Chinese Australians are Australians of Chinese origin. Chinese Australians are one of the largest groups within the global Chinese diaspora, and are the largest Asian Australian community. Per capita, Australia has more people of Chinese ancestry than any country outside Asia. As a whole, Australian residents identifying themselves as having Chinese ancestry made up 5.5% of Australia's population at the 2021 census.
The early history of Chinese Australians began with significant immigration from the Pearl River Delta villages in South China, with most immigrants speaking Yue dialects. In the 19th century, the gold rushes lured large numbers of Chinese to the Australian colonies. Similar to overseas Chinese communities worldwide, these early immigrants established Chinatowns in major cities, including Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney. Today, Australians of full or partial Chinese origin form the plurality of the population in the Australian external territory of Christmas Island.
History
Chinese peoples have a long and continuing role in Australian history. There were early links between China and Australia when Macau and Canton were used as an important trading ports with the fledgling colony. Mak Sai Ying (also known as John Shying) was the first officially recorded Chinese migrant in 1818. After his arrival he spent some time farming before, in 1829, he became prominent as the publican of The Lion in Parramatta. Early-19th-century migration was in limited numbers and sporadic, primarily those who came in this period were free merchants or adventurers and, the more common, indentured labourers.
The Australian Gold Rushes are what first lured thousands of Chinese to the country. In 1855 in Melbourne there were 11,493 Chinese arrivals.Jean Gittins.(1981). The Diggers From China: The Story of Chinese on the Goldfields. Quartet Books Australia. Melbourne. . pg 128 This was startling considering that barely five years previous, Melbourne's entire population had only been around 25,000 people. By 1858, 42,000 Chinese immigrants had arrived in Victoria, with many of them living in boarding houses in Little Bourke Street. Due to the widespread racist sentiments in parliament and on the goldfields, the first of many immigration restrictions and Chinese targeting laws was passed in late 1855. However, due to the long, poorly regulated borders between the colonies of Australia the numbers of Chinese on the goldfields continued to swell. Upon the goldfields Chinese peoples faced many hardships. There were violent anti-Chinese riots; the Buckland Riot, the Lambing Flats Riots, as well as general discrimination and prejudice. However, there were many establishments in this period that would have a lasting effect on the history of Australia and the history of Chinese in Australia. One of these establishments were the Chinese camps, which most often, later, became Chinatowns in Australia. There was also the establishment and the consolidation of power for Chinese societies, many of these are still active in Australia today. These societies provided support and community for the Chinese in the colonies.
After the gold rushes the numbers of Chinese living in the cities swelled and their businesses and industries contributed much to growth of Melbourne and Sydney in the late 19th century. Mei Quong Tart and Lowe Kong Meng were prominent business figures in Sydney and Melbourne respectively. However, there were very few Chinese women migrating to Australia. At one point in the 1860s the numbers of Chinese in Australia was around 40,000. Of these, it is believed only 12, were women. This gender imbalance meant that Chinese men married women of European descent but many had it in their hearts to return to China.
Anti-Chinese racism among white Australians also strongly contributed to the push for the federation of Australia. Some of the first Acts of the new federation would establish the White Australia Policy. This policy made it almost impossible for anyone new to migrate from China to Australia. After federation the population of Chinese in Australia steadily declined. Despite the declining numbers people with Chinese heritage still played their part in Australian history. There were over 200 people with Chinese heritage who fought for Australia in World War I, including the decorated sniper Billy Sing. A similar number fought for Australia in World War II.
Following the end of the White Australia Policy in the 1960s, Australia welcomed new groups from the Chinese diaspora, including many people from non-Cantonese-speaking regions. In the 1970s, the first major wave brought ethnic Chinese refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia. During the 1980s and 1990s, economic immigrants arrived from Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as some Chinese Peruvians—following a 1968 military dictatorship there—with families mostly settling in major capital cities. To support these growing populations, communities built fresh organizations, revived groups like the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and started publishing Chinese-language newspapers again.
After the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, then-Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, allowed students from China to settle in Australia permanently. The aftermath of May 1998 riots of Indonesia saw sizeable influx of Chinese Indonesians fleeing persecution in their home country for Australia. Since the 2000s, with the rapid development of China's economy, there has been an explosion in the number of immigrants from China, which have frequently been Australia's largest source of new immigrants since 2000. In 2015–16, China (excluding Hong Kong and Macau) was the second largest source of immigrants to Australia behind India. China (excluding Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) is now the third largest foreign birthplace for Australian residents, after England and New Zealand.
Demographics
At the 2021 census, 1,390,637 Australian residents identified themselves as having Chinese ancestry, accounting for 5.5% of the total population.
In 2019, the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated that there were 677,240 Australian residents born in mainland China, 101,290 born in Hong Kong, 59,250 born in Taiwan and 3,130 born in Macau. There are also a large number of persons of Chinese ancestry among those born in Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam.
Before the end of the 20th century, Chinese Australians were predominately of Cantonese and Hakka descent from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, and Cantonese was the dominant language. Due to more recent immigration from other regions of China, Mandarin has surpassed Cantonese by number of speakers.
In a 2004 study on the intermarriage pattern in Australia, the proportion of second-generation Chinese Australians with spouses of Anglo-Celtic ancestry was approximately 21% and for third generation it was 68%.Lucille Lok-Sun Ngan, Chan Kwok-bun, The Chinese Face in Australia Multi-generational Ethnicity among Australian-born Chinese, 2012, p. 155
According to Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2012 Chinese immigrant mothers had a total fertility of 1.59 children per woman, lower compared to the Australian average of 1.94. This declined to 1.19 and 1.73 respectively in 2019.
Capital cityPopulation with Chinese ancestry (2021 census)Proportion of total populationSydney552,680 10.6%Melbourne409,285 8.3%Brisbane117,496 4.7%Perth112,293 5.3%Adelaide56,788 4.1%Canberra26,031 5.7%
Language
At the 2021 census, 685,274 persons declared that they spoke Mandarin at home (the most common language spoken at home in Australia after English at 2.8%), followed by Cantonese at 295,281 (the fourth most common after English at 1.2%). Many Chinese Australians speak other varieties of Chinese such as Shanghainese, Hokkien and Hakka at home. Many Chinese Australians from other areas speak Tagalog (Philippines), Malay (Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei), Vietnamese, Thai, and Portuguese (Macau) as additional languages. Second or higher generation Chinese Australians are often either monolingual in English or bilingual to varying degrees with their heritage language, with their relationship to language often being a key component in the maintenance of a bicultural identity.
Chinese Australians have adopted many slang terms in Chinese. An example is the term , which is a slang term for Australia (as opposed to the standard term, ).完了，你们总叫澳洲“土澳”！这个秘密终于传到了当地人的耳朵里...
Religion
According to the census data collected in the last twenty years, among Australians with full or partial Chinese ancestry there has been a general decline of institutional religions (between 2006 and 2016, Buddhism fell from 24.1% to 15.7% and Christianity fell from 29.8% to 23.4%). In 2016, 55.4% of the Chinese Australians fit within the census category of "not religious, secular beliefs or other spiritual beliefs", rising significantly from 37.8% in 2006. These shiftings in religious demography may be due to the incoming of new immigrants from China who generally do not have a formal religious affiliation, and many of whom are involved in the native Chinese religion (including Chinese ancestral worship) which has been experiencing a revival in China over the last decades.
There are also several notable Chinese temples that exist and still active in Australia, like Sarm Sung Goon Temple, Albion (built in 1886), Sze Yup Temple (built in 1898), Yiu Ming Temple (built in 1908) and Heavenly Queen Temple (Melbourne). Nan Tien Temple in New South Wales and Chung Tian Temple in Queensland are the oversea branch temples of Fo Guang Shan.
+ Religion of Australians of full or partial Chinese ancestry, by censusReligion200620112016Number%Number%Number%Not religious or Chinese religion238,67837.8359,13943.7633,05655.4Christianity188,11129.8233,07028.4267,25623.4Buddhism152,54424.1177,90221.6179,38415.7Islam1,4660.232,2800.273,1200.27Hinduism2120.033010.038280.07Judaism1390.021700.022190.02Other2,4330.383,2490.44,3300.37Unclear2,3750.373,4230.42,8830.25Unanswered44,6437.041,0745.050,3644.4 Total population630,598100.0820,613100.01,141,440100.0
Politics Historically, Chinese Australians have voted for the Coalition over Labor, due to a perception that the Liberal Party was more business-oriented and more focused on economic development than Labor. However, support for the Coalition from Chinese Australians has declined in recent years.
In the 2022 Australian federal election, electorates with a higher concentration of Chinese-Australian voters experienced larger swings against the Coalition compared to other electorates; in the top 15 seats by Chinese ancestry, the swing against the Coalition on a two-party-preferred basis was 6.6 per cent, compared to 3.7 per cent in other seats. This resulted in the Liberal Party losing many federal seats with large Chinese communities in 2022 to Labor (losing Bennelong and Reid in Sydney and Chisholm in Melbourne to Labor and Kooyong in Melbourne to a teal independent), as well as losing Aston in 2023, which was the first time in over a century in which the government won a seat off the opposition in a by-election.
In the 2023 New South Wales state election, the top 10 electorates in terms of Chinese ancestry all saw big swings to Labor. The marked swings from the Coalition to Labor from 2022 onwards has been attributed to Australia's fraught relationship with China under the Morrison government, which was marked with aggressive and hostile rhetoric against China from senior politicians such as Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton.
The federal electorate with the highest number of Chinese Australians is the Division of Chisholm in Melbourne, which has been held by the Labor Party since 2022.
Federal opinion polling among Chinese Australians Year Liberal Labor Greens One Nation Other 2021 42% 21% colspan="3" 2022 28% 25% colspan="3" 2025 34% 48% 11% 1% 6% 2026 34% 46% 9% 5% 5%