Claire Lowrie reviews Anna Hayes, Rosita Henry and Michael Wood’s (eds) The Chinese in Papua New Guinea: Past, Present and Future, (Canberra: ANU Press, 2024)

 

China’s increasing engagement with countries across the Pacific region is cause for concern amongst policy makers in Australia and the US. It is also the subject of regular, and at times inflammatory, reporting in the media. China in the Pacific tends to be understood as a recent phenomenon, marked by development interventions, such as the belt and road initiative, and by the pursuit of political and military alliances. This context sets the scene for Anna Hayes, Rosita Henry and Michael Woods’ rich collection of essays and vignettes on The Chinese in Papua New Guinea.  Chapters by James Chin (Chapter 4) and Anna Hayes (Chapter 9) explicitly frame contemporary Chinese relations with Papua New Guinea (PNG) as part of a broader strategy by the People’s Republic of China to achieve regional (and even global) supremacy. Yet this collection also presents more complicated stories of China in PNG by analysing intercultural encounters between Chinese migrants and local people in the past and present.

By bringing together a series of historical and contemporary case studies, Hayes, Henry and Woods seek to illustrate ‘the multiplicity and creativity of Chinese engagements’ in PNG (241). As the editors explain in the introduction, ‘The Chinese in PNG were never a single homogenous group, but a complex series of historically and culturally unique groups with different origins, languages and histories’ (8). The book succeeds in communicating the multifaceted nature of PNG’s relationship with China. It achieves this through a multidisciplinary approach, with some chapters employing historical, ethnographic and linguistic methods to study interactions between Chinese migrants and Indigenous people at a local level, and others considering state driven economic and political forces in a transnational context.

The contributors to the book make a clear distinction between ‘old Chinese’, who settled in PNG prior to independence from Australia in 1975, and ‘new Chinese’ who arrived after independence, with significant numbers migrating from mainland China during the early 2000s. Section 1 deals primarily with the old Chinese, who established themselves in Papua (a British colony until 1906) and, in greater numbers, in New Guinea (a German colony until 1920). Three short and engaging chapters in this section are paired with personal vignettes from two women who grew up in PNG and retain strong connections to the country – Kulasumb Kalinoe and Vyvygen Wong.

Joanna Kosinska (Unsplash)

The difficulties associated with writing histories of the Chinese in PNG in the context of archival scarcity is a central theme in Section 1. Chapter 2 by Rosita Henry, Daniela Vávrová and Laurie Bragge draws on the Bragge Collection – an archive created by L. W. Bragge during his forty-five-year period working as an officer of the Australian Administration in PNG. A key frustration with the Bragge Collection is that it includes limited material on the Chinese as the Australian officials were instructed to ignore the community. Even so, perhaps more could have been done to locate Chinese experiences and perspectives by supplementing the Bragge collection with more diverse sources. Evidence of Chinese agency emerges very clearly in Michael Wood and Vincent Backhaus’ account of how PNG Chinese contributed to the demise of the White Australia Policy (Chapter 3). Those readers interested in Australian immigration policies will surely find that chapter a compelling one.

Over four chapters and a conclusion, Section 2 of the book analyses Chinese engagements with PNG in the contemporary era and considers where the China–PNG relationship is heading. The chapters analyse the involvement of mainland Chinese in PNG’s bêche-de-mer trade (Chapter 5 by Simon Foale, Cathy Hair and Jeff Finch); nickel mining and refining (Chapter 6 by I-Chang Kuo); and as customers at a fruit and vegetable market in Basamuk (Chapter 7 by Sean Gessler). These chapters contest any simplistic notion of an expanding Chinese hegemony in PNG. They do so by showcasing complex encounters between ‘new Chinese’ and Indigenous Papua New Guineans that range from outright conflict and racism to negotiation and compromise resulting in shared economic benefits. One factor in determining which side of the spectrum the encounter falls is the ability to adequately communicate. The role of language is a theme unpacked in Gessler’s chapter and in Chapter 8 by linguist Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald.

This excellent collection shines a light on the complicated relationship between China and PNG and how that relationship has changed over time. It prompts readers to consider processes of colonisation and decolonisation as a triangular relationship involving PNG, Australia and China. It is no surprise that this book emerged through collaboration among scholars based at James Cook University in Cairns and Townsville. The multiethnic history of northern Australia and its strong connections to the Pacific and Southeast Asia have long facilitated work that challenges the framing of colonisation and decolonisation as a black and white affair.

Claire Lowrie
Claire Lowrie

Claire Lowrie is a historian of colonialism in northern Australia and Southeast Asia based at the University of Wollongong. She specialises in the history of Chinese labour migration.