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
Despite the long history of Chinese immigration to Australia, the first official presence of the Qing empire in Australia was not established until 1909, when Australia was a British Dominion. While the Chinese community had agitated for a Qing consulate in Australia for many years, there was reluctance from the British Foreign Office to approve such a move. After the Federation of Australia, the Chinese community's need for an official voice in Australia increased due to the push for the White Australia Policy and anti-Chinese sentiment following the enactment of the "Immigration Restriction Act 1901" in Australia. At the same time, Chinese republican revolutionaries were operating in Australia, and the Qing government saw a need to dissuade the Chinese diaspora against supporting the republicans. Reflecting the political debate in China, Chinese Australians had by 1900 formed branches of the Chinese Empire Reform Association to press for reform in China.