Immediately after World War II Australia embarked on the greatest immigration program in history. Over the following decades immigrants flowed into the country changing it forever. They came from Europe and later from Asia and other parts of the world. At first they filled a huge gap in the labour force, providing the economic strength for national expansion in manufacturing and infrastructure development. This is the story of how the program was planned, where the people came from, and how they became Australians with their own distinct identities.

Immigration specialist James Jupp surveys changes in immigration policy since 1972.

First published in 1996, Australia's China explores the multifaceted and dynamic Australian encounter with China from the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 through the Cold War to the Australian recognition of the PRC in 1972. Going beyond conventional policy studies, it traces the patterns in Australian reactions to China from the grass-roots to official circles, highlighting the centrality of images concerning the exotic, disease, sexuality, the frontier, and China as a paradise/anti-paradise. In responding to China, Australians revealed something of themselves, and this book maps the formation of Australian conceptions of identity in the context of a cross-cultural encounter which was variously cooperative, enriching, baffling, and antagonistic. But there was no single Australian conception of China. Rather, competing perceptions jostled in a shifting dialogue.