Journal of Chinese Australia, Issue 2, October 2006

Building the bridge of solidarity: The politics of the Chinese Youth League in Australia, 1939-73

Drew Cottle and Angela Keys

The Chinese Youth League (CYL), a progressive patriotic organisation, is one of the few surviving political organisations of the early Chinese diaspora in Australia. [1] It was established in Sydney on 1 July 1939.[2]

At that time, the overseas Chinese resident in Australia were like orphans—often intimidated, humiliated and treated as inferiors—and although organisations like the Kuomintang (KMT) existed in the Chinese community in Sydney and elsewhere, they did not adequately respond to the welfare of the overseas Chinese.[3] The KMT at the time the Chinese Youth League was founded was caught in political stasis. From 1927 onwards, the Sydney KMT was faithful to the twists and turns of the Kuomintang in war-ravaged China.[4] From the time of the Long March and the survival of the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Tse Tung, Chiang Kai-Shek devoted all of the energies of the Kuomintang to the elimination of the Chinese communists as Japanese militarism swept through the coastal regions of China, laying it waste.

Younger Chinese men in Sydney were dismayed by the division and subjugation of their homeland. They were dissatisfied with the leadership of the KMT and sought an avenue for their ardour and nationalist aspirations.[] Several of the young founders of the CYL had close ties with the Sydney branch of the KMT. For example, the father of Stanley Wei (Huang Le Wei), the wealthiest wholesale vegetable and fruit retailer in the Haymarket, was a financial contributor to the Sydney Kuomintang, but during the period of his classical Chinese education in Macao, Stanley joined an underground communist youth organisation unbeknownst to his father.[6] William Yong, a sojourner, first found work in Sydney on the Kuomintang's newspaper and, entirely dissatisfied with the political outlook of the Kuomintang, joined with Stanley Wei, Fred Wong, Leung Yi, Lai Chee, Yeung King Tong and Ho Kok Wai to form the Chinese Youth Dramatic Association at the Shanghai restaurant in Campbell Street, Sydney on 1 July 1939.[7] The name of this organisation changed several times in the ensuing years because of its changing membership or political emphasis. The name 'Chinese Youth League of Australia' was finally adopted in 1962.[8]

These young and patriotic Chinese engaged in dramatic and musical performances to raise funds to support the war of resistance against Japan in China. Within months of the group's formation, their enthusiasm helped to unite the small and fractured Chinese community within Chinatown in Sydney. Their zeal in raising funds allowed them to rent the mezzanine floor at number 66 Dixon Street as their premises.[9] One of their first dramatic performances was Rather Die Than Surrender to commemorate the Chinese resistance to Japan.[10] By late 1939, a China Famine Fund had been organised by these young Chinese patriots, with Fred Wong as its energetic and charismatic organiser.[11] In January 1940, they collected money through the sale of winter garments and badges to support the Chinese war effort. In February 1940, this dramatic and musical group combined with seamen from the vessel the Japanese Empress to stage the first of their Cantonese operas, Make Havoc With Magistrate Mei.[12]

In early April 1942, hundreds of Chinese seamen who had worked on foreign-owned vessels were stranded in various Australian ports because of the lightning victories of imperial Japan in Southeast Asia during the first months of the Pacific War. Chinese refugees from the Netherlands East Indies, British Malaya and other colonial dependencies of the European powers fled to Australia during this period.[13] Now called the Chinese Youth Club, the group worked with the Communist-led Seamen's Union of Australia to assist these stranded Chinese seamen to form their own union within Australia after a series of mass sit-down strikes staged by the Chinese seamen in various Australian ports.[14]

This direct involvement in the working lives of these Chinese seamen transformed the forerunner of the Chinese Youth League. It was no longer simply an organisation for patriotic Chinese youth; because of the swelling of its ranks by workers, its name was changed to the Chinese Workers' Club.[15] In May 1942, its premises in Dixon Street were used as the office for the May Day Committee. In June 1942, at the request of the Curtin government, the Chinese Workers' Club organised a labour brigade of 1,000 Chinese seamen to work at the Lake Burragorang Dam (Warragamba Dam) site. Stanley Wei was appointed superintendent of this labour force.[16]

In February 1943, the constitution of the Chinese Workers' Club was changed because its membership was overwhelmingly composed of Chinese mariners. Throughout this period, the forerunner of the CYL and the Chinese Seamen's Union, assisted by the Seamen's Union of Australia, campaigned for Chinese seamen to work on vessels carrying supplies to war zones and along the Australian coast. They were able to achieve pay rates for the Chinese seamen which were equivalent to eighty per cent of the wage accorded to their Australian counterparts, and their working and living conditions were no longer squalid, cramped or dangerous.[17]

In May 1943, the Chinese Youth League's forerunner and the Chinese Seamen's Union helped to organise a labour force of 1,000 Chinese seamen to build landing craft for the United States army at Bulimba near Brisbane. Bulimba became known as the China Camp. Because of the welfare needs of Chinese seamen ashore in Brisbane and Melbourne ports, the CYL established branches to meet their needs. They provided the seamen with housing, finding them board with Chinese families, organised interpreters to assist the seamen with reading and writing in English and finding work on ships. The Chinese Youth League offices were places where seamen could find food and accommodation.[18] Paul Wong, a Chinese market gardener at Mascot and foundation member of the dramatic group and fine tenor, designed the Chinese Youth League emblem combining a torch with linked rings to represent the flame of youth and the unity of the Chinese people in the motherland and overseas.[19]

In October 1944, the Chinese Youth League responded to a call by Madam Sun Yat-Sen to provide funding for medical aid to the Chinese resistance guerrillas behind enemy lines. They organised a week of Cantonese and Hainanese operas at Sydney's Town Hall and the Haymarket district.[20] The donations received helped to build the International Peace Hospital at Yunan. At the Sydney Town Hall meeting, speeches were made on behalf of Madam Sun's appeal by the Federal Minister for Transport, Eddie Ward; Labor Senator, Bill Morrow; Communist writer, Katharine Susannah Prichard and the leaders of various Australian trade unions. Arthur Gar Locke-Chang was given a parcel wrapped in newspaper which contained three thousand pounds as an anonymous donation to the fund.[21]

From 1942, the organisation published periodicals reporting on the state of the war of resistance in China, and the situation of victims of natural disasters in various regions of China. These publications were written in Cantonese to inform the Chinese community within Australia of the problems besetting war time China. In 1945, as the Allied victory in the Pacific against Japan had almost reached its conclusion, members of the Chinese Youth League were filled with jubilation. With news of Japan's unconditional surrender after years of resistance in China, the Chinese Youth League organised a victory march starting from Dixon Street in Chinatown, along George Street to Circular Quay, and returning back to the CYL headquarters. The procession ended after several hours. Many Sydneysiders joined the procession and helped to carry the lion drums.[22] Numerous celebrations organised by the Chinese Youth League occurred throughout the year. The Chinese Youth League encouraged Chinese to purchase Chinese Victory Bonds issued by the Kuomintang, and Liberty and Victory Bonds from the Australian government. Members of the CYL and Chinese Seamen's Union performed a Cantonese opera, The Land of Peach Blossoms, to raise money for the Red Cross.[23] Chinese Youth League members marched in the May Day parade of 1945.

With the Japanese surrender in August 1945, Holland sought to re-establish its control over the Indonesian archipelago. The Dutch were determined to reclaim their colonial rule by force. They chartered ships in Australian ports to carry out their re-conquest of Indonesia.[24] Indonesian political prisoners of the Dutch within Australia, as well as Indonesian seamen, sought assistance from within Australia for the Indonesian independence movement. Indonesian seamen, as well as Australian wharf labourers, refused to crew or load these Dutch-chartered vessels. At the forefront of this support of the boycott against Dutch shipping, was the Chinese Youth League.

With the assistance of Australian waterfront unions, the CYL was able to win over Indonesian Chinese, Malayan, Vietnamese and Indian seamen to refuse to work on the Dutch ships. Hundreds of these seamen were given bedding, food and shelter at the premises of the Chinese Youth League. Billeting was also arranged for many of these seamen with families in Chinatown. As the struggle for Indonesian independence escalated, Indonesian seamen suffering from tuberculosis were evicted from their beds at the Queen Juliana Hospital in North Sydney by the Dutch authorities.[25] These patients were found a bed, food and comfort within the Chinese community by the Chinese Youth League. CYL members together with Indonesian patriots addressed numerous lunch-hour meetings of Australian workers in factories, shops and on wharves.[26] They were responding to Sun Yat-Sen's entreaty to struggle together with all the oppressed peoples of the world. Joris Ivens, who was commissioned by the Dutch government to make a documentary film in support of the re-imposition of Dutch rule in Indonesia, abandoned this project and made a sixteen-millimetre twenty-five minute film entitled Indonesia Calling, which recorded the struggle for Indonesian independence from within Australia. Funding for Ivens' film was provided by the Chinese Youth League.[27]

The boycott of Dutch shipping maintained by the maritime unions and their supporters throughout Australia proved crucial to the final winning of Indonesian independence in 1949.

At the end of the Pacific War and with the revival of commercial shipping, ship owners also attempted to re-establish pre-war conditions of employment on their Asian crews. In response, the CYL helped to establish the Chinese Seamen's Welfare Association. Chinese Youth League members Charles Lim, K.Y. Tong, Louis Wong and Arthur Gar Locke-Chang as non-seafarers helped to resolve disputes over working conditions and the unjust treatment of Chinese and other Asian seamen on these ships. In October 1946 at Sydney, two British steamships, Sarpedon and Hickory Glen, and one French steamer, Gailong, were strike-bound. Nearly three hundred Chinese seamen hired to crew these vessels held a strike meeting in the Chinese Youth League premises.[28] Within days, a settlement was reached between the ship owners and the striking workers. The Chinese crews were provided with higher wages and promised better working and living conditions.[29]

Apart from its involvement with Chinese seafarers and the Chinese resistance to Japanese militarism, the Chinese Youth League also came to the defence of Chinese wartime evacuees who wished to remain within Australia after the war had ceased. The Federal Labor Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, was determined to deport all Asians who had sought refuge in Australia from the Japanese invasion.[30] At the same time, Calwell initiated a huge immigration programme of European war-refugees to Australia.

To forestall these forced deportations of Asians from Australia, the Chinese Youth League mounted a legal challenge to the federal government's actions. It was argued that the Dictation Test for Immigration could not be applied after a person had stayed in Australia for five years and the deportation order was invalid. Calwell responded by introducing the War Time Refugee Removal Act into parliament. Many Chinese were arrested, gaoled and faced deportation. At Long Bay Gaol, thirty-three Chinese including Chinese Youth League members John Foo Shu, Walter Wu Wah Hung and Tan S. Wing were awaiting immediate deportation. Their legal defender, the barrister W.J. Lee, hired by the Chinese Youth League, used the Habeas Corpus Act to delay their deportation. This form of legal defence, through appeal, finally reached the High Court of Australia, where the War Time Refugee Removal Act was contested on constitutional grounds. From this period until 1953, no further deportations occurred. The High Court rescinded the deportation orders and all potential deportees were given temporary residence by the Liberal Immigration Minister, Harold Holt. This legal victory for the Chinese community was a crucial step in ending the White Australia Policy.[31]

From 1946 until his death in August 1948, Chinese Youth League president Fred Wong, with other Chinese Australians, formed a company, Asian Airlines, with the aim of flying aeroplanes from Hong Kong and Darwin to help the infant Indonesian republic with aid from Australia. It was claimed in the Australian federal parliament and the press that Asian Airlines planned to carry guns from Singapore and Hong Kong to the Indonesian independence forces fighting the Dutch. Wong died in mysterious circumstances whilst inspecting a war disposal sea plane, which was to provide this assistance to Indonesia.[32]

During the period of the Chinese Civil War from 1945 until 1949, the Chinese Youth League supported the forces which sought to free China from domination, division and ruin. In 1948, the Chinese Youth League introduced monthly screenings of sixteen-millimetre documentaries about China with Cantonese subtitles. These films proved to be popular within Chinatown and the Chinese community, which was largely devoid of news and information about the motherland. At the film screenings, held in the Chinese Youth League premises, appeals for donations for famine victims and war orphans were made.[33]

On 1 October 1949, the People's Republic of China was proclaimed from Beijing. When this news was heard by the Chinese Youth League members, Moon Heon Lee, and King Mok, they overnight made the first five-star flag in Australia representing the New China. It was hoisted from one of the windows of the Chinese Youth League's headquarters.[34] Whilst many Chinese celebrated the founding of the People's Republic of China, others in Chinatown did not. The Consul of the Republic of China refused to recognise the Chinese Youth League as a registered organisation which raised funds for the motherland. The Sydney branch of the Kuomintang applied pressure on the owners of the Chinese Youth League's leased premises to have the CYL evicted. The Chinese Youth League's importing of films from Hong Kong and southern China often faced lengthy delays by Australian Customs. To overcome this difficulty, the Chinese Youth League, through the Chinese Seamen's Union, arranged for seamen to transport these films to Sydney and circumvent customs.[35]

The creation of a New China heralded a new stage in the history of the Chinese Youth League, as it marked the advent of the Cold War in Asia. From its foundation in 1939 until 1949, the Chinese Youth League's activities had neither contested nor contradicted Australian domestic or foreign policy. With the coming of the Cold War, the Chinese Youth League was seen by Australian security forces as an organisation within Australia serving Communist China. Unlike other Chinese cultural associations or organisations of this period, the Chinese Youth League remained committed to an open progressive form of politics.[36] The Chinese Youth League felt it was imperative to promote New China and Chinese culture and raise awareness and unity amongst the Chinese and foster friendship and understanding between the Australian and Chinese peoples.[37] To advance such ideas in the Cold War was to make the Chinese Youth League the ideological enemy of the KMT and others in the Chinese community who opposed the New China.[38] Nevertheless, this stance by the Chinese Youth League created both internal and external difficulties.

Fewer and fewer Chinese joined the Chinese Youth League. Chinese informants spread lies and rumours about the Chinese Youth League's activities and its leading members. The People's Republic of China insisted that overseas Chinese conform to the laws and policies of their respective host countries. This complicated the activities of the CYL who, by championing People's China, were seen as the agents of Communist China in Cold War Australia. The Menzies coalition government also confronted the dilemma about radical Chinese activism within Australia. They could not deport the activists within the Chinese Youth League by legal fiat, as such action was both unconstitutional and unconscionable. Instead, the Chinese Youth League was to be isolated both within Australian society and the Chinese community. Surveillance of its leading members intensified.[39] The Chinese Youth League was able to maintain its existence throughout this difficult period by raising funds by the regular screening of films in its rented premises at 66 Dixon Street, Sydney. As the Brisbane and Melbourne branches of the Chinese Youth League were closed at the end of the Second World War with the departure of Chinese seamen, the Sydney branch maintained an uncertain existence throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

To break out of its isolation, the few remaining members of the Chinese Seamen's Union and the Chinese Youth League formed the San Lian Educational and Cultural Club to promote and distribute Chinese language publications and to conduct language classes in Cantonese at the CYL rooms in February 1950.[40] These cultural endeavours did not overshadow or curtail the Chinese Youth League's political commitments. In May 1950, Arthur Gar Locke-Chang represented the Chinese Youth League at the World Peace Conference in Melbourne. A Chinese Youth League contingent took part in the 1951 May Day march in Sydney and later performed the play, Oppose Japanese Re-armament. Despite its straitened financial circumstances, the Chinese Youth League assisted an Australian Peace Tour Delegation to People's China at the height of the Korean War. With other progressive organisations, the Chinese Youth League helped to organise the first International Youth Festival held at Hollywood near Liverpool, Sydney in October 1951. In the weeks before the festival, the organisers faced the cancellation of sporting and accommodation venues and pressure from the federal government. Nevertheless, the Chinese Youth League encouraged members of the Chinese community to take part in the festival's sporting and cultural presentations.[41]

By the early 1950s, labour shortages in Chinese restaurants and the market gardens around Sydney grew because of the forced repatriation of Chinese seamen and war-time refugees. Responding to this labour shortage, Chinese businessmen were given preferential treatment by the federal government to sponsor poor indentured workers from China's southern provinces and Hong Kong. They were employed as cooks, shop assistants, waiters and vegetable market gardeners.[42] On arrival, their documents, contracts and entry permits were held by their employers. They often worked more than eighty hours per week, slept at their employers' premises and received only one-fifth of the basic wage for Australian workers. These indentured workers were forbidden to change employment under the terms of their contract. Their indentured work was described as the 'Piglet System'.

To protect the rights and interests of these workers, the Chinese Youth League formed the New South Wales Chinese Workers' Association (NSWCWA) in November 1952.[43] With the support of the Waterside Workers' Federation, the Australian Seamens' Union, the Restaurant Workers' Union and the Chinese Youth League, the NSWCWA united many of the so-called piglets and publicised the injustice of the indenture system.[44]

Through sit-down strikes and 'go-slows', the 'piglets' at the Modern China Restaurant, the Sun Sai Gai Restaurant, the Hong Kong Restaurant, several large Haymarket warehouses and Chinese market gardens at Botany and Rosebery forced their employers into negotiations. A union was formed and the workers gained the wage levels to which they were entitled. The New South Wales Chinese Workers' Association and the Chinese Youth League helped these workers to find accommodation in Chinatown. In the middle of the Cold War, sections of Chinese workers in Chinatown had successfully sought redress to their appalling working and living conditions and exposed and ended the employers' Piglet System.[45]

After the struggle against the Piglet System, the Menzies government ended the deportation orders and gave Chinese seamen, refugees and workers permanent residency. In 1956, the war-time Refugee Removal Act was finally repealed.[46] Chinese in Sydney and elsewhere in Australia had been freed from the threat of continuing employer exploitation and deportation. In law, at least, the Chinese had become virtual Australian citizens. These changes brought unity to the Chinese community. The Chinese Youth League continued, however, to come under security surveillance.[47]

The Cold War virtually ended all contact with mainland China for the Chinese in Australia. In this situation, the majority of Chinese in Sydney's Chinatown abandoned all forms of radical political activity. They chose to endure the Cold War in silence. Nevertheless, the Chinese Youth League attempted to maintain its ties with China. The organisation hosted a Chinese Workers' Delegation, a Peace Delegation and a Friendship Delegation during the years from 1956 until 1960.[48] These unofficial delegations brought the Chinese Youth League limited and temporary respect within the Chinese community but no deep political influence.

The Chinese Youth League also provided refuge and aid to Chinese sailors who jumped ship in Sydney. Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) records indicate that at least two or three Chinese seamen annually failed to return to their Hong Kong-registered ships after docking in Sydney. The Chinese seamen refused to remain on these ships because of the working and living conditions and their employers' refusal to pay wages owing to them. ASIO carried out various raids on the Chinese Youth League in search of these absconding sailors. Shelter, work and new identities were found for these sailors by the Chinese Youth League and its contacts in Chinatown.[49] ASIO believed that the Chinese Youth League was spying for the People's Republic of China. As Chinese seamen brought films and literature from revolutionary China to the Chinese Youth League office in Chinatown, this was seen as proof of the Chinese Youth League's espionage.[50]

Throughout the 1960s, the Chinese Youth League screened sixty-five Chinese films which were banned by the Australian federal government. Nevertheless, attending the Chinese Youth League monthly film nights became a popular activity in Chinatown for those denied any contact with China. Apart from its screening of films, distribution of literature from New China and its language classes, the Chinese Youth League organised and sponsored table tennis, basketball, volleyball, soccer and badminton teams within the Chinese community.

In July 1972, months before Australia established formal diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, a Chinese table tennis delegation toured Australia. The Chinese Youth League played a leading role in organising a Chinese community welcoming committee for the delegation. In Sydney, the Chinese delegation attended a reception of 2,000 people including the Australian Minister for External Affairs, Nigel Bowen. The delegation visited most state capitals within Australia where the Chinese Youth League helped to organise official receptions.

From its beginnings and throughout the Pacific War, the Chinese Civil War and the Cold War, the Chinese Youth League attempted to serve the people and keep China in heart and mind. During the Pacific War, the support of the Chinese Youth League for China was seen as aiding the war effort of the Allies. In this period the membership of the CYL numbered in the hundreds because of the influx of stranded Chinese seamen. From the time of the birth of revolutionary China until Australia formally recognised the PRC, the CYL's membership and influence within the Chinese community declined because of the Cold War's all-pervasive anti-Communism. Although the Chinese Youth League remained steadfast in its objectives, it was largely isolated.

As relations between China and Australia 'normalised' after 1973, the CYL's previous political commitments were superseded by the cultural, sporting and welfare concerns of Chinese Australians. The radical past of the Chinese Youth League faded into the background and politics were less and less in command. A bridge of solidarity had been built by the CYL from 1939 until 1973. Thereafter, as the Cold War receded and as China underwent political and economic transformation, the political significance of the Chinese Youth League diminished.

References

[1] The organisation known as the Chinese Youth League underwent a number of name changes before it formally became the CYL. In spite of the name changes, the Chinese Youth League has held fast to its original objectives throughout its history. Although this article refers to the organisations preceding the Chinese Youth League, for brevity and convenience they are subsumed under the title Chinese Youth League (CYL). Histories of the Chinese Masonic Society and the Kuomintang, like the CYL, await an author, but Shirley Fitzgerald's Red Tape, Gold Scissors: The story of Sydney's Chinese (State Library of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2000) offers a broad overview of these organisations. While t he whereabouts of the CYL records remains a mystery those created during the surveillance of the CYL by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) between 1947 and 1975 are open to public scrutiny. This four-volumed archive of 'intelligence' is located in the National Archives of Australia (NAA): A6122, 1914 to 1917. The ASIO documents are the sole extant, but unreliable, account of the CYL to date.

[2] Jia Rui Zheng, 'Sixty years of the Chinese Youth League', Chinese Youth League of Australia 60th Anniversary Magazine, 2000, pp.38-46.

[3] Arthur Locke Chang, 'Anecdotes of CYL – Down memory lane', Chinese Youth League of Australia 60th Anniversary Magazine, 2000, pp.51-56.

[4] John Fitzgerald, 'The “Australian” in Chinese-Australians of the White Australia era: A study of the Australian Kuomintang in the 1920s and 1930s', in Liu Ludi, Chen Hong and Hour Minyue (eds) Cultural Pluralism and Civil Society in the Asia Pacific Region in the Era of Globalisation, Shanghai shiji chuban jituan, Shanghai, pp.55-99; Shirley Fitzgerald, Red Tape, Gold Scissors: The story of Sydney's Chinese, State Library of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2000, pp.130-136.

[5] Jia Rui Zheng, 'Sixty Years of the Chinese Youth League', p.38; Drew Cottle, 'Fred Wong, China, Australia and a world to win', in S. Couchman, et al (eds) After the Rush: Chinese Communities in Australia, 1869-1940 (Otherland Literary Journal), no. 9, 2004, pp.107-118.

[6] Drew Cottle, 'Forgotten foreign militants: The Chinese Seamen's Union in Australia, 1942-1946', in H. Alexander and P. Griffiths (eds), A Few Rough Reds: Stories of Rank and File Organising, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Canberra, 2003, pp.135-51.

[7] Jia Rui Zheng, 'Sixty Years of the Chinese Youth League', p.38.

[8] Arthur Locke Chang, 'Anecdotes of CYL – Down Memory Lane', p.52.

[9]'Fifty-Five Years of the Chinese Youth League', The Chinese Herald, 19 September 1994, p. 4.

[10]'Fifty-Five Years of the Chinese Youth League', The Chinese Herald, 19 September 1994, p. 4.

[11] Drew Cottle, 'Fred Wong, China, Australia and a world to win', p.109.

[12]Interview, Arthur Gar Locke Chang, Chinese Youth League, Campbell Street, Sydney, August 2005.

[13] Drew Cottle, 'Forgotten foreign militants: the Chinese Seamen's Union in Australia, 1942-1946', p.137.

[14] Drew Cottle, 'Forgotten foreign militants: the Chinese Seamen's Union in Australia, 1942-1946', pp.137-38.

[15] Jia Rui Zheng, 'Sixty Years of the Chinese Youth League', p.38; ' Fifty-Five Years of the Chinese Youth League', The Chinese Herald, 19 September 1994, p.4.

[16] Drew Cottle, 'Forgotten foreign militants: the Chinese Seamen's Union in Australia, 1942-1946', p.145.

[17] Drew Cottle, 'Forgotten foreign militants: the Chinese Seamen's Union in Australia, 1942-1946', p.145.

[18] Drew Cottle, 'Forgotten foreign militants: the Chinese Seamen's Union in Australia, 1942-1946', p.145.

[19]Interview, Arthur Gar Locke Chang, Chinese Youth League, Campbell Street, Sydney, August 2005.

[20]'Fifty-Five Years of the Chinese Youth League', The Chinese Herald, 19 September 1994, p.5.

[21] Arthur Locke Chang, 'Anecdotes of CYL – Down memory lane', p.51.

[22] Jia Rui Zheng, 'Sixty Years of the Chinese Youth League', p.38.

[23] Drew Cottle, 'Forgotten foreign militants: the Chinese Seamen's Union in Australia, 1942-1946', p.146.

[24]Rupert Lockwood, Black Armada: Australia and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1942-1949, Hale & Ironmonger, Sydney, 1982, pp.67-69.

[25] Rupert Lockwood, Black Armada, pp.168-70.

[26] Rupert Lockwood, Black Armada, p.170.

[27] Arthur Locke Chang, 'Anecdotes of CYL – Down memory lane', pp. 51-52.

[28] Arthur Locke Chang, 'Anecdotes of CYL – Down memory lane', p.52.

[29] Arthur Locke Chang, 'Anecdotes of CYL – Down memory lane', p.52.

[30]'Fifty-Five Years of the Chinese Youth League', The Chinese Herald, 19 September 1994, p.3.

[31]Peter Wong, 'Moving forward during difficult times', Chinese Youth League of Australia 60th Anniversary Magazine, 2000, pp.58-63.

[32] Drew Cottle, 'Fred Wong, China, Australia and a world to win', pp.114-15.

[33] Arthur Locke Chang, 'Anecdotes of CYL – Down Memory Lane', p.53.

[34] Jia Rui Zheng, 'Sixty Years of the Chinese Youth League', p.39.

[35]See Drew Cottle and Angela Keys, 'Red-hunting in Sydney's Chinatown', Paper presented at Australian Historical Association Conference, Newcastle, July 2004.

[36]Drew Cottle and Angela Keys, 'Red-hunting in Sydney's Chinatown'.

[37]Peter Wong, 'Moving forward during difficult times', pp.59-60.

[38]Drew Cottle and Angela Keys, 'Red-hunting in Sydney's Chinatown'.

[39]Drew Cottle and Angela Keys, 'Red-hunting in Sydney's Chinatown'.

[40]'Fifty-Five Years of the Chinese Youth League', The Chinese Herald, 19 September 1994, p.3.

[41]Drew Cottle and Angela Keys, 'Red-hunting in Sydney's Chinatown'.

[42] Voy Sang Lee, 'Chinese Youth League and the Chinese Workers' Association', Chinese Youth League 60 th Anniversary Magazine, pp.41 and 114.

[43] 'Chinese Workers Welfare Association', NAA: MP1139/1, V1963/66243, 1953. Shirley Fitzgerald, Red Tape, Gold Scissors, p.145.

[44] 'Chinese Workers Welfare Association', NAA: MP1139/1, V1963/66243, 1953.

[45] Voy Sang Lee, 'Chinese Youth League and the Chinese Workers' Association', p.114.

[46] Arthur Locke Chang, 'Anecdotes of CYL – Down memory lane', pp.53-54.

[47] 'Chinese Youth League of Australia', NAA: A6122, 1914 to 1917 (four volumes).

[48] Arthur Locke Chang, 'Anecdotes of CYL – Down memory lane', p.55.

[49] 'Chinese Communists in Australia', NAA: MP1139/1/1, 53/38/1208.

[50] 'Chinese Communists in Australia', NAA: MP1139/1/1, 53/38/1208.

About the author

Dr Drew Cottle is based at the University of Western Sydney and Angela Keys at Charles Sturt University.

Discussion

Write a response to this article

Email your response, question or comment using the link above. Be sure to include your full name and contact details. Your email will be read by the JCA editorial committee and after editing may be published below. Further information about this process is available on the Discussion page.