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Among the many treasures at Archives New Zealand is an original petition from John Ah Tong and others, protesting the Government’s first anti-Chinese law. The 1881 Chinese Immigrants Act, imposed a £10 poll tax on all Chinese arrivals and restrictions on ships’ passenger numbers. It was the first of many laws to come.

Petitions were one of the ways that Chinese settlers made their voice heard. They also lobbied politicians and wrote to newspapers. But compared with other groups, their voice was small. In 1881 there were just 5,000 Chinese in New Zealand, less than 1% of the population. And although they kept protesting, broader circumstances counted against them.

John Ah Tong - image
Explore story‍

The first petition story
Explore story

Poll-tax section

One of these was New Zealand’s development as a colony. When the first Chinese settler arrived in 1842, the population was around 98% Māori.¹ By 1881 the situation had reversed, just over 90% were of British origin. With that majority and the end of the New Zealand Wars, the government had reached a point of national control. It was ready to plan for its future – the creation of a ‘Britain of the South’ – and that future did not include Chinese.

The protests of Chinese settlers were also overshadowed by international pressures. All over the British colonies and the United States there were movements to restrict Chinese immigration. An Inter-Colonial Conference in 1881 decided that ‘all colonies should adopt identical action [against Chinese]’. New Zealand’s poll-tax law followed almost to the letter.²

The poll-tax was the end of an era for the Chinese community. From 1881 numbers dropped. Hundreds returned to China as gold became harder to find and New Zealand slid into economic depression. But the tax did not stop all Chinese migrants. A new group began arriving, and these new settlers came prepared with funds, education and the backing of their clans. Almost all had New Zealand networks to help them set up their new lives.

Returning home

The Ventnor story – to write image

New arrivals: the poll-tax payers - story

In 20 years the community underwent rapid change. Although post-gold rush numbers were fewer, under 3,000 in 1901, the Chinese population was more dispersed and increasingly North Island based.³ Almost every growing Pākehā town had at least one or two Chinese business owners. In the north where war, confiscation and the Native Land Court had opened up land for colonists, Chinese set up shops and market gardens. Ōtaki, the Manawatū, Hawke’s Bay and Poverty Bay became market gardening centres. The Waimarino joined after 1908 when the main trunk line gave access to the Central North Island, following Ngāti Maniapoto agreement to open up Te Rohe Pōtae (the King Country). Many Chinese gardens were leased from Māori landowners.

But it was the cities where Chinese were the most visible. Although Dunedin was still at the fore, Wellington was fast catching up as a regional hub and the political centre. From the early 1890s it was also home to New Zealand’s most well-known Chinatown – Haining St.

With its poor quality housing, gambling and opium dens, Haining St embodied all the things that many other New Zealanders feared. For the Chinese who lived there it was the opposite. Tong Yan Gai (Chinese people’s street) was their home. There were places to eat, stay, catch up with friends, send and receive letters, do banking, buy Chinese goods, and even listen to music or take a bible class. The street parallel to Haining St, was the institutional heart of the community and home to the Chinese Anglican Mission Church, and two community halls - the Chee Kung Tong building and the Tung Jung Association building.

Auckland and Dunedin also had their Chinese sectors, each serving communities that were starting to put down roots. Men set up businesses, often fruit shops and laundries, and if business was good they sent for friends and relatives to help.

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Maybe we do put in the location based stories here / Ak, Wgtn and Chch

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Women section

A few were able to arrange for their wives and children to join them. This was only an option for the wealthy as in 1896 the poll-tax on Chinese was raised from £10 to £100 – more than the average New Zealand wage earner made in a year.⁴

These wives also needed to be of strong character as by the early-1900s, New Zealand was reaching a racist low. Newspapers mocked and vilified the Chinese, and the public fretted over ‘racial contamination’. Its darkest point was the infamous murder of former goldminer Joe Kum Yung in 1905. The 69-year-old Haining St resident was shot and killed by a white supremacist Lionel Terry.

Things declined further when the Government decided it would no longer allow Chinese to become naturalised New Zealanders. The 1908 decision stayed in place until 1952.

Joe Kum Yung story

Kim Lee

Naturalisation story

Around the country the community reacted by pulling itself closer together. It formed groups based on clans and counties of origin, just as there had been on the goldfields. People poured their passion into politics, especially the modernisation of feudal China. They also recreated the supports they’d had in their home villages, like the Chee Kung Tong (Chinese Freemasons). In 1907 leading merchants formed the Wellington Chinese Association to defend against increasing racial attacks.⁵

Groups like these gave the community a feeling of security. This was much needed as numbers were still decreasing (2,630 in 1911), and many lived socially isolated lives on remote market gardens or as the only Chinese in a small town.

By contrast, the children of established families had quite different lives from other Chinese. William Alloo for example, born 1861, worked for the Otago Daily Times, published a magazine, and was a keen inventor and sportsman. Norman Low (Lo Keong), got a degree from Canterbury University in 1909, the first Chinese to do so.⁶

It was these young men, many of mixed heritage, who eagerly signed up when war was announced in 1914. World War I was a global conflict greater than any other war.⁷ By its end in 1918 the world had changed, including New Zealand. After Gallipoli many felt the stirrings of a new national identity.⁸  And it was in this war that New Zealand soldiers first began calling themselves ‘Kiwis’.

Around 56 New Zealanders of Chinese descent are listed in the Expeditionary Force records.⁹ Private James George Paterson whose grandfather arrived in 1844,¹⁰ was one of the first New Zealanders to die at Gallipoli.¹¹ Sergeant Major Victor Low (Lo Keong)¹² also made his mark surveying the giant 140-meter Bulford Kiwi. Carved into a chalk hill in Wiltshire by servicemen waiting to be shipped back to New Zealand, the carving is now a protected historic site.¹³

Image of WWI Chinese NZers at war

Chinese NZers WWI link

After the Allied victory in 1918, there were great hopes that the treatment of Chinese New Zealanders might improve. After all, China was a wartime ally, sending 140,000 labourers to the Western Front to support the war effort. The expectation was that land in Shandong, formerly under German control, would be returned to them after the war.¹⁴ When Shandong was given to Japan instead, there was an outcry. In solidarity, the Chinese community of Wellington withdrew its support from the city’s elaborate Peace Festival. They had been scheduled to represent China in the parade.¹⁵

Any hopes that the New Zealand Government might view Chinese more kindly were dashed when it passed its landmark 1920 Immigration Restriction Amendment Act. The Act has since become known as the ‘White New Zealand’ policy,¹⁶ although it was broadly similar to legislation introduced in  Australia, America and Canada.

In New Zealand, the Act required all intending migrants to get a permanent residence permit before entering the country. Permits were given out by the Minister of Customs who could decline for whatever reason – although people of British or Irish parentage got an automatic waiver. The basic system did not become merit-based until 1987.

Or other image? 1920 – maybe the one of Aunty Doris sitting in front to St Peters church

Do we want to do a small story on the 1920 permit system? Should be quite easy

The effect of the 1920 change was profound. Those who could, rushed to get family members to New Zealand before the doors were shut.¹⁷  More than 1,000 new migrants made it in, bringing the Chinese population to 3,266 in 1921. However, after that point it was extremely difficult for men to bring their wives and children here. For many, this meant decades of family separation.¹⁸ [To consider how to weave in further thread of war refugees.]

The migrants who made it in before 1920 were a great boost, especially for North Island communities that were ready to start putting down tangible physical roots.¹⁹ By the mid-1920s, Wellington’s Frederick St, was home to three Chinese community spaces: the Chinese Mission Hall (1905), the Chee Kung Tong building (1925) and the Tung Jung Association building (1926).

Chinese spaces like these were essential in what was a socially and culturally vibrant era. Music and theatre thrived, as well as county-of-origin groups, sports teams, political and religious groups. Many met in these community spaces.

Making a community essays - The three social orgs essays. But it should be social organisation led – I mean these stories can’t nest in the wellington stories.

But there were still those who objected to Chinese people. In Timaru, papers described a riot against local fruiterers in April 1920. Crowds gathered, windows were smashed and shops wrecked. Some bystanders disagreed with the violence but not the reasons; Chinese shouldn’t be competing with returned soldiers and ‘other white people’.²⁰

These sentiments were echoed by the White New Zealand League. Formed by potato farmers in Pukekohe in 1925 the League quickly spread its message of ‘race purity’ to other parts of the country. Sadly it was Māori, Indian and Chinese residents of Pukekohe who bore the brunt of the hostility.  As late as the 1950s they were segregated at the local theatre and refused service at barbershops.²¹

The 1920 immigration changes had one other important effect: labour shortages. By this time Chinese gardens were supplying most of New Zealand’s green leaf vegetables. With increasing demand and Chinese workers in short supply, market gardeners turned to their Māori friends, neighbours and landlords for help.²²

Close proximity led to relationships between Māori women and Chinese men. Today there are thousands of proud Māori Chinese descendants, but popular concerns over ‘race purity’ meant these marriages were not always welcomed at the time. Such was the concern that in 1929 there was a commission of inquiry, probing into living conditions and ‘public morality’. Interestingly, the commission found Māori preferred working with Chinese and Indian employers as they were more considerate.²³

Chinese Māori image

making a living stories here?

In the same year that the committee was delving into Māori Chinese relationships, a financial crisis erupted half a world away on Wall St. By 1932 the depression had hit New Zealand hard with thousands of unemployed.²⁴ Protests around the country peaked when around 15,000 rioted on Auckland’s Queen St.  

The situation was desperate for many. There was no national system of social welfare so people relied on charity or the government’s work relief scheme.  The scheme was not ideal as work was rationed and often in remote places with low pay.

Chinese also suffered as businesses went under. But unlike other men, they were denied access to relief schemes – at least in the Auckland area. Community leader Andrew Chong issued a fiery protest: ‘. . . there is a principle at stake. The Chinese community in New Zealand contributes thousands annually to the [unemployment] fund,²⁵ and we consider that portion at least . . . be expended on the relief of our less advantageously placed brethren.’ ^{26, 27}

^‍Image of Andrew Chong / or the depression with that amazing depression quote fr Andrew

Ultimately, it was the shock of the Great Depression that led to political change. In 1935 the Labour Party won a landslide victory on the platform that every New Zealander had a right to a reasonable standard of living. This was a turning point.

The new Government immediately started improving working conditions and pay rates. It set up a housing programme and brought the Reserve Bank under state control. In 1938 the Social Security Act provided New Zealanders with a free-at-the-point-of-contact health system, introduced universal superannuation, and extended benefits for the aged, sick and unemployed.²⁸

Most importantly for Chinese, the new Government withdrew all the legal exclusions from social welfare. The Old Age Pension was granted in 1936, and all other benefits, like the Family Allowance, followed when the 1938 Social Security Act was introduced. The change was the first gesture of government support the community had seen for a very long time. It was a ray of hope, and a signal for better times ahead.

Image showing lifting of legal exclusions

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