CSCSD Activities

CALL FOR PAPERS

CHINESE IN THE PACIFIC: WHERE TO NOW?

The Centre for the Study of the Chinese Southern Diaspora (in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University), announces a one-day workshop on Friday 9 February 2007 on Chinese in the Pacific.

From the later 1980s, when Mainland China began increasingly to open to the world, Chinese people also began once more to emigrate, apparently returning to a long tradition that had seen Chinese-speaking communities established throughout the world before the Second World War. Australia and the islands of the Southwest Pacific attracted their share of these new immigrants. But, unlike in earlier times, there was now no single source of trans-national Chinese immigration, nor one particular style: "Austronauts" from Hong Kong and Singapore moved, or temporarily relocated, to Australia and New Zealand for business or personal reasons, while Taiwanese government largesse won the support of cash-strapped Pacific Island governments.

In the last few years, however, the picture has started to change. The tempo of Chinese immigration into the Pacific has risen dramatically, in the island states especially, with thousands of Mainland Chinese relocating to and investing in Papua-New Guinea, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands. On the political front, the Beijing government has embarked on a vigorous program of economic penetration, no doubt designed to detach local governments from Taiwan, as shown by the presence of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at the inaugural Ministerial Conference of the China-Pacific Island Countries Economic and Development Cooperation Forum, this April in Fiji.

There is a darker side and potential cost to the region from these developments, however, as illustrated by the recent attacks on Chinese people and property in the Solomon Islands. The Australian Federal Police has also expressed fears about the penetration of Chinese criminal gangs in the Southwest Pacific, and the dangers this poses of immigration scams, and drug or people-smuggling rings, targeted at Australia.

The workshop organisers invite scholars with an interest in these issues, and any others related to Chinese people in post-1980s Australia, New Zealand, and the Southwest Pacific, to submit a title, abstract, and details of their academic affiliation, to the Acting Director of the Centre, Dr Li Tana at tana.li@anu.edu.au before 20 October, 2006. Independent scholars are encouraged to submit abstracts, with a short CV attached.

For paper presenters, the Centre will pay for fares and accommodation for two nights (8-9 February, 2007) on campus at the ANU. A selection of the papers will be published later in 2007 as a symposium in the Centre's forthcoming e-journal, Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies. The workshop itself will be open to the public and interested parties are invited to attend.

For more information, please first consult the CSCSD website; if necessary please then contact Dr Li or the CSDS joint-editor, Dr Nola Cooke, at csds@anu.edu.au.