The Australian Bureau of Statistics says Hong Kong ancestry is not a separate category in the 2026 census and will continue to be coded to Chinese, even as Hongkongers push to be counted on their own terms.
Who Gets Counted, and Who Doesn't
On Tuesday night, Australian citizen Kevin Yam will fill out the census for the first time. When he reaches the ancestry question, he plans to write "Hongkonger" as a nod to the place he was born and lived for most of his life before recent political turmoil forced him to leave. The problem is simple and blunt: "Hongkonger" will not register in the data-gathering exercise because it is not an option in the census ancestry category, according to the ABS.
The ABS uses the Australian Standard Classification of Cultural and Ethnic Groups to code ethnic groups. "Hong Kong ancestry is not a separate ancestry category in ASCCEG and will continue to be coded to Chinese," the ABS told the ABC. The bureau says there are other questions meant to measure Australia's cultural and ethnic diversity, including country of birth, birth country of parents and language used at home. That is the machinery of recognition here: a state classification system deciding which identities count cleanly and which get folded into a broader label.
Yam, a former lawyer and pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong, said: "If you can say that you're born in Hong Kong and you can say that you speak Cantonese at home, then why can't you say that Hongkonger is your ancestry?" He added: "It just makes no sense."
Identity Under the Bureaucratic Knife
The stance has frustrated activists like Jane Poon, president of the Australia-Hong Kong Link community group, who advocated for the change with the ABS five years ago, around the time of the last census. Poon said: "I'm the third generation born from Hong Kong." She added: "We treasure our own identities and also hope that others, [whether] it's the Australian government or other people, recognise and acknowledge our own identity — not just imposing [a Chinese] identity over us."
Hongkongers point out there is no way for those born in Australia, China or elsewhere, with strong Hong Kong roots, to identify as such. The territory is part of China, under the "one country, two systems" framework, but Hongkongers say they have their own distinct identity, shaped by more than 150 years of British rule, where they experienced vastly different education and political systems to those of mainland China. A key distinction is language — Hongkongers write in traditional rather than simplified Chinese, and they speak Cantonese rather than Mandarin.
Hong Kong was handed back to the People's Republic of China in 1997 with the promise that it could maintain its own capitalist and political system for 50 years. Ted Hui, a former Hong Kong politician and now Australian resident, said Hong Kong had long been culturally distinct from China, but the impetus for Hongkongers to assert that unique identity came to a head in 2019, when mass protests erupted on the streets of Hong Kong in response to perceived encroachment of democratic freedoms by the Chinese Communist Party.
Like Yam, Hui is wanted in Hong Kong under the extra-territorial National Security Law. Hui was granted asylum in Australia last year. He said a new law introduced in China in June — the Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion law — has put renewed vigour into China's diverse ethnic groups to maintain their cultures and sparked concerns among those in Australia deemed to be "undermining ethnic unity". Human rights groups say the new law attempts to erase the country's ethnic minorities.
Hui said: "The more oppressed we are, the more we feel the need to maintain that [identity] so that it doesn't disappear." He added: "Otherwise, the unique culture that we have will just vanish." He also said Hong Kong is not just a birthplace, but a lived experience and a cultural identity. "We haven't lived in Beijing's political propaganda all our lives, so we have more independent thinking. I think that also makes us Hongkongers." He said it was "inappropriate and unfair" for the ABS to shift Hongkonger responses under the Chinese ancestry category. "I don't think that's on purpose, but that may be inadvertently fitting into the Chinese political propaganda," he said.
The Census as a Gatekeeper
Ramila Chanisheff said the recent law was also a concern for her Uyghur community, a Turkic Muslim population from Xinjiang. She urged Uyghur respondents to identify themselves as such, rather than Chinese. "The Australian census needs to pick up how many Uyghurs live in Australia and how we can be protected, especially with the ethnic unity law that's coming into effect," she said.
Members of the Tibetan and Taiwanese communities encouraged their members to list those specific categories for the ancestry question. Tenzin Khangsar from the Australia Tibet Council said: "Recognising our community in Census data helps ensure that our presence is visible and can contribute to better understanding of our community’s needs, which may help inform future policies and services."
The ASCCEG is a long list with hundreds of possible ancestries, for example, Catalan or Basque, as well as Uyghur, Taiwanese, Singaporean, Mongolian and Tibetan. But there are also omissions — for example, within the nation of Myanmar, the ethnic groups Karen, Mon, Chin and Rohingya are recognised in the ASCCEG, while groups like Kachin, Shan and Karenni are not.
The classification system is not static. The ASCCEG has had a review since the last census, and two new ethnic and cultural groups have been added: Israeli and Edo. Some have been relabelled, for example, Yazidi instead of Yezidi, Romani instead of Roma Gypsy, and Uyghur instead of Uighur. Other categories — Darfur, Madurese, Temoq, Hutu and Kunama — have been retired and shifted under broader groups.
Another change to this year's census is that respondents can select up to four ancestries, rather than two in previous years.
China does not appear on the country of birth tick-box list, despite being the third-most common country of birth according to the 2021 census. "China is an exception and is not included as a tick-box response," an ABS spokesperson said, adding this has been the case since 1991. "This is to encourage more specific answers for this question, such as China, Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan, which are collected and reported separately in Census data."
Some community leaders also aired concerns about language issues in ensuring the census was filled out accurately. The census is compulsory, and failure to complete it can attract a $364 per day fine. The census is only available in English, but information about the census is available in 26 languages, and people can call the Translating and Interpreting Service on 131 450. "Translating the census into many languages would be a complex process that creates a risk of incorrect translation, which could create data quality issues," an ABS spokesperson said. They said the ABS "undertakes an extensive consultation and testing process" ahead of every census. "This includes engagement with community representatives and testing of the census form with people from CALD [culturally and linguistically diverse] communities." "While it is not possible to fulfil all the requests we receive through the process, we are focused on making sure the census reflects, as best as possible, modern Australia."