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States for a new role model, and American influences in lifestyle and language were soon to be
seen and reflected in the literature.
This shift from British to American political leadership is explored in such novels as
Christopher Koch’s Highways to a War, which spans a long enough time to include the
eventual decline in American influence as a result of the defeat of the U.S. and its Australian
allies in Vietnam. This decline then led to Australia’s turn toward Asia in its search for
identity, cementing the re-designation of the ‘Far East’ as the ‘Near North’, representing more
a shift in Australia’s sense of geography than anything else. At the same time, Asian nations,
led by Japan and Singapore, emerged as huge economic powers, and Australians had even
more reason to develop ties with these neglected neighbours. Identification with Asia did not
come without its price, however, as traditional, shared cultural and political values were not
easy to find in the Asian nations. Most were nominal democracies at best, and others were
blatant dictatorships. The middle class, so cherished in Western society, did not seem to be
developing as might have been expected in the new capitalist economies. This trend continues
even today, as Australians try to strengthen what would seem to be natural ties with Asia,
while political and economic turmoil acts to undermine the trust necessary to furthering
structural and psychological ties.
3.4. The Orientalist Stereotype
These difficulties sit upon old and well established prejudices. The image of the
Chinaman in Australian literature developed along the lines of the stereotypical images
described in the discourse on ‘Orientalism’ by Edward Said. Cathy Van Der Driesen identifies
Orientalist literary strategies adopted by the Australians, including ‘authorial position’ with
regard to the ‘Other’, ‘narrative voice’, and the ‘kinds of images, themes, motifs’ which deliver
‘lamentably alien’, ‘dehumanizing’, even ‘demonizing’ representations of the Orient (Driesen,
17-18).
Ouyang Yu classifies four basic types of the Chinese stereotype in Australian literature:
including the sensual Chinaman—representing the fear of contamination of the white race
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