A new breed of migrants fans out
By Bertil Lintner
Northern Thailand is only one of their destinations. Large numbers of Chinese are also moving into northern Myanmar, northern Laos, Cambodia and further abroad - including the Pacific islands, Australia, the United States, the Russian Far East and Japan. More recently, South Korea has become a popular destination for Chinese migrants - both legal and illegal - as it's easier to enter than tightly sealed Japan.
China's new migrants are a breed apart from their peripatetic forebears, who spoke regional dialects and exhibited little nationalism, identifying more with the localities in China from which they hailed. The recent arrivals not only speak the national Mandarin language, but also tend to identify with China as a whole.
This new wave of Chinese migrants to Southeast Asia and beyond - what some Sinologists are referring to as the "Third Wave" of outward Chinese migration - is unprecedented in Chinese history not only because the migrants originate from northern and central Chinese provinces, but also because travel has become easier due to better transportation links both inside and outside of China. That's resulting in potentially larger numbers than previous waves of Chinese migration throughout the globe.
"The new-wave Chinese are very different from those who migrated in the past," says Andrew Forbes, a Chiang Mai-based China expert who has spent more than 20 years studying China's relations with Southeast Asia. "They've grown up in a country which is far more unified than before. There's now a different sense of being Chinese: the new migrants are patriotic and loyal to the motherland."
Nyiri Pal, a Hungarian Sinologist and academic, agrees that unlike earlier Chinese settlers in Southeast Asia, the United States and Australia, these new migrants do not feel they have stopped being part of China. According to Nyiri, they see themselves not as local minorities, but as a "global majority" with an attachment to China that has nothing to do with territorial nationalism. Not only is China their ethnic and cultural base, but it remains the foundation of their economic success - a place where they continue to invest in and draw on, he says.
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