In a book titled 1421: The Year China Discovered the World Gavin Menzies claims that in the 1420's several fleets of Chinese ships sailed around the world, making contact with many countries before Europeans explored them, including Australia.
The Chinese name for Australia has four characters (澳大利亚) and is written in Pinyin and pronounced using Mandarin (or “Putonghua”) as Aodaliya (Ao-da-li-ya).
The first known landing in Australia by Europeans was in 1606 by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon on Australia's northern coast. Later that year, Spanish explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through, and navigated, what is now called Torres Strait and associated islands.
The Chinese were not always welcome in Australia and were constantly reminded of their allegedly inferior status. The most commonly cited acts of discrimination and prejudice against the Chinese in Australia were the Lambing Flat riots of 1860 and 1861.
Australia is China's sixth largest trading partner; it is China's fifth biggest supplier of imports and its tenth biggest customer for exports. Twenty-five per cent of Australia's manufactured imports come from China; 13% of its exports are thermal coal to China. A two-way investment relationship is also developing.
Trade and investment
China is Australia's largest two-way trading partner in goods and services, accounting for nearly one third (32.2 per cent) of our trade with the world.
After establishing diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China in 1972, Australia established an embassy in Beijing in 1973. The Australia-China bilateral relationship is based on strong economic and trade complementarities, a comprehensive program of high-level visits and wide-ranging cooperation.
In a book titled 1421: The Year China Discovered the World Gavin Menzies claims that in the 1420's several fleets of Chinese ships sailed around the world, making contact with many countries before Europeans explored them, including Australia.
The Chinese immigrants referred to the Australian gold fields as 'Xin Jin Shan', or New Gold Mountain. The Californian gold rush was in decline by the 1850s and had become known as 'Jiu Jin Shan', Old Gold Mountain.
Demographics. Pop. ±% p.a. At the 2021 census, 1,390,637 Australian residents identified themselves as having Chinese ancestry, accounting for 5.5% of the total population.
The islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the first peoples of Australia, meaning they were here for thousands of years prior to colonisation.
After Dutch navigators charted the northern, western and southern coasts of Australia during the 17th Century this newly found continent became known as 'New Holland'. It was the English explorer Matthew Flinders who suggested the name we use today.
Today, the term "Asian Australian" is widely accepted and used to refer to people of Asian descent who are citizens or residents of Australia, though its usage and meaning may vary within the Asian Australian community.
Like the fireworks on Sydney Harbour every 31 December, Chinese New Year is one of the most colourful events on the global calendar. The ABS's most recent Estimated Resident Population figures show that there are 526,040 Australian residents born in China, up from 387,420 over the previous five years.
There are approximately 15,000 Australians living, working and studying in mainland China, and around 90,000 in Hong Kong, 7000 in Taiwan, and 1000 in Macau.
Both Aboriginal oral histories and the archaeological record shows the Chinese drove Australia's first global trade in the Asia-Pacific well before the first fleet's arrival. Oral histories tell of direct contact between Chinese and Yolngu people.
Locally sourced meat, seafood and vegetables were complemented by imported ingredients such as Cantonese sausage, tofu, lychee nuts, black fungus and bamboo shoots. By the late 1800s, about a third of commercial cooks in Australia were Chinese.
Two hundred years ago, almost to the day, on 27 February 1818, Mak Sai Ying arrived in Port Jackson, on the ship Laurel. Mak was the first known Chinese immigrant to arrive in the colony of New South Wales.
Makasar traded with Aboriginal people for trepang (sea cucumber), which they boiled down, dried on their boats and traded with China where it is still used for food and medicine. The Makasar did not settle in Arnhem Land but they did have an influence on the Yolŋu people's society and ritual.
While Indigenous Australians have inhabited the continent for tens of thousands of years, and traded with nearby islanders, the first documented landing on Australia by a European was in 1606. The Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed on the western side of Cape York Peninsula and charted about 300 km of coastline.
By the early 1850s, news of a gold rush in Australia had reached southern China, sparking an influx in Chinese migration to Australia. It is thought that approximately 7000 Chinese people came to work at the Araluen gold fields in southern NSW.
Since that time, United States has been the most important security ally. The close security relationship with the United States was formalized in 1951 by the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security (ANZUS) Treaty which remains the cornerstone of Australian security arrangements.
Through the AUKUS security pact and Five Eyes intelligence alliance, Australia's main military allies are the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and New Zealand.