Ethnic Chinese in South East Asia, 2010
Try ask the way in Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur, you most probably got a favor from a Chinese.
As it in Singapore, you might actually regard it as an Ethnic Chinese country; with over 90% population are Ethnic Chinese.
It has been over 1000 year history of Ethnic Chinese immigrating to South East Asia, and the latest large immigration trend occurred before 1949, on which the People’s Republic of China built up their regime. Plenty of peasants who lost their lands and property and city pauper were obliged to leave their home to make a living, since they had already nothing to depend on.
64 years ago, Xu Sheng Kai, who was on his 18, left China Guangdong to Bangkok. After decades of hard work, he became a powerful businessman in rice trading, who could even affect the market price of rice. He would gather with his townee in the community as many of them did. Among them most are businessmen and some are Mr. You Know Who, people would whisper that these people served in government and had a real big power. As in Chinese society, political and business are twins and one leads to the other, things are no different even in South East Asia.
After these Chinese became legal citizen of the country, they start to seek political power, and thus made them really merge in the new country, except for the culture. So, until now, most of the ethnic Chinese in South East Asia remained the traditional Chinese culture, and even more than the ones stay in main land China.
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