One word won’t do to define more than half the planet
The headline said this: ‘‘Asians set to make up one quarter of New Zealand population by 2043: Stats NZ.’’ One in four? Er – that sounds a lot. A milestone? A millstone? But when Statistics NZ says ‘‘Asian’’, it doesn’t mean it the way most Kiwis understand the word. What faces do you picture when you think of Winston Peters’ ‘‘Asian invasion’’ or the hashtag #stopasianhate?
If someone says ‘‘Asian driver’’ or ‘‘Crazy Rich Asian’’ or ‘‘Asian Paradise’’ or Asian food, what faces do you picture?
When Stats NZ says Asian, it doesn’t just mean (deep breath): China and Indonesia and Japan and the Philippines and Vietnam and Thailand and Myanmar and (take another breath) Korea and Malaysia and Taiwan and Cambodia and Hong Kong and Laos and Singapore. It also means: (inhale) India and Pakistan and Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and Nepal. Oh, and Afghanistan.
It means more than half the planet. Literally. Stats NZ bundles together Asians who use chopsticks with Asians who play cricket. (Apologies to the Thais, Filipinos and Indonesians, who do neither, and I respect their choice.)
The Earth’s population is almost 8 billion. China alone makes up 1.4b of that. India has about 1.38b people. If you add all the populations that Stats NZ calls Asian, it’s most of the planet: 4.6b, or 59.5 per cent. Not counting the diasporas, many settled in countries like NZ for more than 150 years.
Stats NZ uses one word – Asian – to describe 60 per cent of the planet.
This for me is a bugbear. But, unlike Stats NZ, I don’t mean all the bugs plus all the bears and all the species in between. Put aside 2043. What’s the Asian proportion in NZ right now? At the 2018 census, ‘‘Asians’’ were 708,000 of New Zealand’s population of 4.7 million. That’s 15 per cent. How’s that sound? Fifteen per cent compared to the global 60 per cent. That’s the one-quarter ratio to focus on. Anaemic under-representation. An epic fail.
What the headline really says is this: a super-majority coalition of wildly diverse races who represent 60 per cent of the planet in 2021 are massively underrepresented in NZ and need to play serious reproductive catch-up, because even by 2043, with studious and indiscriminate mating, they will only make up 25 per cent of New Zealand.
But when a headline or talkback host says Asians are 15 per cent (or 25 per cent one day) many readers or listeners only picture one kind of Asians – the people of the chopstick – and are led to believe there’s twice as many of us as there actually are.
For a benchmark, Ma¯ ori in NZ in 2018 were 776,000, or 16.5 per cent. So when you say Asians are 15 per cent, you imply that newbie upstarts are threatening to swamp the locals – and suddenly the phone lines are full.
Not discussed is the default ethnicity. New Zealand’s population is 70 per cent European, yet Europe as a continent doesn’t even make up 10 per cent of the planet’s population. That’s including Russia. If you add white Americans, white Australians and white Africans, you get a world total of 1b white people, or 12.5 per cent worldwide. So a group of 12.5 per cent worldwide represent 70 per cent of New Zealand. But to Stats NZ, that’s no cause for a headline. Nothing to see here.
Iknow what you’re thinking. If you add 70 per cent European and 15 per cent Asian and 16.5 per cent Ma¯ ori, we’re over 100 per cent. With plenty of ethnicities to go. Which means that ethnicities aren’t mutually exclusive.
So when Stats NZ says Asians will be 25 per cent by 2043, it doesn’t mean there’s a bus and Asians take up 25 per cent of the seats. The seats are bottomless. Stats NZ might as well say Asians will be 25 per cent, ‘‘but the other 95 per cent, who knows?’’ Ethnicity is multi-choice, and ‘‘all of the above’’ is a growing option.
Besides, how can they predict mating patterns in the next 22 years? Who’s to say there won’t be some ethnic superspreaders, or just rogue census rebels who enjoy ticking boxes?
In 2018, Chinese New Zealanders – the box I tick – were 248,000, or 5.3 per cent of the NZ population. How’s that sound? Would you notice 5 per cent if it was added to the bill?
But if 15 per cent Asian, however defined, sounds high to you, perhaps it’s due to our under-representation in the media. Fifteen per cent Asian is about one in seven.
For every seven people you see on a TV panel show, is one of them Asian? For every seven characters on Shortland Street, is one of them Asian? Or is Shortland Street happy with one Asian per year, if you’re lucky? (Rhetorical question.)
How does Shortland Street compare demographically to an actual medical centre in NZ in 2021? The bottom line? If the world total is 60 per cent, and NZ’s total is 15 per cent, how many Asians are there in NZ?
Not many, if any.