MOCA Presents An Unlikely Heritage: Rethinking the Kuomintang in Sydney

In the heart of Sydney stands a building most people walk past without a second glance. It was the Kuomintang's Sydney headquarters, and it is now heritage listed.

History is not always written from the centre. Some of its most revealing stories come from the margins. Under the White Australia Policy, Chinese Australians were never fully excluded and never fully accepted. Caught between an imagined homeland and a country that kept them at arm's length, they built their own associations, businesses and political organisations.

Drawing on a decade of archival research, Dr Mei-fen Kuo opens up records that have sat quiet for generations. They reveal two histories tangled together: one of community, mutual aid and civic life, the other of political loyalty, party discipline and transnational networks. Neither can be pulled free of the other.

So what does it mean when a Kuomintang headquarters becomes part of Australia's heritage? More than the story of one political organisation, this unlikely heritage asks us to rethink migration, belonging, and the place of Chinese Australians in Australia's shared past.

Dr Mei-fen Kuo is a historian at Macquarie University, where she lectures in Chinese Studies and International Studies. Her research covers Chinese diaspora politics, Taiwan Studies and Cold War Asia-Pacific history. She is the author of Making Chinese Australia and Unlocking the History of the Australasian Kuo Min Tang 1911-2013, and held a National Library of Australia Fellowship in 2023.

The talk runs for about an hour, including a Q&A session with the audience.

This session is presented in English as part of NSW History Week. A Mandarin session on the same subject takes place at MOCA on Tuesday 1 September.

This is the fourth event in the MOCA History Forum / 澳華歷史論壇, a series of public talks on the histories of Chinese communities in Australia and the world they connect to.