Sydney’s Chinatown
Total population
697,890 (2006)
3.5% of Australian population
Regions with significant populations
Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide
Language(s)
Australian English, Chinese languages, others
Religion(s)
Christianity, Taoism, Buddhism, others
Related ethnic groups
Chinese New Zealanders, Overseas Chinese
A Chinese Australian is an Australian of Chinese heritage. In the 2006 Australian Census, 669,890 Australian residents (or 3.4% of the resident population) identified themselves as having Chinese ancestry.
The early history of Chinese Australians had involved significant immigration from villages of the Pearl River Delta in Southern China. Less well known are the kind of society Chinese Australians came from, the families they left behind and what their intentions were in coming. Many Chinese were lured to Australia by the gold rush. (Since the mid-19th century, Australia was dubbed the New Gold Mountain after the Gold Mountain of California in North America) They sent money to their families in the villages, and often regularly visited their families and retired to the village after many years, working as a market gardener, shopkeeper or cabinet maker. As with many overseas Chinese groups the world over, early Chinese immigrants to Australia established Chinatowns in several major cities, such as Sydney (Chinatown, Sydney), Brisbane (Chinatown, Brisbane) and Melbourne (Chinatown, Melbourne).
The White Australia Policy of the early 20th Century severely curtailed the development of the Chinese communities in Australia. However, since the advent of Multiculturalism as a government policy in the 1970s, many Chinese from Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines) have immigrated to Australia.