Chinese in Southeast Asia
Since emigration from China began at least a thousand years ago, most migrants have settled in Southeast Asia. At least three-quarters of the world's Chinese outside China reside in the region. However, Southeast Asian Chinese comprise under 5 percent of the region's total population.
Assimilation of Southeast Asian Chinese to indigenous cultures prevents precise measurement of their numbers. Many are more proficient in local languages than Chinese, and most have adopted the citizenship of the countries where they reside. The extent to which Southeast Asian Chinese are considered to belong where they live varies. In Indonesia, for example, a large locally born Chinese community remains distinct from indigenous populations. In Thailand, Chinese descent is a source of pride among the political elite and even in the royal family. In British Malaya, a sizeable Chinese elite became thoroughly Anglicized through business and social interactions with their colonial rulers. In the Philippines, in contrast, an elite group of mixed Chinese-Filipino families become prominent in the anticolonial nationalist movement of the late nineteenth century
Distinctions exist among Southeast Asian Chinese according to ancestral origins within China. Distinct dialects are spoken in the three southeastern coastal regions where most emigrants were born in Guangdong and Fujian Provinces. Dialects and associated occupational differences and loyalties have set Chinese groups apart from each other in Singapore and elsewhere.
Southeast Asian Chinese tend to be urban. They are concentrated in the largest cities of the region, particularly Singapore, where about 70 percent of the population was Chinese in 2000. Because Southeast Asian Chinese are also concentrated in commercial and professional occupations, their economic success has been a sensitive issue. In Indonesia, the Chinese minority, believed to control most of the nation's aggregate wealth, is resented. The apparent dominance of Chinese entrepreneurs in Southeast Asian economies is partly a lasting effect of European colonial policies favoring the employment of Chinese merchants as government revenue agents. Moreover, groups fostering business connections with China and Chinese-owned firms elsewhere in the region have tended to maintaincultural ties as well, strengthening the association of business success with Chinese ethnicity.
A dragon in the Chinese New Year parade in Singapore in February 1987. (TED STRESHINSKY/CORBIS)The official view of China's imperial government toward emigration linked it to piracy and illicit overseas trade; only in 1893 was an official ban on emigration lifted and protection provided to Chinese nationals sojourning abroad. Although Southeast Asian Chinese strengthened ties to their ancestral homeland in patriotic solidarity during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), during the Cold War most reacted to suspicions of Communist affiliation by emphasizing local loyalties. With economic liberalization of the People's Republic of China (PRC) since the late 1970s, Southeast Asian Chinese investments in the PRC have become significant.
Further Reading
Cushman, Jennifer, and Wang Gungwu. (1988) The Changing Identities of the Southeast Asian Chinese Since World War II. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Pan, Lynn. (1999) The Encyclopedia of the Overseas Chinese. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wang Gungwu. (2000) The Chinese Overseas: From Earth-bound China to the Quest for Autonomy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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