Китайцы в Мьянме: История и современность

People of Han Chinese descent in Myanmar

Chinese Burmese, also Sino Burmese or Tayoke , are Burmese citizens of Han Chinese ethnicity. They are a group of overseas Chinese born or raised in Myanmar (Burma). As of 2012, the Burmese Chinese population is estimated to be as high as 3 per cent of the country's population. Burmese Chinese also play a leading role in Burma's business sector and dominate the Burmese economy. In addition, Burmese Chinese have a strong presence in Burma's political scene with several people such as San Yu, Khin Nyunt, and Ne Win having been major political figures.

In the Burmese language, the Chinese are called Tayoke (, tarut, ) and formerly spelt (tarup). The earliest evidence of this term dates to the Bagan Era, in the 13th century, during which it referred to the territory and a variety of peoples to the north and northeast of Myanmar. Various scholars have proposed that it comes from the Chinese term for "Turk" (突厥, Tūjué / tú jué); from the name of Dali (大理國, Dàlǐguó), the capital of the Kingdom of Nanzhao; a Chinese corruption of the term Dàyuèzhī (大月支 or 大月氏), a Chinese term referring to Mongol speaking Kushan Huns. The adoption of Tayoke as an exonym for the Han Chinese was not an established practice until the 19th century. The term itself purportedly originates from a Burmese myth about the Chinese and Burmese peoples as being descendants of the same parents, a dragon princess and a sun god. 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 .

The Hakkas, Hokkiens and Cantonese comprised 45 per cent of the ethnic Chinese population. The Yunnanese comprised 30 to 40 per cent of the ethnic Chinese population.

Hokkiens (Burmese: eingyi shay, or let shay, , ) from Fujian Province. Most of the Hokkien were traders.

Cantonese (Burmese: eingyi to, or let to, , ) from Central Guangdong Province. Most migrants from Guangdong Province were artisans.

Hakkas (Burmese: zaka, , ) from Fujian and Guangdong provinces. The Hakkas are further subdivided into those with ancestry from Fujian Province and Guangdong Province, called eingyi shay haka and eingyi to haka respectively.

In Upper Myanmar and Shan Hills, the Kokang people predominate there.

The Panthay have long been 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 (, meaning "hybrid") 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, possibly because immigrants could acquire Burmese citizenship through intermarriage with the indigenous Burmese peoples.

Historically, Burmese Chinese have made their livelihoods as merchants, traders, and shopkeepers as well as manual labourers such as indentured labourers (pejoratively called "coolies"); dockers, municipal workers, rickshaw men, and pony cart drivers. They were also heavily represented in certain professions such as civil servants, university lecturers, pharmacists, opticians, lawyers, engineers, and doctors.

Like much of Southeast Asia, Chinese entrepreneurs dominate Burmese commerce at every level of society. Burmese Chinese wield tremendous economic clout and influence in relation to their indigenous Burman majority counterparts and play a critical role in maintaining the country's economic vitality and prosperity. In 1988, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) came to power, and gradually loosened the government's role in the economy, encouraging private sector growth and foreign investment. This liberalisation of the state's role in the economy gave Chinese owned Burmese businesses extra space to expand and assert their economic clout. Today, much of Burma's retail, wholesale, and shipping outlets are Chinese owned. Newly settled Han Chinese immigrants following Burma's acceptance of free market capitalism in the late 1980s began to capitalise on new business opportunities that they specialised in. Various businesses that have sprung up include Chinese style patisseries and bakeries, noodle shops, watch repair, cosmetic shops, and grocery stores which soon at the forefront became the nerve centers of economic life across various small towns in Burma. Over time, as the Chinese immigrants became more ambitious in business, they sought more aggressive entrepreneurial and investment activities, such as liquour stores and pawn brokerage shops. Today, Burma's Chinese community is now at the forefront of opening up the country's economy to conduct foreign business and direct investment, especially catering it towards mainland China and other Overseas Chinese businesspeople and investors. The Chinese government has been very proactive in engaging with the Overseas Chinese business community and using China's soft power to help Burma's Chinese community stay close to their ancestral roots and foster business ties. Like other Southeast Asian businesses owned by those of Chinese ancestry, Chinese owned businesses in Burma often make corporate partnerships with other Chinese and Overseas Chinese businesses to focus on new business opportunities to collaborate and concentrate on. However, most Burmese businessmen and investors have voluntarily chosen to stay in Burma or concentrate their efforts on surrounding Southeast Asian markets such as Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand or the Greater Chinese market including mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Many Burmese entrepreneurs of Chinese ancestry also have friends and extended family members in mainland China, as China's economic reform in the late 1970s produced conditions supporting wealth accumulation by introducing the wholesale market of Chinese made products into Burma and other Southeast Asian markets.

Chinese enclaves have sprung up in major cities, particularly in Mandalay. Mandalay is now the economic and financial nerve center of Upper Myanmar and is considered the epicenter of Burmese Chinese business culture. After the 1980 fires in Mandalay, huge swaths of land left vacant by the fires were purchased, mostly by the ethnic Han Chinese, many of whom were recent immigrants from Yunnan. This influx transformed Mandalay rapidly into the prosperous business center with Chinese built and Chinese owned high rise buildings. Under the auspicious of the entrepreneurial Chinese minority, Mandalay became a booming modern metropolis filled with foreign businesses and gem trading centers. Many Chinese owned and operated Burmese businesses such as trading cooperatives, market stalls, food joints, medicine shops, hotels, and gem shops have also flourished. Today, the percentage of ethnic Han Chinese, is estimated at 50% of the city (with the Yunnanese forming an estimated 30% of Mandalay's population). In addition, the apparent influence of mainland China is also ostensibly felt throughout the city, where the local inhabitants have resentfully alluded to Mandalay as a "Chinese city." Many Chinese in Myanmar walk a line between the improving tolerance and aggravating ethnic Bamar, including learning local languages to assimilate. Chinese entrepreneurs became increasingly prominent in Mandalay's economy since the imposition of sanctions by the United States and the European Union in the 1990s. During Burma's open door immigration policy in the 1990s, Mandalay became the most attractive destination for massive Chinese migration and newly settled Han Chinese immigrants. Han Chinese immigrants from Yunnan were able to obtain identity papers on the black market to become naturalised Burmese citizens overnight. Identity cards were not only used for new Chinese immigrants to stay indefinitely, but to also bypass legal barriers on foreign ownership of businesses such as hotels, shops, and restaurants. With the onset of economic liberalisation and the rise of free market capitalism in Burma, members of the Chinese community gravitated towards business and the Chinese paradigm of guanxi which is based on the importance of having contacts, relationships, and connections as ingredients for entrepreneurial and investment success. Retail stores were opened by Chinese entrepreneurs, whose business interests ranged from cement mixing to financial services. Ambitious Chinese entrepreneurs and investors came to dominate the economies of Yangon and Mandalay and turned them into the prosperous business and financial centers that they are today. Mandalay has been sinicised economically and culturally, to the resentment of indigenous Burmese.

Today, virtually all of Mandalay's and Yangon's retail shops, hotels, restaurants, financial services providers, and prime residential and commercial real estate operate under Burmese Chinese hands. Prime real estate in key sites within Mandalay have been entirely acquired by wealthy Chinese businessmen and investors. Gemstones and gold bars are among the many the goods sold on the Burmese commodities market and represent a key focus commodity of value by many Chinese expatriate entrepreneurs and investors. During the last few decades of the 19th century, the Chinese turned to rural money lending as an additive business and investment revenue stream. Burmese businessmen of Chinese ancestry also ran illicit opium and gambling dens, teahouses, liquor stores, and also acted as agents for the production, sale, and export of petroleum and natural gas products. Artisan goods manufactured historically by indigenous Burmans have been increasingly displaced by inexpensive Chinese consumer goods such as textiles, machinery, and electronics in terms of quality and price. Historical sources of livelihood for Bamar like tapestry weaving, gold leaf carving, furniture crafting, and precious stone polishing no longer provide enough wages to keep up with increase Chinese consumer good prices. Furthermore, artisan products have been eclipsed by cheaper Chinese imports and higher quality Chinese made products. Burmese entrepreneurs of Chinese ancestry dominate every major Burmese artisan business and industry sector including silk weaving, tapestry, jade cutting and polishing, stone and wood carving, making marble and bronze Buddha images, food products, temple ornaments and paraphernalia, the working of gold leaves and of silver, garments, pharmaceuticals, match manufacturing, brewing, and distilling. Burmese entrepreneurs of Chinese ancestry have also established heavy industry joint ventures with many large mainland Chinese conglomerates. For example, the lucrative teak industry has provided Sino Burmese conglomerates with incredible profit while ethnic Bamar and Shan people have barely earned money due to government tax exemptions, low labour wages and global export orientated policies. Chinese made consumer electronics, beer, and fashion are also large industries. In Yangon, the Hokkien community have cornered small and medium sized family businesses in teak logging, rice, bean and legume trading, and cooking oil production while the Cantonese community are well known for their niches in the small scale manufacturing of handicrafts and similar artisan retail products.

Legal two way trade between Burma and mainland China reached US$12 billion annually by 2021. Additional Chinese trade, investment, economic, and military aid was sought to invigorate and jumpstart the re emerging Burmese economy. Private gem mining is a huge industry in Burma with many of the concessionaires being controlled by Burmese entrepreneurs of Chinese ancestry. At present, Burma's booming gem industry involves Chinese hands at every level, from the financiers, concession operators, all the way to the retail merchants that own the many newly opened gem markets and stores. In 2003, one Chinese owned jeweller reportedly controlled 100 gem mines producing over 2,000 kilograms of raw rubies annually. These coveted pieces of expensive jewellery typically cater to customers mainly hailing from Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Chinese dominate both the legitimate trade and the highly lucrative illegitimate trade in opium and other unsavory drug enterprises. High profile cases have involved the Burmese Chinese business elite such as businessman Lo Hsing Han in Kokang and politician Kyaw Win. In the legal economy, both have continued to control Burma's major banks, airlines, teak logging companies, and gemstone mining concessions. Lo's son, Steven Law is also a prominent businessman known for being at the helm of Burma's largest conglomerate company Asia World, whose investments include a container shipping operator, port buildings, and toll road authorities. Law also has business interests in sports, where he is the majority owner of Magway FC, a Burmese soccer team, and has holdings in Burma's gem industry valued at an estimated US$600 million. His other holdings include numerous valuable ruby concessions as well as a stake in a mining concession situated near the Burmese town of Phakent. Given Law's notoriety in Burmese business circles, his conglomerate is also the most popular business partner for foreign investors looking to invest in Burma's private gem industry. Burmese entrepreneurs of Chinese ancestry have also established numerous joint ventures and corporate partnerships with mainland Chinese State owned enterprises for the construction of oil pipelines.

As Chinese economic influence might grew, much of the indigenous Bamar majority have gradually been driven out into poorer land on the hills, on the outskirts of major Burmese cities or into the mountains. Underlying resentment and bitterness from the impoverished Burmese majority has been accumulating as there has been no existence of indigenous Burmese having any substantial business equity in Burma. The increased economic clout held in the hands of the Chinese in Burma has triggered distrust, envy, resentment and anti Chinese hostility among the indigenous Burmese majority. Decades of free market liberalisation brought virtually no economic benefit to the indigenous Burmese majority but rather the opposite resulting a subjugated indigenous Burmese majority underclass, many of whom still engage in menial labour, rural peasantry or illegal teak smuggling to make ends meet in a stark socioeconomic contrast to their modern, wealthier, and cosmopolitan middle and upper class Chinese counterparts.

Most Burmese Chinese practice Theravada Buddhism, while incorporating some Mahayana Buddhist and Taoist beliefs including ancestral worship. There are also some prominent Theravadin Buddhist meditation teacher of Chinese descent like Sayadaw U Tejaniya. There are several notable Chinese temples situated in Yangon, including Fushan Temple (dedicated to Qingshui Zhushi), Kheng Hock Keong Temple (dedicated to Mazu) and Guanyin Gumiao Temple (dedicated to Guanyin). The minority Panthay or Chinese Muslims (回教華人; , lit. "little flowers") originated from Yunnan are mainly Muslim.

The earliest records of Chinese migration into present day Myanmar were in the Song and Ming dynasties. During British rule, marriage between the Chinese and Burmese, particularly Chinese men and Burmese women, was the most common form of intermarriage in Burma, as evidenced by a High Court ruling on the legal status of Sino Burmese marriages under Burmese Buddhist law. From 1935 until the end of British rule, the Chinese were represented in the colonial legislature, the House of Representatives. After World War II, displaced Burmese Chinese (whose pre war homes were in Burma), were the most numerous group of overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia to request repatriation to return to Burma, according to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.

During the 1950s, Burma was one of the first countries to recognise the People's Republic of China as a nation. However, its own Chinese population was treated as aliens. The Burmese Chinese were issued foreign registration cards (FRC) in a tiered citizenship system adopted by the post independence government. When the Chinese Communists expelled the Kuomintang, many fled to Myanmar and Thailand over the borders of Yunnan Province. The Burmese government fought and removed the armed KMT and forced them to Taiwan; those who managed to stay prospered. In the 1950s, discriminatory policies against overseas Chinese encompassed citizenship, government employment, approval for business regulations and licensing, loan extensions and permission to make remittances. In 1952, Kheng Hock Keong Temple publications estimated that ethnic Chinese, who lived in enclaves in the area along Sinohdan, Latha, and Maung Khaing Streets (with Cantonese typically living above Maha Bandula Road and Hokkiens living below), constituted 9.5 per cent of Rangoon's population. During this period, there was a sharp rise in the number of private Chinese language schools, primarily teaching Mandarin, in Burma, from 65 in 1935 to 259 in 1953 and 259 at its peak in 1962, with many such schools affiliated to the Chinese nationalist (, lit. "White Chinese") or communist (, lit. "Red Chinese") movements. However, fewer than 10 per cent of Burmese Chinese of school age attended Chinese language schools. Similarly, about 80 clan associations operated in the 1950s.

In 1962, Ne Win led the Socialist coup d'état, establishing the Revolutionary Council under the Burmese Way to Socialism. In February 1963, the Enterprise Nationalization Law was passed, effectively nationalising all major industries and prohibiting the formation of new factories. This law adversely affected many industrialists and entrepreneurs, especially those without the full citizenship. The government's economic nationalisation program further prohibited foreigners, including the non citizen Chinese, from owning land, sending remittances, getting business licences and practising medicine. Such policies led to the beginnings of a major exodus of Burmese Chinese to other countries—some 100,000 Chinese left Burma. Similarly, Chinese shops were looted and set on fire. Public attention was successfully diverted by Ne Win from the uncontrollable inflation, scarcity of consumer items and rising prices of rice. The 1982 Citizenship Law further restricted Burmese citizenship for Burmese Chinese (as it stratified citizenship into three categories: full, associate, and naturalised) and severely limited Burmese Chinese, especially those without full citizenship and those holding FRCs, from attending professional tertiary schools, including medical, engineering, agricultural and economics institutions. and Kachin States. Ethnic Chinese now constitute an estimated 30 to 40 per cent of Mandalay's population. Huge swaths of land in city centre left vacant by the fires were later illegally purchased, mostly by the ethnic Chinese, many of whom were recent illegal immigrants from Yunnan. In the 1990s alone, about 250,000 to 300,000 Yunnanese were estimated to have migrated to Mandalay. There are also substantial Burmese Chinese communities outside of Myanmar, particularly in Taiwan, Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, United States (such as New York City's Henry Street) and Australia. Zhonghe District, near Taipei, Taiwan is home to 40,000 Burmese Chinese (2008), one of the largest communities outside of Myanmar.