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 Council
""China is not a habit of mind for Australians. The spread of Chinese influence is a process we do not understand. There is, of course, intrinsic worth in the understanding of Chinese culture for its own value. But the purpose of this dispatch is to suggest that there is a very specific Australian interest in the promotion of what is broadly described in China as cultural exchange. Without this, our relations with China will never be more than superficial, and we will be damagingly ill-equipped to adjust to a China dominant in our region.""