James Ronald Chi (1948 – 26 June 2017) was an Australian composer, musician and playwright. His best known work is the 1990 musical Bran Nue Dae, which was adapted for film in 2009.

James Ronald Chi was born in Broome, Western Australia in 1948 to a father of Chinese and Japanese descent and a mother of Scottish and Aboriginal (Bardi and Nyulnyul) descent.

Chi attended a Catholic school in Perth, and went on to university in WA. However, he was involved in a serious car accident, and, after coming out of a three-week coma, developed bipolar affective disorder. He became severely depressed, but was helped by his faith.

After returning to Broome in 1970, he bought a guitar and started writing songs, initially on his own. Stephen Pigram and Michael Manolis joined him in songwriting, and in the early 1980s the three of them, along with Garry Gower and Patrick Bin Amat moved to Adelaide, South Australia, to study music at the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music (CASM) and the University of Adelaide.

The five friends from Broome formed the band Kuckles in 1981, with Chi as one of the three songwriters, along with Manolis and Pigram.

Chi's most acclaimed work is Bran Nue Dae, written in collaboration with his band Kuckles, Scrap Metal, The Pigram Brothers, and friends. Bran Nue Dae is a partly autobiographical work which took many years to write. It celebrates family, forgiveness, and reconciliation, and was a hit at the Festival of Perth in 1990 where it was performed by the Black Swan Theatre. It went on to tour Australia extensively and it was Australia's most successful musical play of the early 1990s. A documentary film about it was made in 1991.

One of the famous verses from a song in the musical sums up Chi's dry humour and sharp political approach:

There's nothing I would rather be