By Peggy McInerny, Director of Communications

When the end of monsoon season first left unaccompanied Chinese merchants in Southeast Asian ports for months at a time, they formed local diaspora communities in a process that has spanned at least 18 centuries.

UCLA International Institute, February 12, 2026 — “The ties between Southeast Asia and China have been very long and continuous,” said Danny Wong Tze Ken at an event organized by the Asia Pacific Center on January 22 and cosponsored by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and Center for Chinese Studies. “I dare to venture that this is the longest migration process… in world history.”

Wong, professor of history and former dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the University of Malaysia, and president, International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas, provided an historic overview of Chinese diasporas that have formed in Southeast Asia over a span of at least 18 centuries, with a particular focus on Indonesia and Malaysia.

Diaspora communities in the region were initially sparked by sea trade, when the end of monsoon season would leave unaccompanied Chinese merchants in Southeast Asian ports for months at a time before they could return to China, leading merchants to marry “locals” (that is, indigenous women). The resulting diaspora populations were sustained and replenished over successive centuries through business and family ties, as well as successive waves of migration.

The localization process of these “hybrid” communities has differed over time and by principality and kingdom in areas that eventually became modern-day Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand, among others. Today, said Wong, a total 700 million people live in the 11 nation states of Southeast Asia. Among them, 40 million are of Chinese descent, representing the largest Chinese diaspora in the world.

Historical migration

The historian referred to four major periods of Chinese migration to the region: pre-14th century, beginning with the Dong Wu or Wu Kingdom (220–280 A.D., also known as the Three Kingdoms era); the 14th through 16th centuries (Ming Dynasty); the 17th and 18th centuries (first half of the Qing Dynasty) and the 19th century until today (second half of the Qing Dynasty, Chinese Republic, People’s Republic of China).

China was already aware of Southeast Asia during the Three Kingdoms period, said Wong, when the people of the Wu Kingdom began traveling there and Chinese conceptualized the region as “Nanyang” (or Southern Yang). Merchants traveled from the ports of Ningbo (near present-day Nanjing) and Quanzhou in Fujian Provence to such Southeast Asian ports as Palembang (Siri Jaya Kingdom; present-day Indonesia) and Manila (Philippines). Quanzhou and Guangzhou remained key Chinese trading ports with the region through the Ming Dynasty (mid-14th through mid-17th centuries).

Prior to the 14th century, travelogues about the region written by monks and other travelers began to be circulated in China during the Tang Dynasty (roughly 7th through 10th centuries). Between the 14th and 16th centuries, the Ming Dynasty brought armadas to trade with Malacca (present-day Malaysia) and to solicit tribute in the region. Chinese migrants to the region created hybrid communities by intermarrying with the indigenous peoples of the kingdoms located in areas that would later become Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Myanmar.

“The third phase of migration, [between] the17th and 18th centuries… coincided with the fall of the Ming Dynasty,” said Wong. This phase saw a different wave of migrants: Chinese officials who refused to serve the Manchu dynasty and fled to Formosa (later Taiwan), Malacca, Manila and Southern Vietnam. “This group of people, later sustained by people like [the Chinese revolutionary and modernizer] Sun Yat Sen, went on to establish the new Chinese Republic in 1912,” noted the speaker.

For the first time, however, these migrants in Southeast Asia had no formal relationship with the Chinese government. Not only were they anti-government, but the Manchu Dynast banned foreign travel; they returned to the diplomatic umbrella of China only in the late 19th century.

The last phase of migration began around the mid-19th century and continues more or less to the present. Unlike previous waves, this wave was massive — especially after 1850. Chinese came not only to escape political instability and a harsh life at home, explained Wong, but to fulfill the growing demand for labor in the new cash crop economy introduced by Western colonialists and imperialists (who preferred Chinese workers). Immigrants brought wives and settled permanently in the region in numbers far exceeding previous migrant waves, eventually outnumbering the indigenous populations of certain areas.

“You [had] Spanish control over the Philippines, Dutch control over what is Indonesia today, British control over a massive area (Malaya, Burma, Brunei and northern Borneo). Then you have the French controlling Indochina and also the Portuguese [controlling] the region of Timor, as well as Papua New Guinea,” explained Wong. New settlements also emerged under strong imperial political control, such as Penang, Malacca and Singapore.

Chinese living in Southeast Asia in this period actively supported change in China and later participated in anti-Japanese movements and contributed to Chinese war efforts during World War II. Many were then active in the nationalist movements that pushed for independence from Western imperial rule.

Photo postcard: “Chinese house, Surabaya,” Indonesia, 1910–1940. Collection of National
Museum of World Cultures, Amsterdam, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Localization before and after decolonization

“When the Chinese arrived or emigrated to the region, they… settled among their own people,” explained the speaker.

Prior to the formation of nation states in Southeast Asia, most Chinese residents lived in Chinese communities that were divided along five broad Chinese linguistic groups: Hokkien, Teochew, Hainanese, Cantonese and Hakka. (Originally initiated by the Chinese themselves, these same categories were later used by Western colonial administrators.)

These communities had active cultural lives and often constituted Chinatowns within a larger city or region, complete with civic institutions such as Chinese chambers of commerce, newspapers, temples, churches, and after the 1850s, Chinese schools.

Chinese architecture influenced building in the region; Chinese cemeteries were founded in many countries, including Indonesia (Jakarta), the Philippines (Manila) and Thailand (Bangkok), where some have endured for centuries; and unique Chinese batiks and porcelains emerged in hybrid communities where there was a lot of intermarriage.

With the advent of independent states in the region starting in the second half of the 1940s, new governments had less tolerance for Chinese institutions — particularly Chinese-language schools. Some new nations closed Chinese newspapers, required Chinese residents to become citizens if they wanted to enjoy certain rights or asked that they adopt local names.

Indonesia and Vietnam eventually closed all Chinese schools in their countries. Both countries (in Indonesia’s case, both long before and after WWII) also adopted many restrictive measures against their respective Chinese minorities. “Today, the only country that has sustained Chinese education all along would be Malaysia… [T]here are now 1,300 Chinese schools there,” said Wong. These schools teach the Malaysian curriculum, but in Chinese, and even attract Malaysians and other ethnic nationalities as students.

Indonesia and Malaysia each have Chinese populations of roughly 7 million, said Wong. Both nations have suspected this minority of supporting local communist movements in the past and have experienced outbreaks of shocking violence against them (Indonesia in1946, 1965, 1998) and (Malaysia in 1969). Resentment of the wealth of this ethnic minority is typically a factor contributing to the violence.

Riots and restrictive measures — including a development policy that favored ethnic Malaysians in Malaysia after 1969 — produced alienation among Chinese minorities in the two countries. Waves of Indonesian-born Chinese have chosen to return to China, migrate to Malaysia and Singapore or live abroad elsewhere in the region. Nevertheless, Wong pointed out that ethnic Chinese have contributed significantly to Indonesia as scientists, politicians and businessmen. In fact, many of these individuals are honored in a new museum in the country.

In Malaysia, the fact that Chinese educational institutions continue to operate, the participation of Chinese Malaysians in the country’s independence movement (and later in national leadership) and new economic policies that no longer disfavor Chinese business ownership have created a more positive relationship with the country’s Chinese minority. Yet, said Wong, “out of a population 35 million people, we have a least a million [Chinese Malaysians], some of them our most brilliant people, residing abroad.”

Ties between China and the region have now “been taken over by state-to-state relations, as well as trade,” said Wong, with the Chinese Belt and Road economic development initiative playing a significant role in this trend. In addition, the rapid development of China has led to rising numbers of Chinese students and tourists who come to study or travel in the region, as well as smaller numbers of Chinese who choose to relocate permanently.

Chinese Primary School in Lumut, Perak state, Malaysia. (Photo: Marufish via Wikimedia Commons.) CC BY-SA 2.0.

 
Geopolitical tensions

Wong argued that the Chinese diaspora population in Southeast Asia and their relations with China were important not only because of China’s relationship with the region and vice versa, but also because of the geopolitical rivalry between China and the United States.

“[This rivalry] has forced, or prompted, many countries in Southeast Asia to possibly make some decisions as to which side to take,” he related. “But within this larger picture, we also have the ethnic Chinese who have been prominent in maintaining bilateral ties between China and Southeast Asia.

“In Malaysia in particular, we are very close to China in some sense. But at the same time, we are conscious of the fact that the United States is also very important in the region.”

Published: Thursday, February 12, 2026