A friend is applying for residency in Australia – the glorious points based immigration system.
She writes:
“I included a picture of this because I could not stop laughing when I saw this, the government requires a “character assessment” to insure that you are “of good character”. They have you get police reports for the last 10 years, and all sorts of nonsense. Among the biggest pieces of nonsense is the form itself. Question number 6, after name, gender,DOB, and the like is “Are you of Arabic descent?”. RIght after asking you if you are a Chinese businessman. Whether or not you are of Arabic descent is apparently crucial for the Australian government to determine if you are of good character”
Here is the relevant page of the form:
Comments
That question about Arabic background is on forms much more broadly than those connected to ‘character’, and I’m pretty sure relates to the specificity of ways names operate in different cultures and such, tribal names, patronymic names, things like that. The Chinese commercial code also isn’t quite the variety of sinister operation I think is suggested – numerical identification is a way to deal with translation issues between languages. Still part of identifying people, which has all sorts of implications and such, but still…not about whether you are a Chinese business person.