The Chinese Émigrés of Thailand in the Twentieth Century By Disa ...

There are approximately 60 million overseas Chinese living in Southeast Asia; they make up a majority of the population of Singapore and significant minority populations in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia.⁵ According to Suryadinata,⁶ the phrase “overseas Chinese” implies that the Chinese emigrants are sojourners who will eventually return to mainland China. The Chinese often refer to this group as huaqiao (or Chinese sojourners). This term had been used before the ethnic conflicts when discrimination arose between the overseas Chinese and local Thai. The term continues to be used today by the Chinese who reside outside of the PRC but plan to go back to the mainland in the future.

Stephen Fitzgerald (as cited by Suryadinata) notes that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) first used the term “overseas Chinese” to include all ethnic Chinese living outside of China. By the mid-1950s, it was narrowed to refer to Chinese nationals who maintained some attachment to the Chinese homeland and still held Chinese citizenship. Fitzgerald also suggests that the term can extend beyond the concept of ”nationality” to include many ethnic Chinese who are non-Chinese citizens.⁷ However, after 1955, the Chinese government did not support dual citizenship and encouraged the overseas Chinese, especially the ethnic Chinese who were born outside the PRC, to take the citizenship of the new nations in which they lived, after which they were called “hua yen”—meaning foreigners with ethnic Chinese origins but having no current connection or attachment to mainland China.⁸ To confirm Fitzgerald’s definition, Hay-Him Chan of the Chinese Coordination Centre of World Evangelism (CCCOWE) defines the “ethnic Chinese” as those Chinese whose primary language is not Chinese and whose primary cultural orientation is not toward Chinese culture. Most ethnic Chinese are born outside China (or more specifically, outside “Greater China,” that is, in countries other than the PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau). In Thailand, the ethnic Chinese are called Thai-Chinese or Thai-born Chinese.⁹