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"Ethnic Chinese" redirects here. For other uses, see Chinese people.
| This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters. |
| Overseas Chinese (海外華人/海外华人 or 外籍华人) | ||
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| Total population |
40,000,000 (estimates) |
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| Regions with significant populations |
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| Language(s) | various | Religion(s) | Predominantly Taoism, Mahayana Buddhism, traditional Chinese religions, and atheism. Small but significant Christian and Muslim minorities. |
Overseas Chinese are people of Chinese birth or descent who live outside the Greater China region, which includes territories administered by the rival governments of the People\'s Republic of China (PRC) (Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau) and the Republic of China (ROC) (Taiwan and surrounding islands). In addition, the ROC had granted residents of Hong Kong and Macau "Overseas Chinese Status" prior to their respective handover to Beijing rule, so the definition may be said to loosely extend to them. People of partial Chinese ancestry may also consider themselves Overseas Chinese.
The term Overseas Chinese is ambiguous as to whether it can refer to any of the ethnic groups that live in China (the broadly defined Zhonghua minzu) or whether it refers specifically to the Han Chinese ethnicity, narrowly defined. Korean minorities from China who are living in South Korea today are often included in calculations of overseas Chinese, because these ethnic Koreans also identify themselves as part of the Chinese nation. In Southeast Asia and particularly in Malaysia and Singapore, the state classifies the Peranakan as Chinese despite partial assimilation into Malay culture.
One study on overseas Chinese defines several criteria for identifying non-Han overseas Chinese: there is evidence of descent from groups living within or originating from China, they still retain their culture, self-identify with Chinese culture or acknowledge Chinese origin, and are not indigenous to their current land. Under this definition, minority overseas Chinese number about 7 million, or about 8.4% of the total overseas population.. ""A Survey of the Study on Huanqiao-Huaren in PRC (1950-2000) —With Reference to the Study on Ethnic Minority Huanqiao-Huaren"".
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The Chinese language has various terms equivalent to the English "Overseas Chinese". Huáqiáo (Simplified:华侨; Traditional:華僑) refers to Chinese residing in countries other than China. Huáyì (Simplified:华裔; Traditional:華裔) refers to ethnic Chinese residing outside of China. [25] Another often-used term is 海外华人 (hǎiwài huárén), a more literal translation of Overseas Chinese; it is often used by the PRC government to refer to people of Chinese ethnicities who live outside the PRC, regardless of citizenship.
Overseas Chinese who are Cantonese, Hokkien (Taiwanese) or Hakka refer to Overseas Chinese as 唐人 (tángrén), pronounced tòhng yàn in Cantonese, teng lang in Hokkien and tong nyin in Hakka. Literally, it means Tang people, a reference to Tang dynasty China when it was ruling China proper. It should be noted that this term is commonly used to refer to people of Chinese descent locally and not necessarily always as a reference to any relations between the Overseas Chinese people of today and the Tang dynasty.
The Chinese people have a long history of migrating overseas. One of the migrations dates back to the Ming dynasty when Zheng He became the envoy of Ming, he sent people to explore and trade in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean, many of them were Cantonese and Hokkien.
There were different waves of immigration which led to subgroups among overseas Chinese such as the new and old immigrants in Southeast Asia, North America, Oceania, Latin America, South Africa and Russia.
In the 19th century, the age of colonialism was at its height and the great Chinese Diaspora began. Many colonies lacked a large pool of laborers. Meanwhile, in the provinces of Fujian and Guangdong in China, there was a labor surplus due to the relative peace during the Qing dynasty. The Qing Empire was forced to allow its subjects to work overseas under colonial powers. Many Hokkien chose to work in Southeast Asia with their earlier links starting from the Ming era, as did the Cantonese. The city of Taishan in Guangdong province was the source for many of the economic migrants. For the countries in North America and Australia, great numbers of laborers were needed in the dangerous tasks of gold mining and railway construction. With famine widespread in Guangdong, this attracted many Cantonese to work in these countries to improve the living conditions of their relatives. Some overseas Chinese were sold to South America during the Punti-Hakka Clan Wars in the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong. Many people from the New Territories in Hong Kong emigrated to the UK (mainly England) and the Netherlands in the post-war period to earn a better living.
From the mid-19th century onward, emigration has been directed primarily to western countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the nations of Western Europe; as well as to Peru where they are called tusán, Panama, and to a lesser extent to Mexico. Many of these emigrants who entered western countries were themselves overseas Chinese or were from Taiwan or Hong Kong, particularly from the 1950s to the 1980s, during which the PRC placed severe restrictions on the movement of its citizens. In 1984, Britain agreed to transfer the sovereignty of Hong Kong to the PRC; this triggered another wave of migration to the United Kingdom (mainly England), Australia, Canada, USA, Latin America and other parts of the world. The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 further accelerated the migration. The wave calmed after the transfer of sovereignty in 1997. More recent Chinese presences have developed in Europe, where they number nearly a million, and in Russia, they number over 600,000, concentrated in Russia\'s Far East. Chinese who emigrated to Vietnam beginning in the 18th century are referred to as Hoa.
In recent years, the People\'s Republic of China has built increasingly stronger ties with African nations. As of August 2007, there were an estimated 750,000 Chinese nationals working or living for extended periods in different African countries.Chinese flocking in numbers to a new frontier: Africa
Russia’s main Pacific port and naval base of Vladivostok, once closed to foreigners, today is bristling with Chinese markets, restaurants and trade houses.Chinese Come To Russia Experts predict that the Chinese diaspora in Russia will increase to at least 10 million by 2010 and Chinese may become the dominant ethnic group in the Russian Far East region 20 to 30 years from now.A Chinese \'Invasion\'Chinese Presence Grows in Russian Far EastVladivostok\'s Chinese puzzle
The Chinese in Southeast Asian countries have established themselves in commerce and finance.The world\'s successful diasporas In North America, Europe and Oceania, occupations are diverse and impossible to generalize; ranging from catering to significant ranks in medicine, the arts, and academia.
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The Chinese usually identify a person by ethnic origin instead of nationality. As long as the person is of Chinese descent, that person is considered Chinese, and if that person lives outside of China, that person is overseas Chinese. The majority of PRC Chinese do not understand the overseas Chinese experience of being a minority[citation needed], as ethnic Han Chinese comprise approximately 92% of the population.
Overseas Chinese have sometimes experienced hostility and discrimination (see Sinophobia). Whether such treatment is reasonable, is a frequent point of contention between Overseas Chinese and nativist elements of their host societies. A major point of friction is the often disproportionate economic influence of the Overseas Chinese (who dominate the economies of Southeast Asia), and their tendency to segregate themselves into a subculture. For example, the anti-Chinese Jakarta Riots of May 1998 and Kuala Lumpur Racial Riots of 13 May 1969 seem to have been motivated by these perceptions.
Ethnic politics can be found to motivate both sides of the debate. In Malaysia, Overseas Chinese tend to support equal and meritocratic treatment on the expectation that they would not be discriminated against in the resulting competition for government contracts, university places, etc., whereas many "Bumiputra" ("native sons") Malays oppose this on the grounds that their group needs such protections in order to retain their patrimony. The question of to what extent ethnic Malays, Chinese, or others are "native" to Malaysia is a sensitive political one. It is currently a taboo for Chinese politicians to raise the issue of Bumiputra protections in parliament, as this would be deemed ethnic incitement.Race clouds Malaysian birthday festivities
In Indonesia, ethnic Chinese are not allowed to educate their children in formal Chinese-medium schools. In some cases other cultural markers (such as Chinese calendars) are banned. Chinese-language signs were banned in Indonesia until 2004.
In order to avoid discrimination, some overseas Chinese explicitly identify themselves only by nationality (i.e., the state they are from or resident in).
Many of the overseas Chinese who worked on railways in North America in the 19th century suffered from racial discrimination in Canada and the United States. Although most discriminatory laws have been repealed or are no longer enforced today, both countries had at one time introduced statutes that barred Chinese from entering the country, for example the Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States or the Canadian Chinese Immigration Act, 1923.
Hakka people in a wedding in East Timor, 2006
Overseas Chinese vary widely as to their degree of assimilation, their interactions with the surrounding communities (see Chinatown), and their relationship with China. In Thailand, overseas Chinese have largely intermarried and assimilated with their compatriots. In Myanmar, the Chinese rarely intermarry (even amongst different Chinese linguistic groups), but have largely adopted the Burmese culture whilst maintaining Chinese culture affinities. Indonesia, and Myanmar were among the countries that do not allow birth names to be registered in foreign languages, including Chinese. But since 2003, the Indonesian government has allowed overseas Chinese to use their Chinese name or using their Chinese family name on their birth certificate.
In Vietnam, Chinese names are pronounced with Sino-Vietnamese readings. For example, 胡锦涛 (pinyin: Hú Jǐntāo) would become "Hồ Cẩm Đào". Very often, there is no distinction between Vietnamese and ethnic Chinese. In western countries, the overseas Chinese generally use romanised versions of their Chinese names, and the use of local first names is also common.
On the other hand, in Malaysia and Singapore, overseas Chinese have maintained a distinct communal identity, though the rate and state of being assimilated to the local, in this case a multicultural society, is currently on par with that of other Chinese communities (see Peranakan). In the Philippines, many younger Overseas Chinese are well assimilated, whereas the older ones tend to be considered as \'foreigners\'. More recent overseas Chinese immigrants have been despised by many Filipinos due to incidences of some selling illegal drugs, as well as being high profile smugglers. The Chinese have also brought a cultural influence to some other countries such as Vietnam, where many Chinese customs have been adopted by native Vietnamese. A large number of Chinese people stayed in Vietnam and never returned to China.. "The Urban History of the Southeast Asian Coastal Cities".
Both the People\'s Republic of China and the Republic of China maintain highly complex relationships with overseas Chinese populations. Both maintain cabinet level ministries to deal with overseas Chinese affairs, and many local governments within the PRC have overseas Chinese bureaus. Both the PRC and ROC have some legislative representation for overseas Chinese. In the case of the PRC, some seats in the National People\'s Congress are allocated for returned overseas Chinese. In the ROC\'s Legislative Yuan, there are eight seats allocated for overseas Chinese. These seats are apportioned to the political parties based on their vote totals on Taiwan, and then the parties assign the seats to overseas Chinese party loyalists. Most of these members elected to the Legislative Yuan hold dual citizenship, but must renounce their foreign citizenship (at the American Institute in Taiwan for American citizens) before being sworn in.
Overseas Chinese have sometimes played an important role in Chinese politics. Most of the funding for the Chinese revolution of 1911 came from overseas Chinese.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the ROC tended to seek the support of overseas Chinese communities through branches of the Kuomintang based on Sun Yat-sen\'s use of expatriate Chinese communities to raise money for his revolution. During this period, the People\'s Republic of China tended to view overseas Chinese with suspicion as possible capitalist infiltrators and tended to value relationships with southeast Asian nations as more important than gaining support of overseas Chinese, and in the Bandung declaration explicitly stated that overseas Chinese owed primary loyalty to their home nation.
After the Deng Xiaoping reforms, the attitude of the PRC toward overseas Chinese changed dramatically. Rather than being seen with suspicion, they were seen as people which could aid PRC development via their skills and capital. During the 1980s, the PRC actively attempted to court the support of overseas Chinese by among other things, returning properties that were confiscated after the 1949 revolution. More recently PRC policy has attempted to maintain the support of recently emigrated Chinese, who consist largely of Chinese seeking graduate education in the West. Many overseas Chinese are now investing in mainland China providing financial resources, social and cultural networks, contacts and opportunities.
According to Article 5 of the Nationality Law of the People\'s Republic of China: "Any person born abroad whose parents are both Chinese nationals or one of whose parents is a Chinese national shall have Chinese nationality. But a person whose parents are both Chinese nationals and have both settled abroad, or one of whose parents is a Chinese national and has settled abroad, and who has acquired foreign nationality at birth shall not have Chinese nationality".http://www.china.org.cn/english/LivinginChina/184710.htm However the Nationality Law of the Republic of China(referring to province Taiwan), which permits dual citizenship, considers these persons to be citizens of the ROC.
There are over 40 million overseas Chinese, mostly living in Southeast Asia where they make up a majority of the population of Singapore and significant minority populations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam. The overseas populations in those areas arrived between the 16th and 19th centuries mostly from the maritime provinces of Guangdong and Fujian, followed by Hainan. There were incidences of earlier emigration from the 10th to 15th centuries in particular to Malacca and Southeast Asia.
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Statistics compiled using local country statistics or best available estimates. Note that the percentages may not add up due to varying census and estimate dates.
| Overseas Chinese | |
|---|---|
| Africa | Mauritius · Mozambique · Seychelles · South Africa |
| Americas | Argentina · Brazil · Canada · Cuba · Jamaica · Nicaragua · Panama · Peru · Trinidad & Tobago · United States (Hawaii · Puerto Rico · American-born) |
| Asia | Brunei · Cambodia · India · Indonesia · Iran · Israel · Japan · Korea · Laos · Malaysia (Peranakan) · Mongolia · Myanmar (Panthay) · Philippines · Singapore · Taiwan · Thailand · Vietnam (Ngái · San Diu · RoC nationals) |
| Europe | France (Réunion) · Italy · Romania · Russia (Dungan) · Spain · United Kingdom |
| Oceania | Australia · Fiji · New Zealand · Samoa |
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