Chinese Cambodians

On this page

1. Early settlement
2. Language groups
3. French protectorate
4. War and the Khmer Rouge years
5. Present day
6. Chinese New Year
7. See also
8. References

On this page

1. Early settlement
2. Language groups
3. French protectorate
4. War and the Khmer Rouge years
5. Present day
6. Chinese New Year
7. See also
8. References

A Chinese temple in Kampot

Chinese Cambodians, often called Sino-Khmer, are Cambodians of Chinese descent, a community rooted in centuries of trade and settlement.

Early settlement

Chinese contacts with the lands of present-day Cambodia go back at least to the kingdoms of Funan and Chenla, whose missions to China were recorded by Chinese envoys. The Phnom Penh Post writes that small Chinese families already lived in Funan, some taking Khmer wives. The Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan, who visited in 1296, found a society tied to China by trade and migration. Spanish visitors noted large Chinese communities at Longvek, then the capital.

The largest early wave came at the end of the 17th century. After the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644, loyalist soldiers and their families left China in 1679. Some passed south through Vietnam, and others sailed up the Mekong delta, settling in what is now Takeo and Kampot and along the Mekong and Bassac rivers. Many early migrants were men, and marriage with Khmer women was common. Their descendants often spoke Khmer and practiced Theravada Buddhism while keeping Chinese surnames and ancestral rites.

Language groups

Chinese Cambodians belong to several language groups, among them Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Hainanese and Hakka, each long linked to particular trades and neighborhoods. Speakers of one of these languages cannot understand the others. Each group, called a congregation, kept together around its own language. Mandarin later became the shared language of Chinese schools. The Phnom Penh Post describes the Teochew as traders, the Hokkien as drawn to government business and the Cantonese as shippers on the Mekong. It also notes the Hainanese farmers of Kampot and the Hakka of Takeo.

French protectorate

When Phnom Penh became the capital in 1865, most of its people were Chinese. Immigration grew under French rule in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The French dealt with each congregation through its head rather than with individuals, a policy that gave those leaders more power and kept the groups apart. By the early 20th century, five language groups had their own quarters in the capital. The Teochew, the largest, lived beside the Central Market with the Hainanese and Hakka, and the Cantonese and Hokkien lived further north.

War and the Khmer Rouge years

After Lon Nol took power on March 18, 1970, his government closed the Chinese schools. Under the Khmer Rouge, Ben Kiernan wrote in Cultural Survival Quarterly, the Chinese were nearly all city people and were treated as "new people", made to work harder and under worse conditions than villagers. He estimated that of 425,000 Chinese in 1975, only 200,000 survived the four years, that many died of hunger and diseases such as malaria, and that the regime did not single them out to be killed for their ethnicity. The Diplomat cites a separate estimate of 230,000 Chinese Cambodians killed, more than half the community.

After 1979, while Vietnamese troops were in the country, Chinese Cambodians could not join the ruling party or trade openly, and the towns were closed to them. Private property and trade were allowed from 1989, when the People's Republic of Kampuchea became the State of Cambodia, and the Phnom Penh Post dates the return of the Chinese community to public life from that year.

Present day

Many Cambodians, above all in the cities, have some Chinese ancestry. Chinese associations cited in 2014 counted at least 700,000 Cambodians of Chinese descent, and the Phnom Penh Post wrote in 2014 that nearly one million people of Chinese heritage celebrate Chinese New Year. Lim, Ung, Chea and Taing are among the common Chinese Cambodian family names.

In the decade to 2024, immigrants from the People's Republic of China, called the "new Chinese", arrived in larger numbers. The Diplomat writes that, unlike the earlier migrants, who spoke regional languages and settled into local life, they tend to be Mandarin speakers.

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is a major festival for the community. Families clean their homes, buy incense, new clothes and fruit, and hand red envelopes of money to unmarried young people. Ngor Thou, a former president of the Teochew association, told the Phnom Penh Post that brooms are put away for the first three days so that good luck is not swept out.

See also

• Cambodian Ethnic Chinese Association
• Cham people