ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book talks about social and cultural connectedness between Australia and treaty port China in a sparsely researched period of Sino-Australian relations. It examines Chinese Australian return migration in the 1910s and follows the fate of these returnees after the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949. The book draws heavily on Chinese Australian family archives to tell a counter-history of White Australia, one less concerned with exclusion and more concerned with the opportunities provided by Sino-Australian trade and transport ties between the wars. It explores the parallel movements of white Australian economic migrants into coastal China. The book also examines Chinese reactions in Shanghai to white Australian populations in that city fleeing poverty and unemployment in Australia during the Great Depression. In response to poor opportunities in the 1930s, out-of-work Australians travelled to Asian port cities in the thousands.
