The size of the Chinese community in Australia

It seems like every marketer is interested in the Chinese community. That’s probably because, apart from English (naturally), Mandarin is now the most spoken language in Australia (overtaking Italian since the 2011 Census). When we combine all Chinese languages; Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Teo Cheo and more, the total Chinese speaking population in Australia is around 650,000. 

And this audience spends. In addition to normal expenditure to set up a new life in Australia, this group includes a significant number of high value consumers as evidenced by house purchase, luxury labels and luxury cars etc. So it’s not surprising we’ve seen a spike in interest from existing and new clients in multicultural marketing (or as some clients still call it, ethnic marketing).

Given the last Census was in 2011, IDENTITY used migration figures from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and forecast natural attrition rate to project the Chinese speaking population to June 2016 (it will be interesting to see how close our estimate is to the 2016 Census figure when it’s released on 27 June).

International Student data is sourced from the Department of Education and Training, Tourism data from Tourism Australia.

IDENTITY Communications is a strategy led, award-winning multicultural marketing agency. We are part of the global IPG Mediabrands group. If you find this information useful, please consider following us for more updates:

IDENTITY Chinese infographic APRIL 2017

NB: Infographic revised 19 April 2017.