Chinese Filipinos (sometimes referred as Filipino Chinese or Chinoy/Tsinoy in the Philippines) are Filipinos of full or partial Chinese descent, but are typically born and raised in the Philippines. Chinese Filipinos are one of the largest overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. A large proportion of Chinese Filipinos can trace their ancestry back to the Chinese province of Fujian.
Chinese immigration to the Philippines occurred mostly during the Spanish colonization of the islands between the 16th and 19th centuries, attracted by the lucrative trade of the Manila galleons. During this era, they were referred to as Sangley. They were mostly the Hokkien-speaking Hokkien people that later became the dominant group within the Filipino-Chinese community. In the 19th century, migration was triggered by the corrupt and bad governance of the late Qing dynasty, combined with economic problems in China due to the Western and Japanese colonial wars and Opium Wars. It subsequently continued during the 20th century, from American colonial times, through the post-independence era to Cold War, to the present. In 2013, according to older records held by the Senate of the Philippines, there were approximately 1.35 million ethnic (or pure) Chinese within the Philippine population, while Filipinos with any Chinese descent comprised 22.8 million of the population. However, the actual current figures are not known since the Philippine census does not usually take into account questions about ethnicity. Accordingly, the oldest Chinatown in the world is located in Binondo, Manila, founded on December 8, 1594.
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