Are there many Thais in China?

Many China people who have been to Thailand will have this experience: when they go to the store to buy things, the owner will ask you if you are from China or where you are from China. Once they know that you are from a certain place in Chinese mainland, the shopkeeper will immediately show the excitement of meeting an old friend in another place, and his eyes will light up and tell you "I'm from China" and "I'm from a certain place".

Then he will tell you in his native dialect or simple Mandarin where his ancestral home is in China, which ancestor immigrated here, how he developed here, and so on. He will definitely give you great discounts when he sells things in the future. This situation reflects that many Chinese families in Thailand keep family history and immigration records in mind.

1. How many China people are there in Thailand?

Since Xia and Shang Dynasties, China has experienced 14 dynasties, and each dynasty has experienced a transition from strong to weak. The change of dynasties and social unrest led to a large number of people leaving their homes and wandering around. Many people leave their wives and children, go far away and live abroad. Many China people who have gone overseas to make a living have settled down locally. These people and their descendants were called "overseas Chinese" in their early years, but now they are all called "China people" or "overseas Chinese".

Now there are a large number of overseas Chinese in many countries in the world, especially in the Asia-Pacific region from San Francisco to Singapore. According to rough statistics, there are about 50 million to 60 million Chinese in the Asia-Pacific region. As we all know, Thailand is one of the countries with the largest concentration of overseas Chinese.

However, it is difficult to answer how many China people (or Chinese) there are in Thailand. Because there is no standard of "China people", it is difficult to answer. It may be okay to say that the first and second generations of immigrants from China are from China, but will the fourth and fifth generations still consider themselves from China? Descendants of China people who intermarry with local people,

Are you still from China? Since there is no uniform standard, there is no accurate figure. It is generally believed that at least 600 people in Wan Tai are from China or have relatively pure China ancestry. Some people say that the number of Chinese in Thailand is between 6.5438+million and 6.5438+0.2 million. There is even data that about one third of Thais are of China origin, that is to say, there are more than 20 million Chinese or Chinese in Thailand! But in any case, it is an acknowledged fact that Thailand has a large number of Chinese.

2. When did these China people come to Thailand?

Before the Tang and Song Dynasties, China people mainly migrated from the Central Plains to the southeast, northwest and all directions of China due to the traffic and information congestion. In the Tang and Song Dynasties, many China people began to emigrate to Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. Some China people came to live together in these places and formed their own villages.

Some people live among the local people, marry local women, and begin to assimilate with the local people. At this time, Chinese people went abroad to live for three reasons: first, they went to Thailand to do business and adapted to local conditions, and their living conditions were better; Second, China maritime merchants were plundered or forced to stay in Thailand; Third, they emigrated overseas because they avoided military disasters, which has happened in almost all generations.

During the Yuan Dynasty, the number of immigrants from China to Thailand increased greatly. This is because after the Yuan Dynasty unified China, the Mongolian rulers implemented the policy of ethnic differentiation and oppression, and divided all ethnic groups into four classes: the Mongolians were the first class; Semu people are second-class; Han people are the third class; Southerners are people at the bottom.

Different regulations have been made on the legal status, political treatment and economic burden of these four people, and Han people and southerners have been subjected to serious military precautions, cruel economic exploitation and other kinds of discrimination. Unwilling to endure this rule, they fled overseas, especially in coastal provinces such as Guangdong, Hainan and Fujian. They belong to the bottom of social life, and they are also the people who know overseas best and have the best chance to immigrate.

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were frequent social wars and natural disasters in China, and the economy did not develop as it should. People's life is extremely difficult. They don't have enough food and clothes to keep warm. More and more people make a living overseas. At the same time, the ruling class of the Qing Dynasty also adopted an unequal ethnic policy towards the people, and those Han Chinese who did not want to be ruled by Manchu began to emigrate in large numbers.

3. The "sea ban" in Ming and Qing Dynasties

The "sea ban" refers to the fact that in order to consolidate and maintain feudal rule, the ruling class prohibited China from conducting private overseas trade, fearing that domestic people would associate with foreigners and that people would unite with opposition forces living abroad.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, adopted a strict "sea ban" policy on overseas trade. One is out of "prohibiting offshore personnel from contacting the outside world"; Second, "if people are banned, they have no right to go to sea and trade with foreign countries"; Article 3 emphasizes that "those who dare to have private remittances, hell to pay."

The Qing government's "sea ban" policy changed frequently. In the early years of the Qing Dynasty, the Qing government imposed a "sea ban" in order to eliminate overseas anti-Qing forces. 166 1 year, the Qing government banned private overseas trade in order to implement the policy of "moving to the sea". After the Qing government unified Taiwan Province Province, it cancelled the "maritime ban".

However, in the fifty-sixth year of Kangxi (17 17), the Qing government issued a maritime ban to prohibit businessmen from trading in Southeast Asia. According to "Historical Materials of Ming and Qing Dynasties", the main contents of the "sea ban" during the Qing Dynasty were as follows: First, merchant ships were prohibited from trading in Nanyang; 2. It is forbidden for people to build ships and sell foreign goods, and sell rice and grain for export; Third, people are prohibited from going to sea to settle in foreign countries; Four, allow foreign merchant ships to trade in China.

Although the Ming and Qing governments implemented the "sea ban", private merchant ships never cut off their trade with Nanyang. It turns out that many businessmen only live overseas temporarily and return to China regularly. However, due to the strict "sea ban" policy of the Ming and Qing governments, many China people who stayed abroad dared not return to China and began to settle abroad.

Although China people have migrated to Thailand since ancient times, it was not until modern times that a large number of China people really lived in Thailand. After China's "closed door" was opened by western countries, a large number of western industrial products entered the China market, which led to the disintegration of China's natural economy, and a large number of farmers and craftsmen went bankrupt, unemployed and had no livelihood.

Especially after the Opium War in the late Qing Dynasty, China suffered from political corruption, constant wars, natural and man-made disasters, and people's lives were in dire straits. At this time, people began to make a living and lived abroad in large numbers. This wave started in the 1950s of 19 and lasted until the early 1950s, a whole hundred years. It is reported that by the 1940s, it was estimated that the number of overseas Chinese living in Thailand had reached 2 million, accounting for 15% of the Thai population at that time.

4. Where do the Chinese in China come from?

China immigrants from Thailand come from all over Chinese mainland. In those days, China people "went to Nanyang" naturally went by boat and by water. Therefore, the vast majority of Chinese who came to Thailand in the early days came from the southern coastal provinces of China, such as Guangdong, Fujian, Hainan, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other places, especially farmers in Chaoshan, Guangdong.

However, not all Chinese in Thailand come from the coast of China. China inland Yunnan Province is close to Thailand, and it is also an important province for China tourists to come from Thailand. Since ancient times, caravans have traveled across mountains and rivers in Yunnan to do business in Myanmar, Thailand and other places.

After a long time, people will naturally stay in the local area. But not many Yunnan people who went to Thailand to do business in the early days stayed there. From the 1970s of 19, a large number of Yunnan people left their homeland and moved to Thailand. 1873, after the failure of the Hui uprising in western Yunnan led by Du Wenxiu, many Yunnan Hui people fled abroad to escape the persecution of the Qing government, which formed the first climax of Yunnan people's emigration.

Some of them entered northern Thailand and settled there in a centralized way. Today, there are still some Yunnan Hui immigrant villages named "Qinhao" in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai in northern Thailand.

1949 after the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), the remnants of several defeated former Kuomintang troops and their families formed a "refugee tide", and thousands of people fled abroad from Yunnan. Most of them entered the mountainous area on the Thai side of the Thai-Myanmar border, forming a second wave of China people entering Thailand in large numbers.

After entering Thailand, most of the remnants of these Kuomintang troops and their families were allowed to move to remote areas in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, which is the famous "Golden Triangle" at the junction of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos. These "former officers and men of the national army" and their children, together with a few Chinese from other sources, now number nearly 70,000, and they have also become part of Chinese in Thailand.

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