Dear reader, are we unwelcome in this white man’s nation?

China, Government, Letters to the Editor, Media

Dear reader, are we unwelcome in this white man’s nation?

Mar 17, 2023

pencil from which escapes the letters of the alphabet symbol of inspiration.

I am an Australian-born person of Chinese ancestry and have been disturbed by the alarmist fearmongering and drive to war with China from the media and the government. While I have been a faithful public servant and model citizen for many years, once again I am sadly returned to my childhood traumas and anxieties about being unwelcome and unworthy in this white man’s nation.

I am drawn to this conclusion because Australia has teamed up with two Anglo imperialist nations – the US and the UK (both of whom have wreaked so much damage on coloured peoples of the world) – to arm at enormous expense against the yellow hordes.

As the public is not privy to the government’s intelligence on China’s nefarious activities or to its national interests analyses I am struggling to understand precisely what is ‘the threat’ that China poses to Australia and to the world. From a coloured layperson’s perspective, it looks to me that the threat China poses is to white power and supremacy (hegemony) in Australia and globally. Containment is required to ensure the status quo – of western interests, economies and their cronies remaining on the top of the pile and calling the shots. This has been dressed up by successive governments as supporting liberal democratic systems and the so-called rule of law (white man’s rules), but these seem to be justifications to roll out when it suits us.

At heart, perhaps the fear is that China will jump onto ships, invade Australia and take over the continent? (That sounds like a familiar scenario from 235 years ago – but in that instance it was apparently acceptable. And it’s now ok to cosy up to the nation that actually did try it 81 years ago.)

It is too bad that the enlightened western liberal democratic and capitalist social system we tout as superior and exportable has left us so full of greed and envy that we are driven to destroy what might be good for anyone else or what we perceive to diminish us. Ironically, as such, we are destroying the bed we need to lie in – the global collective, and we are not fighting the true wars we should be fighting such as climate change, environmental degradation, inequality, let alone on our own shores education, health and aged care, and housing challenges, and so on.

Three cheers to what Captain Cook had written upon leaving Australian shores in 1770 about this continent’s First Peoples, and to their Zen road to affluence:

From what I have said of the Natives of New-Holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon Earth, but in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans; being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary Conveniences so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in a Tranquillity which is not disturb’d by the Inequality of Condition: The Earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life, they covet not Magnificent Houses, Household-stuff &c., they live in a warm and fine Climate and enjoy a very wholesome Air. . . . In short they seem’d to set no Value upon any thing we gave them, nor would they ever part with any thing of their own for any one article we could offer them; this in my opinion argues that they think themselves provided with all the necessarys of Life and that they have no superfluities.