Chinese Australian - Demographics

Demographics

The White Australia Policy of the early 20th century severely curtailed the development of the Chinese communities in Australia. However, since the advent of Multiculturalism as a government policy in the 1970s, many ethnic Chinese from Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia) have immigrated to Australia.

According to the 2011 Australian Census, 318,969 Australians declared they were born in China (excludes SARs and Republic of China (Taiwan)). A further 74,995 declared they were born in the Hong Kong SAR, 2,013 in the Macau SAR and 24,368 in Taiwan: a total of 304,775 or 1.5% of those counted by the Census. Chinese ancestry was claimed by 866,205, either alone or with another ancestry, and Taiwanese ancestry was claimed by 5,837 persons. The 2011 Australian Census reported that Chinese was the seventh most common self-reported ancestry. In the 2001 Census, just under 40% of those claiming Chinese ancestry were born in mainland China, Hong Kong or Taiwan; 26% were born in Australia with other notable birth places being Malaysia (10%) and Vietnam (8%).

Chinese Australians have historically been of predominately Cantonese descent from Hong Kong and Canton province. Due to recent immigration from other regions of mainland China and Taiwan, Mandarin has surpassed Cantonese in number of speakers. The Australian Bureau of Statistics lists 336,410 speakers of Mandarin followed by Cantonese at 263,673. Second or higher generation Chinese Australians are either monolingual in English or bilingual to varying degrees with Chinese.

According to the 2011 Census, Sydney was home to almost half (46.6%) of the Chinese population by birth. Melbourne had just over one-quarter of the Chinese born population (28.5%). The rest of Australia also had about one-quarter of the Chinese born population.

In Sydney there were 358,063 persons, or approximately 8.2% of the population, who identified themselves as having Chinese ancestry (either exclusively or with another ancestry). Other Australian cities with large Chinese populations include Melbourne (244,649 or 6.1%), Perth (72,273 or 4.2%) and Brisbane (69,343 or 3.4%). 53% of mainland China-born and 51% of Hong Kong born residents were enumerated in Sydney, while the largest portion of Taiwanese-born residents are in Brisbane (34%).

Chinese migrants are drawn from the Chinese diaspora. The 2001 Australian Census lists the main source countries and regions for overseas born ethnic Chinese as: