Current location - Music Encyclopedia - Chinese History - History of Chinese immigrants
History of Chinese immigrants
China people went abroad to live, and the legend began in the Shang Dynasty, when Kuzi, a survivor of the Shang Dynasty in China, established a vassal state in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula. In 124 BC, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty established exchanges between China and the West. For a long time, messengers and people came and went every year, ranging from hundreds to hundreds. Since the Han Dynasty, China has opened up maritime transportation with Southeast Asia, India and Islamic card. Due to overseas trade, China businessmen and sailors began to emigrate to Southeast Asia, and some of them settled down and became the first generation of overseas immigrants.

During the Tang Dynasty, the number of people living abroad in China increased gradually. Many foreigners call overseas Chinese "Tangren" and overseas Chinese return to China as "Tangshan". During the Song and Yuan Dynasties after 10 century, the coastal residents of China, especially Fujian and Guangdong, were brutally destroyed by the Yuan Army and fled overseas to make a living. China's large-scale migration to Southeast Asia began in the Ming Dynasty. Zheng He embarked on the first voyage in the history of China. Zheng He led a fleet of 200 ships around Nanyang. During the 28 years from 1405 to 1433, Zheng He made seven voyages to the Western Ocean and led his fleet to more than 30 countries, reaching the ports along the east coast of Africa and the Red Sea as far as possible. Before the Western colonists invaded Southeast Asia, the Chinese who immigrated to Southeast Asia from China mainly emigrated overseas for the need of trade. By the16th century, especially after the western countries invaded Southeast Asia in succession in the17th century, with the gradual colonization of Southeast Asian countries, China people mainly moved to Southeast Asia as laborers, and followed their relatives and friends who settled overseas to study business or engage in labor in Southeast Asia.

/kloc-in the 0/9th century, European colonialism reached its peak, which was also the beginning of the tide of world immigration. At that time, many European and American colonists lacked funds to hire workers. At the same time, Fujian and Guangdong were relatively peaceful during the Kang Yong period, and the people were generally rich. However, after Jiaqing, the cultivated land in the Qing Dynasty began to be seriously inadequate, officials became increasingly corrupt, and officials and people became addicted to opium. At this time, the people had surplus labor, and European and American countries began to become strong. Therefore, Manchu was forced to agree to let civilians go abroad to work in European and American colonies. After the Opium War in the late Qing Dynasty, the famine among the people increased, and the poverty level was indescribable. There are poor people and beggars everywhere, and millions of people in Guangdong and Fujian have started to work abroad to improve their lives. Many Fujian people choose to study and work in Southeast Asia with their predecessors who settled overseas in the Ming Dynasty, and many of them are Cantonese. Taishan City, Guangdong Province has the largest number of overseas immigrants. During the conflict between Turks and tourists in Guangdong Pearl River Delta, some people were sold to Peru, Panama, Mexico and Cuba. Overseas Chinese mainly live in Singapore, where there are many local ethnic minorities, and Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam, where there are few local ethnic minorities. From 16 to 19 century, overseas Chinese in these areas were mainly concentrated in Fujian and Guangdong provinces, and later concentrated in Hainan province. From the tenth century to the fifteenth century, immigrants mainly went to Malacca and Southeast Asia.

Since the second half of the 20th century, the geographical distribution of overseas Chinese has also changed, showing a gradual dispersion from concentration, that is, from a high concentration in Asia, especially Southeast Asia, to areas outside Asia, especially Europe, the United States and Australia.

First of all, overseas Chinese capital is not a whole, it is a part of national capital stationed in various countries. A large number of overseas Chinese live in Southeast Asian countries, and the capital and enterprises of overseas Chinese businessmen are also concentrated in Southeast Asian countries. 65438+1In mid-August 1995, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade published a 350-page research report on the economic network of overseas Chinese, saying that more than 70% of listed companies in Southeast Asia are controlled by the capital of overseas Chinese businessmen. At the same time, Fujitsu Research Institute in Tokyo surveyed listed companies in five major Asian countries and found that most of their assets were owned by China people.

In addition to the assets statistics of listed companies, thousands of small and medium-sized business enterprises are the main economic cells of Chinese in Asia-Pacific countries and regions, providing more than half of the employment opportunities for local society.

In the past 20 years, overseas Chinese capital has also developed considerably in the United States, Canada, Japan and European countries. China capital from Southeast Asian countries, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan has flowed into Australia in large quantities, which has also played an important role in Australia's economic growth.

In addition, there are some studies and reports on the total amount of Chinese capital or assets around the world. After entering the 1990s, according to the statistics of The Economist and the Overseas Chinese Research Center of Ohio University, the assets of overseas Chinese outside China at that time were about 1.2 trillion to 2 trillion dollars. According to a newspaper in Taiwan Province Province reported in September 2000, a study on the situation of overseas Chinese estimated that the annual income of overseas Chinese at that time was about 2.65 trillion to 309 billion US dollars, and the total assets could reach 2.5 trillion US dollars. Some researchers have analyzed that overseas Chinese capital consists of two types.

The first category is the local capital accumulated by Chinese. China people who immigrated to other countries in the early days did not carry any capital. Some of them have accumulated today's assets through years of efforts, even generations of efforts. Therefore, their capital accumulation process is consistent with the national capital accumulation process of their country. Especially after 1950s, the former overseas Chinese in Southeast Asian countries gradually became citizens of the host country, and their capital naturally became a part of the national capital of the country.

The second type of China capital originated from the fact that some domestic entrepreneurs in China, including China entrepreneurs from Hongkong and Macau, began to make small investments overseas around the Second World War. Since 1960s, China entrepreneurs from Hongkong, Macau and Taiwan Province Province have increased their overseas investment. The investment of these China people is a kind of capital export. In the receiving country, they are naturally regarded as foreign capital, not the domestic capital of the country. However, joint ventures or wholly-owned enterprises established overseas are all registered in recipient countries, and their GDP is also included in the GDP of recipient countries. They are combined with investment and acceptance of domestic national capital in various forms. Therefore, this part of China's capital has also become an important part of the local national economy.

Dr. Chun of the Overseas Chinese Research Center of China Academy of Social Sciences believes that overseas Chinese are politically loyal to the local society, and economically they are a supplementary part of the local mainstream economy with national characteristics, and they can use ethnic ties for global economic cooperation. Through the analysis of China's capital attribute, the positive role played by China citizens in the economic development and social progress of various countries is studied in depth, so as to promote the harmonious coexistence and economic cooperation of all ethnic groups in the world and promote the common development of the world economy.