Although only about 150 native Chinese live in Cuba today, in the mid-1800s, there were more than 100,000, nearly all of them men. They were brought to Cuba as indentured laborers, enticed by worthless contracts that promised them freedom after eight years. Many died on sugar plantations not long after arriving.
Chinese immigration to Cuba started in 1837 when Chinese (Cantonese and Hakka) contract workers were brought to work in the sugar fields, bringing the religion of Buddhism with them.
Chinese indentured immigration to Cuba started in 1847, nearly four decades prior to the official abolition of African slavery in the island. The first indentured servants from China disembarked at the port of Regla from the ship Oquendo, one of the Cuban-owned vessels frequently used in the Middle Passage.
Today (2021) it is estimated that less than 100 remain. Due to the community's long presence, there are many ethnic Chinese in Cuba today, numbering about 100,000 and accounting for about one percent of the total population.
Cuba was the first country in the Western hemisphere to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, and China-Cuba relations have become an example of solidarity and cooperation between socialist countries and sincere mutual assistance between developing countries.
Canada: $73 million (Excludes short and medium-term commercial debts to Canadian suppliers.) Japan: $1.7 billion (Japan is Cuba's principal creditor, excluding the former Soviet Union.) China: $400 million.
At its height, in the late 1870s, there were more than 40,000 Chinese in Cuba. In Havana, they established “El Barrio Chino” or Chinatown, which grew to 44 square blocks and was once the largest such community in Latin America.
Thailand has the largest overseas Chinese community and is also the most successful case of assimilation, with many claiming Thai identity. For over 400 years, Thai Chinese have largely intermarried and/or assimilated with their compatriots.
Cuba is a multiracial society with a population of mainly Spanish and African origins. The largest organized religion is the Roman Catholic Church.
Cuba is a Caribbean island nation with a population of 11 million. It is a significantly diverse country, with 64% of the country identifying as white, 27% identifying as mixed race, and 9% identifying as Afro-Cuban.
As immigration from Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong continues, the Chinese American communities in both large cities and suburbs continue to adapt to the challenges that come with a growing and diverse culture. In the meantime, Chinese immigrants and their descendants have had an increasingly great impact on U.S. culture.
Among the West Eurasian fraction, the vast majority of individuals belong to West European haplogroup R1b. The African lineages found in Cubans have a Western (haplogroups E1, E2, E1b1a ) and Northern (E1b1b-M81 ) African origin. The North African haplogroup E1b1b1b (E-M81), is found at a frequency of 6.1%.
British and Chinese agents responded by shipping out indentured labourers from China. Most of the Chinese immigrants were from the densely populated southern provinces of Guangdong (Kwangtung) and Fujian (Fukien).
A number of factors lay behind people's decision to leave their Chinese homes. Some of them were escaping from the Taiping Rebellion, others were too poor in their homeland. Thousands of people were murdered in the Taiping Rebellion War. They gave up all hope and immigrated to other countries.
This rapid influx of hundreds of thousands of mainly male South Asians was due to the need for indentured servants. This is largely tied to the abolition of black slavery in the Caribbean colonies in 1834.
Today, there are only 150 Chinese-born residents living in the Latin country, but somewhere around 114,000 Cubans with mixed Chinese heritage. Most do not speak Chinese and have never been to China, yet feel a strong connection to their Asian heritage.
Cubans themselves are, as recent DNA studies prove, partially Africans. But Cuba's expression of African culture evolved primarily as a mechanism of existential survival and adaptation for the African men and women that experienced slavery, dehumanization, and racism on the island for 350 years.
The first group originated from northern South America (Venezuela and Guyana), settled in Trinidad around 6,000 BCE, and then expanded to the north along the Lesser Antilles1,2. The second group moved around 4,500–4,000 BCE from the Yucatan Peninsula to Hispaniola and Cuba—the largest island of the Greater Antilles1,2.
At the 2021 census, 1,390,637 Australian residents identified themselves as having Chinese ancestry, accounting for 5.5% of the total population.
94% of China's population lives east of the Heihe–Tengchong Line. West of the line: 57% of the area; only 6% of the population. East of the line: 43% of the area; 94% of the population. The line roughly demarcates historic Han China from territories occupied by force.
China is about 1.2 times bigger than Australia.
Australia is approximately 7,741,220 sq km, while China is approximately 9,596,960 sq km, making China 24% larger than Australia. Meanwhile, the population of Australia is ~26.1 million people (1.4 billion more people live in China).
The original inhabitants of Cuba were the indigenous Ciboney and other Arawak speaking groups.
From the 1500s, Spanish colonizers brought about 8,000 Africans, largely from West Africa, to Cuba as slaves, to work the sugar plantations. By 1838, at their peak, there were nearly 400,000 slaves on the island.
Yet Cuba remained one of Spain's two colonies in the New World. (The other was Puerto Rico.) It was governed from Madrid much as it had been governed since it was first occupied and settled by the Spaniards in 1511.
In 2020, the African countries with the largest Chinese debt were Angola ($25 billion), Ethiopia ($13.5 billion), Zambia ($7.4 billion), the Republic of the Congo ($7.3 billion), and Sudan ($6.4 billion).