What is the main destination of China's overseas immigrants in history?

The demand of western capitalist countries for developing colonial labor force is the main factor leading to the emigration of China population.

1492 One of the most direct consequences of Columbus's great geographical discovery was the continuation of 400 years of western colonial activities, and America, Australia and Asia became western colonies one after another. /kloc-After the mid-9th century, with the development of western capitalist economy, especially the expansion and development of overseas colonies, the demand for labor in the capitalist world has greatly increased. The discovery of gold mines in California and the western development driven by them, the development of sugar cane production and coffee planting economy in the West Indies, the growing development of Southeast Asia after the mid-10th century, and the rise of plantation economy such as sugar cane and rubber have further led to a large demand for labor in China. The population of capitalist countries and colonies is generally small, which is far from meeting the needs of economic development. Overseas workers became the goal pursued by colonists. The labor force needed by western colonists to develop colonies in the early days mainly depended on the "slave trade". With the deepening of the bourgeois revolution and the advancement of the industrial revolution in the major capitalist countries in the west, the slave trade that prevailed for nearly 300 years was abolished by Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland and other countries in19th century and10-20th year. L 1862, the slave trade was abolished by the United States, and the cheap black labor resources that supported the economic development of western colonies dried up. In this context, China, with a large population, became the only source of labor needed by western colonial development at that time. The demand for China's labor force brought about by the abolition of the slave trade and the employment opportunities provided by colonial development have become a powerful pull for China's overseas immigrants.

The reason why China formed the climax of emigration overseas during this period was also closely related to the population situation of China at that time. The long-term stable and peaceful social environment and the implementation of a series of measures such as "spreading rice into acres" and "recruiting people to open up wasteland" since the early Qing Dynasty have greatly promoted the population growth. From the middle of the old century to the middle of19th century, the total population of China continuously exceeded 200 million and 300 million, and reached the highest record of 430 million in Daoguang period. There is a huge contradiction between the huge population and the limited cultivated land area. The cruel exploitation of feudal government, especially the invasion of foreign capital and commodities, caused the decline of China's traditional combination of agriculture and textile with natural economy, and the land annexation intensified. Farmers and craftsmen went bankrupt one after another, and farmers and lower-class industrialists who lost their land were forced to leave their homes, and migration became a major way of making a living. At that time, the domestic agricultural areas were basically overcrowded, the national industry and commerce were depressed, and the cities could not absorb a large number of landless peasants, so emigrating overseas became the only way to alleviate the increasingly serious population crisis. This has formed a huge driving force for population migration. Especially in Guangdong and Fujian provinces, which suffered the most direct and earliest foreign capitalist aggression, this kind of population migration has a greater thrust.

Fujian and Guangdong are the areas with the greatest population pressure in China. Fujian and Guangdong were originally the places where Baiyue people lived. After the Qin and Han Dynasties, the Han people entered the area continuously, especially after the three climaxes of the Han people's southward migration in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the Southern Dynasties, the Middle Tang Dynasty to the Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty. The population of Fujian and Guangdong is gradually increasing, and the contradiction between population and land is very prominent.

The topography of Fujian is mainly mountainous and hilly, and the contradiction between less cultivated land and less people and land is very prominent. As early as the Song Dynasty, Fujian was already "a small place with a large population, although it was refined and bedding was exhausted". After the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with the rapid growth of population, the per capita cultivated land area declined seriously. In the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty (1578), the number of man-days in Fujian was only1738,000, but in the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty (1786), it exceeded1000,000 and reached1200. With the population explosion, the per capita cultivated land area is declining. During the period of1661-12, the per capita cultivated land in Fujian decreased from 7. 1 1 mu to 0.9 mu. The situation in southern Fujian is even more severe. Quanzhou "cultivates if you want, and opens if you don't have land", and Nan 'an is also "an idyllic sundial with more grain and fewer children". Since modern times, the invasion of foreign goods has made a large number of farmers, businessmen and craftsmen in Fujian unemployed, and immigration has become the only way out for survival.

Guangdong was also one of the areas with the greatest population pressure in China during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. According to historical records, Guangdong is "small and densely populated, earning three yuan a year." The people's strength is exhausted, and the geographical position is exhausted. There are many people without farmland to cultivate, and there is no farmland in the wild "; Jiaying Prefecture, where Hakkas live in compact communities, is even more "barren and poor, with many mountains and few fields, so men make a living, each with the ambition of all directions". The Opium War caused serious damage to Guangdong's economy, and the direct economic loss reached19.5 million taels of silver, which was equivalent to the total revenue of Guangdong's local finance from 18. What's more, relying on the unequal treaties such as treaty of nanking, western capitalism dumped foreign goods such as foreign yarn, foreign cloth, foreign iron and foreign oil in Guangdong, which dealt a heavy blow to Guangdong's handicraft industry and led to the situation that "foreign weaving flourished and local machines declined". The iron smelting industry in the Pearl River Delta with Foshan as the center is also rapidly declining, and local iron smelting workers and businessmen running Guangdong Railway have lost their jobs. In particular, farmers and craftsmen who make a living from this have to go far away. In the twenty-third year of the Republic of China, Volume V of Kaiping County Records said that "the domestic industry is not prosperous, and the livelihood of the poor is declining, resulting in an increasing number of people crossing the ocean", which clearly attributed the emigration to the decline of the domestic economy.

The tradition of overseas migration in the southeast coastal areas of China and the privilege of foreign capital-imperialism to recruit workers in China are also important historical conditions for the formation of the climax of overseas migration in modern China.