Chinese Australians
As a whole, Australian residents identifying themselves as having Chinese ancestry made up 5.6% of those nominating their ancestry at the 2016 census and numbered 1,213,903. At the 2016 census, 509,555 people declared that they were born in Mainland China, 86,886 declared that they were born in Hong Kong, while 46,882 declared that they were born in Taiwan. There are also a large number of persons of Chinese ancestry among those born in Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam.
Australia–China relations
Chinese people from mainly Guangdong province in southern China have migrated to Australia since the late 1700s (the earliest reports of traders in Australia date to the 1750s at the latest) and boomed in the Victorian gold rush era. By 1861, there were around 40,000 Chinese people (3.3% of the total population) living in Australia. Australia during the 18th to the early 20th century were colonies - and later dominion - of the United Kingdom and focused her attention predominantly towards Europe.