Chinese from various places of mainland China, Macau, Taiwan, Korea, Southeast Asia—especially Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Philippines, and Indonesia—and Latin America also settled Australia.

As in North America, the Chinese faced massive institutionalized discrimination, and Asian immigration was restricted by the White Australia Policy in the late 1880s.

It was repealed by the 1970s under multiculturalist policies, which in turn ushered in a new wave of Asian immigration, particularly from Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China, and giving rise to several Australian Chinatown communities.

Starting in 1865, early Chinese migrants of the Hakka variety arrived in French Polynesia to work on the island cotton plantations.

The Japanese, Koreans, Thais, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Chamorros, and other Pacific Islanders also settled the place, making it a multi-Asian district.

Chinatowns existed on Greys Avenue in Auckland and Haining Street in Wellington up until the 1970s, and there is a growing community in both Christchurch and Dunedin.

Racist violence towards Chinese people in New Zealand followed, such as the tragic murder of Joe Kum Yung by white supremacist Lionel Terry.

This attack occurred in Haining Street in Te Aro, Wellington, on 24 September 1905, in the centre of what was once was a significant Chinatown.

In 2002, the New Zealand Government made a public apology to the Chinese for the poll tax that had been levied on their forebears a century ago.