David Wang

David Neng Hwan Wang (12 February 1920 – 1 January 1978), was a Chinese-Australian businessman and the first Chinese-Australian elected to the Melbourne City Council. Wang was born in Haimen county, Jiangsu province, China, the son of a prosperous peasant farmer, and studied radio communications in Shanghai before entering the military academy in Chongqing (Chungking), (then the temporary capital of China) in 1939. Promoted lieutenant in 1941, he served in the intelligence section of the general headquarters. Following the outbreak of World War II in the Pacific, he was sent to Australia as a captain with the Chinese military mission. In Melbourne in 1942 he met Mabel Chen, an Australian-born Chinese, who chose the English name David for him. In 1947 they were married in Singapore, where he opened a business importing woollen goods from Australia. These connections to Australia enabled him to gain a seven-year Australian business residence permit in 1948, despite the then-official White Australia Policy, which prevented Asian immigration. The permit was issued by the Immigration Minister Arthur Calwell, who became a close friend of the Wang family, despite his lifelong support for White Australia. He opened his furniture business in Little Bourke Street in 1950. The business grew rapidly and by the 1960s Wang was a leading businessman and a leader of the Chinese community. The Australian Dictionary of Biography notes: "Anticipating a growing taste for oriental wares, they prospered almost immediately, obtaining Chinese goods through a Hong Kong agent, and later importing from Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and the Pacific Islands, and, after 1972, mainland China. The Wangs largely pioneered the trade in Chinese cane-ware, bamboo blinds, camphorwood chests, and arts and crafts. Fireworks were among their most lucrative earners. In 1962, wishing to make his first overseas business trip on an Australian passport, David applied for naturalisation six months before he had completed the required fifteen years residence, and succeeded on appeal. He purchased and demolished the Canton Building in Little Bourke Street, erecting in its place a modern emporium, opened in 1964 by Calwell."