Racial settler colonialism in Aotearoa: Heather Gao, ‘Chinese racialisation and colonial complicity: connecting capitalism, white supremacy and settler colonisation in Aotearoa’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

Racial settler colonialism in Aotearoa: Heather Gao, ‘Chinese racialisation and colonial complicity: connecting capitalism, white supremacy and settler colonisation in Aotearoa’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

27Nov25

Abstract: Building on theorisations examining the colonial positionalities of Asian diasporic communities in settler societies such as Canada, Hawai’i and the U.S., this article investigates the role of Chinese racialisation and discursive positioning vis-à-vis Pākehā and Māori in bolstering, obscuring or otherwise entrenching White supremacy, settler colonisation, and capitalism in Aotearoa. Specifically, I offer a critical analysis of historical texts, building upon and expanding existing narratives within secondary sources through the theoretical framework of colonial racial capitalism. I argue that Chinese racialisation and discursive positioning in Aotearoa has and continues to be shaped by the material interests of ‘New Zealand’ as a settler-colonial project founded upon the subjugation of Māori land and life, and reliant on the alienation of racialised tauiwi from the national identity and body politic. At once a Yellow Peril, model minority and essentialised Other, Chinese immigrants have been differentially racialised and positioned in society in order to produce and reproduce the conditions necessary for the preservation of colonial racial capitalism. Our racialisation as Chinese people can then be understood as inseparable from the settler-colonial project, and so to resist against White supremacy thus also requires that we resist against the violences of capitalism and (settler) colonisation.

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