What Americans don't realize is that Chinese people are a very very big population all over Southeast Asia.... The Chinese "diaspora" is HUGE...!
The South Asian "natives"....mostly Malays and Indonesians...but also Thais and Cambodians...did not want to work in commerce or industry...
So Chinese where 'imported"...along with Indians...to do the work... Not unlike what happen in California in the 1840's...
These same Chinese and Indians now own most of the small businesses in South Asia...NOT THE NATIVE PEOPLE....
That is really what Pol Pot was about in Cambodia...Anti-Chinese Nationalism...
The natives in this tropical region...never "got over" the subsistence farming lifestyle that supported them...
And they were very reluctant to enter the "cash/market" economy...and move to the cities...which were dominated by Chinese and Indians...
Singapore is 80% Chinese... And all the big cities in the region are dominated by Chinese businesses and merchants...
Some people think that the "laziness" of the natives was due to their Buddhist attitude...others think that the abundance of free food in the jungle was a factor... Whatever it was the natives did not leave their villages and their rice paddies...and move to the cities...
That is why the Chinese are considered a threat...in the region...
Not unlike Hitlers "concern" with the German diaspora in Eastern Europe... Few people realize that the Crimea in Ukraine had a large German population... Transylvania in Romania was heavily German...
China may decide to "liberate" their diaspora...that's what the thinking is on more military in the area...
