I’m not old enough nor am I knowledgeable enough to tell you the whole story, but I’ll try.
Because most of the Chinese people you see are not permanent residents or nationals, they are either on a visitor visa, a student visa, or some other kind of temporary visa.
Chinese migration to Australia started way back in the days of the Australian Gold Rushes. Most of them settled down. How big a portion of their descendants were assimilated into the mainstream, I’m not able to tell, but usually they would not speak any kind of Chinese language and consider themselves purely Australian. Over the years, some of their relatives and friends must have followed them, on what visa, I don’t know.
Then there were the major changes in mainland China immigrants - after the civil war following WWII, after the Cultural Revolution, after Tienanmen Square Event. I believe they formed the foundation of the Chinese communities you see in Australia today. Many of them arrived on a student visa, and I don’t know through what visa type they finally settled down; it could be a protective visa, work visa, or something else.
Then it’s the recent years’ boom. A lot of overseas students from China entered Australia to study, and they are allowed to stay after graduation to allow time for job seeking. Some accompanied by their parents, others visited by their family, relatives, and friends. This is the majority of young Chinese people you see in big cities like Sydney and Melbourne. They are pretty active, too. Most of my WeChat feed subscriptions seem to be created and run by Chinese students or people who seem to have graduated in the past few years. I can tell by the things they care about and the style of their writing. Pretty young. Most won’t have kids.
And of course, as others have mentioned, there is skilled worker immigration, I myself being one of them. I find my kind rather the minority, though, because the scoring system demands you do exceptionally well in all aspects of English language abilities. I needed to get at least 7’s on each and every module of the IELTS test (listening, reading, writing, and speaking) to be qualified, and I barely made the writing module - I initially got a 6.5 but got 7 as the final score after I requested a review. To give you an idea of how hard this is, the top score you can get on any module is 9, which is functionally a native speaker or bilingual competency. 8 = excellent and 7 = very good. It’s not hard to get an overall 7, but at least 7 on each and every module, which eliminated most of the Chinese applicants. I was told only 3% of all IELTS test takers from mainland China were able to make at least four 7’s. Since I started living in Australia, most of the Chinese people I met fell into the previous several categories.
And not all Chinese came from the mainland. There are HK people, Macau people, Taiwanese, and people from Southeast Asian countries who are ethnically Chinese but weren’t born in China. That can be the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia (a big group), Singapore, and so on. These ethnically Chinese consist of at least a quarter of the Chinese community.
Two other minority groups that I know of and are worth mentioning are the rich and the illegal. A lot of rich Chinese made investments that the Australian government approved, and got their permanent residence just like that. Since it’s really a lot of money, I doubt there are that many. The number of such immigrants cannot compare to any of the previously mentioned groups. But their family and friends can always get a visitor visa and come and play (work?) with them. Another very small group is the illegal migrants. They simply entered Australia and stayed. They cut off their connections with all officials, don’t go to Centrelink and get cash-paying (most likely also underpaying) jobs, and live. I don’t know anyone in particular, but I have heard such stories. The number of such people would be even smaller than the rich kind if I take a wild guess.
Last but not least, unless you ask, a lot of times you can’t really tell a Chinese from a Korean, or a Japanese, or a Vietnamese, or a Thai. Some people have pretty obvious characteristics, whether in appearance or in manner, most don’t. I myself can’t tell most of the time by just looking at first sight.
No comments:
Post a Comment