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Abstract
Australian society functioned under the Immigration Restriction Act from 1901 until the 1970s, and relatively little has been written about Chinese Australian lives and experiences during that period. At a time when national legislation threatened their community viability and sense of belonging, and prevented many of them from active military service, Chinese Australians invested significantly in philanthropic, patriotic activities. This pattern of community activity also appeared in other diasporic Chinese communities in North America, lending weight to recent calls in Chinese Australian historiography for a more transnational conceptualisation of identity and cultural politics. This essay examines the underrepresented subject of Chinese Australian patriotic fundraising in the two World Wars, focussing in particular on the ways in which Chinese communities chose to participate during two periods of heightened nationalism. In what ways did Chinese Australians contribute, and how were these activities perceived in broader Australian society?
Acknowledgements
Tseen Khoo would like to acknowledge that this research was supported by the Australian Research Council's Discovery Projects funding scheme (DP0880038) and her Monash University Research Fellowship. The authors would also like to thank the readers of earlier drafts of this essay for their astute comments and suggestions.
Notes
1Hsu-Ming Teo, ‘Future Fusions and a Taste for the Past: Literature, History and the Imagination of Australianness’, Australian Historical Studies, 118 (2002): 139.
2Other research about transnational aspects of diasporic Chinese community life includes Hong Liu's ‘Old Linkages, New Networks: The Globalization of Overseas Chinese Voluntary Associations and its Implications’, The China Quarterly, 155 (1998): 588–609; and Aihwa Ong's ‘Flexible Citizenship among Chinese Cosmopolitans’, in The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory and Critique, ed. Joan Vincent (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), 338–55.
3Andrew Markus, ‘Reflections on the Administration of the “White Australia” Immigration Policy’, in After the Rush: Regulation, Participation, and Chinese Communities in Australia 1860–1940, eds Sophie Couchman, John Fitzgerald, and Paul Macgregor (Melbourne: Otherland, 2004), 57. See also Henry Chan, ‘From Quong Tarts to Victor Changs: Being Chinese in Australia in the Twentieth Century’, Centre for the Study of the Chinese Southern Diaspora seminar presentation, 24 May 2000 (accessed 3 November 2010 from the website: http://rspas.anu.edu.au/cscsd/online/henry.html).
4Nigel Murphy, ‘“The elephant in the living room”: Studying Chinese Australian History’, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 10, no. 1 (2008): 134–5.
5Chan, ‘From Quong Tarts’.
6Morag Loh and Judith Winternitz, Dinky-Di: The Contributions of Chinese Immigrants and Australians of Chinese Descent to Australia's Defence Forces and War Efforts 1899–1988 (Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1989), 22. Works that focussed on Chinese Australian Anzacs include: Robert A. Hall, ‘“An Invitation to National Disunity”: Chinese Support for Australia's War Effort in the Second World War and the White Australian Response’, War and Society 8, no. 2 (October 1990): 104–19; Diana Giese, Courage and Service: Chinese Australians and World War II (Sydney: Courage and Service Project, 1999); John Hamilton, Gallipoli Sniper: The Life of Billy Sing (Sydney: Pan MacMillan, 2008); Alastair Kennedy, ‘Queensland's “Assassin of Gallipoli” and other Chinese Australian Heroes of World War One’, in Rediscovered Past: China in Northern Australia, eds Kevin Wong Hoy and Kevin Rains (Melbourne: Chinese Heritage in Northern Australia, 2009), 31–8.
7Wendy Rankine, ‘Australia's Chinese Army Corps’, in Chinese in Australia and New Zealand: A Multidisciplinary Approach, ed. Jan Ryan (New Delhi: New Age International, 1995), 67–74; Wendy Rankine, ‘From Nauru to Nowhere: Pacific Island Chinese Evacuee Workers in Central Australian Wolfram Mines, 1942–43’, in Histories of the Chinese in Australasia and the South Pacific, ed. Paul Macgregor (Melbourne: Museum of Chinese Australian History, 1995), 152–8; Drew Cottle, ‘Forgotten Foreign Militants: The Chinese Seamen's Union in Australia, 1942–1946’, in A Few Rough Reds: Stories of Rank and File Organisers, eds. Hal Alexander and Phil Griffiths (Canberra: Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, 2003), 135–51; Paul Jones, ‘“A Consequent Gain in Tempo of Effort”: Chinese Labour and Chinese Industrial Activism in Australia, 1941–45’, in The Past is Before Us: The Ninth Labour History Conference, The University of Sydney, 30 June – 2 July 2005, eds., Greg Patmore, John Shields and Nikola Balnave (Sydney: Australian Society for the Study of Labour History with the Business and Labour History Group, 2005), 339–47.
8Melanie Oppenheimer, All Work No Pay: Australian Civilian Volunteers in War (Walcha: Ohio Productions, 2002); Melanie Oppenheimer, Volunteering: Why We Can't Survive Without It (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2008), 34–49.
9Notably K. Scott Wong's Americans First: Chinese Americans and the Second World War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), where Wong argues that the Second World War brought about ‘the most dramatic changes in the social roles of Chinese Americans’ (73). See also Chinese American Voices: From the Goldrush to the Present (compiled and edited by Judy Yung, Gordon H. Chang and H. Mark Lai, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), particularly pages 106–7.
10See Paul Jones’ ‘What Happened to Australia's Chinese between the World Wars?’, in After the Rush, p. 226.
11For other Asian Australian and Asian American comparative work, refer to the outcomes of the three-year Australian Research Council Discovery project, ‘Being Australian in the United States and America’ (2008–2010; http://arc2008.asianaustralianstudies.org); for diasporic Chinese Australia/New Zealand comparative history and he ritage work, see Keir Reeves, ‘Tracking the Dragon Down Under: Chinese Cultural Connections in Goldrush Australia and Aotearoa, New Zealand’, Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies, 1.5 (2005): 41–66; and Warwick Frost, ‘Making an Edgier Interpretation of the Goldrushes: Contrasting Perspectives from Australia and New Zealand’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 11.3 (2005): 235–50.
12Christine Inglis, ‘Chinese in Australia,’ International Migration Review 6, no. 3 (1972): 267, 266–81).
13Inglis, 267–8.
14Oppenheimer, All Work, 8.
15Ian Willis, ‘Wartime Volunteering in Camden’, History Australia 2, no. 1 (2004): 9–5.
16For a study of the event's earlier years, see Amanda Rasmussen, ‘Networks and Negotiations: Bendigo's Chinese and the Easter Fair’, Journal of Australian Colonial History 6, (2004): 79–92.
17Roger L. Burritt, Dylan Walker and Amanda J. Carter, Way Lee: 100 Years On (Adelaide: University of South Australia, 2009), 24.
18Loh and Winternitz, 17.
19Oppenheimer, All Work, 9.
20The Australian Comforts Fund sent food parcels and provided clothing and personal hygiene items not supplied by the military (Oppenheimer, All Work, 152).
21Oppenheimer, All Work, 7.
22Oppenheimer, All Work, 37.
23Oppenheimer, All Work, 31.
24Oppenheimer, All Work, 62.
25 Sydney Morning Herald, 22 August 1914, 14.
26 Sydney Morning Herald, 22 August 1914, 8.
27 Newcastle Morning Herald, 24 September 1914, 5.
28John Fitzgerald, ‘Advance Australia Fairly: Chinese Voices at Federation’, in After the Rush, 59–74.
29 Argus, 25 August 1914, 8.
30Leon Stubbings, ‘Look What You Started Henry!’ A History of the Australian Red Cross 1914–1991 (Melbourne: Australian Red Cross Society, 1992), 7–10.
31 Atherton News & Barron Valley Advocate, 21 October 1914, 3.
32 Argus, 13 August 1915, 13.
33 Mullumbimby Star, 4 July 1918, 2.
34Joanna Boileau, Families of Fortune: Chinese People in the Tweed (Tweed Heads: Tweed River Regional Museum, 2009), 75.
35 Mullumbimby Star, 17 February 1916, 2.
36John Fitzgerald, Big White Lie, 218.
37Quoted in Carol Holsworth, Chinese in Echuca-Moama: A Chronicle 1850s to 1930 (Echuca Historical Society Inc, 2008), 100.
38 Argus, 15 March 1918, 6.
39 Northern Territory Times, 17 August 1916, 13.
40 Newcastle Morning Herald, 4 November 1918, 4.
41 Newcastle Morning Herald, 8 June 1915, 4.
42The stalls raised money for soldiers’ institutes under the auspices of the YMCA, Salvation Army and other churches. Argus, 17 December 1915, 8.
43 Argus, 25 May 1918, 16.
44 Our Jack, 28 October 1918, 3.
45 Sydney Morning Herald, 23 April 1918, 6.
46 Sydney Morning Herald, 7 May 1918, 8.
47 Sydney Morning Herald, 18 May 1918, 7.
48David Walker notes that the Immigration Restriction Act ‘attracted overwhelming support through to the 1960s’ (‘Race Building and the Disciplining of White Australia’, in Legacies of White Australia: Race, Culture and Nation, eds., Laksiri Jayasuriya, David Walker and Jan Gothard [Perth: U of Western Australia Press, 2003], 33).
49Scott Wong, 42.
50 Sydney Morning Herald, 12 June 1918, 10.
51 Sydney Morning Herald, 26 June 1918, 10.
52 Brisbane Courier, 30 November 1918, 5.
53 Brisbane Courier, 21 July 1919, 7.
54 Northern Territory Times, 26 July 1919, 14.
55 Sydney Morning Herald, 21 July 1919, 11.
56John Fitzgerald, ‘Transnational Networks and National Identities in the Australian Commonwealth: The Chinese-Australasian Kuomintang, 1923–1937’, Australian Historical Studies, 37. 127 (2006): 116.
57Shirley Fitzgerald, Red Tape, Gold Scissors: The Story of Sydney's Chinese (Sydney: State Library of New South Wales Press, 1996), 136.
58Wendy Lu Mar, So Great a Cloud of Witnesses: A History of the Chinese Presbyterian Church, Sydney 1893–1993 (Sydney: Chinese Presbyterian Church, 1993), 18.
59Drew Cottle, ‘Unbroken Commitment: Fred Wong, China, Australia and a World to Win’, in After the Rush, 110–1.
60Scott Wong, 40–2.
61Cottle, ‘Forgotten Foreign Militants’, 148.
62Cottle, ‘Unbroken Commitment’, 108.
63Loh, 106–113. For more on the history of the 7th Labour Company, see Rankine and Jones.
64 Argus, 22 March 1938, 7.
65 Argus, 4 March 1939, 7.
66Shirley Fitzgerald, 138.
67 Argus, 10 September 1938, 32, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 October 1938, 16.
68William Liu to Senator H. S. Foll, Minister of the Interior, 23 June 1941, W. J. L. Liu Papers (hereafter Liu Papers), MLMSS 6294/1, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.
69 Sydney Morning Herald, 26 October 1939, 8.
70 Argus, 13 January 1940, 2; Argus, 20 January 1940, 2.
71 Argus, 17 May 1941, 7.
72 Argus, 12 June 1941, 6; Argus, 26 June 1941, 6.
73 Argus, 29 July 1941, 2.
74 Daily Telegraph, 29 July 1942, 7.
75Bill Forday, The Forday Story: The First 100 Years (Rockhampton: Bill Forday, 1998).
76Frost et al., Bendigo Chinese Heritage Precinct: Marketing and Interpretation Plan (Melbourne: Tourism Research Unit, Monash University, 2007).
77Forday, 73–74.
78Commonwealth Investigation Services and ASIO Files, ‘Chinese Comforts Fund’, Meeting minutes and report by R. A. Hartley, 1944–1945, A9108, Barcode: 3122444. National Archives of Australia, Canberra.
79Commonwealth Investigation Services and ASIO Files, ‘Chinese Comforts Fund’, Meeting minutes and report by R. A. Hartley, 1944–1945, A9108, Barcode: 3122444. National Archives of Australia, Canberra., Report by R. A. Hartley.
80 Inverell Times, 9 February 1942, 3.
81Shirley Fitzgerald, 140–1.
82Oppenheimer, All Work No Pay, 133.
83Loh and Winternitz, 108–9.
84P. T. Burke, Organiser National Quotas, First Victory Loan to William Liu, 23 May 1944; C. F. Lewis, Deputy Director, War Loans Campaign to William Liu, 8 December 1944.
85Scott Wong, 37–8.
86 Daily Telegraph, 1 August 1942, 7.
87William Liu to Dr Pao, Consulate General of the Republic of China, Calcutta, 1 October 1942.
88Janis Wilton, Hong Yuen: A Country Store and its People (Armidale: Armidale College of Advanced Education, 1988), 22.
89Wilton, 58.
90 Inverell Times, 3 August 1942, 2.
91Margaret Jean Baker, ‘A Sociological Survey of Tingha’ (MA thesis, University of Sydney, 1943), 77–8.
92 Inverell Times, 20 July 1942, 2.
93Alec Fong Lim, Memories of Pre-War Northern Territory Towns (Darwin: State Reference Library of the Northern Territory, 1990), 4.
94 Adelaide Advertiser, 17 October 1942, 6.
95 Adelaide Advertiser, 7 November 1942, 7.
96 West Australian, 8 February 1943, 4.
97Rankine, ‘Australia's Chinese Army Corps’, 72.
98 Argus, 27 February 1943, 10.
99 Hobart Mercury, 1 August 1942, 2.
100 Hobart Mercury, 25 July 1942, 4.
101These included instances such as handing a cheque to the Lord Mayor (Hobart Mercury, 31 July 1942, 5), and presenting a bouquet to the governor's wife on Allies Day (Hobart Mercury, 1 August 1942, 2).
102 Argus, 15 May 1943, 10.
103 Argus, 14 August 1943, 10.
104 Argus, 3 September 1943, 6.
105 Argus, 7 September 1943, 6.
106 Courier Mail, 17 May 1944, 4.
107 Sydney Morning Herald, 5 June 1945, 6.
108Oppenheimer, Volunteers, 47.
109 Argus, 24 March 1943, 6.
110 Argus, 5 April 1943, 6.
111 Argus, 15 April 1943, 6; Argus, 23 June 1943, 6. Plays and operas had similarly served as fundraisers in Sydney since the formation of the Chinese Youth Dramatic Association, later known as the Chinese Youth League, on 1 July 1939 (Jia Rui Zheng, ‘Sixty Years of the Chinese Youth League’, Chinese Youth League of Australia 60 th Anniversary Magazine, [2000]: 38).
112 Argus, 27 March 1942, 6.
113Scott Wong, 36.
114 Argus, 13 March 1942, 2; Age, 28 March 1942, 8; Argus, 28 March 1942, 5.
115 Sydney Morning Herald, 22 July 1943, 3.
116 Daily Telegraph, 30 July 1943, 4.
117 Newcastle Morning Herald, 26 July 1943, 2, 4.
118 Newcastle Morning Herald, 31 July 1943, 6.
119 Inverell Times, 6 August 1943, 4; Inverell Times, 13 August 1943, 4.
120 North-West Champion, 19 July 1943, 3.
121 North-West Champion, 2 August 1943, 2.
122 Tweed Daily, 19 July 1943, 2.
123 Tweed Daily, 5 August 1943, 2.
124Boileau, 59.
125 Sydney Morning Herald, 16 August 1945, 5; Argus, 17 August 1945, 4.
126 Argus, 17 August 1945, 4; Argus, 5 September 1945, 10.
127Chou-Ling Yeh, Making an American Festival: Chinese New Year in San Francisco's Chinatown (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), 2–3.
128Lynn Abrams and Karen Hunt, ‘Borders and Frontiers in Women's History’, Women's History Review 9, no. 2 (2000): 195.
129Ien Ang, ‘The Curse of the Smile: Ambivalence and the “Asian” Woman in Australian Multiculturalism’, Feminist Review, 52 (1996): 48.
130Joan Beaumont, ‘Whatever Happened to Patriotic Women, 1914–1918?’, Australian Historical Studies 31, no. 115 (2000): 276.
131Yuriko Nagata, Unwanted Aliens: Japanese Internment in Australia (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1996).