As news of Bob Hawke's death swept through the country, the Chinese-Australian community lit up with gratitude towards the Labor legend's promise to allow Chinese students to stay after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.

Key points: More than 42,000 Chinese students were granted permanent visas

More than 42,000 Chinese students were granted permanent visas Mr Hawke's election as PM coincided with the start of China's opening up policies

Mr Hawke's election as PM coincided with the start of China's opening up policies Chinese state media praised Mr Hawke for promoting China-Australia relations

Mr Hawke's death also comes just over two weeks before the 30th anniversary of the massacre on June 4, 1989, when Beijing used violent force to suppress student protests at Tiananmen Square.

His announcement to extend all temporary permits for Chinese nationals and the subsequent granting of permanent visas to 42,000 people not only changed their lives, but the lives of generations of Chinese-Australians after them.

My father, Jon Zhou, was among the tens of thousands Chinese migrants who came to Australia shortly after the massacre. ( Supplied )

Many of the children of those students who received permanent residency took to social media to pay tribute to the longest-serving Labor prime minister, who is known to be a champion of multiculturalism and opened the doors of Australia to a wave of new migration.

For them, Mr Hawke's decision was much more than just a set of landmark immigration policies.

They say they are ultimately the beneficiaries of Mr Hawke's compassion — as well as their parents' sacrifice of permanently leaving their lives behind in China — and that Mr Hawke is the reason they can call Australia home today.

It is certainly a sense of appreciation I myself can personally identify with, as my father, Jon Zhou, was among the tens of thousands Chinese migrants who came to Australia shortly after the massacre.

'The reason I can call Australia home'

Bob Hawke is known to be a champion of multiculturalism and opened the doors of Australia to a wave of new migration. ( AAP )

Like many Chinese millennials, Frances Mao, an Australian-based journalist with the BBC, only learnt about her parents' full migration story well into her adulthood.

Ms Mao's then 30-year-old father arrived in Sydney on a one-year student visa in late 1988, and was given the opportunity to extend his visa for four years shortly after the Tiananmen incident on June 4.

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She told the ABC her parents "always had a great fondness" for Mr Hawke, and when they discussed politics, they would often refer to Mr Hawke and Paul Keating because they were the Labor leaders who allowed them to stay in Australia.

"Bob Hawke's compassion and humanity were so openly on display when he cried during that speech, where he said that he'd offer asylum and extend the visas to those Chinese students already in Australia.

"It kind of matters to hear it from your knockabout Aussie bloke … to hear someone standing up for you, and to hear someone being so ... open and embracing of multiculturalism and embracing new migrants," she said.

The 26-year-old also said emotionally, that Mr Hawke's decision to allow her parents to stay changed their lives "tremendously".

"Sometimes I think my parents made a big sacrifice by moving to Australia," she said.

"My dad could have gone back to China after his year in Australia — he was really just here on a holiday and kind of testing it out.

"He already had contacts [in China] and could have gone on and had a very successful career … but he obviously saw [the opportunities] for his family."

Instead, Ms Mao said her father had to "work his way up" in Australia to give her and her siblings the opportunity to attend quality schools and to live in a country with democratic freedom and rights.

"Many of the Chinese-Australians growing up in the 90s, so many of my friends and my classmates, their parents would have done the same thing as my parents," she said.

"And now I feel like we really contribute a lot to Australian society, and we wouldn't have had the opportunities, the freedoms and the rights that we have in Australia if we had grown up in China instead."

Other Chinese-Australians, like SBS World News journalist Lin Evlin, tweeted that Mr Hawke's decision "is the reason I can call Australia home".

Many migrants who were granted permanent residency after the Tiananmen Square massacre had to work their way up.

Melbourne businessman Zhengliang Wang, who arrived in Australia five months before the Tiananmen massacre with just $US200 in his pocket, told the ABC that Mr Hawke's decision "changed the rest of his life".

"[It] opened a door for me, my wife and my eldest daughter. They were able to join me in Australia," he said.

Like Mr Wang, Ai Ling Zhou, who arrived in Sydney on a student visa, also had to rebuild her life from scratch because her Chinese bachelor's degree in material engineering — like all degrees from Chinese universities at the time — wasn't recognised.

She said she had to do "odd jobs" like waitressing and sell Chinese herbal medicines, but eventually went on to become a professor of economics at the University of Sydney.

Hawke praised for contributions to Boao Forum, APEC

Mr Hawke's election as prime minister coincided with the start of China's economic reform and opening up policy in 1978.

Allan Gyngell, the National President of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, told the ABC Mr Hawke was the first Australian prime minister to be dealing with a China that was recovering from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.

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"China was emerging as an important international player and as a market for Australia," he said.

"The important thing is that Hawke saw China, really from the beginning, as a country more than simply a market, he wanted to engage actively in this process of bringing China into the world.

"He spent a lot of time and effort building his relationships with the leadership of China … he sent his own economic advisor Ross Garnaut there as ambassador and [engaged on a] whole lot of different levels.

"The distinctive thing about him was his desire to enmesh Australia and Asia generally, but China in particular."

Mr Hawke also helped with the establishment of the Boao Forum for Asia, a non-profit organisation that hosts high-level forums for leaders from government, business and academia.

Most Chinese state media also reported on Mr Hawke's death, praising his contributions to the founding of APEC, promoting China-Australia relations and helping Beijing successfully bid for the 2008 Olympics.

The articles were short and brief, and unsurprisingly, none of them mentioned Mr Hawke's decision to grant permanent residency for the tens of thousands of Chinese after the June 4 massacre of the mass censorship of the incident in China.

Additional reporting by Jason Fang