Hoa

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The Hoa are an overseas Chinese minority in Vietnam. They are also typically referred to as either Chinese Vietnamese, Vietnamese Chinese, Sino-Vietnamese, or ethnic Chinese in/from Vietnam. The Vietnamese government's classification of the Hoa excludes two other groups of Chinese-speaking peoples, the San Diu (mountain Chinese) and the Ngai. Along with ethnic Vietnamese, the Hoa are usually referred to as "Vietnamese" by Chinese from Mainland China and Taiwan.

They are the largest ethnic minority in Vietnam.^[1]

Contents 1 Languages 2 Occupations 3 History 3.1 Population and expulsion 4 Immigration to other countries 4.1 List of concentrations of Hoa by country 5 Notable persons 6 See also 7 Footnotes and References 8 External links

[edit] Languages

The Chinese who escaped from Qing dynasty to Vietnam declared themselves as the Minh-huong (明鄉 or mingxiang in pinyin) which means the people of the Ming dynasty. The Hoa are descended from early Mainland Chinese settlers from the Guangdong province who arrived in Vietnam from the 18th to 20th centuries. The final group of Mainland Chinese migrants came during the 1940s. A large proportion of Hoa who are living outside of Vietnam speak the Vietnamese accent of Cantonese Chinese as their mother tongue. The second largest group of Hoa tend to speak Teochew Chinese (Chaozhou), but may also speak Cantonese as a lingua franca. The younger generation of Hoa in Vietnam tends to speak both Vietnamese and Cantonese.

Due to similar culture with Vietnamese and close proximity with China, the Chinese Vietnamese have tended to retain the strongest ties and greater affinity to traditional Chinese culture. The intermarriage between the Hoa and the majority Kinh ethnic is the highest compare to other minorities in Vietnam. ^[2]

They are predominantly urban dwellers. A few Hoa live in small settlements in the northern highlands near the Chinese frontier, where they are also known as ngai. Traditionally, as elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the Chinese have retained a distinctive cultural identity, but in 1955 North Vietnam and China agreed that the Hoa should be integrated gradually into Vietnamese society and should have Vietnamese citizenship conferred on them.

[edit] Occupations

This article contains material from the Library of Congress Country Studies, which are United States government publications in the public domain.

Before 1975 the northern Hoa were mainly rice farmers, fishermen, and coal miners, except for those residing in cities and provincial towns. In the South, the French colonizers had allowed the Cholon Chinese to be the trading middleman. Subsequently, they became dominant in commerce and manufacturing. According to an official source, at the end of 1974 the Hoa controlled more than 80 % of the food, textile, chemical, metallurgy, engineering, and electrical industries, 100 % of wholesale trade, more than 50 % of retail trade, and 90 % of export-import trade. Dominance over the economy enabled the Hoa to "manipulate prices" of rice and other scarce goods. This particular source further observed that the Hoa community constituted "a state within a state," inasmuch as they had built "a closed world based on blood relations, strict internal discipline, and a network of sects, each with its own chief, to avoid the indigenous administration's direct interference." It was noted by Hanoi in 1983 that as many as 60 % of "the former bourgeoisie" of the south were of Chinese origin.

[edit] History

[edit] Population and expulsion

As of 2006, the Hoa became the largest ethnic minority in Vietnam, with figures of 2.3 million.^[3]

In mid-1975, when North and South Vietnam were unified, the combined Hoa communities of the North and South numbered approximately 1.3 million, and all but 200,000 resided in the South, most of them in the Saigon metropolitan area, especially in the Cholon district (Chinatown). Beginning in 1975, the Hoa bore the brunt of socialist transformation in the South. The government attempted to require all ethnic Chinese adopt Vietnamese nationality, and those who refused faced heavy taxes, occupational discrimination, and had food rations reduced.^[4][5] Further reforms in 1977 prohibited Chinese from entering civil service, working for public enterprises, engaging in retail trades or farming, or moving from one place to another. Distrusted Chinese nationals were required to fill out "voluntary repatriation" forms, which would lead the to confiscation of their property and exile from the country^[6], while ethnic Chinese with Vietnamese citizenship were denied the right to stand for elections and began to suffer occupational and political discrimination. ^[7][8]

By April 1977, Vietnam began to expel both Chinese and non-Vietnamese minorities from the Sino-Vietnamese border areas into China.^[9][10][11] As Vietnam prepared to escalate its border conflict with Kampuchea, surveillence, harassment, and expulsions of ethnic Chinese nationwide increased,^[12][13] as they were increasingly distrusted and seen as a possible fifth column for China. Distrust deepened in 1978, as China announced reforms, as part of its Four Modernizations, to protect its citizens living abroad as well as reestablish relations with overseas Chinese to encourage foreign investment.^[14]

In early 1978, Chinese in Ho Chi Minh City protested against discrimination, including confiscation of their properties, expulsions, and nullification of their nationality.^[15][16] By early 1978 the communist government decided to abolish private trade. On March 23, 1978, 30,000 police cordoned off the Cholon district of Ho Chi Minh City. This force conducted searches and confiscation in every house and shop in the district, including confiscations of goods and valuables from about 50,000 retailers.^[17][18][19] This operation was simultaneously conducted nationwide in other parts of the country, often with specific target quotas set for each area, and continued for a month.^[20][21] An announcement on March 24 outlawed all wholesale trade and large business activities, which forced around 30,000 businesses to close down overnight^[22], followed up by another that banned all private trade^[23][24]. Further government policies forced former owners to become farmers in the countryside or join the arm forces and fight at the Vietnam-Kampuchea border, and confiscated all old and foreign currencies, as well as any Vietnamese currency in excess of the US value of $250 for urban households and $150 by rural households. ^{[25][26][27][28][29][30]} While such measures were targeted at all bourgeois elements, such measures hurt ethnic Chinese the hardest and resulted in the takeover of Chinese properties in and around major cities.^[31][32] Chinese communities offered widespread resistance and clashes left the streets of Cholon "full of corpses".^[33][34]

These measures, combined with external tensions stemming from Vietnam's dispute with Cambodia and China in 1978 and 1979 caused an exodus of as the majority of the Hoa, of whom more than 170,000 fled overland into the province of Guangxi, China, from the North and the remainder fled by boat from the South. China received a daily influx of 4-5,000 refugees, while Southeast Asian countries saw a wave of 5,000 boat people arriving at their shores each month. China sent unarmed ships to help evacuate Chinese refugees, but encountered diplomatic problems as the Vietnamese government denied that Chinese suffered persecution and later refused to issue exit permits after as many as 250,000 Chinese had applied for repatriation.^[35] In an attempt to stem the refugee flow, avert Vietnamese accusations that Beijing was coercing its citizens to emigrate, and encourage Vietnam to change its policies towards ethnic Chinese, China closed off its land border in 1955.^[36] This led to a jump in the number of boat people, with as many as 100,000 arriving in other countries by the end of 1978. However, the Vietnamese government by now not only encouraged the exodus, but took the opportunity to profit from it by imposing a price of five to ten taels of gold or an equivalent of uS $1,500 to $3,000 per person wishing to leave the country.^{[37][38][39][40][41]} The Vietnamese military also forcibly drove the thousands of border refugees across the Sino-Vietnamese land border, causing numerous border incidents and armed clashes, while blaming these movements on China by accusing them of using saboteurs to force Vietnamese citizens into China.^{[42][43][44][45][46][47]} This new influx brought the number of refugees in China to around 200,000.^[48]

The expulsion and persecution of ethnic Chinese in Vietnam was one of the reasons, though not cited as a primary one, for China initiating the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979. However, this justification was played downplayed and never publicly stated for fear of both alienating other Southeast countries with Chinese minorities (who would feel threatened if mistreatment of their Chinese minorities could lead to war with China), and for fear of possible persecution of other populations of overseas Chinese due to suspicions of ties with China.^[49] However, the size of the exodus increased during and after the war. The monthly number of boat people arriving in Southeast Asia increased to 11,000 during the first quarter of 1979, 28,000 by April, and 55,000 in June, while more than 90,000 fled by boat to China. In addition, the Vietnamese military also began expelling ethnic Chinese from Vietnam-occupied Kampuchea, leading to over 43,000 refugees of mostly Chinese descent fleeing overland to Thailand^[50] By now, Vietnam was openly confiscating the properties and extorting money from fleeing refugees. In April 1979 alone, overseas Chinese outside of Vietnam had remitted a total of US $242 million (an amount equivalent to half the total value of Vietnam's 1978 exports) through Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh City to help their friends or family pay their way out of Vietnam.^[51] By June, money from refugees had replaced the coal industry as Vietnam's largest source of foreign exchange and was expected to reach as much as 3 billion in US dollars.^[52] By 1980, the refugee population in China reached 260,000^[53], and the number of surviving boat people refugees in Southeast Asia reached 400,000.^[54] (An estimated 50%^[55][56] to 70%^[57] of boat people perished at sea.) By the end of 1980, the majority of the Hoa had fled or been expelled from Vietnam. In addition to Chinese, an estimated 30,000 ethnic Vietnamese refugees were accepted by China, where they they form one of the country's ethnic minorities.^[58]

[edit] Immigration to other countries

As an example of their resiliency to Chinese culture, upon their arrival in North America, some Chinese Vietnamese (Sino-Vietnamese) immigrants have re-asserted Chinese identity by changing their Vietnamized surnames - which was required under the autocratic regime of Ngô Đình Diệm of the former South Vietnam - back to Chinese-sounding equivalents; for example, Duong to Tang, Hoang to Wong (Cantonese) or Huang (Mandarin), Truong to Chang, and so on.

Today, there are many Chinese Vietnamese communities in Australia, Canada, France, and the United States, where they have been instrumental in breathing new life into old existing Chinatowns. For example, the established Chinatowns of Los Angeles, Houston, Toronto, and Paris have a Vietnamese atmosphere due the large presence of ethnic Chinese from Vietnam. Some of these communities also have associations for transplanted Vietnamese Chinese refugees; for example, the America Vietnam Chinese Association in Los Angeles and Association des Résidents en France d'origine indochinoise in Paris.

The Chinese Vietnamese poulation in China now number about 300,000, and live mostly in 194 refugee settlements mostly in the provinces of Guangdong, Yunnan, Fujian, Hainan, Jiangxi, and Guangxi. Most (85%+) have achieved economic independence, but the remainder still live below the poverty line in rural areas. While they have most of the same rights as Chinese nationals, including employment, education, housing, property ownership, and health care, they have not been granted citizenship and continued to be regarded by the government as refugees. Their refugee status allowed them to receive UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) assistance and aid until the early twenty-first century. ^[59]

There is also a sizable Chinese Vietnamese refugee population - many of whom speak Cantonese - in Hong Kong, but they have experienced discrimination in housing and employment.

In the United States, the Chinese Vietnamese have also started prominent Vietnamese communities called Little Saigon, including those in the states of California, Texas, and Washington. They own a large share of businesses especially catering to ethnic Vietnamese.

[edit] List of concentrations of Hoa by country

Vietnam

• Ho Chi Minh City: Cholon
• Can Tho
• Danang
• Hanoi
• Haiphong
• Kien Giang
• Quang Ninh

Hong Kong

• Yuen Long

Australia

• Melbourne: Box Hill, Footscray
• Sydney: Cabramatta, Bankstown

Canada

• Montreal: Chinatown, Montreal, Brossard
• Ottawa, Ontario
• Toronto: Chinatown, Toronto, Mississauga, North York, Ontario, Kitchener, Ontario, Waterloo, Ontario
• Windsor, Ontario

France

• Paris: 13th arrondissement

United Kingdom

• London: Hackney, Lewisham

United States

• Boston: Chinatown; and larger presence in Dorchester section
• Chicago - New Chinatown
• Detroit: Madison Heights, Michigan
• Honolulu: Chinatown
• Houston: Chinatown, Houston (Bellaire), Alief
• Los Angeles: Little Saigon/Orange County, Chinatown, Los Angeles, Lincoln Heights, San Gabriel Valley
• Philadelphia: Chinatown
• San Francisco: Little Saigon/San Francisco (Tenderloin district), San Jose, Fremont, Oakland, California
• Seattle: International District, Seattle, Washington

This article contains material from the Library of Congress Country Studies, which are United States government publications in the public domain.

[edit] Notable persons

• Tsui Hark, Hong Kong film director
• Frank Jao, pioneer of the Vietnamese American enclave of Little Saigon in Orange County, California, USA
• Lui Leung-Wai, Hong Kong actor

[edit] See also

• Overseas Chinese
• List of ethnic groups in Vietnam
• San Diu

[edit] Footnotes and References

[edit] External links

• Chinese Affairs Department of Ho Chi Minh City - in Vietnamese, English, and Chinese

Ethnic groups in Vietnam (sorted by language family)

Viet-Muong: Chut | Muong | Tho | Viet (Kinh) Tay-Thai: Bố Y | Giáy | Lao | Lu | Nung | San Chay | Tay | Thai Mon–Khmer: Ba Na | Brau | Bru-Van Kieu | Cho Ro | Co | Co Ho | Co Tu | Gie Trieng | H're | Khang | Khmer | Kho Mu | Ma | Mang | Mnong | O Du | Ro Mam | Ta Oi | Xinh Mun | Xo Dang | Xtieng Hmong–Dao: Dao | Hmong | Pa Then Tai-Kadai: Gelao | Lachi | Laha | Qabiao Malayo-Polynesian (Nhóm ngôn ngữ Nam đảo): Chăm | Chu-ru | Ê-đê | Jarai | Ra-glai Nhóm Hán: Hoa | Ngái | Sán dìu Tibeto-Burman (Nhóm Tạng): Cống | Hà Nhì | La Hủ | Lô Lô | Phù Lá | Si La