In the Face of Diversity

Has a united or singular “Chinese Australian community” ever actually existed? If so, is a united community a means to an end or an end in itself? And where might 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.