 | ||
Chinese Surinamese are Surinamese residents of Chinese origin. They are predominantly found in Surinam, as well as in the Netherlands and the Dutch Antilles, especially Curaçao. Chinese Surinamese are a small part of the Surinamese people. There are about 40,000 Chinese among the 566,846 Surinamese people, constituting about 7% of the total population. The majority of the Chinese Surinamese consider Hakka (Dongguan, Huiyang or Bao'an) of Guangdong as their ancestral homes. There is a small minority of Heshan, Guangdong Hakka as well.
Contents
Many Chinese Surinamese are active in the retail and business community. Six percent of the Chinese in the Netherlands are from Suriname.
Contract workers
In 1853, planters in Suriname feared a labor shortage when slavery was about to be abolished. They asked the government to recruit other workers from abroad.
The government of Java recruited a group of 18 Chinese for contract labor in the Catharina Sophia plantation in Saramacca. Because of the high acquisition costs, it was decided to get a second group, not from Java, but from China instead. In 1858, 500 Chinese laborers were recruited by the Dutch consul in Macau. They arrived in Suriname in April, but it turned out that no one wanted to hire people to do work that slaves would do "for free".
Because of this, the contract with the Chinese was changed without their knowledge by Governor Charles Pierre Schimpf, in favor of the employers. The Chinese could now be treated like slaves. When they would revolt against this, they were, without due process and contrary to existing regulations, punished by police with cane strokes, an unlawful act that was repeated again and again.
An interpellation (formal request for information) to the Minister of Colonies Jan Jacob Rochussen did not help.
In the 1850s and 1860s, about 2,500 Chinese people went to Suriname. Most were employed as contract laborers on the plantations. After their contracts expired, many found opportunities in trade, mostly in food retail. Most of the male laborers were married to non-Chinese women. Those who married Chinese women, mostly married with an imported bride.
Later immigrants
Other Chinese came to Suriname as free laborers, traders and shop assistants, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. Further large numbers came in the 1990s. In 2007, there were over 70,000 Chinese in Suriname, and the immigration is still ongoing. The rapidly growing demand in China for wood and minerals makes Suriname very attractive to Chinese businesses. The new Chinese migrants from northern China are known in Suriname as "salt-water-Chinese".
Since the 1960s, thousands of Chinese have emigrated from Suriname to the Netherlands.
The Chinese held a prominent position in small and medium business for a long time, and their mostly well-educated offspring of mixed ancestry or Chinese ancestry can be found in various social sectors. Also, the Surinamese people have adopted several Chinese customs.
Language
The original Chinese settlers were Hakka from the Fuitungon region of Guangdong; Fui5tung1on1 means three places: Huiyang or Fui5jong2, Dongguan or tung1kon1, and Bao'an County or pau3on1, Kejia (Hakka) was originally present and became the "old Chinese" of Guyana. It was previously the only spoken variety of Chinese in the country. Paul Brendan Tjon Sie Fat of the University of Amsterdam stated that Hakka people in Suriname do not frequently voice negative attitudes towards the fact that Kejia has a lower status than Dutch in Suriname.
In the 1970s Cantonese was introduced into Suriname. Beginning in the 1990s new migrants from China moved to Suriname, and Putonghua, during circa 2004-2014, became the main Chinese lingua franca in the country.
There are Mandarin and Cantonese television shows aired in Suriname.