‘That Hateful Flag’, Anti-Manchu Sentiment amongst Chinese Australians

Abstract

In December 1911, as a revolution continued to unfold in China, the secretary of the Melbourne-based revolutionary group the Young China League wrote a scathing letter to the Chinese Consul General in Australia criticising the consulate for raising the ‘hateful flag’ of the Qing Dynasty, and showing sympathies with the ‘despotic’ Manchu government. At the centre of this letter was a clear frustration at the Manchu ethnic group that then ruled China. This article examines this letter as a case study in the development of anti-Manchu rhetoric among Chinese people all over the world, revealing its impact on Chinese Australians’ changing concepts of loyalty during the Qing Dynasty.

There are too many to mention, but I would like to thank my friends and colleagues who showed an interest in this project, and encouraged me to pursue it to its completion.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The Herald, 26 December 1911, 8.

2 Edward J.M. Rhoads, Manchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China 1861–1928 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 10.

3 The term Chinese Australians is used in a broad and general sense throughout this article to refer to any individual of Chinese background who resided in Australia.

4 Joseph W. Esherick, ‘Reconsidering 1911: Lessons of a Sudden Revolution’, Journal of Modern Chinese History 6, no. 1 (2012): 12.

5 C.F. Yong, The New Gold Mountain: The Chinese in Australia 1901–1921 (Adelaide: Raphael Arts, 1977), 116; Mei-Fen Kuo, Making Chinese Australia: Urban Elites, Newspapers and the Formation of Chinese-Australian Identity, 1892–1912 (Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2013), 215.

6 Steffen Rimner, ‘Chinese Abolitionism: The Chinese Educational Mission in Connecticut, Cuba, and Peru’, Journal of Global History 11 (2016): 351; Elena Barabantseva, Overseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism: De-Centering China (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), 23.

7 Marilyn Lake, ‘The Chinese Empire Encounter the British Empire and Its “Colonial Dependencies”: Melbourne, 1887’, in Chinese Australians: Politics, Engagement and Resistance, eds Sophie Couchman and Kate Bagnall (Boston: Brill, 2015), 105–7.

8 Sydney Morning Herald, 12 February 1909, 6.

9 Kuo, 218.

10 Singleton Argus, 14 August 1909, 4.

11 This was an event in 1908, where the Qing Dynasty gave in to Japanese demands for compensation after capturing the Japanese steamer Tatsumaru, suspecting it of trafficking guns.

12 The Advertiser, 12 August 1909, 9.

13 The Advertiser, 23 November 1909, 7.

14 Kuo, 240.

15 Rhoads, Manchus and Han, 187.

16 The Age, 17 October 1911, 7.

17 Sydney Morning Herald, 25 October 1911, 19.

18 The Herald, 26 December 1911, 8.

19 Chinese Times, 31 July 1909, 9; Kuo, 238.

20 Chinese Times, 28 January 1911, 2, 6.

21 The Age, 24 January 1910, 6.

22 The Age, 28 December 1910, 7.

23 Sydney Morning Herald, 24 October 1911, 9.

24 The Argus, 1 January 1912, 5.

25 Kuo, 242.

26 Chinese Times, 30 December 1911, 5; Chinese Times, 6 January 1912, 11.

27 The Bendigo Independent, 28 December 1911, 3.

28 Hu Ying, ‘Enemy, Friend, Martyr: Commemorating Liangbi (1877–1912), Contesting History’, Late Imperial China 38, no. 1 (2017): 18.

29 Ibid., 20.

30 Mark C. Elliott, The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2001), 5–6; Rhoads, Manchu and Han, 35.

31 Hu Ying, 20.

32 C.Y. Choi, Chinese Migration and Settlement in Australia (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1975), 15.

33 Ibid., 8.

34 Yen Ching Hwang, The Overseas Chinese and the 1911 Revolution: With Special Reference to Singapore and Malaya (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1976), 12.

35 Yong, 115.

36 Jing Tsu, Failure, Nationalism, and Literature: The Making of Modern Chinese Identity, 1895–1937 (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2005), 53.

37 Barabantseva, 22–3.

38 Sydney Morning Herald, 17 June 1909, 8.

39 Yen, 57.

40 Rodney Noonan, ‘Grafton to Guangzhou: The Revolutionary Journey of Tse Tsan Tai’, Journal of Intercultural Studies 27, no. 1–2 (2006): 103.

41 Choi, 12–13.

42 Ibid., 13–14.

43 James Francis Warren, Rickshaw Coolie: A People’s History of Singapore (1880–1940) (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986), 17–18.

44 Yong, 1.

45 Ying-Kit Chan, ‘Divide to Unite: Ou Jujia, New Guangdong, and Provincial Consciousness in 1900s China’, Journal of World History 29, no. 4 (2019): 495.

46 Ibid., 487.

47 Kuo, 237.

48 Ibid., 223.

49 Liang, Edward Yin, 1926–: Papers relating to Hwang Yung-liang. 1999. MS-Papers-6635, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand; Kuo, 213.

50 Chan, 496–7.

51 Choi, 4.

52 Chan, 487.

53 Ibid., 490–1.

54 Noonan, 109.

55 Sam Wong and Valerie Wong, ‘The Role of the Guangbao in Promoting Nationalism and Transmitting Reform Ideas in Late Qing China’, Modern Asian Studies 51, no. 5 (2017): 1518.

56 Chan, 496.

57 Examples include but are not limited to: the 1895 Canton Revolt, the Huizhou uprising (1900), the 1903 revolt, the New Army Uprising (February 1910) and the Canton March 29 Uprising (1911). See Edward J.M Rhoads, China’s Republican Revolution: The Case of Kwangtung, 1895–1913 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975).

58 Li Zhenwu, ‘Late Qing Governors and Provincial Assemblies’, in China: How the Empire Fell, eds Joseph W. Esherick and C.X. George Wei (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), 46.

59 Tsu, 32.

60 Rhoads, Manchus and Han, 18.

61 Rebecca E. Karl. Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (London: Duke University Press, 2002), 166.

62 Young-tsu Wong. Beyond Confucian China: The Rival Discourse of Kang Youwei and Zhang Binglin (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010), 48.

63 Yen, 50.

64 John Fitzgerald, Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007), 123.

65 Ibid., 114.

66 The West Australian, 2 February 1909, 3.

67 A.C. Palfreeman, The Administration of the White Australian Policy (London: Melbourne University Press, 1967), 7.

68 Kuo, 150.

69 Fitzgerald, 114.

70 Examples include ‘Ten Days in Yangzhou’ and ‘The Massacre in Jiading’; Tsu, 42.

71 Peter Zarrow, China in War and Revolution, 1895–1949 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), 66.

72 Barabantseva, 21.

73 Cited by Rhoads, Manchus and Han, 15.

74 Ibid.

75 Ibid., 163.

76 Kuo, 224–5.

77 Factories and Shop Act 1896 (VIC) S. 3(1), http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb//au/legis/vic/hist_act/fasa1896196/ (accessed 9 January 2022).

78 Factories and Shop Act 1896 (VIC) S. 23(1), http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb//au/legis/vic/hist_act/fasa1896196/ (accessed 9 January 2022).

79 Immigration Restriction Act 1901 S. 9, https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C1901A00017 (accessed 9 January 2022).

80 The Age, 5 September 1900, 7.

81 The Bulletin, 22 June 1901, 8.

82 Henry Reynolds, North of Capricorn: The Untold Story of Australia’s North (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2003), 169.

83 Fitzgerald, 33.

84 Yen, xxi.

85 Kuo, 126.

86 Yong, 137–8.

87 Kuo, 184–5.

88 Wong, 52.

89 Kuo, 222.

90 Ibid., 238.

91 Esherick, 10.

92 Rhoads, Manchus and Han, 189.

93 Ibid., 192. There were further massacres in Taiyuan, Zhenjiang and Nanjing.

94 Zhou Jiming and Hu Xi, ‘Conflict and Competition: A New Perspective on Late Qing Politics’, in China: How the Empire Fell, eds Joseph W. Esherick and C.X. George Wei (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), 74.

95 Sydney Morning Herald, 25 December 1911, 7.

96 The Sun, 20 October 1911, 12.

97 二百六十年漢人不服滿人. The Chinese Times, 23 December 1911, 3–4.

98 Esherick, 2–3.

99 Liang, Edward Yin, 1926–: Papers relating to Hwang Yung-liang. 1999. MS-Papers-6635, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

100 Sydney Morning Herald, 12 February 1909, 6.

101 The West Australian, 2 February 1909, 3.

102 Sydney Morning Herald, 12 February 1909, 6.

103 The West Australian, 2 February 1909, 3.

104 Sydney Morning Herald, 12 February 1909, 6.

105 Sydney Morning Herald, 21 June 1909, 6; Maryborough Chronicle, Wide Bay and Burnett Advertiser, 26 June 1909, 3.

106 The Argus, 31 August 1911, 9.

107 Cairns Morning Post, 29 July 1908, 6.

108 The secretary for the Consul General Mr Chai claimed the diplomatic courtesies in question were to celebrate the birthday of foreign leaders. The Herald, 29 December 1911, 1.

109 Globe, 10 January 1912, 2.

110 The Age, 4 January 1912, 7.

111 Globe, 10 January 1912, 2.

112 Pamela Crossley, A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 337.

113 Letter of Hwang Yung Liang to the Minister of External Affairs, Atlee Hunt, 19 February 1912, National Archives of Australia: A1, 1913/18967.

114 Liang, Edward Yin, 1926–: Papers relating to Hwang Yung-liang. 1999. MS-Papers-6635. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.