1.
Thailand
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Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand, formerly known as Siam, is a country at the centre of the Indochinese peninsula in Southeast Asia. With a total area of approximately 513,000 km2, Thailand is the worlds 51st-largest country and it is the 20th-most-populous country in the world, with around 66 million people. The capital and largest city is Bangkok, Thailand is a constitutional monarchy and has switched between parliamentary democracy and military junta for decades, the latest coup being in May 2014 by the National Council for Peace and Order. Its capital and most populous city is Bangkok and its maritime boundaries include Vietnam in the Gulf of Thailand to the southeast, and Indonesia and India on the Andaman Sea to the southwest. The Thai economy is the worlds 20th largest by GDP at PPP and it became a newly industrialised country and a major exporter in the 1990s. Manufacturing, agriculture, and tourism are leading sectors of the economy and it is considered a middle power in the region and around the world. The country has always been called Mueang Thai by its citizens, by outsiders prior to 1949, it was usually known by the exonym Siam. The word Siam has been identified with the Sanskrit Śyāma, the names Shan and A-hom seem to be variants of the same word. The word Śyâma is possibly not its origin, but a learned, another theory is the name derives from Chinese, Ayutthaya emerged as a dominant centre in the late fourteenth century. The Chinese called this region Xian, which the Portuguese converted into Siam, the signature of King Mongkut reads SPPM Mongkut King of the Siamese, giving the name Siam official status until 24 June 1939 when it was changed to Thailand. Thailand was renamed Siam from 1945 to 11 May 1949, after which it reverted to Thailand. According to George Cœdès, the word Thai means free man in the Thai language, ratcha Anachak Thai means kingdom of Thailand or kingdom of Thai. Etymologically, its components are, ratcha, -ana- -chak, the Thai National Anthem, written by Luang Saranupraphan during the extremely patriotic 1930s, refers to the Thai nation as, prathet Thai. The first line of the anthem is, prathet thai ruam lueat nuea chat chuea thai, Thailand is the unity of Thai flesh. There is evidence of habitation in Thailand that has been dated at 40,000 years before the present. Similar to other regions in Southeast Asia, Thailand was heavily influenced by the culture and religions of India, Thailand in its earliest days was under the rule of the Khmer Empire, which had strong Hindu roots, and the influence among Thais remains even today. Voretzsch believes that Buddhism must have been flowing into Siam from India in the time of the Indian Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya Empire, later Thailand was influenced by the south Indian Pallava dynasty and north Indian Gupta Empire. The Menam Basin was originally populated by the Mons, and the location of Dvaravati in the 7th century, the History of the Yuan mentions an embassy from the kingdom of Sukhothai in 1282
2.
Thai Chinese
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Thai Chinese consist of people of full or partial Chinese ancestry – particularly Han Chinese. Thailand is home to the largest overseas Chinese community in the world with a population of nine million people. It is also the oldest, most prominent, and best integrated overseas Chinese community, slightly more than half of the ethnic Chinese population in Thailand trace their ancestry to eastern Guangdong Province. This is evidenced by the prevalence of the Minnan Chaozhou dialect among the Chinese in Thailand, a minority trace their ancestry to Hakka and Hainanese immigrants. The Thai Chinese have been deeply ingrained into all elements of Thai society over the past 200 years, the present Thai royal family, the Chakri Dynasty, was founded by King Rama I who himself was partly Chinese. His predecessor, King Taksin of the Thonburi Dynasty, was the son of a Chinese immigrant from Guangdong Province, many Thai Chinese have assimilated into Thai society and self-identify solely as Thai. Thailand has the largest overseas Chinese community in the world, fourteen percent of Thailands population is considered ethnic Chinese. Nonetheless, nearly all Thai Chinese self-identify as Thai, due to their close integration, Han Chinese traders, mostly from Fujian and Guangdong, began arriving in Ayutthaya by at least the 13th century. Ayutthaya was under almost constant Burmese threat from the 16th century onward, from 1766-1769, the Qianlong Emperor sent his armies four times to subdue the Burmese, but the Sino-Burmese Wars ended in complete failure, and Ayutthaya fell in the Burmese–Siamese War. However, the Chinese efforts did divert the attention of Burmas Siam army, General Taksin, himself the son of a Chinese immigrant, took advantage of this to organize his force and attack the Burmese invaders. When he became king, Taksin actively encouraged Chinese immigration and trade, settlers mainly from Chaozhou prefecture came to Siam in large numbers. Immigration continued over the years, and the Chinese population in Thailand jumped from 230,000 in 1825 to 792,000 by 1910. By 1932, approximately 12.2 percent of the population of Thailand was Chinese, however, the early Chinese immigration consisted almost entirely of men who married Thai women. The children of marriages were called Sino-Thai or luk-jin in Thai. These Chinese-Thai intermarriages declined in the early 20th century, when numbers of Chinese women also began immigrating to Thailand in the early 20th century. The corruption of the Qing Dynasty and the population increase in China, along with very high taxes. If successful, they sent money back to their families in China, many Chinese immigrants prospered under the tax farming system, whereby private individuals were sold the right to collect taxes at a price below the value of the tax revenues. In the late 19th century, when Thailand was struggling to defend its independence from the colonial powers, Thai nationalist attitudes at all levels were thus colored by anti-Chinese sentiment
3.
Malaysia
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Malaysia is a federal constitutional monarchy located in Southeast Asia. Peninsular Malaysia shares a land and maritime border with Thailand and maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, East Malaysia shares land and maritime borders with Brunei and Indonesia and a maritime border with the Philippines and Vietnam. The capital city is Kuala Lumpur, while Putrajaya is the seat of the federal government, with a population of over 30 million, Malaysia is the 44th most populous country. The southernmost point of continental Eurasia, Tanjung Piai, is in Malaysia, located in the tropics, Malaysia is one of 17 megadiverse countries on earth, with large numbers of endemic species. Malaysia has its origins in the Malay kingdoms present in the area which, from the 18th century, the first British territories were known as the Straits Settlements, whose establishment was followed by the Malay kingdoms becoming British protectorates. The territories on Peninsular Malaysia were first unified as the Malayan Union in 1946, Malaya was restructured as the Federation of Malaya in 1948, and achieved independence on 31 August 1957. Malaya united with North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore on 16 September 1963 to become Malaysia, less than two years later in 1965, Singapore was expelled from the federation. The country is multi-ethnic and multi-cultural, which plays a role in politics. About half the population is ethnically Malay, with minorities of Malaysian Chinese, Malaysian Indians. The constitution declares Islam the state religion while allowing freedom of religion for non-Muslims, the government system is closely modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system and the legal system is based on common law. The head of state is the king, known as the Yang di-Pertuan Agong and he is an elected monarch chosen from the hereditary rulers of the nine Malay states every five years. The head of government is the prime minister, since its independence, Malaysia has had one of the best economic records in Asia, with its GDP growing at an average of 6. 5% per annum for almost 50 years. The economy has traditionally been fuelled by its resources, but is expanding in the sectors of science, tourism, commerce. Today, Malaysia has a newly industrialised market economy, ranked third largest in Southeast Asia, the name Malaysia is a combination of the word Malay and the Latin-Greek suffix -sia/-σία. The word melayu in Malay may derive from the Tamil words malai and ur meaning mountain and city, land, malayadvipa was the word used by ancient Indian traders when referring to the Malay Peninsula. Whether or not it originated from these roots, the word melayu or mlayu may have used in early Malay/Javanese to mean to steadily accelerate or run. This term was applied to describe the current of the river Melayu in Sumatra. The name was adopted by the Melayu Kingdom that existed in the seventh century on Sumatra
4.
Malaysian Chinese
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The Malaysian Chinese or Chinese Malaysians consist of people of full or partial Chinese—particularly Han Chinese ancestry who were born in or immigrated to Malaysia. Most of these people are the descendants of those who arrived between the early 19th century and the mid-20th century, Malaysian Chinese form the second largest community of Overseas Chinese in the world, after Thailand. Within Malaysia, they represent the second largest ethnic group in Malaysia after the ethnic Malay majority and they are usually simply referred to as Chinese in Malaysia, Orang Cina in Malay, and Huaren or Huaqiao by Chinese themselves. The Chinese population in Malaysia has been consistently declining percentage-wise since Malayan independence, the reason for the decline may be due to a lower birthrate, as well as a high level of emigration in recent decades. The large number of emigrants, many of whom are young, the first wave of Han Chinese settlers came during the Malacca Empire in the early 15th century. The friendly diplomatic relations between China and Malacca culminated during the reign of Sultan Mansur Syah, who married the Chinese princess Hang Li Po, a senior minister of state and five hundred youths and maids of noble birth accompanied the princess to Malacca. Admiral Zheng He had also brought along 100 bachelors to Malacca, the descendants of this wave, many of whom are of Hokkien ancestry, adapted to the customs of local Malays while retaining parts of their ancestral culture. They are called Peranakan, or Baba for their menfolk and Nyonya for the females, Chinese immigration to British Malaya and Straits Settlements was encouraged by the British and the Malay sultans to work in the mines and plantations. This group was responsible for establishing the many Chinese-medium schools in Malaya and are mostly Chinese-educated, Some such as Koh Lay Huan escaped from China due to rebellious activities against the Qing dynasty. A much smaller wave came after the 1990s and they were mostly Mandarin speaking Chinese from northern China and these were mostly foreign spouses married to Malaysian Chinese. Some national sports coaches such as badminton coach Han Jiang could only obtain permanent residency after repeated rejections of their citizenship applications, however, diving coach Huang Qiang managed to obtain his Malaysian citizenship. China is the largest participant in Malaysias foreign residency scheme called Malaysia My Second Home, according to department of statistics Malaysia July 2003, the composition of each dialect are as follows. The largest dialect group are the Min people with a total of about 2.947 million, the Min dialect group consists of the following subgroups. The southern Hokkien from Quanzhou, Amoy, and Zhangzhou is the largest Chinese language group in Malaysia, the first wave of Hokkien settled primarily in Malacca where they constitute a mere 3 percent of Malaccas Chinese population and are called Peranakan. The Quanzhou Hokkien also migrated to towns in Sarawak. Teochew immigrants from the Chaoshan region began to settle in Malaya in large numbers from the 18th century onwards, mainly in Province Wellesley and these immigrants were chiefly responsible for setting up gambier and pepper plantations in Malaya. More Teochew immigrated to Johor at the encouragement of Temenggong Ibrahim in the 19th century, many of them are the descendants of plantation workers who came to set up gambier and pepper plantations, following the administrative pattern of their countrymen in Johor. Chinese immigrants from Hainan began to migrate to Malaya and North Borneo from the 19th century onwards, smaller communities of Hainanese are also found in Sarawak and Sabah, where they work as coffee shop owners and are mainly found in large towns and cities
5.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
6.
Chinese Americans
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Chinese Americans, also known as the American Chinese, are Americans who have full or partial Han Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute one group of overseas Chinese and also a subgroup of East Asian Americans, the Chinese American community is the largest overseas Chinese community outside of Asia. It is also the third largest in the Chinese diaspora, behind the Chinese communities in Thailand, the Chinese American community comprises the largest ethnic group of Asian Americans, comprising 25. 9% of the Asian American population as of 2010. Americans of Chinese descent, including those with partial Chinese ancestry constitute 1. 2% of the total U. S. population as of 2010, according to the 2010 census, the Chinese American population numbered approximately 3.8 million. In 2010, half of Chinese-born people living in the United States resided in the states of California, the first Chinese immigrants arrived in 1820, according to U. S. government records. 325 men are known to have arrived before the 1849 California Gold Rush, There were 25,000 immigrants by 1852, and 105,465 by 1880, most of whom lived on the West Coast. They formed over a tenth of Californias population, nearly all of the early immigrants were young males with low educational levels from six districts in Guangdong Province. In the 1850s, Chinese workers migrated to the United States, first to work in the mines, but also to take agricultural jobs. As the numbers of Chinese laborers increased, so did the strength of anti-Chinese attitude among other workers in the American economy, the Chinese laborers worked out well and thousands more were recruited until the railroads completion in 1869. Chinese labor provided the workforce needed to build the majority of the Central Pacifics difficult route through the Sierra Nevada mountains. American objections to Chinese immigration took many forms, and generally stemmed from economic and cultural tensions, Most Chinese laborers who came to the United States did so in order to send money back to China to support their families there. At the same time, they also had to repay loans to the Chinese merchants who paid their passage to America and these financial pressures left them little choice but to work for whatever wages they could. Non-Chinese laborers often required much higher wages to support their wives and children in the United States, therefore, many of the non-Chinese workers in the United States came to resent the Chinese laborers, who might squeeze them out of their jobs. Some advocates of anti-Chinese legislation therefore argued that admitting Chinese into the United States lowered the cultural and moral standards of American society, others used a more overtly racist argument for limiting immigration from East Asia, and expressed concern about the integrity of American racial composition. Because anti-Chinese discrimination and efforts to stop Chinese immigration violated the 1868 Burlingame-Seward Treaty with China, the Chinese population rose from 2,716 in 1851 to 63,000 by 1871. In the decade 1861-70,64,301 were recorded as arriving, 77% were located in California, with the rest scattered across the West, the South, and New England. Most came from Southern China looking for a life, escaping a high rate of poverty left after the Taiping Rebellion. In 1879, advocates of immigration restriction succeeded in introducing and passing legislation in Congress to limit the number of Chinese arriving to fifteen per ship or vessel, republican President Rutherford B. Hayes vetoed the bill because it violated U. S. treaty agreements with China
7.
Indonesia
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Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a unitary sovereign state and transcontinental country located mainly in Southeast Asia with some territories in Oceania. Situated between the Indian and Pacific oceans, it is the worlds largest island country, with more than seventeen thousand islands. At 1,904,569 square kilometres, Indonesia is the worlds 14th-largest country in terms of area and worlds 7th-largest country in terms of combined sea. It has an population of over 260 million people and is the worlds fourth most populous country. The worlds most populous island, Java, contains more than half of the countrys population, Indonesias republican form of government includes an elected legislature and president. Indonesia has 34 provinces, of which five have Special Administrative status and its capital and countrys most populous city is Jakarta, which is also the most populous city in Southeast Asia and the second in Asia. The country shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, other neighbouring countries include Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Australia, Palau, and the Indian territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Despite its large population and densely populated regions, Indonesia has vast areas of wilderness that support the second highest level of biodiversity. The country has abundant natural resources like oil and natural gas, tin, copper, agriculture mainly produces rice, palm oil, tea, coffee, cacao, medicinal plants, spices and rubber. Indonesias major trading partners are Japan, United States, China, the Indonesian archipelago has been an important region for trade since at least the 7th century, when Srivijaya and then later Majapahit traded with China and India. Local rulers gradually absorbed foreign cultural, religious and political models from the early centuries CE, Indonesian history has been influenced by foreign powers drawn to its natural resources. Indonesia consists of hundreds of native ethnic and linguistic groups. The largest – and politically dominant – ethnic group are the Javanese, a shared identity has developed, defined by a national language, ethnic diversity, religious pluralism within a Muslim-majority population, and a history of colonialism and rebellion against it. Indonesias national motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, articulates the diversity that shapes the country, Indonesias economy is the worlds 16th largest by nominal GDP and the 8th largest by GDP at PPP, the largest in Southeast Asia, and is considered an emerging market and newly industrialised country. Indonesia has been a member of the United Nations since 1950, Indonesia is a member of the G20 major economies and World Trade Organization. The name Indonesia derives from the Greek name of the Indós, the name dates to the 18th century, far predating the formation of independent Indonesia. In 1850, George Windsor Earl, an English ethnologist, proposed the terms Indunesians—and, his preference, in the same publication, one of his students, James Richardson Logan, used Indonesia as a synonym for Indian Archipelago. However, Dutch academics writing in East Indies publications were reluctant to use Indonesia, they preferred Malay Archipelago, the Netherlands East Indies, popularly Indië, the East, and Insulinde
8.
Chinese Indonesians
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Chinese Indonesians, are Indonesians descended from various Chinese ethnic groups, primarily the Han Chinese. Chinese came to Indonesia as workers both directly and through Maritime Southeast Asia and their population grew rapidly during the colonial period when workers were contracted from their home provinces in southern China. Evidence of discrimination against Chinese Indonesians can be throughout the history of Indonesia. Resentment of ethnic Chinese economic aptitude grew in the 1950s as native Indonesian merchants felt they could not remain competitive, in some cases, government action only propagated the stereotype that ethnic Chinese-owned conglomerates were corrupt. The development of local Chinese society and culture is based upon three pillars, clan associations, ethnic media, and Chinese-language schools, one group supported political reforms in mainland China, while others worked towards improved status in local politics. The New Order government dismantled the pillars of ethnic Chinese identity in favor of policies as a solution to the Chinese Problem. Patterns of assimilation and ethnic interaction can be found in Indonesias literature, architecture, the Chinese Indonesian population of Sumatra accounts for nearly half of the groups national population. Although they are more urbanized than Indonesias indigenous population, significant rural and agricultural communities exist throughout the country. Declining fertility rates have resulted in a shift in the population pyramid. Emigration has contributed to a population, and communities have emerged in more industrialized nations in the second half of the 20th century. Some have participated in programs to the Peoples Republic of China. Among the overseas residents, their identities are noticeably more Indonesian than Chinese, the first recorded movement of people from China into Maritime Southeast Asia was the arrival of Mongol forces under Kublai Khan that culminated in the invasion of Java in 1293. The Mongols introduced Chinese technologies to the island, including shipbuilding and their intervention hastened the decline of the classical kingdoms such as Singhasari and precipitated the rise of the Majapahit empire. Chinese Muslim traders from the eastern coast of China arrived at the towns of Indonesia and Malaysia in the early 15th century. They were led by the mariner Zheng He, who commanded several expeditions to southeastern Asia between 1405 and 1430, in the book Yingya Shenglan, his translator Ma Huan documented the activities of the Chinese Muslims in the archipelago and the legacy left by Zheng He and his men. These traders settled along the northern coast of Java, but there is no documentation of their settlements beyond the 16th century, the Chinese Muslims were likely to have been absorbed into the majority Muslim population. Between 1450 and 1520, the Ming Dynastys interest in southeastern Asia reached a low point and trade, the Portuguese made no mention of any resident Chinese minority population when they arrived in Indonesia in the early 16th century. Trade from the north was re-established when China legalized private trade in 1567 through licensing 50 junks a year, several years later silver began flowing into the region, from Japan, Mexico, and Europe, and trade flourished once again
9.
Singapore
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Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, sometimes referred to as the Lion City or the Little Red Dot, is a sovereign city-state in Southeast Asia. It lies one degree north of the equator, at the tip of peninsular Malaysia. Singapores territory consists of one island along with 62 other islets. Since independence, extensive land reclamation has increased its size by 23%. During the Second World War, Singapore was occupied by Japan, after early years of turbulence, and despite lacking natural resources and a hinterland, the nation developed rapidly as an Asian Tiger economy, based on external trade and its workforce. Singapore is a global commerce, finance and transport hub, the country has also been identified as a tax haven. Singapore ranks 5th internationally and first in Asia on the UN Human Development Index and it is ranked highly in education, healthcare, life expectancy, quality of life, personal safety, and housing, but does not fare well on the Democracy index. Although income inequality is high, 90% of homes are owner-occupied, 38% of Singapores 5.6 million residents are permanent residents and other foreign nationals. There are four languages on the island, Malay, Mandarin, Tamil. English is its language, most Singaporeans are bilingual. Singapore is a multiparty parliamentary republic, with a Westminster system of unicameral parliamentary government. The Peoples Action Party has won every election since self-government in 1959, however, it is unlikely that lions ever lived on the island, Sang Nila Utama, the Srivijayan prince said to have founded and named the island Singapura, perhaps saw a Malayan tiger. There are however other suggestions for the origin of the name, the central island has also been called Pulau Ujong as far back as the third century CE, literally island at the end in Malay. In 1299, according to the Malay Annals, the Kingdom of Singapura was founded on the island by Sang Nila Utama and these Indianized Kingdoms, a term coined by George Cœdès were characterized by surprising resilience, political integrity and administrative stability. In 1613, Portuguese raiders burned down the settlement, which by then was part of the Johor Sultanate. The wider maritime region and much trade was under Dutch control for the following period, in 1824 the entire island, as well as the Temenggong, became a British possession after a further treaty with the Sultan. In 1826, Singapore became part of the Straits Settlements, under the jurisdiction of British India, prior to Raffles arrival, there were only about a thousand people living on the island, mostly indigenous Malays along with a handful of Chinese. By 1860 the population had swelled to over 80,000, many of these early immigrants came to work on the pepper and gambier plantations
10.
Chinese Singaporeans
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Chinese Singaporeans or Singaporean Chinese are people of full or partial Chinese – particularly Han Chinese – ancestry who hold Singaporean nationality. Through a century or more of cultural divergence and as part of the diaspora, while ethnically similar to the Mainland Chinese, Chinese Singaporeans are typically westernised and speak English as their first language. In addition, Mainlanders are perceived by Chinese Singaporeans as being Fresh Off the Boat, as of 2015, they constitute 76. 2% of the countrys citizens – approximately three out of four Singaporeans – making them the largest ethnic group in Singapore. It is the home of the fifth largest community of Overseas Chinese, behind the Chinese communities in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, in the Chinese language, Chinese Singaporeans clearly distinguish themselves as full Chinese rather than overseas Chinese or China Chinese. In general, the Chinese in Singapore are grouped according to their ancestral home in China or dialect group. Most came from the southeastern coast of China in the provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, the Hoklo, Teochew, and Cantonese together form more than three-quarters of the Chinese population. The Hakka, Hainanese, and other account for most of the remainder. These are generally the descendants of the free and indentured immigrants from southern China during the 19th, the 1990s and early 21st century saw Singapore experience a third wave of migration from different parts of China. The Hokkien constitute around two-fifths of the Chinese Singaporean population and they are the largest linguistic group in Singapore. They come from the Minnan or Hoklo people who originated in the parts of the Fujian province, including Xiamen, Quanzhou. They speak Singaporean Hokkien, the standard of which is based on the Amoy dialect of Xiamen, just as in Taiwan, Hoklo people, speakers of Hokkien, refers not to people originating from all parts of Fujian. Hokkien refers only to the Minnan region of southern coastal Fujian, Singaporean Hokkien does not include northern Fujianese such as those arriving from Fuzhou, Putian, and so on. Early Hokkien migrants settled around Amoy Street and Telok Ayer Street and they subsequently set up clan headquarters there and later expanded to Hokkien Street and the vicinity of China Street. The Hokkien were the most active in trading that centred along the Singapore River. In Singapore, her idol was at the Thian Hock Kheng Temple, other popular deities are the Nine Emperor Gods and the Jade Emperor, who is celebrated on his birthday on the 9th day of Chinese New Year. A traditional Taoist practice by a medium is also popular. The tangki goes into a trance and purportedly channels a chosen deity for the petitioner, the deity then provides a wide range of help ranging from religious rituals to answering queries to providing protective talismans. The Teochew in Singapore constitute about a fifth of the Chinese population in Singapore and they originated from Chaoshan region in eastern Guangdong, in cities like Chaozhou, Shantou, and Jieyang
11.
Canada
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Canada is a country in the northern half of North America. Canadas border with the United States is the worlds longest binational land border, the majority of the country has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but southerly areas are warm in summer. Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its territory being dominated by forest and tundra. It is highly urbanized with 82 per cent of the 35.15 million people concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, One third of the population lives in the three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Its capital is Ottawa, and other urban areas include Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg. Various aboriginal peoples had inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1,1867, the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and this began an accretion of provinces and territories to the mostly self-governing Dominion to the present ten provinces and three territories forming modern Canada. With the Constitution Act 1982, Canada took over authority, removing the last remaining ties of legal dependence on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II being the head of state. The country is officially bilingual at the federal level and it is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Its advanced economy is the eleventh largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources, Canadas long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. Canada is a country and has the tenth highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the ninth highest ranking in the Human Development Index. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, Canada is an influential nation in the world, primarily due to its inclusive values, years of prosperity and stability, stable economy, and efficient military. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the origins of Canada. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona, from the 16th to the early 18th century Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the St. Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named The Canadas, until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the name for the new country at the London Conference. The transition away from the use of Dominion was formally reflected in 1982 with the passage of the Canada Act, later that year, the name of national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day
12.
Chinese Canadians
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Chinese Canadians are Canadians of full or partial Chinese ancestry. They comprise a subgroup of East Asian Canadians which is a subgroup of Asian Canadians. Canadians of Chinese descent, including mixed Chinese and other origins, make up about four percent of the Canadian population. The Chinese Canadian community is the largest ethnic group of Asian Canadians, most of them are concentrated within the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The five metropolitan areas with the largest Chinese Canadian populations are the Greater Toronto Area, Metro Vancouver, Greater Montreal, Calgary Region, the first record of Chinese in what is known as Canada today can be dated back to 1788. The railway as a whole consisted of 28 such sections, 93% of which were constructed by workers of European origin. When British Columbia agreed to join Confederation in 1871, one of the conditions was that the Dominion government build a railway linking B. C. with eastern Canada within 10 years. British Columbia politicians and their electorate agitated for a program from the British Isles to provide this railway labour. Many workers from Guangdong Province arrived to build the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 19th century as did Chinese veterans of the gold rushes. Their willingness to endure hardship for low wages enraged fellow non-Chinese workers who thought they were unnecessarily complicating the labour market situations. From the passage of the Chinese Immigration Act in 1885, the Canadian government began to charge a head tax for each Chinese person trying to immigrate to Canada. The Chinese were the ethnic group that had to pay such a tax. With this act, the Chinese received similar treatment to blacks before them who Canada also had specifically excluded from immigration on the basis of race. During the next 25 years, more and more laws against the Chinese were passed, most jobs were closed to Chinese men and women. Many Chinese opened their own restaurants and laundry businesses, in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Ontario, Chinese employers were not allowed to hire white females, so most Chinese businesses became Chinese-only. Some of those Chinese Canadian workers settled in Canada after the railway was constructed, most could not bring the rest of their families, including immediate relatives, due to government restrictions and enormous processing fees. During the Great Depression, life was even tougher for the Chinese than it was for other Canadians, in Alberta, for example, Chinese-Canadians received relief payments of less than half the amount paid to other Canadians. Census data from 1931 shows that there were 1,240 men to every 100 women in Chinese-Canadian communities, to protest The Chinese Exclusion Act, Chinese-Canadians closed their businesses and boycotted Dominion Day celebrations every July 1, which became known as “Humiliation Day” by the Chinese-Canadians
13.
South Korea
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South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea, is a sovereign state in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. The earliest Korean pottery dates to 8000 BC, with three kingdoms flourishing in the 1st century BC and its rich and vibrant culture left 19 UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritages of Humanity, the third largest in the world, along with 12 World Heritage Sites. Annexed into Imperial Japan in 1910, Korea was divided after its surrender in 1945, peace has since mostly continued with the two agreeing to work peacefully for reunification and the South solidifying peace as a regional power with the worlds 10th largest defence budget. South Koreas tiger economy soared at an average of 10% for over 30 years in a period of rapid transformation called the Miracle on the Han River. A long legacy of openness and focus on innovation made it successful, today, it is the worlds fifth largest exporter with the G20s largest budget surplus and highest credit rating of any country in East Asia. It has free trade agreements with 75% of the economy and is the only G20 nation trading freely with China, the US. Since 1988, its constitution guarantees a liberal democracy with high government transparency, high personal freedoms led to the rise of a globally influential pop culture such as K-pop and K-drama, a phenomenon called the Korean Wave, known for its distinctive fashionable and trendy style. Home of the UN Green Climate Fund and GGGI, South Korea is a leader in low carbon growth, committed to helping developing countries as a major DAC. It is the third least ignorant country in the Index of Ignorance, ranking eighth highest for peaceful tolerance. It is the worlds largest spender on R&D per GDP, leading the OECD in graduates in science, the name Korea derives from the name Goryeo. The name Goryeo itself was first used by the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo in the 5th century as a form of its name. The 10th-century kingdom of Goryeo succeeded Goguryeo, and thus inherited its name, the modern spelling of Korea first appeared in the late 17th century in the travel writings of the Dutch East India Companys Hendrick Hamel. After Goryeo was replaced by Joseon in 1392, Joseon became the name for the entire territory. The new official name has its origin in the ancient country of Gojoseon, in 1897, the Joseon dynasty changed the official name of the country from Joseon to Daehan Jeguk. The name Daehan, which means great Han literally, derives from Samhan, however, the name Joseon was still widely used by Koreans to refer to their country, though it was no longer the official name. Under Japanese rule, the two names Han and Joseon coexisted, there were several groups who fought for independence, the most notable being the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea. Following the surrender of Japan, in 1945, the Republic of Korea was adopted as the name for the new country. Since the government only controlled the part of the Korean Peninsula
14.
Chinese people in Korea
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There has been a recognisable community of Chinese people in Korea since the 1880s. Most early migrants came from Shandong province on the east coast of China, many of them, in 2009, more than half of the South Koreas 1.1 million foreign residents were PRC citizens, 71% of those are Chosŏnjok, PRC citizens of Korean ethnicity. There is also a community of PRC citizens in North Korea. When writing in English, scholars use a number of different terms to refer to Chinese people in Korea, one common one is yeohan hwagyo or lühan huaqiao, meaning Chinese staying in Korea. The Korean reading is often shortened to hwagyo, which means overseas Chinese. Other authors call them huaqiao, but this term might be used to refer to overseas Chinese in any country, not just Korea, so sometimes a qualifier is added, the terms Chinese Korean and Korean Chinese are also seen. However, this usage may be confused with Koreans in China, jizi came to Korea during the Shang dynasty and established Gija Joseon and Wiman of Gojoseon came from Han dynasty China and established Wiman Joseon. Chinese colonists settled in the Four Commanderies of Han after the Han dynasty conquered Wiman Joseon, at Lelang Han colonies of peasants were settled there. Other minority ethnicities from China such as the Xianbei, Khitan and these Khitans are possibly the origin of the Baekjeong. This branch of the family received aristocratic rank in Joseon era Korea, 曲阜孔氏 곡부 공씨2 Japanese families, a Vietnamese family, an Arab family, a Uighur family,4 Manchuria originated families,3 Mongol families, and 83 Chinese families migrated into Korea during Goryeo. Goryeo era Korea accepted Lý Dynasty royals refugees, the Lý were of Chinese ethnicity. Fujian province, Jinjiang village was the origin of Lý Thái Tổ 李公蘊, China, Fujian was the home of Lý Công Uẩn. The ethnic Chinese background of Lý Công Uẩn has been accepted by Vietnamese historian Trần Quốc Vượng, individual Chinese are recorded on the Korean peninsula as early as the 13th century, with some going on to found Korean clans. Accompanying the troops were some 40 Chinese merchants and other civilians, unlike in other Asian countries, 90% of the early overseas Chinese in Korea came from Shandong, rather than the southern coastal provinces of Guangdong and Fujian. Chinese merchants did well in competition with the Japanese due to their access to credit. They were not confined to cities, and many did business in inland parts of Korea. Generally speaking, Japanese traders were interested in quick profits. The earliest Chinese school in Korea, the Joseon Hwagyo Primary School, was established in 1902 in Incheon, by 1910, when Korea formally came under Japanese rule, the number of Chinese in Korea had risen to 12,000
15.
Myanmar
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Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar and also known as Burma, is a sovereign state in South East Asia bordered by Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand. About one third of Myanmars total perimeter of 5,876 km, forms an uninterrupted coastline of 1,930 km along the Bay of Bengal, the countrys 2014 census revealed a much lower population than expected, with 51 million people recorded. Myanmar is 676,578 square kilometres in size and its capital city is Naypyidaw and its largest city and former capital city is Yangon. Early civilizations in Myanmar included the Tibeto-Burman-speaking Pyu city-states in Upper Burma, the Pagan Kingdom fell due to the Mongol invasions and several warring states emerged. In the 16th century, reunified by the Taungoo Dynasty, the country was for a period the largest empire in the history of Mainland Southeast Asia. The early 19th century Konbaung Dynasty ruled over an area included modern Myanmar and briefly controlled Manipur. The British invaded Myanmar after three Anglo-Burmese Wars in the 19th century and the became a British colony. Myanmar became an independent nation in 1948, initially as a nation and then, following a coup détat in 1962. For most of its independent years, the country has been engrossed in rampant ethnic strife, during this time, the United Nations and several other organisations have reported consistent and systematic human rights violations in the country. In 2011, the junta was officially dissolved following a 2010 general election. While former military leaders still wield enormous power in the country, there is, however, continuing criticism of the governments treatment of the Muslim Rohingya minority and its poor response to the religious clashes. In the landmark 2015 election, Aung San Suu Kyis party won a majority in both houses, Myanmar is a country rich in jade and gems, oil, natural gas and other mineral resources. In 2013, its GDP stood at US$56.7 billion, the income gap in Myanmar is among the widest in the world, as a large proportion of the economy is controlled by supporters of the former military government. As of 2016, according to the Human Development Index, Myanmar had a level of human development. The renaming remains a contested issue, many political and ethnic opposition groups and countries continue to use Burma because they do not recognise the legitimacy of the ruling military government or its authority to rename the country. The countrys official name is the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. Countries that do not officially recognise that name use the long form Union of Burma instead, in English, the country is popularly known as either Burma or Myanmar /ˈmjɑːnˌmɑːr/. Both these names are derived from the name of the majority Burmese Bamar ethnic group, Myanmar is considered to be the literary form of the name of the group, while Burma is derived from Bamar, the colloquial form of the groups name
16.
Chinese people in Myanmar
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The Chinese people in Burma, Burmese Chinese, or Sino-Burmese are a group of overseas Chinese born or raised in Burma. Burmese Chinese constitute one group of Overseas Chinese and is small compared to other Overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. Although the Chinese officially make up three percent of the population, the figure is believed to be much higher. As of 2012, the Burmese Chinese population is estimated to be at 1.6 million, Burmese Chinese are well represented in all levels of Burmese society and play a leading role in the Burmese commerce and business sector as well as public service. Several Burmese Chinese such as Khin Nyunt, Ne Win, the Burmese Chinese are also a well established middle class ethnic group and dominate the Burmese economy today. Moreover, the Burmese Chinese have a large presence in Burmese the high powered, private sector, white collar jobs. In the Burmese language, the Chinese are called Tayoke, pronounced, the etymology of the term remains uncertain. The earliest evidence of this dates to the Bagan era, in the 13th century, during which it referred to the territory. The adoption of Tayoke to refer to the Han Chinese was not an established practice until the 19th century, in the Mon language, the Chinese are known as Krawk, in Shan, they are called Khe. In the Wa language, spoken in the borderlands between Yunnan Province and Shan State, the word for Chinese is Hox/Hawx, pronounced /hɔʔ/, the Hokkiens and Cantonese comprised 45% of the ethnic Chinese population. The Yunnanese comprised 30-40% of the ethnic Chinese population, most of the Hokkien were traders. Cantonese Chinese from central Guangdong Province, most migrants from Guangdong Province were artisans. In Upper Burma and Shan Hills, the Kokang people, mainly speakers of Southwestern Mandarin Chinese, the mountain-dwelling, farming Kokang are classified as a part of the Shan national race, although they have no linguistic or genetic affinity to the Tai-speaking Shan. The Panthay have long considered distinct from the Han Chinese diaspora community. They are Chinese Muslims who are called Hui in China, finally, there are the tayoke kabya of mixed Chinese and indigenous Burmese parentage. The kabya have a tendency to follow the customs of the Chinese more than of the Burmese, indeed, tayoke kabya who follow Burmese customs are absorbed into and largely indistinguishable from mainstream Burmese society. A large portion of Burmese Chinese is thought to have some kabya blood, the Shan people of Burma are said to be descended from the Dai people of China when they moved to the area of present-day Burma around the 10th century. The Kachin people of Burma are said to be descended from the Jingpo people of China around the 15th and 16th century, the Burmese Chinese place a high importance on education, and represent a disproportionately high share of those with advanced degrees in Burma
17.
Philippines
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The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is a sovereign island country in Southeast Asia situated in the western Pacific Ocean. It consists of about 7,641 islands that are categorized broadly under three main geographical divisions from north to south, Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, the capital city of the Philippines is Manila and the most populous city is Quezon City, both part of Metro Manila. The Philippines has an area of 300,000 square kilometers, and it is the eighth-most populated country in Asia and the 12th most populated country in the world. As of 2013, approximately 10 million additional Filipinos lived overseas, multiple ethnicities and cultures are found throughout the islands. In prehistoric times, Negritos were some of the archipelagos earliest inhabitants and they were followed by successive waves of Austronesian peoples. Exchanges with Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Islamic nations occurred, then, various competing maritime states were established under the rule of Datus, Rajahs, Sultans or Lakans. The arrival of Ferdinand Magellan in Homonhon, Eastern Samar in 1521 marked the beginning of Hispanic colonization, in 1543, Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the archipelago Las Islas Filipinas in honor of Philip II of Spain. With the arrival of Miguel López de Legazpi from Mexico City, in 1565, the Philippines became part of the Spanish Empire for more than 300 years. This resulted in Roman Catholicism becoming the dominant religion, during this time, Manila became the western hub of the trans-Pacific trade connecting Asia with Acapulco in the Americas using Manila galleons. Aside from the period of Japanese occupation, the United States retained sovereignty over the islands until after World War II, since then, the Philippines has often had a tumultuous experience with democracy, which included the overthrow of a dictatorship by a non-violent revolution. It is a member of the United Nations, World Trade Organization, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. It also hosts the headquarters of the Asian Development Bank, the Philippines was named in honor of King Philip II of Spain. Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos, during his expedition in 1542, named the islands of Leyte, eventually the name Las Islas Filipinas would be used to cover all the islands of the archipelago. Before that became commonplace, other such as Islas del Poniente. The official name of the Philippines has changed several times in the course of its history, during the Philippine Revolution, the Malolos Congress proclaimed the establishment of the República Filipina or the Philippine Republic. From the 1898 Treaty of Paris, the name Philippines began to appear, since the end of World War II, the official name of the country has been the Republic of the Philippines. The metatarsal of the Callao Man, reliably dated by uranium-series dating to 67,000 years ago is the oldest human remnant found in the archipelago to date and this distinction previously belonged to the Tabon Man of Palawan, carbon-dated to around 26,500 years ago. Negritos were also among the archipelagos earliest inhabitants, but their first settlement in the Philippines has not been reliably dated, there are several opposing theories regarding the origins of ancient Filipinos
18.
Chinese Filipino
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Chinese Filipinos (Filipino, Tsinoy or Intsik, are Filipinos of Chinese descent, mostly born and raised in the Philippines. Chinese Filipinos are one of the largest overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, There are approximately 1.5 million Filipinos with pure Chinese ancestry, or around 1. 8% of the population. In addition, Sangleys — Filipinos with at least some Chinese ancestry — comprise a minority of the Philippine population. Chinese Filipinos are represented in all levels of Philippine society and are integrated politically and economically, the term Chinese Filipino may or may not be hyphenated. The website of the organization Kaisa para sa Kaunlaran omits the hyphen, the Chicago Manual of Style and the APA, among others, also recommend dropping the hyphen. When used as an adjective, Chinese Filipino may take on a form or may remain unchanged. Chinese Filipino, Filipino Chinese, or Philippine Chinese -- refers to Chinese people with Philippine nationality and this also includes Filipino Chinese who live and/or are born in the UK and are often referred to us britsinoy. Lan-nang, Lán-lâng, Bân-lâm, Hokkienese -- a Hokkien term referring to Chinese Filipinos whose ancestry is from Fujian province, keńg-tang-lâng, Cantonese -- a Hokkien term referring to Chinese Filipinos whose ancestry is from Guangdong province. Chinese mestizo -- refers to people who are of mixed Chinese, a common phenomenon in the Philippines, those with 75% Chinese ancestry are considered to be Chinese Filipino, rather than Chinese mestizo. Mainland Chinese, Mainlander -- refers to Chinese people with Chinese nationality and were born in China, Taiwanese -- refers to Chinese people with Republic of China nationality and were born in Taiwan. Tornatras or Torna atras -- refers to people who are of varying mixtures of Chinese, Spanish, indigenous Filipino, or simply Filipino, is used in this article to refer to the Austronesian inhabitants prior to the Spanish Conquest of the islands. During the Spanish Colonial Period, the term Indio was used, the Chinese Filipinos has always been one of the largest ethnic groups in the country with Chinese immigrants comprising the largest group of immigrant settlers in the Philippines. They are one of the three ethnic groupings in the Philippines, namely, Christian Filipinos, Muslim Filipinos and Chinese Filipinos. Today, most Chinese Filipinos are locally born, the rate of intermarriage between Chinese settlers and indigenous Filipinos is among the highest in Southeast Asia, exceeded only by Thailand. However, intermarriages occurred mostly during the Spanish colonial period because Chinese immigrants to the Philippines up to the 19th century were predominantly male and it was only in the 20th century that Chinese women and children came in comparable numbers. Today, Chinese Filipino male and female populations are practically equal in numbers and these Chinese mestizos, products of intermarriages during the Spanish colonial period, then often opted to marry other Chinese or Chinese mestizos. Generally, Chinese mestizos is a term referring to people with one Chinese parent, by this definition, the ethnically Chinese Filipinos comprise 1. 8% of the population. Ethnic Chinese sailed around the Philippine Islands from the 9th century onward, Chinese and Filipino interactions initially commenced as bartering and item exchanges done on Chinese sampans
19.
Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
20.
Chinese Australians
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Chinese Australians are Australian citizens of Chinese ancestry. Chinese Australians are one of the largest groups of Overseas Chinese people, Chinese Australians are also a subgroup of East Asian Australians and represent the single largest minority in the country constituting approximately forty-percent of the Asian Australian population. As a whole, Australian residents identified themselves as having Chinese ancestry make up four percent of Australias population or approximately 865,000 people as of 2011. The early history of Chinese Australians had involved significant immigration from villages of the Pearl River Delta in Southern China, less well known are the kind of society Chinese Australians came from, the families they left behind and what their intentions were in coming. Many Chinese were lured to Australia by the gold rush and they sent money to their families in the villages, and regularly visited their families and retired to the village after many years, working as a market gardener, shopkeeper or cabinet maker. Chinese Australians record high levels of educational attainment that match and occasionally surpass the national average, Chinese peoples have a long and continuing role in Australian history. There were early links between China and Australia when Macau and Canton were used as an important trading ports with the fledgling colony, mak Sai Ying was the first officially recorded Chinese migrant in 1818. After his arrival he spent some time farming before, in 1829, early 19th Century migration was in limited numbers and sporadic, primarily those who came in this period were free merchants or adventurers and, the more common, indentured labourers. The Australian Gold Rushes are what first lured thousands of Chinese to the country, in 1855 in Melbourne there were 11,493 Chinese arrivals. This was startling considering that barely five years previous, Melbournes entire population had only been around 25,000 people, due to the widespread racists sentiments in parliament and on the goldfields, the first of many immigration restrictions and Chinese targeting laws was passed in late 1855. However, due to the long, poorly regulated borders between the colonies of Australia the numbers of Chinese on the continued to swell. Upon the goldfields Chinese peoples faced many hardships, there were violent anti-Chinese riots, the Buckland Riot, the Lambing Flats Riots, as well as general discrimination and prejudice. However, there were many establishments in this period that would have an effect on the history of Australia. One of these establishments were the Chinese camps, which most often, later, there was also the establishment and the consolidation of power for Chinese societies, many of these are still active in Australia today. These societies provided support and community for the Chinese in the colonies, after the gold rushes the numbers of Chinese living in the cities swelled and their businesses and industries contributed much to growth of Melbourne and Sydney in the late 19th century. Mei Quong Tart was a prominent business figure in Sydney, however, there were very few Chinese women migrating to Australia. At one point in the 1860s the numbers of Chinese in Australia was around 40,000, of these, it is believed only 12, were women. This gender imbalance meant that some Chinese men married women of European descent, anti-Chinese sentiment also strongly contributed to the establishment of the Federation of Australia
21.
Peru
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Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the west by the Pacific Ocean. Peruvian territory was home to ancient cultures spanning from the Norte Chico civilization in Caral, one of the oldest in the world, to the Inca Empire, the largest state in Pre-Columbian America. The Spanish Empire conquered the region in the 16th century and established a Viceroyalty with its capital in Lima, ideas of political autonomy later spread throughout Spanish America and Peru gained its independence, which was formally proclaimed in 1821. After the battle of Ayacucho, three years after proclamation, Peru ensured its independence, subsequently, the country has undergone changes in government from oligarchic to democratic systems. Peru has gone through periods of political unrest and internal conflict as well as periods of stability, Peru is a representative democratic republic divided into 25 regions. It is a country with a high Human Development Index score. Its main economic activities include mining, manufacturing, agriculture and fishing, the Peruvian population, estimated at 31.2 million in 2015, is multiethnic, including Amerindians, Europeans, Africans and Asians. The main spoken language is Spanish, although a significant number of Peruvians speak Quechua or other native languages and this mixture of cultural traditions has resulted in a wide diversity of expressions in fields such as art, cuisine, literature, and music. The name of the country may be derived from Birú, the name of a ruler who lived near the Bay of San Miguel, Panama. When his possessions were visited by Spanish explorers in 1522, they were the southernmost part of the New World yet known to Europeans, thus, when Francisco Pizarro explored the regions farther south, they came to be designated Birú or Perú. An alternative history is provided by the contemporary writer Inca Garcilasco de la Vega, son of an Inca princess, the Spanish Crown gave the name legal status with the 1529 Capitulación de Toledo, which designated the newly encountered Inca Empire as the province of Peru. Under Spanish rule, the country adopted the denomination Viceroyalty of Peru, the earliest evidences of human presence in Peruvian territory have been dated to approximately 9,000 BC. Andean societies were based on agriculture, using such as irrigation and terracing, camelid husbandry. Organization relied on reciprocity and redistribution because these societies had no notion of market or money, the oldest known complex society in Peru, the Norte Chico civilization, flourished along the coast of the Pacific Ocean between 3,000 and 1,800 BC. These early developments were followed by archaeological cultures that developed mostly around the coastal, the Cupisnique culture which flourished from around 1000 to 200 BC along what is now Perus Pacific Coast was an example of early pre-Incan culture. The Chavín culture that developed from 1500 to 300 BC was probably more of a religious than a political phenomenon, on the coast, these included the civilizations of the Paracas, Nazca, Wari, and the more outstanding Chimu and Mochica. Their capital was at Chan Chan outside of modern-day Trujillo, in the 15th century, the Incas emerged as a powerful state which, in the span of a century, formed the largest empire in pre-Columbian America with their capital in Cusco
22.
Chinese Peruvians
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Chinese Peruvians, also known as tusán, are people of overseas Chinese ancestry born in Peru, or who have made Peru their adopted homeland. In addition to Spanish or Quechua, many of them one or more varieties of Chinese that may include Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka. Since the first Chinese immigrants came from Macau, some of them also speak Portuguese, in Peru, Asian Peruvians are estimated to be at least 5% of the population. One source places the number of citizens with some Chinese ancestry at 1.300.000, filipinos made up most of their population. The people in community of diverse Asians in Mexico was called los indios chinos by the Spanish. Spain received some of these coolies from Mexico, where owning a Chino coolie showed high status, Chinese immigrants, who in the 19th century took a four-month trip from Macau, settled as contract laborers or coolies. Other Chinese coolies from Guangdong followed and they were to provide continuous labor for the coastal guano mines and especially for the coastal plantations where they became a major labor force until the end of the century. While the coolies were believed to be reduced to virtual slaves, in Peru non-Chinese women married the mostly male Chinese coolies. There were almost no women among the nearly entirely male Chinese coolie population that migrated to Peru, Peruvian women were married to these Chinese male migrants. Another group of Chinese settlers came after the founding of Sun Yat-sens republic in 1912, in 1957 Cantonese speakers constituted 85 per cent of the total Chinese immigrant population, the rest of whom were Hakka speakers. Many Chinese Indonesians came to Peru after anti-Chinese riots and massacres in those countries in the 1960s, 1970s and these recent Chinese immigrants make Peru the home of the largest ethnic Chinese community in Latin America. Many Chinese Peruvians left Peru in the 1960s and 1970s, after their contracts ended, many of them adopted the last name of their patrons. Some freed coolies established many small businesses, calle Capón, Limas Chinatown, also known as Barrio Chino de Lima, became one of the Western Hemispheres earliest Chinatowns. The Chinese coolies married Peruvian women, and many Chinese Peruvians today are of mixed Chinese, Spanish, and African or Native American descent. Chinese Peruvians also assisted in the building of railroad and development of the Amazon Rainforest, where they tapped rubber trees, washed gold, cultivated rice and they even became the largest foreign colony in the Amazon capital of Iquitos by the end of the century. Sino-Peruvian identity and community as prison, Siu Kam Wens rendering of self-exploitation and other strategies, Afro-Hispanic Review,27, 73–90 Lausent-Herrera. The Chinese in Peru and the Changing Peruvian Chinese Community, in Journal of Chinese Overseas,7, pp. 69–113
23.
Vietnam
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Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. With an estimated 92.7 million inhabitants as of 2016, it is the worlds 14th-most-populous country, and its capital city has been Hanoi since the reunification of North and South Vietnam in 1976, with Ho Chi Minh City as a historical city as well. The northern part of Vietnam was part of Imperial China for over a millennium, an independent Vietnamese state was formed in 939, following a Vietnamese victory in the Battle of Bạch Đằng River. Following a Japanese occupation in the 1940s, the Vietnamese fought French rule in the First Indochina War, thereafter, Vietnam was divided politically into two rival states, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam. Conflict between the two sides intensified in what is known as the Vietnam War, the war ended with a North Vietnamese victory in 1975. Vietnam was then unified under a communist government but remained impoverished, in 1986, the government initiated a series of economic and political reforms which began Vietnams path towards integration into the world economy. By 2000, it had established relations with all nations. Since 2000, Vietnams economic growth rate has been among the highest in the world and its successful economic reforms resulted in its joining the World Trade Organization in 2007. It is also a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, Vietnam remains one of the worlds four remaining one-party socialist states officially espousing communism. The name Việt Nam is a variation of Nam Việt, a name that can be traced back to the Triệu Dynasty of the 2nd century BC. The word Việt originated as a form of Bách Việt. The form Vietnam is first recorded in the 16th-century oracular poem Sấm Trạng Trình, the name has also been found on 12 steles carved in the 16th and 17th centuries, including one at Bao Lam Pagoda in Haiphong that dates to 1558. Then, as recorded, rewarded Yuenan/Vietnam as their nations name, to also show that they are below the region of Baiyue/Bach Viet. Between 1804 and 1813, the name was used officially by Emperor Gia Long and it was revived in the early 20th century by Phan Bội Châus History of the Loss of Vietnam, and later by the Vietnamese Nationalist Party. The country was usually called Annam until 1945, when both the government in Huế and the Viet Minh government in Hanoi adopted Việt Nam. Archaeological excavations have revealed the existence of humans in what is now Vietnam as early as the Paleolithic age, Homo erectus fossils dating to around 500,000 BC have been found in caves in Lạng Sơn and Nghệ An provinces in northern Vietnam. The oldest Homo sapiens fossils from mainland Southeast Asia are of Middle Pleistocene provenance, teeth attributed to Homo sapiens from the Late Pleistocene have also been found at Dong Can, and from the Early Holocene at Mai Da Dieu, Lang Gao and Lang Cuom. The Hồng Bàng dynasty of the Hùng kings is considered the first Vietnamese state, in 257 BC, the last Hùng king was defeated by Thục Phán, who consolidated the Lạc Việt and Âu Việt tribes to form the Âu Lạc, proclaiming himself An Dương Vương
24.
Hoa people
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Hoa refers to a minority group living in Vietnam consisting of persons considered ethnic Chinese. The Vietnamese governments classification of the Hoa excludes two other groups of Chinese-speaking peoples, the San Diu people and the Ngái people, the Hoa constitute one group of Overseas Chinese and contain one of the largest Overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. The Hoa were highly represented in Vietnams business and commerce sector before the Fall of Saigon in 1975, as of 2012, they comprise a well-established middle class ethnic group and make up a high percentage of Vietnams educated and upper class. As with ethnic Chinese elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the Sino-Vietnamese are dominant in Vietnamese commerce and they are estimated to have started 70% to 80% of pre-fall of Saigons privately owned and operated South Vietnamese economy. Hoa persecution intensified in the late 1970s, which was one of the reasons for the Sino-Vietnamese War. Due to historical issues, they are referred in Vietnamese as Hoa instead of the main Vietnamese name for Chinese people, Hán, some modern Vietnamese believe that Thục Phán came upon the Âu Việt territory. After assembling an army, he defeated King Hùng Vương XVIII and he proclaimed himself An Dương Vương. The Chinese military leader Zhao Tuo founded the Trieu dynasty which ruled Nanyue in southern China, shi Xie was the leader of the elite ruling class of Han Chinese families who immigrated to Vietnam and played a major role inndeveloping Vietnams culture. The Chinese rulers encouraged the immigration of Han Chinese into Tonkin and this policy was continually enforced over the next 1,000 years of Chinese rule of Vietnam until the Ngô Dynasty when the Vietnamese regained their independence from China. The Vietnamese emperors deported some 87,000 Chinese nationals, although a large minority applied for permanent residency in Vietnam, Chinese who chose to remain in Vietnam adopted Vietnamese customs and culture. Vietnamese women were wedded by new Chinese gentry migrants, a revolt against China was mounted by Ly Bon who was of Chinese descent. Sporadic Chinese migration into Vietnam continued between the 9th to 15th century AD, the Vietnamese court also allowed Chinese refugees, which consisted of civilian and military officials with their family members to seek asylum in Vietnam. However, these Chinese settlers were not allowed to change their place of residence without the Courts permission, during the Early Lê dynasty some Chinese were captured in 995 after the Vietnamese raided the border. During the Lý Dynasty Vietnam raided Song Dynasty China to enslave Chinese, in 1050 the Cham dedicated some Chinese slaves to their goddess Lady Po Nagar at the Po Nagar temple complex, along with Thai, Khmer, and Burmese slaves. In the South, the Daoyi Zhilue also mentioned Chinese merchants who went to Cham ports in Champa, married Cham women, to whom they regularly returned to after trading voyages. One notable example of such intermarriages was Chinese merchant from Quanzhou, Wang Yuanmao, who in the 12th century traded extensively with Champa, Chinese prisoners were returned to China for captured districts in 1078 after China defeated Đại Việt and overran several of Cao Bằng Provinces districts. The Lý dynasty monarchs were of Chinese ethnicity, Fujian province, Jinjiang village was the origin of Lý Thái Tổ 李公蘊, the ancestor of the Lý dynasty ruling family. China, Fujian was the home of Lý Công Uẩn, the ethnic Chinese background of Lý Công Uẩn has been accepted by Vietnamese historian Trần Quốc Vượng
25.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
26.
Chinese people in Japan
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Chinese people in Japan consist of migrants from the Peoples Republic of China and the Republic of China, and the previous imperial dynasties to Japan and their descendants. They have a going back for centuries. Before this, there had been a number of Chinese communities in the west of the country, made up of pirates, merchants. The communities are served by Chinese schools that teach the Chinese language, a study that was conducted in 1995 estimated that the Chinese population of Japan numbered 150,000, among whom between 50,000 and 100,000 could speak Chinese. In 2000, Japanese governmental statistics revealed that there were 335,575 Chinese people in Japan, a significant number of Chinese people take Japanese citizenship each year and therefore disappear from these figures. Therefore, the numbers of Japanese people who are of Chinese descent is unclear, the original immigrants to the Japanese isles probably came from the south, but around 2300 years ago, increasing numbers came from what is now China and Korea. Xu could not find any elixir of life and was reluctant to return to China because he knew he would be sentenced to death, other immigrants are also thought to include major population movements such as that of the Hata clan. According to the Shinsen Shōjiroku,176 Chinese aristocratic families lived in Japan, during the Meiji and Taisho eras, it is estimated that up to 100000 Chinese students came to study in Japan. Japan was both closer to China culturally and in distance than the American and European alternatives, in 1906 alone, more than six thousand Chinese students were in Japan. Most of them resided in the district of Kanda in Tokyo, the term shin-kakyō refers to people of Chinese descent who immigrated to Japan from Taiwan and Mainland China. Many famous Chinese intellectuals have studied in Japan, among them Sun Yat-sen, Lu Xun, the Industrial training scheme used to bring Chinese workers to Japan has been criticized by lawyers as exploitation, after several deaths. Many Japanese war orphans left behind in China after World War II have migrated to Japan with the assistance of the Japanese government, bringing along their Chinese spouses, Chinese restaurants in Japan serve a fairly distinct style of Chinese cuisine. As of 2008 there are five Chinese day schools in Japan, three are oriented towards the Republic of China on Taiwan while two are oriented towards Mainland China. In Japanese the PRC-oriented schools are called tairiku-kei, and the ROC-oriented schools are taiwan-kei, the Taiwan-oriented schools teach Traditional Chinese and Bopomofo while the Mainland-oriented schools teach Simplified Chinese and Hanyu Pinyin. The Taiwan-oriented schools, by 2008, also began teaching Simplified Chinese, as of 1995 most teachers at these schools are ethnic Chinese persons who were born in Japan. By that year there were increasing numbers of Japanese families sending their children to Chinese schools, other students at Chinese schools are Japanese with mixed Chinese-Japanese parentage, Japanese children with Chinese parents, and returnees from abroad. Sun Yat-sen established the Yokohama Chinese School in 1898, in 1952 it split into the Mainland-aligned Yokohama Yamate Chinese School and the Taiwan-aligned Yokohama Overseas Chinese School. The Kobe Chinese School is also oriented towards Mainland China, the Osaka Chinese School is located in Naniwa-ku, Osaka
27.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
28.
Chinese diaspora in France
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The Chinese diaspora in France consists of people of Chinese ancestry who were born in or immigrated to France. Population estimates vary, ranging from 600,000 to 700,000 as of 2010, though they form a small part of the Chinese diaspora, the Chinese diaspora of France represents the largest overseas Chinese community in Europe with the UK following second at around 400,000. The first record of a Chinese man in France is Shen Fo-tsung in 1684, the opening of the Chinese port at Wenzhou in 1876 soon saw a small number of merchants from the region arriving in Paris, being the first wave of Chinese settlement in France. The 1911 census counted 283 Chinese in France and this tiny Chinese population during the Belle Époque period mainly consisted of students, journalists, intellectuals, as well as merchants. Many students of Chinese ethnicity in France were not from China but rather Vietnam, in 1902, Li Shizeng and Zhang Jingjiang arrived in Paris as embassy students accompanying Ambassador to France Sun Baoqi. Li soon left this position to study biology at Ecole Pratique dAgriculture du Chesnoy in Montargis. He founded the first factory which manufactured beancurd for the French market, Zhang establish a Paris gallery which sold Chinese art. Together with their friend Wu Zhihui, they formed the French branch of the Chinese anarchist movement which drew inspiration from French anarchists. In 1909, the three arranged for 140 students to come from China to work in the factory in order to support their study of French language. Over the next two decades, Li, Zhang, and Wu established a number of institutions of Sino-French friendship such as the Diligent Work-Frugal Study Movement, also arriving in Paris at this time was the art-dealer C. T. Loo, who married a French woman and maintained a business there until the 1950s and they cleared mines, repaired roads and unloaded ships, with their contribution going unrecognized for decades. Some worked in factories, others in naval shipyards, for a pittance of three to five francs a day. At the time they were seen just as cheap labour, not even allowed out of camp to fraternise locally, when the war ended some were used for mine clearance, or to recover the bodies of soldiers and fill in miles of trenches. After the Armistice, the Chinese, each identified only by a reference number, were shipped home. Only about 2,000 to 3,000 stayed on, most who survived returned to China in 1918. However, some were trapped in France by the 30 June 1920 collapse of the Banque industrielle de Chine, an estimated ten thousand died in the war effort, victims of either shelling, landmines, poor treatment or the worldwide Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. Their remains still lie in 30 French graveyards, the largest at Noyelles-sur-Mer on the Somme, the cemetery contains 842 gravestones each engraved with Chinese characters, guarded by two stone lions, gifts from China. After decades of neglect, the Chinese World War I labourers were ceremoniously recognized for their effort, a 2004 documentary film, Journey With no Return, was shown on French television
29.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
30.
British Chinese
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They opened restaurants on the ports. Most British Chinese are descended from people who were themselves overseas Chinese when they came to Britain, most are from former British colonies, such as Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Mauritius. People from mainland China and Taiwan and their descendants constitute a minor proportion of the British Chinese community. Chinese communities are found in major cities including London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Sheffield, Nottingham, Belfast. The first recorded Chinese person in Britain was Shen Fu Tsong, Shen was the first person to catalogue the Chinese collection in the Bodleian Library. The King was so taken with him he had his portrait painted, the portrait of Shen hangs in the Queens collection. The first settlement of Chinese people in the United Kingdom dates from the early 19th century, because many of the Chinese settlers were originally seamen, the first settlements started in the port cities of Liverpool, Cardiff and London. In London, the Limehouse area became the site of one of the first Chinatowns established in Britain, a Chinese seaman known as John Anthony took on this lucrative role looking after Chinese sailors for the East India Shipping Company in the late 18th and early 19th century. By 1805, Anthony had amassed both the fortune and the influence to become the first Chinese man to be naturalised as a British citizen—an act so rare it actually required an Act of Parliament. British shipping companies first started employing Chinese sailors during the Napoleonic Wars to replace the British sailors who had called up to the Royal Navy. They soon discovered that they worked for less, did not drink to excess, conditions aboard ship appalled Lee Cheong, for instance, when he visited his fathers quarters, The smell. I remember the smell and the cramped conditions. I remember going down below, rows and rows of bunks, knapsacks and all sorts of junk stuffed in every nook, lots and lots of people milling around. I couldn’t think of anything worse than those sorts of conditions, with the advent of steam in the 1860s, the recruitment of Chinese seamen increased on the trading routes from the Far East. The first Chinese student to graduate from a British university was Wong Fun who received his MD in 1855 from Edinburgh, many Chinese graduates did indeed return to make a significant contribution to their country, but some stayed. The Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, is the most important celebration for Chinese and it links overseas Chinese and their descendants to their heritage, even though they live thousands of miles away from their ancestral homelands. Celebrations in London are famous for colourful parades, fireworks, the route starts in the Strand and goes along Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue. Other activities include a show in Trafalgar Square with dragon and lion dances and traditional
31.
Venezuela
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Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a federal republic located on the northern coast of South America. It is bordered by Colombia on the west, Brazil on the south, Guyana on the east, Venezuela covers 916,445 km2 and has an estimated population of 31775371. The territory now known as Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522 amid resistance from indigenous peoples and it gained full independence as a separate country in 1830. During the 19th century, Venezuela suffered political turmoil and autocracy, since 1958, the country has had a series of democratic governments. This new constitution changed the name of the country to República Bolivariana de Venezuela. Venezuela is a presidential republic consisting of 23 states, the Capital District. Venezuela also claims all Guyanese territory west of the Essequibo River, oil was discovered in the early 20th century, and Venezuela has the worlds largest known oil reserves and has been one of the worlds leading exporters of oil. Previously an underdeveloped exporter of commodities such as coffee and cocoa, oil quickly came to dominate exports. The recovery of oil prices in the early 2000s gave Venezuela oil funds not seen since the 1980s, the Venezuelan government then established populist policies that initially boosted the Venezuelan economy and increased social spending, significantly reducing economic inequality and poverty. However, such policies later became controversial since they destabilized the economy, resulting in hyperinflation, an economic depression. According to the most popular and accepted version, in 1499, the stilt houses in the area of Lake Maracaibo reminded the navigator, Amerigo Vespucci, of the city of Venice, so he named the region Veneziola Piccola Venezia. The name acquired its current spelling as a result of Spanish influence, where the suffix -uela is used as a term, thus. The German language 16th century-term for the area, Klein-Venedig, also means little Venice, however, Martín Fernández de Enciso, a member of the Vespucci and Ojeda crew, gave a different account. In his work Summa de geografía, he states that they found people who called themselves the Veneciuela. Thus, the name Venezuela may have evolved from the native word and it is not known how many people lived in Venezuela before the Spanish conquest, it has been estimated at around one million. In addition to indigenous peoples known today, the population included historic groups such as the Kalina, Auaké, Caquetio, Mariche, the Timoto-Cuica culture was the most complex society in Pre-Columbian Venezuela, with pre-planned permanent villages, surrounded by irrigated, terraced fields. They also stored water in tanks and their houses were made primarily of stone and wood with thatched roofs. They were peaceful, for the most part, and depended on growing crops, regional crops included potatoes and ullucos
32.
South Africa
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South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is the southernmost country in Africa. South Africa is the 25th-largest country in the world by land area and it is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World or the Eastern Hemisphere. About 80 percent of South Africans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, divided among a variety of ethnic groups speaking different Bantu languages, the remaining population consists of Africas largest communities of European, Asian, and multiracial ancestry. South Africa is a multiethnic society encompassing a variety of cultures, languages. Its pluralistic makeup is reflected in the recognition of 11 official languages. The country is one of the few in Africa never to have had a coup détat, however, the vast majority of black South Africans were not enfranchised until 1994. During the 20th century, the black majority sought to recover its rights from the dominant white minority, with this struggle playing a role in the countrys recent history. The National Party imposed apartheid in 1948, institutionalising previous racial segregation, since 1994, all ethnic and linguistic groups have held political representation in the countrys democracy, which comprises a parliamentary republic and nine provinces. South Africa is often referred to as the Rainbow Nation to describe the multicultural diversity. The World Bank classifies South Africa as an economy. Its economy is the second-largest in Africa, and the 34th-largest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity, South Africa has the seventh-highest per capita income in Africa. However, poverty and inequality remain widespread, with about a quarter of the population unemployed, nevertheless, South Africa has been identified as a middle power in international affairs, and maintains significant regional influence. The name South Africa is derived from the geographic location at the southern tip of Africa. Upon formation the country was named the Union of South Africa in English, since 1961 the long form name in English has been the Republic of South Africa. In Dutch the country was named Republiek van Zuid-Afrika, replaced in 1983 by the Afrikaans Republiek van Suid-Afrika, since 1994 the Republic has had an official name in each of its 11 official languages. Mzansi, derived from the Xhosa noun umzantsi meaning south, is a name for South Africa. South Africa contains some of the oldest archaeological and human fossil sites in the world, extensive fossil remains have been recovered from a series of caves in Gauteng Province. The area is a UNESCO World Heritage site and has termed the Cradle of Humankind
33.
Chinese South Africans
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South Africa has the largest population of Chinese in Africa, and most of them live in Johannesburg, the economic hub for all of southern Africa. The first Chinese to settle in South Africa were prisoners, usually debtors, however the Dutch failed to find anyone in the Chinese community in Batavia who was prepared to volunteer to go to such a far off place. The first Chinese person recorded by the Dutch to arrive in the Cape was a convict by the name of Ytcho Wancho, there were also some free Chinese in the Dutch Cape Colony. They made a living fishing and farming and traded their produce for other required goods. From 1660 until the late 19th century the number of Chinese people in the Cape Colony never exceeded 100, most were independent immigrants mostly coming from Guangdong Province then known as Canton. Due to anti-Chinese feeling and racial discrimination at the time they were prevented from obtaining mining contracts and so became entrepreneurs, the Chinese community in South Africa grew steadily throughout the remainder of the 19th century, bolstered by new arrivals from China. The Anglo-Boer War, fought between 1898 and 1902, pushed some Chinese South Africans out of the Witwatersrand and into such as Port Elizabeth. A host of discriminatory laws similar to the laws that sought to restrict trade. These early immigrants arriving between the 1870s and early 1900s are the ancestors of most of South Africas first Chinese community, there were many complicated reasons why the British chose to import Chinese labour to use on the mines. After the Anglo-Boer War, production on the mines of the Witwatersrand was very low due to a lack of labour. The British government was eager to get these mines back online as quickly as possible as part of their effort to rebuild the war-torn country. Because of the war, unskilled black laborers had returned to areas and were more inclined to work on rebuilding infrastructure as mining was more dangerous. Unskilled white labour was being phased out because it was deemed too expensive, the British found recruiting and importing labour from east Asia the most expedient way to solve this problem. Between 1904 and 1910, over 63,000 contracted miners were brought in to work the mines of the Witwatersrand, most of these contractors were recruited from the provinces of Chihli, Shantung and Honan in China. They were repatriated after 1910, because of strong White opposition to their presence, similar to anti-Asian sentiments in the western United States and it is a myth that the contracted miners brought into South Africa at this time are the forefathers of much of South Africas Chinese population. Herbert Hoover, who would become the 31st U. S. President, was a director of Chinese Engineering and Mining Corporation when it became a supplier of coolie labor for South African mines. The first shipment of 2,000 coolies arrived in Durban from Qinhuangdao in July 1904, by 1906, the total number of Chinese coolies increased to 50,000, almost entirely recruited and shipped by CEMC. When the living and working conditions of the laborers became known, public opposition to the scheme grew, the scheme was abandoned in 1911
34.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
35.
Ethnic Chinese in Russia
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Ethnic Chinese in Russia officially numbered 34,577 according to the 2002 census. Their number has been shrinking since 2013, the Manchu Qing Dynasty, which came to rule over China in the mid-17th century, traditionally regarded the territory of East Tartary or Outer Manchuria—now known as the Russian Far East—as its own. The Russian trans-Ural expansion into the area resulted in a low level of armed conflict during the 1670s and 1680s, however, under the 1860 Treaty of Peking, the Qing ceded even the far bank of the Amur River to Russia. The Manza War in 1868 was the first attempt by Russia to expel the Chinese from territory it controlled, hostilities broke out around Peter the Great Gulf, in Vladivostok when the Russians tried to shut off gold mining operations and expel Chinese workers there. Large-scale migration from Qing territories to lands actually under the control of the Russian Empire did not begin until the late 19th century, few of the Chinese in the Russian Empires Far East would be able to become Russian subjects. It is reported that, at least during one period, only persons who had married to a Russian subject and had become Christian would be eligible for naturalization. N. Later, Tifontai was to play an important part in Russias economic expansion into Manchuria, during World War I, several thousand of the Russian Empires Chinese residents were brought to European Russia to work on the construction of fortifications. After the October Revolution of 1917, a number of ethnic Chinese participated in the Russian Civil War as well. Outside of the cities, others engaged in mining and opium cultivation, under the New Economic Policy, they spread out into other urban centres, including Novosibirsk and Barnaul. The wave of Chinese migration to the Soviet Union lasted as late as 1929, a separate, different, Latin-based writing system was simultaneously developed for the Dungans, who were already considered a separate ethnic group. This was accompanied by a campaign to raise literacy among Chinese workers. By the 1930s, there were ten state schools, one vocational secondary school, one college. However, many Chinese migrant workers were repatriated to China in 1936 and those Chinese who remained in the Russian Far East, along with ethnic Koreans, were deported to other areas of Russia in 1937 for fear that their communities could be infiltrated by Japanese spies. Roughly 11,000 Chinese were arrested beginning that year, with 8,000 forced to resettle in the north of Russia, there was a great deal of factional infighting among them. However, the Russian government terminated the visa-free travel agreement just six years later, the total ethnic Chinese population in Russia is a somewhat controversial topic. In the 2002 Census, merely 34,500 residents of Russia self-identified as ethnic Chinese, if popular media estimates such as the 2003 figure of 3.26 million were correct, Chinese would form Russias fourth largest ethnic group after the Russians, Tatars, and Ukrainians. The two main Chinese communities of Russia are those in Moscow and those in the Russian Far East. The community in Moscow was believed to have been the largest as of 2002, numbering 20,000 to 25,000 people and they come from most provinces of China
36.
Italy
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Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino, Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is referred to in Italy as lo Stivale. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth most populous EU member state, the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The weakened sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria. Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world
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Chinese people in Italy
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The community of Chinese people in Italy has grown rapidly in the past ten years. In 2010, an analysis conducted by the CESNUR and the University of Turin on the 4, 000-strong Chinese community of Turin showed that at time, 48% of this community was women and 30%. Most of the Chinese in Italy -- and virtually all of the Turin community -- hail from the southeastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, the community in Turin is younger than other Chinese settlements in Italy, and for this reason it depends as a branch of the community of Milan. Approximately 70% of the Chinese in Turin work in restaurant activity, Prato, Tuscany has the largest concentration of Chinese people in Italy and all of Europe. It has the second largest population of Chinese people overall in Italy after Milan, the study of the CESNUR also surveyed religious affiliation and beliefs of the Chinese in Turin. In total, approximately one quarter of the Chinese community was classified as belonging to the Chinese religion. The survey found that 39. 9% of the Chinese had a thoroughly atheist identity, not believing in any god, nor belonging to any religious organisation, the study also analysed the Chinese Christian community, finding it comprised 8% of the total population. The Christian community was small, but larger than that of the province of origin, especially for the Catholics and the Jehovahs Witnesses, protestants were found to be basically nondenominational and largely women. In 2007, several dozen protesters took to the streets in Milan over alleged discrimination, the northern Italian town of Treviso also ordered Chinese-run businesses to take down their lanterns because they looked too oriental. Based on Demo ISTAT statistics. 1111/1468-2435.00246 Luigi Berzano, Carlo Genova, Massimo Introvigne, Roberta Ricucci, cinesi a Torino, la crescita di un arcipelago. SPIEGEL Magazine Article about the Chinese in Prato September 7,2006
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Brazil
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Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. As the worlds fifth-largest country by area and population, it is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language. Its Amazon River basin includes a vast tropical forest, home to wildlife, a variety of ecological systems. This unique environmental heritage makes Brazil one of 17 megadiverse countries, Brazil was inhabited by numerous tribal nations prior to the landing in 1500 of explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, who claimed the area for the Portuguese Empire. Brazil remained a Portuguese colony until 1808, when the capital of the empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, in 1815, the colony was elevated to the rank of kingdom upon the formation of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. Independence was achieved in 1822 with the creation of the Empire of Brazil, a state governed under a constitutional monarchy. The ratification of the first constitution in 1824 led to the formation of a bicameral legislature, the country became a presidential republic in 1889 following a military coup détat. An authoritarian military junta came to power in 1964 and ruled until 1985, Brazils current constitution, formulated in 1988, defines it as a democratic federal republic. The federation is composed of the union of the Federal District, the 26 states, Brazils economy is the worlds ninth-largest by nominal GDP and seventh-largest by GDP as of 2015. A member of the BRICS group, Brazil until 2010 had one of the worlds fastest growing economies, with its economic reforms giving the country new international recognition. Brazils national development bank plays an important role for the economic growth. Brazil is a member of the United Nations, the G20, BRICS, Unasul, Mercosul, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States, CPLP. Brazil is a power in Latin America and a middle power in international affairs. One of the worlds major breadbaskets, Brazil has been the largest producer of coffee for the last 150 years and it is likely that the word Brazil comes from the Portuguese word for brazilwood, a tree that once grew plentifully along the Brazilian coast. In Portuguese, brazilwood is called pau-brasil, with the word brasil commonly given the etymology red like an ember, formed from Latin brasa and the suffix -il. As brazilwood produces a red dye, it was highly valued by the European cloth industry and was the earliest commercially exploited product from Brazil. The popular appellation eclipsed and eventually supplanted the official Portuguese name, early sailors sometimes also called it the Land of Parrots. In the Guarani language, a language of Paraguay, Brazil is called Pindorama
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Chinese Brazilian
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Chinese Brazilians are people of Chinese ancestry who were born in or have immigrated to Brazil. The Chinese Brazilian population was estimated to be approximately 250,000, Brazil imported slaves from Lisbons population of Chinese slaves in Portugal. Fillippo Sassetti saw some Chinese and Japanese slaves in Lisbon among the slave community in 1578. Military, religious, and civil service work and other lenient and light jobs were given to Chinese slaves. Portugal exported some Chinese slaves to Brazil and it is known that there were Chinese in Brazil as far back as the late 18th century. Rugendas painted a depiction of Chinese Tea planters in Rio de Janeiro during the period of the Portuguese Royal family in Brazil, in 1814 John VI of Portugal brought 300 Chinese from Macau to work in the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro. São Paulo has the largest Chinese Brazilian population, in particular on the district of Liberdade, many Cantonese from Hong Kong and Portuguese-speaking Macau, including some Macanese of mixed Chinese and Portuguese descent, have also settled in Brazil. These Macau immigrants can speak and understand Portuguese, allowing them to adjust more easily to life in Brazil. Today, the majority of Chinese Brazilians only speak Portuguese, although some may be bilingual, ken Chang, a Brazilian actor of Chinese descent, popular TV series star in Taiwan and China. Gui Lin, an Olympic Athlete in Table Tennis, felipe Almeida Wu,2016 Olympic silver medalist in shooting -10 m air pistol. A China no Brasil, influências, marcas, ecos e sobrevivências chinesas na sociedade e na arte brasileiras, a Presença Chinesa no Brasil - Pesquisa Bibliográfica. Fundação João Nabuco/João Nabuco Foundation of Brazil together with the International Institute of Macau present, padrões de Linguagem nos Imigrantes Chineses - Diglossia. This is an article written in Portuguese, the title meaning Diglossie - Patterns of Language of Chinese Immigrants
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Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
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New Zealand
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New Zealand /njuːˈziːlənd/ is an island nation in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main landmasses—the North Island, or Te Ika-a-Māui, and the South Island, or Te Waipounamu—and around 600 smaller islands. New Zealand is situated some 1,500 kilometres east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and roughly 1,000 kilometres south of the Pacific island areas of New Caledonia, Fiji, because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans. During its long period of isolation, New Zealand developed a distinct biodiversity of animal, fungal, the countrys varied topography and its sharp mountain peaks, such as the Southern Alps, owe much to the tectonic uplift of land and volcanic eruptions. New Zealands capital city is Wellington, while its most populous city is Auckland, sometime between 1250 and 1300 CE, Polynesians settled in the islands that later were named New Zealand and developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to sight New Zealand, in 1840, representatives of Britain and Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, which declared British sovereignty over the islands. In 1841, New Zealand became a colony within the British Empire, today, the majority of New Zealands population of 4.7 million is of European descent, the indigenous Māori are the largest minority, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders. Reflecting this, New Zealands culture is derived from Māori and early British settlers. The official languages are English, Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, New Zealand is a developed country and ranks highly in international comparisons of national performance, such as health, education, economic freedom and quality of life. Since the 1980s, New Zealand has transformed from an agrarian, Queen Elizabeth II is the countrys head of state and is represented by a governor-general. In addition, New Zealand is organised into 11 regional councils and 67 territorial authorities for local government purposes, the Realm of New Zealand also includes Tokelau, the Cook Islands and Niue, and the Ross Dependency, which is New Zealands territorial claim in Antarctica. New Zealand is a member of the United Nations, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Pacific Islands Forum, and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sighted New Zealand in 1642 and called it Staten Landt, in 1645, Dutch cartographers renamed the land Nova Zeelandia after the Dutch province of Zeeland. British explorer James Cook subsequently anglicised the name to New Zealand, Aotearoa is the current Māori name for New Zealand. It is unknown whether Māori had a name for the country before the arrival of Europeans. Māori had several names for the two main islands, including Te Ika-a-Māui for the North Island and Te Waipounamu or Te Waka o Aoraki for the South Island. Early European maps labelled the islands North, Middle and South, in 1830, maps began to use North and South to distinguish the two largest islands and by 1907, this was the accepted norm. The New Zealand Geographic Board discovered in 2009 that the names of the North Island and South Island had never been formalised and this set the names as North Island or Te Ika-a-Māui, and South Island or Te Waipounamu
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Chinese New Zealander
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Chinese New Zealanders refers to New Zealanders of Chinese ancestry. They constitute one group of overseas Chinese and represent the second largest Chinese community in Oceania behind the Chinese community in Australia, the first records of ethnic Chinese in New Zealand were the immigrants from Guangdong province, China, who arrived during the 1850s goldrush era. Due to this influx, there is still a distinct Chinese community in the Southern city of Dunedin. However, most Chinese New Zealanders live in the North Island, the remainder of Chinese immigrants to New Zealand came from Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Indonesia. In the 2013 census in New Zealand, the size of the Chinese New Zealander population stood at approximately 171,000. This represented a 16% increase in population from the 2006 census in the country, over two-thirds of Chinese New Zealanders live in the Auckland Region, with 19.8 percent living elsewhere in the North Island and 11.8 percent in the South Island. Over 95 percent live in an urban area. English is by far the most widely spoken language among the usually resident Asian population in New Zealand, nonetheless the next most common language after English in New Zealand was Yue or Cantonese and Northern Chinese or Mandarin. Some Chinese New Zealanders also adhere to speaking Malay and Indonesian due to an influx of Chinese immigrants from Southeast Asia. While many believe there was a White New Zealand policy similar to Australias, however, in the 1880s, openly sinophobic political ideology resulted in the New Zealand head tax, also known as the Poll Tax, aimed specifically at Chinese migrants. Chain migration from Guangdong continued until the new Communist Chinese regime stopped emigration and this original group of Cantonese migrants and their descendants are referred to in New Zealand as Old Generation Chinese, and are now a minority within the overall Chinese population. John Halls government passed the Chinese Immigration Act 1881 and this imposed a £10 tax per Chinese person entering New Zealand, and permitted only one Chinese immigrant for every 10 tons of cargo. Richard Seddons government increased the tax to £100 per head in 1896, ethnic Chinese communities from countries other than China began establishing themselves in New Zealand between the 1960s and 1980s. This period saw a spike in migration from the Asian region, including other Chinese people from East Asia. From the late 1990s to the 2000s, skilled migrants from Mainland China became the new significant demographic group of Chinese immigrants, in 2002, the New Zealand Government publicly apologised to the Chinese for the poll tax that had been levied on their ancestors a century ago. New Zealand earns $1.76 billion annually from the array of students that study each year in New Zealand universities. International students, and The Ministry of Foreign Affairs records that export education is more to New Zealand than its fourth largest export sector which is seafood. Chinese immigrant parents on the other hand see homework as a catapult for higher education as well as to prepare their children to pursue greater academic achievement, the findings show that different or even contradictory expectations and practices exist among Chinese immigrant parents
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Laos
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Present day Laos traces its historic and cultural identity to the kingdom of Lan Xang Hom Khao, which existed for four centuries as one of the largest kingdoms in Southeast Asia. Due to Lan Xangs central geographical location in Southeast Asia, the kingdom was able to become a hub for overland trade. After a period of conflict, Lan Xang broke off into three separate kingdoms— Luang Phabang, Vientiane and Champasak. In 1893, it became a French protectorate, with the three territories uniting to form what is now known as the country of Laos and it briefly gained independence in 1945 after Japanese occupation, but returned to French rule until it was granted autonomy in 1949. Laos became independent in 1953, with a monarchy under Sisavang Vong. Shortly after independence, a civil war ended the monarchy. Laos is a one-party socialist republic and it espouses Marxism and is governed by the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party, in which the party leadership is dominated by military figures. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Vietnam Peoples Army continue to have significant influence in Laos, other large cities include Luang Prabang, Savannakhet, and Pakse. Laos is a country with the politically and culturally dominant Lao people making up approximately 60 percent of the population. Mon-Khmer groups, the Hmong, and other hill tribes, accounting for 40 percent of the population, live in the foothills. It is a member of the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, East Asia Summit, Laos applied for membership of the World Trade Organization in 1997, on 2 February 2013, it was granted full membership. According to the anti-corruption non-governmental organisation Transparency International, Laos remains one of the most corrupt countries in the world and this has deterred foreign investment and created major problems with the rule of law, including the nations ability to enforce contract and business regulation. This has contributed to a third of the population of Laos currently living below the poverty line. Laos has an economy, with one of the lowest annual incomes in the world. In 2014, the country ranked 141st on the Human Development Index, according to the Global Hunger Index, Laos ranks as the 29th hungriest nation in the world out of the list of the 52 nations with the worst hunger situation. Laos has also had a human rights record. In the Lao language, the name is Muang Lao or Pathet Lao. Stone artefacts including Hoabinhian types have been found at sites dating to the Late Pleistocene in northern Laos, archaeological evidence suggests agriculturist society developed during the 4th millennium BC
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United Arab Emirates
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In 2013, the UAEs population was 9.2 million, of which 1.4 million are Emirati citizens and 7.8 million are expatriates. The country is a federation of seven emirates, and was established on 2 December 1971, the constituent emirates are Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm al-Quwain. Each emirate is governed by a monarch, together, they jointly form the Federal Supreme Council. One of the monarchs is selected as the President of the United Arab Emirates, Islam is the official religion of the UAE and Arabic is the official language. The UAEs oil reserves are the seventh-largest in the world while its natural gas reserves are the worlds seventeenth-largest, Sheikh Zayed, ruler of Abu Dhabi and the first President of the UAE, oversaw the development of the Emirates and steered oil revenues into healthcare, education and infrastructure. The UAEs economy is the most diversified in the Gulf Cooperation Council, while its most populous city of Dubai is an important global city, nevertheless, the country remains principally reliant on its export of petroleum and natural gas. The UAE is criticised for its rights record, including the specific interpretations of Sharia used in its legal system. The UAEs rising international profile has led analysts to identify it as a regional. It appears the land of the Emirates has been occupied for thousands of years, there is no proof of contact with the outside world at that stage, although in time it developed with civilisations in Mesopotamia and Iran. This contact persisted and became wide-ranging, probably motivated by trade in copper from the Hajar Mountains, in ancient times, Al Hasa was part of Al Bahreyn and adjoined Greater Oman. Sassanid groups were present on the Batinah coast, in 637, Julfar was an important port that was used as a staging post for the Islamic invasion of the Sassanian Empire. The area of the Al Ain/Buraimi Oasis was known as Tuam and was an important trading post for camel routes between the coast and the Arabian interior. The earliest Christian site in the UAE was first discovered in the 1990s, a monastic complex on what is now known as Sir Bani Yas Island. Thought to be Nestorian and built in 600 AD, the church appears to have been abandoned peacefully in 750 AD and it forms a rare physical link to a legacy of Christianity which is thought to have spread across the peninsula from 50 to 350 AD following trade routes. Certainly, by the 5th century, Oman had a bishop named John – the last bishop of Oman being Etienne, in 676 AD. This led to a group of travelling to Medina, converting to Islam and subsequently driving a successful uprising against the unpopular Sassanids. Following the death of Prophet Muhammad, the new Islamic communities south of the Persian Gulf threatened to disintegrate, with insurrections against the Muslim leaders. The Caliph Abu Bakr sent an army from the capital Medina which completed its reconquest of the territory with the battle of Dibba in which 10,000 lives are thought to have been lost
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Colombia
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Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a transcontinental country largely situated in the northwest of South America, with territories in Central America. Colombia shares a border to the northwest with Panama, to the east with Venezuela and Brazil and to the south with Ecuador and it shares its maritime limits with Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It is a unitary, constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments, the territory of what is now Colombia was originally inhabited by indigenous peoples including the Muisca, the Quimbaya and the Tairona. The Spanish arrived in 1499 and initiated a period of conquest and colonization ultimately creating the Viceroyalty of New Granada, independence from Spain was won in 1819, but by 1830 the Gran Colombia Federation was dissolved. What is now Colombia and Panama emerged as the Republic of New Granada, the new nation experimented with federalism as the Granadine Confederation, and then the United States of Colombia, before the Republic of Colombia was finally declared in 1886. Since the 1960s the country has suffered from an asymmetric low-intensity armed conflict, Colombia is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse countries in the world, and thereby possesses a rich cultural heritage. Cultural diversity has also influenced by Colombias varied geography. The urban centres are located in the highlands of the Andes mountains. Colombian territory also encompasses Amazon rainforest, tropical grassland and both Caribbean and Pacific coastlines, ecologically, it is one of the worlds 17 megadiverse countries, and the most densely biodiverse of these per square kilometer. Colombia is a power and a regional actor with the fourth-largest economy in Latin America, is part of the CIVETS group of six leading emerging markets and is an accessing member to the OECD. Colombia has an economy with macroeconomic stability and favorable growth prospects in the long run. The name Colombia is derived from the last name of Christopher Columbus and it was conceived by the Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda as a reference to all the New World, but especially to those portions under Spanish and Portuguese rule. The name was adopted by the Republic of Colombia of 1819. When Venezuela, Ecuador and Cundinamarca came to exist as independent states, New Granada officially changed its name in 1858 to the Granadine Confederation. In 1863 the name was changed, this time to United States of Colombia. To refer to country, the Colombian government uses the terms Colombia. Owing to its location, the present territory of Colombia was a corridor of early human migration from Mesoamerica, the oldest archaeological finds are from the Pubenza and El Totumo sites in the Magdalena Valley 100 km southwest of Bogotá. These sites date from the Paleoindian period, at Puerto Hormiga and other sites, traces from the Archaic Period have been found
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Cambodia
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Cambodia, officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is 181,035 square kilometres in area, bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the northeast, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia has a population of over 15 million. The official religion is Theravada Buddhism, practiced by approximately 95 percent of the population, the countrys minority groups include Vietnamese, Chinese, Chams, and 30 hill tribes. The capital and largest city is Phnom Penh, the political, economic, the kingdom is a constitutional monarchy with Norodom Sihamoni, a monarch chosen by the Royal Throne Council, as head of state. The head of government is Hun Sen, who is currently the longest serving leader in South East Asia and has ruled Cambodia for over 25 years. In 802 AD, Jayavarman II declared himself king, uniting the warring Khmer princes of Chenla under the name Kambuja. The Indianized kingdom built monumental temples including Angkor Wat, now a World Heritage Site, after the fall of Angkor to Ayutthaya in the 15th century, a reduced and weakened Cambodia was then ruled as a vassal state by its neighbours. In 1863 Cambodia became a protectorate of France which doubled the size of the country by reclaiming the north, the Vietnam War extended into the country with the US bombing of Cambodia from 1969 until 1973. Following the Cambodian coup of 1970, the king gave his support to his former enemies. Following the 1991 Paris Peace Accords, Cambodia was governed briefly by a United Nations mission, the UN withdrew after holding elections in which around 90 percent of the registered voters cast ballots. The 1997 coup placed power solely in the hands of Prime Minister Hun Sen and the Cambodian Peoples Party, important sociopolitical issues includes widespread poverty, pervasive corruption, lack of political freedoms, low human development, and a high rate of hunger. While per capita income remains low compared to most neighbouring countries, agriculture remains the dominant economic sector, with strong growth in textiles, construction, garments, and tourism leading to increased foreign investment and international trade. Cambodia scored dismally in an annual index ranking the rule of law in 102 countries, placing 99th overall, Cambodia also faces environmental destruction as an imminent problem. The most severe activity in this regard is considered to be the countrywide deforestation, the Kingdom of Cambodia is the official English name of the country. The English Cambodia is an anglicisation of the French Cambodge, which in turn is the French transliteration of the Khmer Kampuchea, Kampuchea is the shortened alternative to the countrys official name in Khmer, Preah Reacheanachak Kampuchea. The Khmer endonym Kampuchea derives from the Sanskrit name Kambujadeśa, composed of देश, desa and कम्बोज, Kambujas, colloquially, Cambodians refer to their country as either Srok Khmer, meaning Khmers Land, or the slightly more formal Prateh Kampuchea, literally Country of Kampuchea. The name Cambodia is used most often in the Western world while Kampuchea is more used in the East. Excavations in its lower layers produced a series of dates as of 6000 BC
