In the Face of Diversity

Has a united or singular “Chinese Australian community” ever actually existed? If so, would a united community be a means to an end or an end in itself? And where would this community sit in contemporary multicultural Australia?

In the Face of Diversity offers answers to these questions with the history of more than a dozen Chinese Australian community organisations from across the country, drawing on the English- and Chinese-language materials produced by these organisations, as well as interviews with past and present leaders. Instead of a single community, the evidence demonstrates the existence of many diverse Chinese Australian communities.

Familiar and fascinating moments of recent Australian history are treated with new and evocative perspectives in relation to Chinese Australian communities, from the official turn away from the White Australia policy and embrace of multiculturalism in the 1970s to the debate about China’s influence upon Australian politics and society, beginning in the 2010s and continuing into the present.

In the Face of Diversity advances that “unity” has only ever been momentarily or partially grasped by Chinese Australian community organisations but that it has nonetheless produced real-world outcomes, the most prominent being a highly participatory style of Australian multiculturalism. Gardner Molina dismantles the myth of a single Chinese Australian community and rebuilds a solid understanding of many diverse communities instead; each with their own aims, needs and participatory capacities.

Dr Nathan D. Gardner Molina is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Melbourne taking part in an ARC Discovery Project to produce a history of Australia’s community sponsorship programs for refugee resettlement. As a historian of Australia’s immigration and ethnic diversity, Nathan delivered the 2024 Hancock Lecture for Australian Academy of Humanities, What Makes a Multicultural Nation?

• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Preface

1. Chinese Australian community organisations from White Australia to multiculturalism
2. Early optimism and challenges
3. The “Blainey debate”
4. The Tiananmen Massacre and the “89ers”
5. The “Hanson debate”
6. Community organisations in the “Chinese century”
7. The China influence debate * The Chimera: Chasing unity in the face of diversity

• Bibliography
• Appendix 1: Sample interview questions
• Appendix 2: Profiles of prominent Chinese Australian community organisations encountered in the book

Format: paperback
Size: 210 × 148 mm
Copyright: © 2025
ISBN: 9781743329986
Publication: 01 May 2025
Series: China and the West in the Modern World