Public perceptions of foreign and Chinese real estate investment: intercultural relations in Global Sydney

Geographies of hyper‐commodified housing: foreign capital, market activity, and housing stress

“…As noted above, our focus in this article is on the relationship between participants’ housing status, property ownership, and house hunting in relation to their views about foreign and Chinese investment. Hence, this analysis looks at parts one and two of the survey in detail (for an analysis of part one of the survey, see Rogers et al ., ). Our sample was broadly representative of Sydneysiders in general, but did include some notable exceptions.…”

“…There have been periodic narratives in the Australian media about corrupt and rule breaking Chinese real estate investors (Besser & Hichens, ), and in media and policy discussions about rule breaking foreign investors from Asia (Robertson & Rogers, ; Rogers et al ., ). Therefore, we were interested in Sydneysiders’ views about whether they thought that Chinese real estate investment was being conducted legally in Australia.…”

“…Therefore, more fine‐grained analysis of the inflationary impact of foreign investment is needed at neighbourhood and/or building scales. In any case, there is an assumption in some media coverage that foreign real estate investment is a major contributor to increasing housing prices in Australia (Rogers et al ., , ; Wong, ).…”

“…We might expect those who are actively looking to purchase a property would be particularly concerned, on the grounds that they may feel they are directly competing against and being priced out of the market by foreign and Chinese buyers in the globalising hyper‐commodified housing system. Certainly, there has been a media narrative to that effect in Australia (Rogers et al ., , ; Wong, ). For this reason, we asked participants whether they were actively looking for a property to purchase at the time of the survey; just under a quarter (23%) of survey participants were.…”

Australians’ Views on Cultural Diversity, Nation and Migration, 2015-16

“…Given Australia's White settler history and continued privilege of Anglo-Australians (Hage 1998), the positive attitudes towards Anglo-Australians are not surprising. However, such positive attitudes towards Asian Australians provides a counterpoint to Australia's long history of anti-Asian sentiment and recent research that suggests that anti-Asian sentiment, related to the cultural, geopolitical and economic swing towards Asia, and particularly China in the 'Asian century', is re-emerging (see for example Rogers et al 2017). Similarly, the more positive dispositions towards Asian Australians found in our survey also contradicts experiential data that were collected and indicates Chinese Australians report experiences of racism at more than double the average for all Australians: in the workplace, education, housing and other spheres ).…”