One in three Chinese-Australians suffer discrimination due to their heritage, report says

Chinese-Australians have experienced an uptick in racism since the COVID-19 pandemic, with one in four saying they have been called offensive names because of their Chinese heritage.

Instances of racial discrimination among Chinese-Australians are "disappointingly high", according to a new Lowy Institute report.

One in three Chinese-Australians living in Australia believe they experience discrimination because of their Chinese heritage, a new report by Lowy Institute has found.

One in four Chinese-Australians have been called offensive names, and almost one in five have either been physically threatened or attacked because of their heritage in the past one year, according to the report.

Lowy Institute’s Jennifer Hsu, who co-authored the report with fellow professor Natasha Kassam, said these figures are “disappointingly high”.

“These numbers are the legacy of the early onset of COVID in 2020, [which] really had an impact on how Chinese-Australians have fared in terms of discrimination and racism over the last few years,” Professor Hsu told SBS News.

The annual survey of more than 1,000 Chinese-Australians was released for the first time in early 2021.

The second edition of the report — titled Being Chinese in Australia: Public Opinion in Chinese Communities —was released earlier this month, with a slight drop in the number of people reporting racism.

In the 2021 report, 37 per cent of the survey respondents said they were “treated differently or less favourably”, while in the 2022 report that figure went down to 34 per cent.

Despite the drop, Professor Hsu said “this is still a problem”.

“We can associate [these numbers] with the development and evolution of the pandemic in the early phase of [COVID-19]," she said.

“China was the focus in the media, [with] lockdown in Wuhan. And those sort of images really stuck in people’s minds.

“That eventuated into people calling it the China virus, the Wuhan virus … giving a geographical denominator to the virus."

While it’s been more than two years since the start of the pandemic, Professor Hsu said racially divisive discussions and events in Australian politics continue to stoke the flame.

She referred to the dramatic scenes that unfolded in federal parliament in February this year when Prime Minister Scott Morrison labelled deputy Labor leader Richard Marles a “Manchurian candidate” as an example of racially divisive discussions.

The term “Manchurian candidate” is based on the book and movie of the same name and used to describe a person, especially a politician, who’s used as a puppet by a foreign power.

“In that debate, we saw a lot of mudslinging from different sides of politics, where the ALP was being labelled as appeasing China," she said.

“I think that sort of rhetoric and language doesn’t help at all in trying to reduce discrimination and racism."

She also cited Advance Australia’s election billboards claiming the Chinese Communist Party is supporting Labor as an example of racially divisive political campaigns.

“Granted we’re in election campaign season but that kind of political point-scoring is so unhelpful,” she said.

Professor Hsu also cited the October 2020 incident where conservative Liberal Senator Eric Abetz demanded three Chinese-Australians publicly and unconditionally condemn “the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship”.

Mr Abetz asked Osmond Chiu, Yun Jiang and Wesa Chau to condemn the party during a parliamentary inquiry into issues faced by diaspora communities. They were all appearing at the inquiry to provide submissions.

Mr Chiu told SBS News the racism he has experienced in Australia in the past couple of years is “unlike anything I have experienced in the past 20 years”.

“There’s a real sense that if you’re of Chinese heritage you are increasingly being treated differently," he said.

“We seem to be in an environment where some people – albeit a minority – feel that those of Chinese heritage are a potential threat or risk for no reason other than their Chinese background."

The Lowy Institute report also found only 17 per cent of the survey’s 1,000-plus respondents said they feel a “great extent” of belonging to Australia.

Five per cent of the respondents don’t feel any sense of belonging to Australia whatsoever, while 31 per cent of the respondents only feel it “slightly”.

More than half of the survey respondents — or 57 per cent — felt Australian media’s reporting about China was “too negative”.

But in spite of that sentiment, more survey respondents (14 per cent) said they have “a great deal” of trust in English-language media outlets in Australia than the number of survey respondents (6 per cent) who said they have “a great deal” of trust in news that’s shared on WeChat.

Forty-two per cent of the respondents ranked Australia as a “very good” place to live, with only two per cent ranking it “poor”.

Pride in Australian life and culture also depicted a positive sentiment – 22 per cent expressed their pride “to a great extent”, 49 per cent “to a moderate extent”, 25 per cent “only slightly” and only four per cent “not at all”.

The survey's 1,002 respondents were adults in Australia who self-identify as Chinese-Australian and included Australian citizens, permanent residents and visa holders (excluding tourist visa holders). Those who had resided in Australia for less than one year were excluded.

Nearly 63 per cent of respondents answered the survey in simplified Chinese — the standardised system used in China.