Revisiting the Roots of anti-Chinese Racism

Anti-Chinese racism is re-emerging in the Australian media and in public discourse, partly driven by the rising economic and political tensions between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. As these tensions increase, historians and commentators will need to be able to offer deeper explanations of the long-noted persistence of anti-Chinese racism in Australia and its relations to contemporary debates. Consequently, the current trend among historians of Chinese Australia to explicitly shift focus away from explaining the material roots of that racism needs to be challenged. This piece argues for a revisiting of the earlier debates around the roots and history of Australia’s anti-Chinese policies and practices, and offers a new Marxist analysis locating the historical and contemporary expressions of this racism firmly in the Australian capitalist nation-building project.