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Hoa Wikipedia

The Hoa (Chu Nom/Traditional Chinese character|Chinese character: 華, Mandarin (linguistics)|Mandarin: Yu??n??n hu??r??n (????????????), Cantonese (linguistics)|Cantonese: yuet naam wah que (????????????), also referred to as either Chinese Vietnamese, Vietnamese Chinese, or ethnic Chinese from Vietnam, are a Chinese race|Chinese ethnic minority|minority in Vietnam. Along with Kinh|ethnic Vietnamese, the Hoa are usually referred to as "Vietnamese" by the Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese.

The Hoa are descended from early Mainland Chinese settlers from the Guangdong province who arrived in Vietnam from the 18th to 20th centuries. The final group of Mainland Chinese migrants came during the 1940s. A large proportion of Hoa speak the Vietnamese accent of Cantonese Chinese as their mother tongue. The second largest group of Hoa tend to speak Teochew Chinese (Chaozhou), but may also speak Cantonese as a lingua franca.

The Chinese Vietnamese have remained relatively distinct and isolated ethnic group from the native Vietnamese population. Due to the proximity of Vietnam to Guangdong province, Mainland China, and to Hong Kong, the Chinese Vietnamese have tended to retain the strongest ties and greater affinity to traditional Chinese culture, unlike many other overseas Chinese diasporas in Southeast Asia, especially in comparison to Chinese Filipinos, Chinese Thais, and westernized Chinese Singaporeans.

They are predominantly urban dwellers. A few Hoa live in small settlements in the northern highlands near the Chinese frontier, where they are also known as ngai. Traditionally, as elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the Chinese have retained a distinctive cultural identity, but in 1955 North Vietnam and China agreed that the Hoa should be integrated gradually into Vietnamese society and should have Vietnamese citizenship conferred on them.

Before 1975 the northern Hoa were mainly rice farmers, fishermen, and coal miners, except for those residing in cities and provincial towns. In the South they were dominant in commerce and manufacturing. According to an official source, at the end of 1974 the Hoa controlled more than 80 percent of the food, textile, chemical, metallurgy, engineering, and electrical industries, 100 percent of wholesale trade, more than 50 percent of retail trade, and 90 percent of export-import trade. Dominance over the economy enabled the Hoa to "manipulate prices" of rice and other scarce goods. This particular source further observed that the Hoa community constituted "a state within a state," inasmuch as they had built "a closed world based on blood relations, strict internal discipline, and a network of sects, each with its own chief, to avoid the indigenous administration's direct interference." It was noted by Hanoi in 1983 that as many as 60 percent of "the former bourgeoisie" of the south were of Chinese origin.

In mid-1975 the combined Hoa communities of the North and South numbered approximately 1.3 million, and all but 200,000 resided in the South, most of them in the Saigon metropolitan area, especially in the Cholon district (Chinatown). Beginning in 1975, the Hoa bore the brunt of socialist transformation in the South, especially after the communist government decided in early 1978 to abolish private trade. This, combined with external tensions stemming from Vietnam's dispute with Cambodia and China in 1978 and 1979 caused an exodus of about 250,000 Hoa, of whom 170,000 fled overland into China from the North and the remainder fled by boat from the South.

Today, there are many Chinese Vietnamese refugee communities in Australia, Canada, France, and the United States, where they have been instrumental in breathing new life into old existing Chinatowns. There is also a sizable of Chinese Vietnamese refugee population - many of whom speak Cantonese - in Hong Kong, but they have experienced discrimination in housing and employment.

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Last Modified:   2005-11-07