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Abstract
The Black Lives Matter rallies across Australia in 2020 drew wide attention to Indigenous deaths in custody, calling forth racial justice to right the wrongs of continuing colonization. However, many may have missed the rare, if not fortuitous, presence of Chinese Australians at the rallies and the heated discussions within the Chinese community on social media. Little recognition of the cross-cultural contact between Chinese and Indigenous peoples points to a blind spot vis-à-vis Australia’s race and ethnic relations, a schism that needs bridging if community-wide social cohesion and reconciliation is to be realized. The key question is: why do Indigenous-Chinese relationships remain unrecognized and misunderstood by the mainstream society? In an attempt to tackle this question, this essay will look into the under-reported participation of Chinese individuals and organizations at the Australian BLM rallies and provide a critical consideration of the mixed attitudes within the Chinese community over the rallies in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. By exploring the understated support and camaraderie, as well as fractures and frictions, of the ongoing relationships between Indigenous and Chinese Australians, this essay examines the conceptual, historical and transnational factors that render the recognition of their interrelations difficult in contemporary Australia. It brings together otherwise disparate issues, including the conceptual divide between race and ethnicity, segregation history, identity politics, and transnational racism. It links cyber discussion within the Chinese community in Australia with the discourse of race in China, so as to chart the transnational connectivity of racial discourses and racism against cultural others in the era of social media. In so doing, the essay will offer new insights into Indigenous-Chinese interrelations in culturally diverse Australia.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 In this essay “Indigenous people” refers to the first nations of Australia, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
2 This is notwithstanding the decreasing number of Indigenous deaths in custody as the percentage of the Indigenous prison population over the past three decades, which is now lower than the rate of non-Indigenous deaths in prison.
3 The discussion about the BLM movement in China is beyond the scope of this essay for two main reasons: first, the BLM movement did not generate much debate within China when public attention was gripped by the Covid-19 pandemic; second, the limited discussion on the BLM movement – both Chinese official responses and public discourse – was framed within a large narrative of China-US tensions, deviating from the racial discourse examined here.
4 This figure excludes those from Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR and Taiwan.
5 A proportion of immigrants with Chinese ancestry are from Southeast Asian countries, such as Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. This essay focuses on the Chinese who have emigrated from China.
9 Indigenous-Chinese interrelations has emerged in the field of arts and culture, for instance the acclaimed collaborations between Chinese-born, Melbourne-based artist Zhou Xiaoping and the Walmajarri artist, Jimmy Pike, and the Ganalbingu artist, Johnny Bulunbulun.
10 The BLM movement has sparked debates among overseas Chinese, notably in the United States, on whether Chinese communities should join black Americans in the protests against racial injustice following Floyd’s killing (Sun Citation2020). The debates in the US were more intense than that in Australia, as I observe.
11 1.5 generation immigrants are those who are foreign born but emigrate at a young age. They may acculturate to Australia to a greater extent than those adult, first generation immigrants. But they may experience “double” cultural identities compared to those native-born, second generation immigrants.
12 The quotes in Chinese are translated by the author. The same below.
13 The original quote is from 7News, 5 June 2020: https://www.7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/sydneys-black-lives-matter-protest-deemed-illegal-by-supreme-court-c-1082394.
14 No direct link was found later between the BLM rallies and the rapid increase of Covid-19 cases in Victoria in June 2020. See the ABC programme “The Drum” aired on 27 July 2020.
15 Chinese Australians also identify themselves as Asian Australians.
16 The translation of the Chinese term “Minzu” is the subject of controversy, which is beyond the discussion here. Its multiple meanings can be close to the English equivalent of nation, nationality, nationalism, or ethnicity. I follow Dikötter (Citation2015) to translate “Minzu” in Sun’s Three Principles of the People as nationalism, and sociologist Ma Rong (Citation2012) to translate “Zhonghua Minzu” as the Chinese nation.
17 Recent years have seen the initiative taken to compare Indigeneity between Indigenous Australians and Inner Mongolians and other Chinese ethnic minorities. These discussions focus on the preservation of cultural heritage, language revival, and cultural exchange. For instance, academic conferences on “Parallels between Australian Indigenous people and people of Chinese Mongolian nationality” were held in Hohhot, China in 2015 and 2017.