Are We Asian Yet? History vs Geography by Jonathan Pearlman

Author:Jonathan Pearlman [Pearlman, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760641009
Google: yuMkvAEACAAJ
Goodreads: 44013664
Publisher: Black Incorporated
Published: 2019-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

Anglosphere affinities

Australia has come a long way since the White Australia policy. Multiculturalism enjoys bipartisan support, and over the last two decades the proportion of the country’s population born overseas has risen steadily. From 2007 to 2017, the percentages of those born in England, Italy and Scotland declined, but the proportions of those born in China, India, the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia increased. The number of Australian residents with Chinese ancestry rose from about 3.4 per cent in 2006 to 5.2 per cent – or 1.2 million people – in 2016, while the number of those with Indian ancestry increased from 1.2 per cent to 2.6 per cent – or 620,000 people. Student enrolments from Asia have also risen over the past decade. As of October 2018, students from China made up the largest share of Australia’s international students, at 30 per cent, followed by India (13 per cent), Nepal (6 per cent) and Malaysia (4 per cent). In quantitative terms, Australia is more “Asian” than it was a decade ago.

Australia … continues to be perceived as an outsider

These numbers demonstrate Australia’s desirability as a place to live. The country has had twenty-seven years of uninterrupted economic growth, has one of the highest minimum-wage levels in the world, and its people enjoy a relatively strong level of political freedom. Australia has consistently ranked within the top three of the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index, which is based on life expectancy, education levels and standards of living. Its universities are considered among the best in the world. A 2016 survey conducted by the Institute of Policy Studies in Singapore found that Australia was the preferred migration destination for local respondents, far ahead of New Zealand, in second place, followed by the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan. Travelling from Asia to Australia has become easier and, in most cases, cheaper. Ten years ago, direct flights connected Australia and mainland China only between Sydney and Melbourne, and Beijing and Shanghai. Today, there are more than 100 flights a week between multiple Australian and Chinese cities. In 2016, Singapore Airlines became the first carrier in more than a decade to fly regularly to Canberra from overseas. With expanding transport and people-to-people links, Australia appears to be becoming increasingly “Asian-ised”.

Yet most of Australia’s population remains of Anglo-Saxon ethnicity. Although the proportion of first-generation immigrants born in England has declined, it is, at 4.1 per cent, far higher than that of any other foreign country. Despite the rapid increase in the number of Australians with Chinese ancestry, the 2016 ABS census found that the most common groups of ancestry continue to be English (33.6 per cent), Australian (31.2 per cent), Irish (10.2 per cent) and Scottish (8.6 per cent). While ethnic compositions differ across cities and suburbs – and there are parts of Sydney and Melbourne where those with Chinese or Indian ancestry are the largest population group – the Asian presence in Australia, though expanding, still forms a relatively minor segment of the overall population.

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