Waves of Chinese emigration have happened throughout history. They include the emigration to Southeast Asia beginning from the 10th century during the Tang dynasty, to the Americas during the 19th century, particularly during the California gold rush in the mid-1800s; general emigration initially around the early to mid 20th century which was mainly caused by corruption, starvation, and war due to the Warlord Era, the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War; and finally elective emigration to various countries. Most emigrants were peasants and manual laborers, although there were also educated individuals who brought their various expertises to their new destinations.
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👉 Chinese emigration in the context of Chinese New Zealanders
Chinese New Zealanders (Māori: Tāngata Hainamana o Aotearoa; simplified Chinese: 新西兰华人; traditional Chinese: 紐西蘭華人; pinyin: Niǔxīlán Huárén) or Sino-New Zealanders are New Zealanders of Chinese ancestry. The largest subset of Asian New Zealanders, many of the Chinese immigrants came from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or other countries that have large populations of Chinese diaspora. Today's Chinese New Zealand group is also composed of diasporic communities from Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Singapore. As of 2018, Chinese New Zealanders account for 4.9% of the population of New Zealand, and are the largest Asian ethnic group in New Zealand, accounting for 36.3% of Asian New Zealanders.
In the 1860s gold rush immigrants from Guangdong arrived. Due to this historical influx, there is still a distinct Chinese community in Dunedin, whose former mayor Peter Chin is of Chinese descent. However, most Chinese New Zealanders live in the North Island, and are of more recent migrant heritage. Chinese people historically faced severe discrimination in New Zealand, through means varying from the head tax to racist violence. In 2002, the New Zealand Government publicly apologised to China for the racism ethnic Chinese were dealt by New Zealand. Chinese people, culture and cuisine have had a profound impact on modern New Zealand, and are today seen as an inextricable and defining part of the country's rich and diverse culture. Chinese New Year is widely celebrated throughout the country, and although no conventional Chinatowns exist anymore, strongholds of ethnic Chinese exist in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. Mandarin is New Zealand's fourth-most-spoken language, while various dialects of Chinese make up the second-most spoken group of languages in New Zealand. Many famous and innovative New Zealanders are of Chinese ancestry, such as Augusta Xu-Holland, Bic Runga, Boh Runga, Brent Wong, Chris Tse, Manying Ip, Meng Foon, Michelle Ang, Renee Liang, Roseanne Liang, and Rose Lu.
In this Dossier
- ⭐ Core Definition: Chinese emigration
- 👉 Chinese emigration in the context of Chinese New Zealanders
- Chinese emigration in the context of Overseas Chinese
- Chinese emigration in the context of Pe̍h-ōe-jī
- Chinese emigration in the context of Languages of Taiwan
- Chinese emigration in the context of Taishanese
- Chinese emigration in the context of Qiao'xiang
Chinese emigration in the context of Overseas Chinese
Overseas Chinese people or the Chinese diaspora are a diaspora people of Chinese origin who reside outside Greater China (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan). As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese. As of 2023, there were 10.5 million people living outside mainland China who were born in mainland China, corresponding to 0.7 percent of China's population. Overall, China has a low percent of its population living overseas.
Chinese emigration in the context of Pe̍h-ōe-jī
Pe̍h-ōe-jī (/peɪweɪˈdʒiː/ pay-way-JEE; Taiwanese Hokkien: 白話字, pronounced [pe˩ˀ o̯e̞˩ d͡ʑi˧] , lit. 'vernacular writing'; POJ), also known as Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Hokkien Southern Min, particularly Taiwanese and Amoy Hokkien. It is widely employed as one of the writing systems for Southern Min. During its peak, it had hundreds of thousands of readers.
Developed by Western missionaries working among the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia in the 19th century and refined by missionaries working in Xiamen and Tainan, it uses a modified Latin alphabet and some diacritics to represent the spoken language. After initial success in Fujian, POJ became most widespread in Taiwan and, in the mid-20th century, there were over 100,000 people literate in POJ. A large amount of printed material, religious and secular, has been produced in the script, including Taiwan's first newspaper, the Taiwan Church News.
Chinese emigration in the context of Languages of Taiwan
The languages of Taiwan consist of several varieties of languages under the families of Austronesian languages and Sino-Tibetan languages. The Formosan languages, a geographically designated branch of Austronesian languages, have been spoken by the Taiwanese indigenous peoples for thousands of years. Owing to the wide internal variety of the Formosan languages, research on historical linguistics recognizes Taiwan as the Urheimat (homeland) of the whole Austronesian languages family. In the last 400 years, several waves of Han emigrations brought several different Sinitic languages into Taiwan. These languages include Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka, and Mandarin, which have become the major languages spoken in present-day Taiwan.
Formosan languages were the dominant language of prehistorical Taiwan. Taiwan's long colonial and immigration history brought in several languages such as Dutch, Spanish, Hokkien, Hakka, Japanese, and Mandarin. Due to the former Japanese occupation of the island, the Japanese language has influenced the languages of Taiwan, particularly in terms of vocabulary, with many loanwords coming from Japanese.
Chinese emigration in the context of Taishanese
Taishanese (simplified Chinese: 台山话; traditional Chinese: 臺山話; pinyin: Táishān huà; Jyutping: toi4 saan1 waa2), alternatively romanized in Cantonese as Toishanese or Toisanese, in local dialect as Hoisanese or Hoisanwa, is a Yue Chinese language native to Taishan, Guangdong.
Even though they are related, Taishanese has little mutual intelligibility with Cantonese. It is not a dialect of Cantonese. Taishanese is also spoken throughout Sze Yup (or Siyi in the pinyin romanization of Standard Mandarin Chinese), located on the western fringe of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong, China. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, most of the Chinese emigration to North America originated in Sze Yup (which includes Taishan). Thus, up to the mid-20th century, Taishanese was the dominant variety of the Chinese language spoken in Chinatowns in Canada and the United States. It was formerly the lingua franca of the overseas Chinese residing in the United States.
Chinese emigration in the context of Qiao'xiang
Qiaoxiang (侨乡, literally 'hometown of overseas Chinese'), is a Chinese ceremonial title that refers to regions (mostly categorized at county-level) in China with significant overseas communities, or have a long history and tradition of emigration abroad.
The classification of a qiaoxiang is generally irrespective of provincial provenance, however, Guangdong and Fujian in particular have some of the most well-established overseas Chinese communities both in their size and influence, whereas many counties in provinces like Zhejiang, Guangxi, Hainan, and Northern province of Shandong are also renowned for being homes to various Chinese diasporic groups across the world.