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I was quite amazed that Alexa’s list of the top 100 most popular websites in Australia includes several Chinese ones:

34th place: 6park.com: (Oversea [sic] Chinese Community)

42nd: Baidu.com (The leading Chinese language search engine)

48th: www.qq.com (the most popular instant messenger service and the largest online community in the world)

53rd: sina.com (Chinese portal site)

80th: Sohu.com Inc. (Produces Chinese language Internet portal and internet communities)

But it was not that surprising after reading Australia’s 2006 Census results, which were released yesterday:

Britain continues to provide the most overseas-born residents, but the number of Chinese and Indian migrants has doubled since 1996.

There are now 206,600 Chinese-born people living in Australia, and 147,100 Indians. Chinese is now the most common foreign language spoken at home, followed by Italian and Greek.

Wow. When I was a kid (living in Australia), the only foreigners we ever saw were the newly arrived Italians and Greeks. Very occasionally we would see an Asian who was studying in Australia as part of the Colombo Plan.

Now, the fastest growing migrant population groups are the Chinese and Indians. The dark days of the White Australia Policy are well and truly over.

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