Māori were once New Zealand’s friendliest people towards Chinese: they married us and taught us to farm!

About half of New Zealand’s prison population is Māori. Chinese newcomers to New Zealand are also often warned by friends to be wary of crime in areas with large Māori and Pacific populations. 

 

But did you know? 

 

Until the 1980s, Chinese New Zealanders felt deeply grateful to Māori. At a time when white New Zealanders called Chinese people the “yellow peril”, Māori were the friendliest group towards them. They leased land to Chinese settlers, taught them how to farm and married them. 

 

Some members of the Māori aristocracy also have Chinese ancestry. Yet all this is now history gathering dust! 

 

The Chinese people labelled the “yellow peril” in New Zealand 

 

In the mid-19th century, gold was discovered in Dunedin, New Zealand. Gold miners from around the world began heading to New Zealand, including Chinese miners.

 

Chinese miners outside their stone dwellings in Arrowtown, Otago, photographed around 1900. 

 

In 1866, the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce formally invited Chinese people to work the goldfields. The earliest Chinese miners came mainly from Zengcheng, Panyu, Guangzhou and Siyi in Guangdong. By 1874, the number of Chinese workers in New Zealand had reached 5000. 

 

As gold production declined, these Chinese workers gradually moved into other occupations, building railways, growing fruit and vegetables, trading groceries, and opening laundries and Chinese restaurants. 

 

However, life in New Zealand was far from promising for Chinese people, who wore queues and did not practise Christianity. 

 

Chinese people were labelled the “yellow peril”. 

 

In 1881, New Zealand passed its first “Chinese exclusion law”, requiring Chinese people to pay a poll tax of £10. 

 

In 1896, the poll tax on Chinese people rose 10fold to £100, and was not abolished until 1944. At the time, £100 was an enormous sum, and many Chinese people had to borrow from fellow villagers and other sources to raise it.

 

 

In 1908, New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs decided to stop submitting Chinese naturalisation applications to Cabinet for approval. Until 1952, a period of more than 40 years, no Chinese person was formally naturalised as a New Zealand citizen. For decades, Chinese people were treated as second-class citizens, enduring hardship and discrimination in silence and keeping their heads down. 

 

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Helene Wong was born in New Zealand and served as a social policy adviser to New Zealand Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon from 1978 to 1980. 

 

In an interview with the author, she said: “When I became the Prime Minister’s social policy adviser, people noticed only that I was a woman. Nobody noticed my Chinese background. That was because Chinese people had kept such a low profile over the previous century. They deliberately avoided drawing attention to being Chinese. In everything they did, they wanted others to see them as New Zealanders.” 

 

 Helene Wong, former social policy adviser to the New Zealand Prime Minister 

 

Relations between Chinese and Māori 

 

Understanding the humiliating history of Chinese people in New Zealand helps explain why they formed such deep friendships with Māori. 

 

Manying Ip, a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, was born and raised in Hong Kong and settled in New Zealand in 1974. She has published several books on the history of relations between Māori and Chinese.

 

 University of Auckland Professor Manying Ip 

 

She explained that Chinese people had contact with Māori as early as the 1860s, with relations closest during the 1910s and 1920s. 

 

The closeness between Māori and Chinese had political and social causes, as well as economic and cultural factors. 

 

For one thing, both Māori and Chinese faced discrimination from white people at the time. Both occupied lower socioeconomic positions and depended on each other. 

 

For another, white settlers were pastoral farmers who raised cattle and sheep, while Māori and Chinese were crop-growing peoples who cultivated kūmara, potatoes and vegetables. Both groups also lived in large, multigenerational households and enjoyed eating pork and watercress. 

 

Chinese miners in Otago after a church service 

 

Chinese people were deeply grateful to Māori  

 

Helene Wong said the economic relationship between Māori and Chinese was interesting. Chinese people leased farmland from Māori, while the Māori landowners also worked for them as farm labourers. 

 

Manying Ip said most early Chinese settlers in New Zealand came from Guangdong and were unfamiliar with New Zealand’s climate and soil conditions. In those early years, Māori gave Chinese settlers hands-on lessons in cultivation, weeding and pest control. 

 

Chinese New Zealanders in 1939, whose clothing suggests they were reasonably well off 

 

But from the 1990s, new Chinese migrants to New Zealand generally had higher educational qualifications and greater financial resources. They had little contact with Māori in their daily lives and work, and relations between the groups grew increasingly distant. New Chinese migrants often avoided Māori communities because of concerns about crime. 

 

So how do Māori view Chinese people today? 

 

Manying Ip said their feelings towards Chinese people were complex. On the one hand, there was a sense of cultural affinity, with similar family values.

 

On the other hand, they saw new Chinese migrants as wealthy and overbearing, and worried that they lacked respect for Māori, would monopolise New Zealand’s economy and would keep Māori at the bottom of the economic ladder.

 

“Māori feel that Chinese people lack an understanding of the importance of the Treaty of Waitangi. Māori are signatories to New Zealand’s founding treaty, rather than simply another minority ethnic group. Yet many new Chinese migrants show little awareness of Māori’s unique status or the treaty’s importance.”