Chinese immigration to Australia

Chinese immigration to Sydney dates back almost two hundred years, with Mak Sai Ying being the first recorded settler in Australia. The 2006 census showed that 221,995 people (5.39%) in Sydney reported Mandarin or Cantonese as the language they used at home.

Chinese immigration was seen as part of a solution for a labour shortage in New South Wales from 1828 onwards, though the scale of immigration remained low until later in the nineteenth century.

What came to be known as the White Australia Policy saw a series of restrictive legislation passed at both a state and later a federal level. The climate of fear and distrust eased somewhat from the 1950s onwards, and today Chinese communities form a vibrant and important part of Sydney's character.

Chinese immigration has increased continuously from the 1990s and today the Chinese are the third largest group among immigrants. Since the mid-1990s, migration has become less permanent than it used to be, and goes in more than one direction, a trend that pertains also to the Chinese. Students and academics are examples of this pattern. In 1990, Chinese settlers rarely returned permanently, but by 2002, the number of Hong Kong settlers leaving Australia for good equalled those arriving during that year.

The earliest documented Chinese settler was Mak Sai Ying, who arrived in 1818, and purchased land in Parramatta. He married an English woman; Sarah Thompson, in 1823, changed his name to John Shying, and by 1829 held the licence for a Parramatta public house, the Lion. He returned to China in 1832, but was back in Sydney five years later. Some of his children became furniture makers, and descendants live in Melbourne today. This story of integrating while maintaining ties with China was repeated over and over in the nineteenth century. European immigrants often found the long trip 'home' a daunting prospect, but many Chinese did not feel so distant from old connections.

The shortage of labour that followed the ending of the convict system in the 1840s encouraged some tentative imports of so-called 'coolie' labour from China. The first large group arrived from Amoy (Xiamen) on the Nimrod, which docked at Henry Moore's wharf at Millers Point in October 1848, where about half of the 121 Chinese passengers disembarked. By 1852 more than 1500 had arrived. The intention was that they would work as indentured labourers on rural holdings, but some remained in Sydney and others escaped the isolation of the bush and returned to town. A five-year indenture meant very little once gold had been discovered, and the Chinese, like everyone else who caught gold fever, deserted their posts for the diggings.

...
Wikipedia