in the heading, this final section has two main purposes: one is to briefly discuss practical implications of this study, and the other is to recommend potential areas for future research. This analysis has been critiquing the one-sidedness of many comments and analyses, and I hope that readers investigate more widely to grasp a fuller and clearer picture of the issues analysed in this study. As noted, there are a number of practical implications emerging from the analysis of what has happened recently in Australia. Some of them have already been discussed in earlier chapters, including the importance of focusing on nation-building efforts and domestic affairs. To make this study practical, three more key points need to be emphasised in this section. First, the fundamental issue that has been observed throughout the course of conducting this study is the need to improve Australia’s Asia literacy, China literacy in particular. This has become more necessary because now more than three-quarters of Australia’s exports go to Asia, while China buys about 40 per cent of Australia’s total exports. In late

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2005, a federal Senate inquiry recommended a more proactive stance in the development of greater China literacy, because it had found out that Australia’s level of China literacy was not adequate and its overall capacity to improve the level of China literacy was also evidently declining (Senate Standing Committees on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade 2005). Almost 15 years since the 2005 inquiry, the current China debate has revealed a reversed trend: the enthusiasm of ruling elites for shifting towards Asia, as well as connecting with China, has largely faded. The problem of a lack of understanding about Asia and China has worsened by the reusing of various Cold War notions in the current debate. For example, a regularly used answer to many questions is always that China is communist. It is deceitful in terms of scaring people away from partaking in the debate and demonising the opponents. What critics have not realised is that labelling China as communist is a product of Eurocentric thinking, since the notion hardly reflects life in post-1978 China, except being kept in the name of China’s ruling party. While many non-Chinese scholars and analysts have realised that China is more capitalist than many Western countries, many other alternative concepts, such as authoritarianism, or even neo-authoritarianism, have already been put forward to handle the conceptual challenges imposed by China’s development practices. The frequent use of the ideologicalised expression ‘communism’ or ‘communist’ in defining or explaining various intricate issues in the China debate appears to be an indication that Australia’s consideration of China does not include the many recent changes in China. As discussed in earlier chapters, the terms ‘communism’ and ‘communist’ have also been used in Australia’s China debate as the label for disliked activities or events of Chinese Australians, or an ultimate answer to explain why many activities by ethnic Chinese groups are deemed to be unacceptable, both socially and politically. Because such an ideological and politicised reasoning is not really convincing, the concepts of communism and communist have, therefore, often been transcribed into explicit words, such as Chinese spies or agents. In their usage, these eerie phrases seem to be a modified alternative expression for ‘yellow peril’. Of course, as will be elaborated below, this specific aspect of Australia’s China literacy issue has to be seen as a domestic challenge for Australian society. At the same time, it is undeniable that these misinterpretations, or mislabelling, are an extension of Australia’s China literacy issue, demonstrating that the knowledge problem can be harmful domestically.

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Second, a further key point is where the underlying problem is in Australia’s current approach to external relations. This study has identified two issues. In the first place, Australian political leaders and elites are deeply troubled, if not overwhelmed, by the task of defining Australia’s standing in the Asia-Pacific region and developing new public discourses about its position in a changing geo-economic and geopolitical landscape. It involves changes to national identity, which would certainly cause strong social reactions and divisions. All countries need a positive and proud feeling about themselves, and Australia is a country that should be proud of its prosperity, but its historical advantages over some Asian countries or regions have long been challenged by the emerging economies in what is still clumsily called the developing world. South Korea, as mentioned in Chap. 7, is a good example of how Australia’s economy has been eclipsed by that of some Asian countries. Since Australia has encountered cultures different from its own, it has been accustomed to telling others what to do, but Asia now is very different from the Asia of the Menzies era, when Australia may still have been able to see itself as principal. The Australian traits of high spirits and low creativity have now been challenged, causing resentment among elites, and political blindness among politicians. In the second place, although this analysis gives prominence to internal conditions in determining social processes and changes, it would certainly be of practical benefit to point out that Australia’s current ideology-oriented approach to China, as well as its migrants, is not effective for promoting its own interests in the region. It has, in effect, placed itself on a collision course with emerging realities and trends in China and other Asian economies, both of which are now heavily influenced by Deng Xiaoping’s ideas or Dengist pragmatism, stressing economic development as a priority over non-economic ones. In their eyes, Australia would be better served by advancing its intellectual and industrial capacities, through which it would be equipped with positive narratives and confidence. Almost no respect and influence can now be earned from talking about lofty values and ideas in Asia. Third, more importantly, serious attention needs to be given to inter-­ ethnic relations within Australia, although it is still seen, in a global comparative sense, to be a very successful immigration country. However, what has occurred in Australia in these years has revealed that Australia’s ruling elites have wandered off into a new round of geopolitical tension at the risk of upsetting domestic harmony among different ethnic groups and souring relations with China as its most important trading partner and

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neighbour. It seems to many Chinese Australians that Sinophobic politicians and elites have earned too much easy money from China’s growing economy for too long a time to remember and understand how its profitable relations with China have been developed and what help Australia has had from many entrepreneurial Chinese Australians. That is, it has been very evident that Australia’s China debate has hurt itself badly in at least two ways. Its economically active ethnic Chinese community has been demonised and alienated, while the debate has been badly hitting the biggest buyer of Australia’s exports. What is more damaging to its long-term national interest is that Australia has, in effect, been found to have been playing a more proactive role than almost all Western countries in the current international campaign against China’s rising influence. All of these recent events have happened in front of the eyes of the whole nation. Through denying the active role played by many new Chinese migrates in Australia’s economy, a bad message has been sent to all other migrants, suggesting that they cannot be too active in Australia. Apart from such a negative message, a team of Sydney-based researchers have also verified the spread of a strong Sinophobic sentiment as follows: Sinophobia in Australia is also emerging in debates about housing investment, donations to political parties, university campus politics, the purchase of agricultural land for mining, as well as general concerns about Chinese government influence, geopolitics and human rights issues in China. Public debate is appropriate, but emerging hysteria and sensationalism are shifting into animosity towards people with Chinese heritage in Australia. (Kamp et al. 2018, n.p.)

Because of such consequences, it seems to be urgent to devote serious attention to social cohesion before it’s too late. There were many issues that have made Australia’s political leaders and elites very worried, such as the protests by many Chinese in 2016 against the Hague’s ruling about the South China Sea. These large-scale protests have revived Australia’s long-held fear of the threat from the north, but the politicised response and other actions were not warranted, let alone measures to hurt or deprive Chinese Australians of their rights and interests. The latter has been a rather regrettable start of new cracks in Australian society, which may be divisive in the future. It is known that some Australians are not great fans of multiculturalism; however, what can and should be done is to extend Australia’s fair-go attitude and principle to non-Anglo-Celtic

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Australians and minority communities, including Chinese Australians. That is, the country can at least become more inclusive of different ethnic and cultural groups for the sake of peace within the country, if dominant elites refuse to admit the value of multiculturalism. The current nationwide China debate has already exposed Australia to potential domestic risks, as some of its actions run against its own fairness principle. As a multi-ethnic country, Australia has to take every measure to avoid the internalisation of geopolitical tensions and unite all people under the banner of the nation-state to achieve both social cohesion and prosperity. The second key task of this section is to suggest some possible research topics for future studies based on the experience of conducting this project. According to my observation, there are many unanswered questions and uncovered topics because of the impact and significance of this troubling period of Australian history. For this reason, this discussion is limited to the following three areas. The first possible future research area is the delayed responses of many ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs to Australia’s irrational debate over alleged meddling by China in Australian domestic politics, which has, in one way or another, implicated many Chinese Australians, especially migrant entrepreneurs. This study contains preliminary findings on the responses of many ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs to the debate, but the politicisation and securitisation of community-based activities have gone so far that there will definitely be more delayed responses than what have so far been observed. At the same time, as mentioned, many activities of Chinese Australians, including those of business people, have made some uninformed Australian elites suspicious of their actual motivations. Such suspicion will also have its effects in the years to come. The importance of giving future research attention to migrant entrepreneurs is because of the belief that entrepreneurs are active actors in maintaining and regenerating the momentum of economic activities and development. Many Australian entrepreneurs are attracted from overseas through special merit-based immigration intake schemes, because Australia-born people do not, on the whole, have the level of overseas experience expected by the country’s trade-dependent economy. The frustration of this active section of society may have greater negative consequences for the country’s economy than is currently observed. In the case of Chinese migrant entrepreneurs, it is worth devoting research attention to a wide range of aspects of their transnational movements, including intentions to come to Australia or to leave

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the place that has been found to be less than accommodating of those who are too active or entrepreneurial. The second possible research topic is a follow-up study of some Chinese Australians who were very active in ethnic Chinese communities before the China debate. These activists are frontline figures of Chinese Australian communities, who not only advocated for political participation of ethnic Chinese people in local politics, but also pushed strongly for breaking the bamboo ceiling. As a result, they have been major targets of the campaign against China’s meddling in Australian domestic affairs. Many of them are completely stunned by what has occurred, as not long ago they were encouraged to integrate into Australia and they had also relayed that message to their fellow community members. Future research efforts should be directed to finding out how the debate would change their understanding of participation and integration in Australia, and how the latter could influence the reformation and new composition of the community leadership. As noted, Australia’s China debate demonstrates tension between two active sections of Australian society: politically dominant Anglo-Celtic Australians and economically active ethnic Chinese. Future studies are needed to show how the tensions will evolve. The third type of possible future research that is evidently important but difficult to carry out is to find out how Australian political leaders and elites have been convinced to choose between opposing views on China’s meddling and Chinese migrant activism, and to take a hard-line stance on the issue. This is a difficult area to examine as the topic involves the people behind the scenes of the campaign or involves disclosing private information. Therefore, it is only time that allows such research to take place. According to many media reports, there appears to be at least two types of people behind the Sinophobic campaign: the campaigners and their informants. The interactions and collaboration between them may be regarded by some politically minded people as an intelligence issue. However, without knowing why, and in what way, some Australian political leaders and elites are persuaded to act against alleged meddling by China, there will always be a gap in our understanding of these dominant elites, their strategy selection, and political alliances in the twenty-first century. A unique aspect of Australia’s Sinophobic campaign is that the campaign appears to have been influenced, if not guided, by some informants, or storytellers in the words of several interviewees of this study, in addition to the American factor that was exposed by the media. That is, there appears to be a group of Chinese Australians behind the non-Chinese

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campaigners. According to media reports, the non-Chinese campaigners are unlikely to gather so much critical adverse information about China and Chinese Australians. The limits of their existing knowledge and analytical skills were unveiled again in the recent spy case of Wang Liqiang that was briefly noted at the start of Chap. 7. Since both institutional and individual campaigners seem to have relied on some community-based informants, the question that has then been raised is the extent to which the debate reflects the tensions, or inherent dislikes, within different Chinese Australian groups and communities. Australia’s ruling elites have lately been worried about Chinese influences, but it seem to be that there may be a different kind of Chinese influence at work. This is a difficult and sensitive topic to research at present, but the question will hopefully be researched and answered in the near future when more information becomes available and depoliticised. * * * I would like to conclude this book by quoting a few sentences from my own commentary piece written for Modern History, the writing of which helped me sort out my main ideas for writing this book. In my original draft of the commentary, I wished to use the last section to highlight the importance for Australia to refocus on its own nation-building, and avoid following sensationalised topics and becoming unreasonably politicised at the risk of derailing its economic expansion. The controversy has given some Australians a chance to show their discontent with the country’s strategic shift toward Asia, but it is also eroding Australia’s standing as a successful immigrant nation. This runs a real risk of alienating many Chinese Australians who should instead be encouraged to contribute to building a twenty-first century economy that makes the most of a diverse society. (Gao 2018, p. 234)

Apart from the above, Australia’s ruling elites need to be aware that Australia does face a foreign-relations crisis, and the past few years have been the most dangerous period in its foreign relations since the late 1940s, as it ‘is becoming an even more lonely country now than we were seventy-five years ago’ (Milner 2019, n.p.). During this turbulent period, the country’s standing has been tarnished by some xenophobic elites, making Australians look like a nation of unkind people. The worst

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component of its multi-year long debate over China’s meddling is the attacks on new immigrants recruited through its own merit-based immigration intake programs, sowing the seeds of internal disunity in the future.

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Index1

A ABC, The, see Australian Broadcasting Corporation ACRI, see Australia-China Relations Institute ALP, see Labor, the American/America, (the influence), xi, 14, 62, 67, 98, 99, 106, 108n3, 119, 174, 178–179n2, 213, 225, 226, 229, 239, 244, 245, 247, 258, 272, 277 Anti-intellectualism, Australia, 228–232, 265 ASIO, see Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Australia-China relations, 98, 99, 118, 120, 178n1, 239, 240, 258 Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI), 133, 145n6 Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC, The), 2, 27, 52, 100, 158, 163, 173, 175–177, 178n1, 225, 246

Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), 174, 193 Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade), 65, 101 B Bennelong, the federal electorate, 159, 162, 163, 172, 173, 176 Blainey, Geoffrey, 4, 7, 28n3, 118, 227, 236 Bolkus, Nick, 51, 70n2, 126, 192 C Carr, Bob, 133, 145n6, 193, 240 CCCA, see Chinese Community Council of Australia CCP, see Chinese Communist Party

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 J. Gao, Chinese Immigration and Australian Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5909-9

325

326 

INDEX

ChAFTA, see China-Australia Free Trade Agreement Chau Chak Wing, see Zhou Zerong Chen Yonglin, 211 China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA), 106 China Power, 2, 178n1 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), ix, 28n2, 109n4, 163, 174, 181n7, 192, 216n2, 217n4, 240 Chinese Community Council of Australia (CCCA), 160, 180–181n5, 209 Chisholm, the federal electorate, 162, 173, 181n6 Colombo Plan, the, 4–7, 191, 233 Cronulla riots, 8, 29n6 Cultural Revolution, the, 216n2 D Dastyari, Sam, 2, 27–28n1, 173–177 Deng Xiaoping, 29n7, 84, 90, 94, 108n4, 216n2, 241, 274 Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), 3, 95, 232 Dio (Zhenya) Wang, 102, 109–110n6 Donation, to political parties, 242, 275 Dutton, Peter, 175–177 E Economic reform in China, 108n4, 267 Economic restructuring in Australia, 22, 23, 44, 84, 241 ELICOS, see English Language Incentive Course for Overseas Students, the

English Language Incentive Course for Overseas Students, the (ELICOS), 192, 217n4 Ernest Wong, 209 Ethnic vote, 155, 157, 163, 264 Evans, Gareth, 70n1 F Fairfax Media, 27, 132, 178n1, 216n3, 225 ‘1 November (1993) decisions,’ the, 29n7, 43 Foxall, Edward William, 118, 119, 143n2 Fraser, Malcolm, 48, 236 G Garnaut, John, 178n1, 196, 216n3 Garnaut, Ross, 22 Gillard, Julia, 54, 70n4, 145n6, 158 Gizen-No-Teki, see Foxall, Edward William Gladys Liu, 181n6, 209 H Hamilton, Clive, 2, 28n1, 28n2, 240 Hand, Gerry, 51, 70n2, 71n6, 126, 192 Hanson, Pauline, 8, 19, 28n5, 67, 69, 95, 116, 123, 136, 137, 139, 155, 161, 238, 263 Hastie, Andrew, 224 Hawke, Bob, 9, 29n7, 49, 69n1, 156, 237 Hewson, John, 55 Horne, Donald, 27, 45, 48, 121, 224, 227–231

 INDEX 

Housing market, the, 136, 138, 141, 262 Howard, John, 8, 9, 28n4, 29n5, 58, 59, 69n1, 70n4, 91, 92, 122, 155, 159, 161, 168, 172, 173, 180n4, 238, 239, 245, 246, 258, 265, 271 Huang, Xiangmo, 27–28n1, 109n5, 145n6, 173–177, 196 Hu Jintao, 98 I Indentured labour, 144n3 J Jenny Leong, 169, 209 K Keating, Paul, 9, 29n7, 45, 51, 58, 59, 69–70n1, 70n3, 235, 236, 238 Keynes, John Maynard, see Keynesian (economics) Keynesian (economics), 45, 70n3 L Labor, the, 6, 49, 63, 69n1, 99, 157, 158, 161, 171, 172, 175, 180n4, 192, 203, 209, 258, 264 Labor, the Party, 27–28n1, 44, 51, 70n4, 92, 145n7, 153, 156–158, 160, 162, 166, 167, 169, 173, 210 Liberal, the Party, 49, 69n1, 102, 144n4, 145n7, 153, 156, 157, 162, 166, 167, 170–174, 176, 209, 210, 235, 264 Lucky Country, the, see Horne, Donald

327

M Mackay, Hugh, 120, 227, 231, 268 Maoist and Mao’s, 84, 105, 107, 119, 179n2, 192, 193, 212, 216n2 McCarthyism, 13, 179n2 McKenzie, Nick, 153, 174, 176, 178n1, 190, 214, 224, 240 Menzies, Robert, 144n4, 230, 234–237, 239, 246, 274 Menzies’ road map, 235–237, 246 Middle-class status, 141, 160, 162, 166, 173 Migration Regulations 1994, see Office of Parliamentary Counsel, the Mining boom, the, 95, 99–102, 109n6 Morrison, Scott, 70n4, 145n7, 248n1 Multiculturalism, 3, 5–7, 11, 23, 26, 28n3, 28n4, 29n5, 43, 48, 51, 92, 123, 128, 190, 199, 202, 215, 245, 264, 275, 276 O Office of Parliamentary Counsel, the (OPC), 57, 58, 60, 61, 71n5 OPC, see Office of Parliamentary Counsel, the P ‘Populate or perish,’ 49, 58 Pringle, John Douglas, 26, 48, 120, 121, 224, 227–231 Pringle-Horne phenomenon, the, 225–232, 265 R Ray, Robert, 51, 70n2 Recession, 45, 46, 48, 49, 67, 68, 84, 91, 97, 142, 259

328 

INDEX

Rudd, Kevin, 13, 69n1, 70n4, 98, 99, 158, 175, 176, 179n2, 180n4, 189, 258 Ruddock, Philip, 43, 51–54, 70n2 S Sally Zou, 102 Same-sex marriage, 175 Selective public schools, 129, 130, 144–145n5 Significant investor visa(s), see Subclass 888 Stern Hu, 98, 99, 102, 109n5, 109n6 Subclass 163, 59, 60 Subclass 188, 57, 61 Subclass 457, 59, 206 Subclass 888, 57, 61 Sun, Wanning, 2, 11, 119, 120, 182n8, 207 T ‘13 June 1997 decision,’ the, 91

Turnbull, Malcolm, 2, 70n4, 106, 109n6, 117, 141, 142, 145n7, 172, 174–177, 178n1, 211, 235, 245 U Uhlmann, Chris, 23, 153, 178n1, 240 United States, the, see American/ America, (the influence) W WeChat, 181–182n8, 206 White, Hugh, 246, 247 ‘White Australia,’ the, 3, 4, 6, 43, 117, 143n2, 232 White flight, 134, 135 Whitlam, Gough, 6, 236 Willard, Myra, 4, 107n1, 117, 226 Z Zhou Zerong, 196, 216n3