One in four NZ Chinese born here

By THERESA GARNER

To make an Auckland quilt, you need a lot of Chinese pieces.

An atlas of Auckland's multilingual population presents its ethnic make-up as a patchwork map. It gives a picture of who really lives in the city's enclaves, one woven through with Chinese presence from Long Bay in the north to Runciman in the south.

In a country where "immigrant" is equated with "Asian", and that description is applied loosely to all people from East Asia, the distinctive character of Auckland's Chinese as one of the city's earliest settler groups is often overlooked.

University of Auckland Associate Professor Manying Ip says that on campus, "even staff members too often take an Asian face to mean that the person must be an international student, or someone in need of language help".

In reality, one in four of the Chinese in New Zealand were born locally, with many family trees dating back to the 19th century.

Howick, the eastern suburb crudely nicknamed "Chowick" in the early 1990s when it was seen as ground zero of the so-called Asian invasion, is just one part of the mosaic.



Many longstanding families in Auckland retain the surname given to them by Customs officials who did not know that Chinese surnames go first.

Dr Ip says 1987 was the watershed year for the Chinese. A new immigration policy gave them an equal chance with immigrants from "traditional source countries".

The result was a new Chinese community of just over 100,000 nationwide.

There are four main groups of Chinese, including the 20 per cent of Auckland Chinese who were born here.

The 12.3 per cent of Hong Kong-born Chinese were the earliest arrivals.

Taiwan-origin Chinese, making up 12.6 per cent of the total number, mostly entered New Zealand under the points system in the early 1990s.

Dr Ip says this group has suffered more as immigrants than their Hong Kong counterparts because of their lack of English and their unfamiliarity with the British system.



The group from the People's Republic of China is the biggest (39 per cent), rising 120 per cent between the 1996 and 2001 Census.

The presence of Chinese people in areas that have top schools, such as Epsom-Remuera, "traditionally European middle-class suburbs, has aroused much jealousy and fuelled considerable anti-immigrant rhetoric, much of it politically motivated", Dr Ip says.

Since the migrants themselves "were chosen by the New Zealand Government because they were highly educated middle-class professionals, their choice of residential areas was hardly surprising".

"The Hong Kong-born [people] are comparatively older and, therefore, more experienced in New Zealand ways, while the China-born are very raw."

Dr Ip says the work status of many highly qualified new arrivals is dismal.

While official unemployment percentages are in low single digits, the "not in labour force" figures are glaringly high, reahcing 69 per cent for the Taiwanese-born.

The perception that Asian immigrants are affluent, says Dr Ip, and can sit on their savings, take holidays and spend their time playing golf and fishing "cannot be borne out". Rather, many are seeking retraining and hoping a New Zealand degree might make them more marketable.

Others are opting for early retirement or the "astronaut" role - flying home to work to support their family in New Zealand.

Dr Ip's figures show 73 per cent of overseas-born Chinese can hold a basic conversation in English. That gives her hope for social integration and closer ties to the New Zealand way of life. "


Chinese in Auckland

2001 Census: 68,133; 1996: 10,545.

13.1 per cent of Aucklanders are Asian, 6 per cent are Chinese.

Burswood, Botany Downs, Mt Roskill, Chatswood and Remuera are suburbs where more than 4 per cent of the population can converse in Chinese dialects, Auckland University of Technology's Atlas of Multilingual Auckland shows.