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Total population | |
749,466 0.78% of the Vietnamese population (2019) | |
Regions with significant populations | |
Languages | |
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Religion | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Hoa | |||||||||||||||||||
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Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 越南華人 | ||||||||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 越南华人 | ||||||||||||||||||
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Vietnamese name | |||||||||||||||||||
Vietnamese alphabet | người Hoa người Hán người Tàu [a] | ||||||||||||||||||
Chữ Nôm | 𠊛華 𠊛漢 𠊛艚 |
The Hoa people, also known as Vietnamese Chinese (Vietnamese: Người Hoa, Chinese: 華人; pinyin: Huárén or Chinese: 唐人; Jyutping: tong4 jan4) are the citizens and nationals of Vietnam of full or partial Han Chinese ancestry. Chinese migration into Vietnam dates back millennia but allusions to the contemporary Hoa today mostly refers to people of Chinese ancestry who immigrated to Vietnam during the 18th century, who especially trace their ancestry to various southern Chinese provinces. The Hoa are an ethnic minority group in Vietnam as part of the Chinese community there, and can also be found in other regions such as in the Americas. They may also be called "Chinese-Vietnamese" or "Vietnamese Chinese" by the Vietnamese.[1]
Historically, the first wave of Chinese migrants into Vietnam brought Chinese-oriented cultural, religious and philosophical thought to Vietnam, where the Vietnamese gradually developed and adapted such elements to systematically its own.[2] Beginning as early as the 19th century, the Hoa people were known during the French Indochina era for being favoured by the French colonial rulers. Despite subsequent backlash that followed this, the Hoa community still exists in contemporary Vietnamese society today, either as descendants of Han Chinese who have immigrated to Vietnam over the nation's history or as more recent immigrants.
During prehistoric times in the Red River Delta basin, there were two main language families present. One being the Austroasiatic family from which the native modern Vietnamese language is descended, and the other being influenced by the Sino-Tibetan culture and language by the Chinese-speaking Han immigrants into Vietnam.[3]
The Hoa, especially those of more recent Han Chinese extraction who settled in Vietnam since the 18th century, have played a leading role in Vietnam's private business sector before the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and the reunification of Vietnam. However, many Hoas from South Vietnam had their businesses and property confiscated by the North Vietnamese Communist Party after 1975 and fled the country, as well as the South Vietnamese who faced persecution by the Communist Government. This was then intensified during the Sino-Vietnamese War.[4][5] From the Vietnamese Communist government point of view, the Chinese disloyal to Vietnam were regarded with deep suspicion, and had potentially teamed up with the French occupiers in seizing control of Vietnam's resources and labour, an almost repeat of the forces of Japanese imperialism leading to the Vietnamese famine of 1945, resulting in 2 million deaths of the Vietnamese populace.
From the late 19th century, the Hoa played a leading role in Vietnam's private business sector prior to the Fall of Saigon in 1975. They were a well-established commercial middle class ethnic group that made up a disproportionately high percentage of Vietnam's upper class.[6] Despite their small numbers, the Hoa were disproportionately dominant in the Vietnamese economy having started an estimated 70 to 80 percent of pre-fall Saigon's privately owned and operated businesses.[7] Communist intervention was then deemed necessary by wide swathes of the Vietnamese population and is considered to be an ingrained symbol of the Vietnamese identity by some.[8] Many Hoa had their businesses and property confiscated by the Communists after 1975, and many fled the country as boat people due to persecution by the newly established Communist government. Hoa persecution intensified in the late 1970s, which was one of the underlying reasons for the Sino-Vietnamese War.[5][9]
The Vietnamese government's post-1988 shift to economic liberalization has revived the entrepreneurial presence of the predominantly urban Chinese minority allowing them reassert much of their previous economic clout in the Vietnamese economy.[10][11] [12][13] However, contemporary Hoa economic clout however pales in comparison to their previous influence that they once held prior to 1975, where modern Vietnam has mostly diversified its economy, allowing the presence of global corporations to operate within the country.[14][15][16][17]
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