At the gate to Australia’s heavenly peace: Asian racialization and Australia’s Tiananmen Chinese

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the racialization of Asians in Australia through the dialectic of the “yellow peril” and “model minority”. It uses the specific historical case study of People’s Republic of China nationals in Australia at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre (1989) who were ultimately given permanent residence. Through analysis of archival sources and Australia’s print media in this period (1989–1993), the article identifies how the Tiananmen Chinese were at once characterized as educated, hard-working and worthy additions to the Australian nation (model minority), while also appearing as a threat to the order and integrity of the immigration system (yellow peril). The article draws on Asian American theorist Colleen Lye’s argument about the economistic character of Asian racial form. By using her framework, I suggest the value of deepening engagements with Asian American studies in examining the racialization of Asians in Australia.

KEYWORDS:

• Asian Australians
• Tiananmen
• Chinese students
• model minority
• yellow peril
• racialization

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of Frank Bongiorno and Jessie Liu at the Australian National University; I could not have completed this project without them. I would also like to thank my colleagues in the Asian/American Studies Collective at UC Santa Barbara for their feedback on this specific piece and the general intellectual nourishment they provide. All faults in this article are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).