The Chinese would never forget the massacres and plundering of their country by the foreign invaders from Europe and also Japan. They ganged up to invade Manchu China and robbed China of its wealth, then the richest country in the world. The war indemnities from the invasion and the wars to sell opium in China bankrupted the Manchu Dynasty. They had no more funds to run the country as it was before and had to impose heavy taxes on the already poor citizens hit by wars, famines and droughts. There was literary nothing left in China and decent work was non existence.
Then came the Japanese invaders attempting to colonise the whole of China, a second phase of massacres and looting and plundering. More unequal treaties, more land carved away by the Japanese, including the Ryukyu island chain of today's Okinawa, Diaoyu Islands and Taiwan.
When the Japanese were finally driven out of China, there was no economy to talk about in China. A hundred years of foreign domination, semi colonisation and wars depleted everything in the Chinese govt's treasury, depleted the soul of the Chinese citizenry. China was robbed of every penny in the Treasury, in the whole country, and still not enough, still in debt to the invaders. China was again at Year 0, so to speak, to start everything from nothing in 1949.
The outflow of Chinese gathered speed, from the 19th Century to the early 20th Century. There was no industry of reasonable scale to provide employment for the masses of impoverished Chinese, actually hardly any industry existed other than agriculture, handicraft and small traders. The hungry masses had to seek a living elsewhere. The British started by providing indenture labour to Malaya to provide coolie manpower in the rubber plantations and tin mining as well as coolies for the ports. Many left for the Americas and Australia to work in the gold mines, many were cheated and sold as semi slave workers.
China was like the proverbial rich village landlord being robbed and killed by the gangsters or bandits coming down from the hills. The people, the children of the landlord became poor orphans. Some died, some ran away, and a few were kept by the bandits as workers. When the children grew up, many forgot that the rich landlords were the bandits that killed their parents and stole their homes and wealth that forced them to flee their homeland. Those that were given better jobs by the bandits turned landlords were grateful to their benefactors and willingly served their new masters. They forgot that the wealth of the bandit landlords were theirs in the first place and they were serving the murderers of their parents. These are the Chinese diaspora of today, descendants of a very poor and broken China.
Some of the children worked their way to rebuild their lives and their fortune. They grew up in the hard way and not forgetting how it all began and the history behind their sad past. Now they are strong enough to want back the wealth and properties stolen from their parents by the bandit landlords. The latter accused them of being assertive and aggressive and spread lies about their 'bad' behaviour, to want to live a better life and to want to take back what were stolen from their parents.
Some of the diaspora could not understand why, did not know why, also sided with the bandit landlords and hate their forgotten brothers for being assertive and demanding the return of their assets and land. Some of these Chinese diaspora even despised their long lost brothers thinking that they are overbearing and over reaching, unreasonable, to want to seize the wealth of the bandit landlords that gave them good jobs and a good life, a life better than their long lost kins.
This is the tragic story of the Chinese diaspora, acknowledging the thiefs and murderers as their benefactors without knowing why they became the diaspora, eking a living in far off land, away from their impoverished country of origin. They think, live and act like they are part of the bandit landlords and yes, they hate their lost long kins.
They even could not see that the bandit landlords are getting poorer with no free wealth and properties to rob to feed their good life. They think their good life, a given to them by their gracious and generous bandit landlords would continue forever. They could not see that their long lost kins have rebuilt their fortunes and would be richer than their bandit landlords and deserved a rightful place under the sun.
The diaspora have forgotten their roots, their origins and how they became the diaspora, also by courtesy from the good grace of the bandit landlords that killed their parents and stole their wealth and everything from them. Their parents were like the refugees today running away from their war torn and destroyed homes and countries. When would the diaspora know who they really are and wake up from their fake existence, calling and treating the murderers of their parents as fathers, the bandits that made them poor and had to run away from home, from a place called China?