Between the period of 1927–1949, some Republic of China citizens were forced to emigrate because of insecurity, lack of food and lack of business opportunity due to Chinese Civil War and Second Sino-Japanese War.
A number of factors lay behind people's decision to leave their Chinese homes. Some of them were escaping from the Taiping Rebellion, others were too poor in their homeland. Thousands of people were murdered in the Taiping Rebellion War. They gave up all hope and immigrated to other countries.
A combination of draconian Covid lockdowns and Xi Jinping's increasingly repressive rule has pushed thousands to flee China.
The Chinese immigrants were mainly peasant farmers who left home because of economic and political troubles in China. Most intended to work hard, make a lot of money, and then return to their families and villages as wealthy men.
The impact of the Opium Wars
Through the two Opium Wars in the mid-nineteenth century, Britain and France forced the Qing government to authorize a massive exodus of Chinese labourers to western countries and their colonies, to replace black slaves.
By the early 1850s, news of a gold rush in Australia had reached southern China, sparking an influx in Chinese migration to Australia. It is thought that approximately 7000 Chinese people came to work at the Araluen gold fields in southern NSW.
Linked to eunuch politics and wasteful policies, the voyages were over. By the century's end, ships could not be built with more than two masts, and in 1525 the government ordered the destruction of all oceangoing ships.
At that time, war, famine, and a poor economy in southeastern China caused many Chinese men to come to America. Most of them hoped to find great wealth and return to China.
From Seattle to Los Angeles, from Wyoming to the small towns of California, immigrants from China were forced out of business, run out of town, beaten, tortured, lynched, and massacred, usually with little hope of help from the law.
Chinese immigrants in the 19th century worked in the California Gold Rush of the 1850s and the Central Pacific Railroad in the 1860s. They also worked as laborers in Western mines. They suffered racial discrimination at every level of society. The white people were stirred to anger by the "Yellow Peril" rhetoric.
The country's National Bureau of Statistics reported a drop of roughly 850,000 people for a population of 1.41175 billion in 2022, marking the first decline since 1961, the last year of China's Great Famine.
At the 2021 census, 1,390,637 Australian residents identified themselves as having Chinese ancestry, accounting for 5.5% of the total population.
Records show that about 18 Chinese settlers had immigrated to Australia before 1848. The earliest known Chinese immigrant to arrive in Sydney is reported to have been Mak Sai Ying. Born in Guangzhou (Canton) in 1798, he arrived as a free settler in New South Wales in 1818 and purchased land at Parramatta.
Although mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau constitute a single country, Chinese citizens do not have freedom of movement in all three jurisdictions. Each region maintains a separate immigration policy and can deny entry to or deport non-resident Chinese citizens visiting from outside that territory.
From the mid-20th century onward, emigration has been directed primarily to Western countries such as the United States, Australia, Canada, Brazil, The United Kingdom, New Zealand, Argentina and the nations of Western Europe; as well as to Peru, Panama, and to a lesser extent to Mexico.
Many Chinese Americans have ancestors from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, as well as other regions that are inhabited by large populations of the Chinese diaspora, especially Southeast Asia and some other countries such as Australia, Canada, France, South Africa, New Zealand, and the ...
The door to the Chinese American dream was slammed shut in 1882, when Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. This act was the first significant restriction on free immigration in U.S. history, and it excluded Chinese laborers from the country under penalty of imprisonment and deportation.
An estimate published in 2018 counted 600,000 people of other nations living in China, with 12% of those from the US; that means approximately 72,000 Americans living in China.
By 1871 there were 2,645 Chinese people living in New Zealand. These migrants, often from the Guandong region like Minnie's father, sought to make money working in New Zealand to send back to their family, often hoping to eventually return to China.
They would often flock to Mott Street in the evening or on Sunday to socialize, gamble, smoke opium, get mail, hear news of their home village, and other things.
While the number of Chinese immigrants in the United States peaked at almost 2.5 million in 2019, it fell to under 2.4 million in 2021, breaking a long period of growth.
About the White Australia policy
The Immigration Restriction Act was one of the first Commonwealth laws passed after Federation. It was based on the existing laws of the colonies. The aim of the law was to limit non-white (particularly Asian) immigration to Australia, to help keep Australia 'British'.
TRANSCRIPT: Traditionally in the West, we've always told the story the other way around, in which the key to the story is that the Europeans find this supply of silver, and the Europeans are the ones who want spices, silk, porcelain, et cetera.
Firstly, it was easier for Europeans to cross the Atlantic than for Chinese to cross the Pacific. Secondly, Europeans were motivated by the desire to access China's legendary wealth whereas Chinese had no such incentive for exploration.
Historians have a variety of explanations. The Yongle Emperor was distracted by a land war against the Mongols, a conflict in which the navy was irrelevant, for instance. Others argue that the vast cost of the Treasure Fleet's expeditions far outweighed the actual treasure they came back with.