Chinese Filipinos in the context of "History of the Philippines (1986–present)"

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⭐ Core Definition: Chinese Filipinos

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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Chinese Filipinos in the context of Binondo

Binondo (Chinese: 岷倫洛; pinyin: Mínlúnluò; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Bîn-lûn-lo̍h; Tagalog: Distrito ng Binondo) is a district in Manila and is referred to as the city's Chinatown. Its influence extends beyond to the places of Quiapo, Santa Cruz, San Nicolas and Tondo. It is the oldest Chinatown in the world, established in 1594 by the Spaniards as a settlement near Intramuros but across the Pasig River for Catholic Chinese; it was positioned so that the colonial administration could keep a close eye on their migrant subjects. It was already a hub of Chinese commerce even before the Spanish colonial period. Binondo is the center of commerce and trade of Manila, where all types of business run by Chinese Filipinos thrive.

Noted residents include Saint Lorenzo Ruiz, the Filipino protomartyr, and Venerable Mother Ignacia del Espiritu Santo, founder of the Congregation of the Religious of the Virgin Mary.

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Chinese Filipinos in the context of Sangley Massacre (1662)

The Sangley Massacre was a colonial ethnic cleansing in the Philippines in June 1662, when the Spanish governor of the Captaincy General of the Philippines ordered the killing of any Sangley (Chinese Filipinos) who had not submitted to the assembly area.

Anti-Chinese sentiment had been prevalent in the Spanish Philippines since the early 17th century, resulting in the First (1603), Second (1609) and the Third Sangley Rebellion (1639). In early 1662, the Southern Ming warlord Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong) defeated the Dutch colonial outpost in Taiwan at the Siege of Fort Zeelandia and established the Kingdom of Tungning with himself as the ruler. On April 24, 1662, weeks after becoming the ruler of the Kingdom of Tungning, Koxinga demanded that the Spanish authorities of Manila pay tribute, or else he would send a fleet to demand it. The message arrived on May 5. The Spanish authorities took the threat very seriously and withdrew their forces from the Moluccas and Mindanao to reinforce Manila (modern-day Intramuros) in preparation for an attack. The Chinese residents and native Filipino subjects were forced to gather food supplies and contribute labor to improving the city walls. Some argued for killing all non-Christian Chinese residents. Upon hearing rumor of that, Chinese residents began to flee even while the Spanish tried to reassure them and keep things quiet.

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Chinese Filipinos in the context of Philippine Hokkien

Philippine Hokkien is a dialect of the Hokkien language of the Southern Min branch of Min Chinese descended directly from Old Chinese of the Sinitic family, primarily spoken vernacularly by Chinese Filipinos in the Philippines, where it serves as the local Chinese lingua franca within the overseas Chinese community in the Philippines and acts as the heritage language of a majority of Chinese Filipinos. Despite currently acting mostly as an oral language, Hokkien as spoken in the Philippines did indeed historically have a written language and is actually one of the earliest sources for written Hokkien using both Chinese characters (traditionally via Classical Chinese (漢文; Hàn-bûn) worded from and read in Hokkien) as early as around 1587 or 1593 through the Doctrina Christiana en letra y lengua china and using the Latin script as early as the 1590s in the Boxer Codex and was actually the earliest to systematically romanize the Hokkien language throughout the 1600s in the Hokkien-Spanish works of the Spanish friars especially by the Dominican Order, such as in the Dictionario Hispánico-Sinicum (1626-1642) and the Arte de la Lengua Chiõ Chiu (1620) among others. The use of Hokkien in the Philippines was historically influenced by Philippine Spanish, Filipino (Tagalog) and Philippine English. As a lingua franca of the overseas Chinese community in the Philippines, the minority of Chinese Filipinos of Cantonese and Taishanese descent also uses Philippine Hokkien for business purposes due to its status as "the Chinoy business language" [sic]. It is also used as a liturgical language as one of the languages that Protestant Chinese Filipino churches typically minister in with their church service, which they sometimes also minister to students in Chinese Filipino schools that they also usually operate. It is also a liturgical language primarily used by Chinese Buddhist, Taoist, and Matsu veneration temples in the Philippines, especially in their sutra chanting services and temple sermons by monastics.

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Chinese Filipinos in the context of Saint Lorenzo Ruiz

Lorenzo Ruiz (Filipino: Lorenzo Ruiz ng Maynila; Chinese: 李乐伦; pinyin: Lǐ Yuèlún; Spanish: Lorenzo Ruiz de Manila; November 28, 1594 – September 29, 1637), also called Saint Lorenzo of Manila, was a Filipino Catholic layman and a member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic. A Chinese Filipino, he became his country's protomartyr after his execution in Japan by the Tokugawa shogunate during its persecution of Japanese Christians in the 17th century. Lorenzo Ruiz is the patron saint of, among others, the Philippines and the Filipino people.

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