Chinese in Australian Fiction, 1888–1988 By Ouyang Yu

But around the period of the First Opium War, when Great Britain forced the Qing government to accept opium importation⁶ and occupied Hong Kong, this migration took on a new form called ‘coolie’ emigration. It resulted from the opening up of five treaty ports after the Nanking Treaty (1842), among them Canton (Guangdong) and Amoy (Fujian); it was driven by the need for cheap labour on the part of foreign powers such as Great Britain and the United States after the end of the slave trade, as well as the appalling living conditions in those two provinces⁷ and throughout the country.⁸ Most of the so-called coolies went to Mauritius (1843), Bourbon Isle (1845), Cuba (1847), Peru (1849), the British West Indies (1852), and California (1854).⁹ Some of them went to Australia.

The Early Period (1888–1901)

According to Eric Rolls, the first Chinese man to arrive in Australia, Mark O Pong, arrived in 1817.¹⁰ A carpenter, Moon Chow, followed him in 1829. After that, three more Chinese convicts went to Sydney in 1837.¹¹ Another account has a group of nine carpenters arriving in Tasmania in 1830 as the first Chinese in Australia.¹² By general agreement, however, not until 1848 did the systematic migration of Chinese labourers begin. In that year, J. Tait & Co., an English company, recruited one hundred Chinese labourers and twenty-one child labourers in Amoy and sent them to Sydney on the Nimrod.¹³

The Qing government, from its very inception, had regarded any movement overseas with suspicion and disapproval. The Great Qing Law in 1647 stipulated that ‘whoever, officials or civilians, engages in private overseas business or migrates to other sea islands to live by farming is an enemy and should be beheaded’.¹⁴ However, when the evil practice of exporting and exploiting coolies started, the corrupt Qing government did nothing to stop it. Although the government policy became more lenient later, it took a harsh and cruel attitude toward its nationals abroad at this time. Asked one Chinese official in 1856: ‘When the Emperor rules over so many millions, what does he care for a few waifs that have drifted away to a foreign land?’¹⁵