I was invited to give the annual 2020 Henry Chan lecture at a time when Chinese-Australians had well and truly become objects of suspicion and distrust. I have been doing research on Chinese-language media in the Chinese diaspora for two decades.
The word ‘diaspora’ has been a jargon word in academia, which often is used without any hint of positive or negative connotation. Diaspora studies is now a well-established sub-field of scholarly research, and there are quite a few refereed journals dedicated to diaspora studies.
In recent years, however, I have noticed a curious trend of weaponizing the term. English-language mainstream journalists have now not only learned to properly spell and pronounce the word, they have also taken to using the term with gusto when referring to members of the Chinese community, especially those from China. Politicians love to use this term as a short cut. A few months ago, acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge observed ‘with regret’ that, instead of being ‘proud Australians’, some communities are still seen by their former countries as ‘their diaspora’.
The default assumption about the political connection between the Chinese diaspora and the Chinese government is most clearly evidenced in Senator Abetz’ request to the three Chinese Australians in a senate inquiry into issues facing diaspora communities in Australia. He asked them to denounce the Chinese Communist Party.
As Louise Edwards, UNSW’s Scientia Professor of China Studies recently comments, “diaspora people are only really heard when they are useful to fulfilling some other agenda’. She reminds us that some groups, such as the white diaspora, don’t even get called “diaspora” because the term has become a way of marking those who are racially, politically or culturally different from ‘us’.
When our Prime Minister expressed outrage and demanded apology from the Chinese government over Zhao Lijian’stweeted image, Mr Tudge promptly held a teleconference with some Chinese Australian community leaders. In his media statement, Mr Tudge said the image tweeted by Zhao was ‘shameful and offensive’, and he was glad to report that every one of Chinese community leader who spoke at the teleconference ‘was just as appalled by the fake image’.
Upon reading Tudge’s statement, I wondered: if anyone from the Chinese Australian community did not share Mr Tudge and our Prime Minister’s outrage, would he or she dare to speak up? Would they be deemed less Australian or even ‘unAustralian’? We have seen a wide range of opinions in the mainstream Australian public in response to the Chinese tweet and our Prime Minister’s reaction, so why shouldn’t we expect a similar level of pluralism within the Chinese Australian community?
Reading Mr Tudge’s praise of the Chinese community leaders for saying the ‘right’ thing, I was again reminded of what Jan Fran said to Osmond Chiu in a recent episode of the Q&A regarding Senator Abetz’ questioning: ‘It is just a confirmation that you, actually, are not really Australian, that you are here conditionally… You are here on a good-behaviour bond.’
I know that I might sound like what some may describe as an ‘ungrateful migrant’ – after all, why whinge about Mr Tudge, who was full of praise for the 1.2 million Chinese Australians? But the honest truth is that instead of feeling privileged by this special treatment – Mr Tudge didn’t go to anywhere else except the Chinese Australian community – I felt, for the lack of a more colloquial word, ‘interpellated’. I felt like a child whose parent hovers over her and says, ‘Look at that child. He’s naughty, isn’t he? Now we don’t want to be naughty like that, do we?” As Jan Fran said to Osmond, ‘you need to be constantly proving your loyalty to this country. That is not asked of other people.’
Many people in my WeChat groups have taken up Australian citizenship and consider themselves Australian. Some have mixed feelings in response to Mr Tudge’s praise. Many people in this first-generation migrant cohort experience what I call ‘chronic Chinese influence fatigue syndrome’. Some say, ‘why can’t I just be left alone and get on with our lives? ‘I no longer care about China-Australia relationship. I just don’t want to be a pawn between them’.
It is against the backdrop of this complex political reality that I wrote this lecture. The conceptual starting point for my lecture was the fact that Australia’s multiculturalism is in trouble, partly due to the fact that China is not only our largest trading partner, but also, in recent years, has been the largest source of immigrant population. In my talk, I engage with Professor Andrew Jakubowicz’s work and ask how the ‘Chinese question’ could help ‘modernize’ Australia’s multiculturalism. And I offer a two-pronged pathway: engagement and respect for human rights.
The lecture starts with a brief review of recent changes in Chinese migration to Australia in the last four decades, pointing to a dramatic demographic shift in the Chinese migrant community in Australia in terms of language and cultural practice. The first main message from this overview is that the PRC migrant community is marked by diversity in terms of social values, political views, cultural sensibilities, and consumption habits. They by no means constitute a single interest group. The second message is that there is a high level of ambivalence on the part of many individuals in this group about their identity and their sense of belonging, and many feel stuck between a ‘rock and a hard place’.
This brief history is followed by a review of the main issues facing first-generation Mandarin-speaking migrants, as well as those facing Australia’s multiculturalism as a result of the ‘Chinese question’. Here, I discuss a set of push and pull dynamics which impact on this cohort’s capacity to develop a sense of belonging and feeling at home in their adopted country. While the pull factors include DFAT’s public-diplomacy-through-diaspora agenda and China’s soft-power-through-diaspora agenda, the push factors in Australia include anti-Chinese racism, security establishment’s tendency to see them as a risk, and the current political discourse that mostly questions their loyalty.
Pitching my message to the Australian government, media, older and southern dialect speaking Chinese communities – as well the first generation mainlander migrant cohort itself – I suggest that engagement with this new migrant cohort is a pre-requisite to their integration. Sadly, so far, this engagement is not happening – some people in the Cantonese speaking community eye mainlanders with suspicion, even hostility. And many mainlanders find it difficult to communicate with Chinese-Australians who don’t speak Mandarin.
Finally, revisiting Andrew Jakubowicz, I ask how Australia’s multiculturalism can be modernized through a genuine attempt to engage first-generation Chinese migrants, on the one hand, and an ungrudging respect for their human rights, on the other. I suggest that the most effective way of starting this engagement is to treat members of this cohort as rights-bearing citizens, and, first and foremost, as Australians.
“This was the 4th Henry Chan lecture sponsored by the Chinese Australian Historical Society, in association with the State Library of New South Wales, the original intent of which was to bring China based scholars of Australian studies to Australia. In response to pandemic restrictions this aim has broadened to include Australian based scholars discussing topics of value and interest to the Chinese Australian and broader Australian community. The topical nature of Wanning Sun’s lecture only demonstrates that history begins now.”
- Chinese Australian Historical Society (CAHS)
Wanning Sun is a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Technology, Sydney. She also serves as the deputy director of the UTS Australia-China Relations Institute. She is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a member of the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts (2020-23). She is best known in the field of China studies for her ethnography of rural-to-urban migration and social inequality in contemporary China. She writes about Chinese diaspora, diasporic Chinese media, and Australia-China relations.
Comments
12 responses to “Many Australians with a Chinese background feel caught ‘between a rock and a hard place’”
When an ethnic group is reprehensibly targeted by the government, politicians, and their entourage of shock jocks and media, other ethnic groups, tremble in victimhood, keep their heads down and shamefully shut up.
Remember Pastor Niemoller’s warning..”First they came for….. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_…
It’s time that all multicultural groups walk tall and stand up for their own and fellow citizens’ indisputable legal dignity of Australian-ness.
As Australians we are all voters.. that is our right and when owned and wielded is a power that makes governments tremble.
The Chinese Diaspora thru our national organisation CCCA in Australia has a voice and is not afraid to respond to the Afghan issue however, we take care to be respectful and diplomatic in our efforts when critical of our PM as we believe we still need to talk to the PM on issues affecting the Chinese Australian community or thru Minister Tudge, who is empathetic to our cause. See our weekly commentary “Sad to see a cartoon and Brereton’s report of Afghan war atrocity push Australia-China relations off the cliff”. http://www.au123.com/view/ocean/20201207/550678.html
Story: The PM ignored one of the enduring truths in politics in his over-the-top response to China (3Dec2020) SMH comment : Afghan image as the bait & we took it – they were having us on and we bite; PM responded in rage – PM did his block.; Current Oz-China trade situation – dog’s breakfast; Wine trade stopped – Grape juice down the gurgler; We need a miracle to reset things – we need to do a Bradbury.
Story: Morrison’s outrage over Chinese tweet a tried and true tactic (5Dec2020) SMH comment: If the allegations are true, then Australia has lost the high moral ground in being critical of China on human rights. The Americans had lost theirs in My Lai massacre of 1968 in Vietnam.
Story: Empower Chinese community to resist Beijing’s pressure: (7Dec2020) SMH comment; Despite having 1.2 million Chinese Australians, Sharma has failed to comprehend their culture. sensitivity and empathy. The Chinese Community Council of Australia, as a declared independent Australian community, free from any CCP influence, would be the best to give government and opposition advice how to repair Australia-China relations, & in the Australian national interest. This article suggests using Mandarin speakers as security agents is extremely naive and you won’t get the right personnel. Australia is better served to use Chinese Australians for trade & peaceful pursuits with our No 1 trading partner, staring with a re-vamp of the composition of the National Foundation for Australia-China relations.
It is a measure of the racism of the anti-China crowd that the immense talent, wisdom and dynamism in the Australian -Chinese community isnt being tapped into for advice and representative assistance as a circuit breaker in the rapidly down ward spiral. The very notion of the Australian Chinese community playing a leading role wouldnt even occur to the aspi assorted nutters and fruit cakes. Australia’s vaccine is a dud, we are at the back of the queue with Pfizer (apart from Scotty’s Cabinet’s blue pills) and we have rejected the generous offer of assistance from PRC. And the bloviating clown cant get a word in at the Climate conference. And the Poms have squibbed sanctions against PRC over HK. It cant get any worse can it? You bet it will.
I think Wanning totally missed the forest for the trees. With so much MSM brainwashing, you are really pushing sh.t up hill here but there is so much vested interest behind the Anti-China movement, if you are Chinese, it would be prudent to leave an escape route.
I am old enough to remember the early marches against a terrible war in Melbourne. A few hundred of brave souls, pelted with abuse and called traitors. We were pacifist, we walked dutifully on the pavement and occasionally got punched in the back of the head by the coppers. Within five years we were marching with 100,000 people in the Treasury Gardens. There is such a thing as a tide of history. Hold our nerve, stick to principles and we have seen these racist clowns come and go before. As they will as history moves on. They represent the past. And a pretty shabby and disgraceful one at that.
Exactly- there is immense political and ideological power behind the anti-China movement, which logically also means it is anti-Chinese. The USA wants to contain China, and let’s face it, White Australia is also uncomfortable with the rise of a powerful China. Brain washing or not, the big rocks are coming down the mountain. Arguing about integration, or how much more Australian Chinese people should be totally detracts from the root cause of the issue. And the root cause is the demonisation of China, and things Chinese. Fact is 99% of Chinese Australians have no skin in this game, including those who have strong views on the containment of China . We are only the victims, real or imagined, out of all this. It is 100% not our fault. Unfortunately as a community, there is nothing we can do about the mainstream political and ideological play- we are zero compared to their mighty media. Just bear in mind the root cause. And hope that Australia is a fair enough country when we come through on the other side.
Chinese Australians have for a long time since 1973 unwittingly extended the shelf life of John Chinaman – that harmless, obligingly hard- working fellow, who knew his place. Think of the token Chinaman on advisory boards, and State Upper Houses. It’s the compardor mentality of the huayi immigrants and the persistence of the White Australia Dream which fused that outcome.
That comprador mentality also meant that we keep our tongue and tell our children to do the same – centuries of habit evolved in the whtie colonies of Asia. (Keeps White Australia’s dream of John Chinaman snoring on.) That is beginning to break down now. Hopefull it will take a much shorter time than getting rid of foot-binding took.
The disruption caused by the overwhelming influx PRC emigres has forced new thinking amongst the huayi leaders.
I hope the native born Chinese Aussies will rise up and make their homeland fit for purpose soon. They are in a position to do so, since the biased selection criteria for immigration meant that Chinese Australians have a far better purcase on life in this lucky country than the populace. Wistful! Given the state of our polity. Can’t help it.
Thank you so much for this thoughful article. The problem with our multiculturalism is the underlying racial anglo supremacist “imagined community” that is contemoraryAustralia. This imagined community is created and reinforced with the myths of miltary intervention and settler heroism. The PRC presents a deeply disturbing existential challenge to this imagined community as a rising global Asian power that is economically and culturally dominant. The journey of our imagined community to becoming an Asian country will be painful and protracted. And we need the Chinese ‘diaspora” to help lead us. For anyone who imagines this concept to be “kow towing” i rest my case in regard to the current supremacist imagined community. The concept of imagined communities as the basis of nationalism is set out in Benedict Anderson’s “Imagined Communities – Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism.”
I note the importance of a point Professor Sun makes in the lecture: that the vast majority of Chinese in Australia are not interested in the views of the extreme pro-China and anti-China activists. They just want to get on with their lives and be successful and happy. And this was my experience in my near 8 years of working and living in China. The Chinese were not, just like Australians, particularly interested in politics; they just wanted to get on with their lives and all they required of their governments was that conditions for a good and safe life were maintained.
Another wonderful piece by Wanning Sun. She has the remarkable ability to excite both shame and hope in an umpteenth-generation Anglo-Celtic-Germanic mixed-breed Australian like me. And, happily, some of us are trying to do something about realising the amazing potential Australia has as a multicultural, inclusive nation at peace with its own domestic history (if we can ever achieve that). Professor Sun encourages us on.
“The lecture starts with a brief review of recent changes in Chinese migration to Australia in the last four decades”
Very selective timeframes there, almost like you are trying to avoid something. Why not start from the 1800s during the gold rush and go from there through the White Australia Policy and then finally where we land today?
Why not start from even earlier when Chinese sailors and others appeared on ships to Sydney Town – latter 18th/early 19th centuries. Rex Ingamells even suggested that “Cheng Ho” (aka Zheng He) might have touched on Australia’s north – that even if not – maybe some from his great Fleet which sailed to East Africa via Malacca and Ceylon might have touched in those northern parts. And might include the possibility – though much pushed back on at the time it appeared in an SMH column back in the 1980s that fair “dinkum” had a likely Chinese origin. I was in Nyngan recently – in the cemetery a section with the graves of nine Chinese men – back around the start of the 20th century onwards – men who had been tree fellers – clearing farming land in the late 19th century – later town market gardeners. Other graves I looked at in Cobar’s heat baked red-earth cemetery of anglo-women who had clearly married Chinese men. In both places I thought of the hardship, the courage – playing their parts in making this Australia. An older brother of my great great grand-father was Jim KABLE (my namesake) – trading between Calcutta and southern China – on his father-owner’s vessell – a brig – the “Fly” – was killed by pirates at Kepulauan Masalembu (then uninhabited) in the middle of the Java Sea between Madura and southern Kalimantan mid-late November, 1809. A Chinese “lascar” Ah Kini along with Portuguese “lascar” George were those who told the story to Dutch authorities at Sumenep…You can visit the Museum of Sydney and see porcelain/ceramic bowls crafted in “Canton” with images of Sydney Town from the early decades of the 19th century. Brava, Wanning Sun. By the way – who is Henry CHAN? Was he also known as Harry CHAN?