Chinese business networks

During the last few decades before World War II, Chinese traders and financiers still operated as an alien minority in the countries of the Nanyang, yet they thrived as participants in colonial exploitation of resources for export and controllers of trade. As colonialism ended during the fifteen-year period after 1945, nationalist passions in newly independent nations led to restrictions and prohibitions on Chinese businesses, and these continued through the 1970s and, in some countries, the 1980s. This inhibited domestic Chinese capital investment and motivated them to transfer capital to safe havens in Singapore and, especially, Hong Kong. Between the late 1940s and early 1950s, capital flight from China represented the earliest large flow to Hong Kong, and continued harassment of Chinese businesses in newly independent nations maintained that flow. As much as $440 million (Hong Kong dollars) entered annually between 1954 and 1963, a rate that equaled the inflow during the previous decade; this capital came from (1954–63 period totals in parentheses): Malaysia and Singapore ($1,200 million); Indonesia ($1,000 million); the Philippines ($800 million); Thailand ($800 million); and South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos ($600 million).