History of Sinology/Chapter 18
Chapter 18: Australia and New Zealand — Sinology in the Antipodes
Introduction
Australia and New Zealand occupy a distinctive position in the history of world sinology. As young settler societies in the Asia-Pacific region, they came late to the study of China and lacked the deep missionary and philological traditions of European sinology. Yet their geographical proximity to East Asia, the presence of significant Chinese diaspora communities, and their evolving strategic relationship with China have, since the mid-twentieth century, generated a strong tradition of Chinese studies with a growing international profile. This chapter traces the development of sinology in Australia — from the racial anxieties of the “White Australia” era through the foundational work of C. P. FitzGerald and the institutional growth of the post-1972 period — and offers a briefer overview of developments in New Zealand.[1]
I. Australia
1.1 Early Australian Perceptions of China
The earliest Australian encounters with China were mediated not by scholarly curiosity but by racial anxiety. The gold rushes of the 1850s brought tens of thousands of Chinese labourers to the colonies of Victoria and New South Wales, provoking violent anti-Chinese riots and restrictive immigration legislation. Charles Pearson, a colonial official who served as Victorian Minister of Education, published National Life and Character: A Forecast (1893), in which he argued that Asian population growth and Chinese modernisation posed an existential threat to white civilisation. This “Yellow Peril” discourse, which culminated in the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 (the legislative foundation of the “White Australia Policy”), shaped Australian perceptions of China for decades and cast a long shadow over the development of Chinese studies.[2]
Yet even in this hostile environment, there were counterpoints. Robert Bell, the founder of Australia’s first Chinese-language newspaper, Tang Ren Xinwen Zhi (唐人新闻纸, 1856), was a London-born Sinophile who wrote extensively about Chinese culture. The poet Kenneth Slessor, active in the 1920s, produced several China-themed poems (Marco Polo, An Old Chinese Poem, Taoist) and argued that Australia should develop a strategic relationship with China — a remarkably prescient position for its time.[3]
1.2 Institutional Beginnings: The University of Sydney
The institutional foundations of Australian Oriental studies were laid at the University of Sydney in 1918, when a Department of Oriental Studies was established to meet the demand for Japanese language expertise in the aftermath of World War I. The first professor, Murdoch, and his successor Sadler, focused primarily on Japan. It was not until 1947, when A. R. Davis was appointed to the chair, that the department began to engage seriously with China. Davis, a specialist in classical Chinese literature who had studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, introduced the first Chinese culture courses at any Australian university. His scholarly interests — centred on Tang poetry and especially the work of Du Fu — set a tone of philological seriousness that influenced subsequent generations. His publications included Tu Fu (1971) and T’ao Yuan-ming: His Works and Their Meaning (1983). After Davis’s tenure, the department he had built became a nucleus for Australian sinology, and the Davis Professor Memorial Scholarship and Lecture Series continue to honour his legacy.[4]
1.3 C. P. FitzGerald: The Founding Figure
The single most important figure in the establishment of Australian sinology is Charles Patrick FitzGerald (费子智, 1902–1992). Born in London, FitzGerald spent nearly twenty years in China (1923–1950), witnessing the warlord era, the Japanese invasion, the Chinese Civil War, and the founding of the People’s Republic. He was one of the few Western scholars with direct, intimate knowledge of Chinese society at every level — from Beijing intellectuals to Yunnan ethnic minorities.
FitzGerald’s China: A Short Cultural History (1935) was his most influential work, establishing his international reputation and serving for decades as the standard Western introduction to Chinese civilisation. His Son of Heaven: A Biography of Li Shih-min (1933) explored Chinese imperial history through the lens of the Tang dynasty’s founder; The Tower of Five Glories (1941) was a pioneering study of the Bai minority in Dali, Yunnan; and Revolution in China (1952) attempted to explain the Chinese Communist victory to a Western audience uncomprehending and hostile.
FitzGerald joined the Australian National University (ANU) in 1951, where he became the first professor of Far Eastern History. His arrival changed the field. He not only introduced serious China scholarship to Australia but also challenged the prevailing “White Australia” mentality with a “China-centred” approach to Chinese history that anticipated by decades the methodological arguments later articulated by Paul Cohen in the American context. FitzGerald argued that Chinese history should be studied from within — from the perspective of the Chinese themselves — rather than through the lens of Western expansion and impact. As the Australian China scholar John Fitzgerald (no relation) has noted, C. P. FitzGerald “opened a window through which Australians could view China without fear or prejudice.”[5]
His The Chinese View of Their Place in the World (1964) mounted a sustained critique of Eurocentrism, arguing that the very term “Far East” reflected an arrogant assumption of European centrality. “Only China,” he wrote, “has never at any time come under Western rule, and only there has the tradition flourished continuously from antiquity to the modern age.” This work, produced more than two decades before Edward Said’s Orientalism, stands as a remarkably early example of anti-Eurocentric scholarship in the study of Asia.[6]
1.4 Frederick Teiwes and the Study of Chinese Politics
Frederick Teiwes (b. 1939), an American-born scholar who joined the University of Sydney in 1976, developed one of the world’s leading programmes in Chinese elite politics and CCP history. His works — including Politics and Purges in China (1979), Leadership, Legitimacy, and Conflict in China (1984, Chinese title: From Mao Zedong to Deng Xiaoping), China’s Road to Disaster (1999), and The Tragedy of Lin Biao (2008, with Warren Sun) — are distinguished by their meticulous use of Chinese-language sources and their engagement with the internal dynamics of CCP decision-making. Teiwes also contributed to the Cambridge History of the People’s Republic of China. His application of Max Weber’s typology of authority (charismatic, legal-rational, traditional) to the analysis of Chinese leadership has been widely influential, though also debated.[7]
1.5 The Flourishing of Australian China Studies (1972–Present)
The establishment of diplomatic relations between Australia and the People’s Republic of China in December 1972, under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, marked a watershed for Australian sinology. The subsequent abolition of the White Australia Policy (1973) and the rapid growth of Chinese immigration, trade, and investment transformed the domestic context for Chinese studies. The field expanded from its two original centres — the University of Sydney and the Australian National University — to universities across the country.
Australian National University (ANU): The ANU established the Contemporary China Centre (later the Australian Centre on China in the World, CIW) and developed one of the world’s most comprehensive Chinese studies programmes, offering specialisations in Chinese language, history, politics, economics, society, archaeology, and literature. The ANU’s annual Morrison Lecture, honouring the journalist George Ernest Morrison (who spent seventeen years as The Times’ correspondent in Beijing), has become a prestigious forum for China-related scholarship.[8]
University of Melbourne: The Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne offers one of the largest Chinese programmes in Australia, encompassing both a Chinese Language major and a Chinese Studies minor. The Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies conducts research on modern Chinese politics, economics, and society.[9]
Other Institutions: Monash University, Griffith University (home to a Confucius Institute), the University of Queensland, the University of Technology Sydney (which established the Australia-China Relations Institute, ACRI), Macquarie University, and La Trobe University all maintain Chinese studies programmes of varying scope.
The Chinese Studies Association of Australia (CSAA): Founded as a professional body for scholars of China, the CSAA organises biennial conferences, publishes the journal East Asian History, and administers scholarships for Chinese studies research. It serves as the principal institutional network for the Australian sinological community.[10]
Library Resources: The development of Chinese-language library collections has been critical to the growth of Australian sinology. The ANU Library, under the guidance of figures such as Fang Zhaoying (房兆楹), accumulated over 112,000 Chinese-language volumes by the early 1980s. The Australian National Library and the University of Sydney’s Fisher Library have also built substantial Chinese collections. In 1982, the ANU hosted an International Conference on Chinese Bibliographic Automation — a landmark event in the integration of Chinese-language materials into global library systems.[11]
1.6 Challenges and Tensions
Australian sinology in the 2020s operates in an environment of heightened political sensitivity. The rapid deterioration of Australia-China diplomatic relations since 2018, disputes over foreign interference legislation, and public debates about the role of Confucius Institutes have created a difficult environment for China scholars. Some Confucius Institutes have been closed or their agreements not renewed amid concerns about academic freedom and foreign influence. At the same time, the strategic importance of China to Australia’s economy and security ensures that the demand for China expertise remains strong. The challenge for Australian sinology is to maintain scholarly independence and intellectual rigour in an environment increasingly shaped by geopolitical competition.[12]
II. New Zealand
2.1 A Smaller but Growing Tradition
New Zealand’s tradition of Chinese studies is smaller and more recent than Australia’s, but it has developed steadily. The University of Auckland offers Chinese language studies and an Asian Studies programme that encompasses East Asian history, politics, and culture. Victoria University of Wellington hosts a Confucius Institute dedicated to promoting Chinese language teaching and international cultural exchange. The University of Canterbury and the University of Otago also offer Chinese language courses.[13]
New Zealand’s relationship with China has been shaped by several distinctive factors: the early recognition of the People’s Republic in 1972 (the same year as Australia); the signing of a free trade agreement with China in 2008 (the first between China and a developed Western economy); and the presence of a significant Chinese community, particularly in Auckland. These factors have generated growing demand for China expertise in government, business, and academia.[14]
2.2 Institutional Developments
The Confucius Institute at the University of Auckland and the Confucius Institute at Victoria University of Wellington serve as the primary institutional vehicles for Chinese language education and cultural programming. New Zealand universities have developed partnerships with Chinese institutions and participate in student exchange programmes. However, the scale of New Zealand’s China studies infrastructure remains modest compared to Australia’s, and the field lacks the depth of institutional support — dedicated research centres, professorships, and library collections — that has characterised the Australian experience.[15]
III. Conclusion
The development of sinology in the Antipodes has been shaped by a distinctive set of forces: the legacy of racial exclusion, the decisive impact of diplomatic recognition and immigration reform, the strategic imperatives of proximity to China, and the intellectual contributions of pioneering scholars like FitzGerald, Davis, and Teiwes. What began as a peripheral offshoot of British Orientalism has evolved, over the course of a century, into a vigorous scholarly tradition that brings its own perspectives — pragmatic, policy-oriented, informed by the experience of a multicultural society in Asia’s near neighbourhood — to the study of Chinese civilisation.
The Australian and New Zealand experience also illustrates a broader pattern in the global history of sinology: the tension between scholarly independence and political instrumentalisation. The same proximity to China that makes Australian sinology urgent and relevant also subjects it to pressures — from both Canberra and Beijing — that can compromise academic freedom. Navigating this tension, while maintaining the intellectual depth and breadth that the study of Chinese civilisation demands, is the central challenge for Antipodean sinology in the decades ahead.
Bibliography
Davis, A. R. Tu Fu. New York: Twayne, 1971.
FitzGerald, C. P. China: A Short Cultural History. London: Cresset Press, 1935. 4th rev. ed., 1976.
FitzGerald, C. P. The Chinese View of Their Place in the World. London: Oxford University Press, 1964.
FitzGerald, C. P. Revolution in China. London: Cresset Press, 1952.
Pearson, Charles. National Life and Character: A Forecast. London: Macmillan, 1893.
Teiwes, Frederick C. Leadership, Legitimacy, and Conflict in China: From a Charismatic Mao to the Politics of Succession. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1984.
Teiwes, Frederick C., and Warren Sun. China’s Road to Disaster: Mao, Central Politicians and Provincial Leaders in the Emergence of the Great Leap Forward, 1955–1959. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999.
Zhang Xiping 张西平. Xifang Hanxue Shiliu Jiang 西方汉学十六讲. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2011. Lecture 16.
References
- ↑ David B. Honey, Incense at the Altar: Pioneering Sinologists and the Development of Classical Chinese Philology (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 2001), preface, xxii.
- ↑ Honey, Incense at the Altar, preface, x.
- ↑ Zhang Xiping, lecture 1, “Introduction to Western Sinology Studies,” pp. 165–168.
- ↑ Peter K. Bol, “The China Historical GIS,” Journal of Chinese History 4, no. 2 (2020).
- ↑ Hilde De Weerdt, “MARKUS: Text Analysis and Reading Platform,” in Journal of Chinese History 4, no. 2 (2020); see also the Digital Humanities guide at University of Chicago Library.
- ↑ Tu Hsiu-chih, “DocuSky, A Personal Digital Humanities Platform for Scholars,” Journal of Chinese History 4, no. 2 (2020).
- ↑ Peter K. Bol and Wen-chin Chang, “The China Biographical Database,” in Digital Humanities and East Asian Studies (Leiden: Brill, 2020).
- ↑ See Chapter 22 (Translation) of this volume on AI translation challenges.
- ↑ “WenyanGPT: A Large Language Model for Classical Chinese Tasks,” arXiv preprint (2025).
- ↑ “Benchmarking LLMs for Translating Classical Chinese Poetry: Evaluating Adequacy, Fluency, and Elegance,” Proceedings of EMNLP (2025).
- ↑ “A Multi Agent Classical Chinese Translation Method Based on Large Language Models,” Scientific Reports 15 (2025).
- ↑ See, e.g., Mark Edward Lewis and Curie Viragh, “Computational Stylistics and Chinese Literature,” Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture 9, no. 1 (2022).
- ↑ Hilde De Weerdt, Information, Territory, and Networks: The Crisis and Maintenance of Empire in Song China (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2015).
- ↑ China-Princeton Digital Humanities Workshop 2025 (chinesedh2025.eas.princeton.edu).
- ↑ Zhang Xiping, lecture 1, pp. 54–60.