Contact with the Chinese people such as envoys, merchants, travelers and diplomats who regularly visited Indochina verifiably existed since the beginning of the common era.

[18] Shortly after the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644, Chinese troops under the command of Mac Cuu and Duong Ngan Dich encouraged large numbers of refugees from Fujian and Guangdong provinces to settle in Indochina.

Five associations were established in Cambodia, each identified by its specific region of ancestral origin in China; Cantonese, Hokkien, Hainanese, Teochew and Hakka.

This committee was the largest association of Chinese merchants in the country, and it was required by the organization's constitution to include on its fifteen-member board six people from the Teochew group, three from the Cantonese, two from the Hokkien, two from the Hakka, and two from the Hainanese.

Anti-Chinese feeling and policies emerged, however, after the coup of 1970 which saw the establishing of a pro-West government which considered the neighbouring People's Republic of China a dangerous threat - and the Chinese minorities in Cambodia as a possible fifth column.

[citation needed] While the Khmer Rouge regime appeared to have a more ‘tolerant' ethnic policy initially, it continued to discriminate against the Chinese once it had completed its takeover of Cambodia.

[citation needed] The continued discrimination, however, now rested on class rather than ethnic grounds; since the majority of urban Chinese were traders, they were classified as ‘capitalists' by the revolutionary regime.

Partly because of tensions between China and Vietnam, the new Cambodian authorities adopted restrictive measures against the remaining members of the Chinese minorities, including banning them from returning to urban trades.

With leadership that could be expected to include the recognized leaders of the national Chinese community, the federation was believed likely to continue the trend, evident since the early 1960s, to transcend dialect group allegiance in many aspects of its social, political, and economic programs.

Several of the most senior members of the Khmer Rouge were themselves of partial Chinese descent, such as Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan, Kang Kek Iew, Son Sen, Ta Mok and even Pol Pot himself.

[28] However, partial restrictions and a certain amount of suspicion remained, for the pro-Soviet PRK regime resented China's support for the Khmer Rouge guerrillas fighting against it, now renamed as the "National Army of Democratic Kampuchea" (NADK).

Observers at the time believed that the lingering anti-Chinese stance of the PRK government and of its officials in Phnom Penh made it unlikely that a Chinese community of the same scale as before the Khmer Rouge could resurface in Cambodia in the near future.

[29] Of particular note is China's economic role in the country, which encouraged Sino-Khmer businessmen to reestablish their past business which were once suppressed by the Khmer Rouge.

There has been a huge growth in Chinese-language schools, often generously supported by the government of China through subsidies, and also in the production of textbooks (in Chinese) that incorporate Cambodian history and seminars for teachers.

[32] A university field study conducted by William Willmott in 1961 found that there were 425,000 Chinese in Cambodia, which made up to approximately 7.4% of the total population at that time.

The earliest records of Teochew immigrants date back to the 16th century when some mutineers under the leadership of the Chinese pirate, Lim To Khieng settled in Cambodia.

The Chinese community dominates nearly the entirety of Cambodia's business sector and is economically prosperous relative to their small population in comparison with their indigenous Khmer counterparts.

[63][64][65] Within Cambodia's socioeconomic backdrop, its presumed assertion as a plural society is seemingly arranged in a way where one's place in the country's economic structure is stereotypically believed to be purportedly reliant and inextricably linked to one's ethnic background.

[66] William Willmot, a sinologist at the University of British Columbia estimated that 90 percent of the Chinese Cambodian community were involved in some form of commerce in 1963.

[67] Taking on and playing a crucial economic role in the country, the Chinese control almost all of Cambodia's internal trade and a substantial portion of the manufacturing including the nation's rice-milling and transportation sectors.

[68] Today, an estimated 60 percent are Chinese Cambodian urban dwellers engaging in commerce while the rest of the rural population work as shopkeepers, processors of food products (such as rice, palm sugar, fruit, and fish), and moneylenders.

[35][8] Throughout Cambodian cities, Chinese dominated numerous industries such as retail, hospitality, export-import trade, light, food processing, soft drinks, printing, and machine shops.

[65] In the rural areas of Cambodia, Cambodian businessmen of Chinese ancestry operated general shops that provided the indigenous Khmer peasants with essential purchases such as farming supplies, groceries imported from China, sampots and sarongs, bamboo baskets, perfume, kerosene for lamps, alcohol as well as tobacco.

[10] Chinese Cambodian moneylenders also wielded considerable economic power over the poorer indigenous Khmer peasants through usury at an interest rate of 10 to 20 percent per month.

[80] Following the era of post-colonial French rule, the Chinese retained their commercial dominance throughout Cambodia's economy throughout the reign of King Sihanouk (1953–1970).

[84] Chinese entrepreneurs were also able to secure contracts from the Khmer royal family, where they were granted access to vast kinship networks to marshal investment capital and shore up credit and loans as well as given privileges to operate gambling dens, opium farms, pawn brokerage houses, and fisheries throughout the country.

[61] Market reforms during the mid-1980s has attracted a large contingent of wealthy Overseas Chinese entrepreneurs and investors looking to exploit opportunities in Cambodian property development and general trading sectors.

[87] Moreover, social mechanisms that underpin these entrepreneurial trajectories largely derive from family, ethnic, cultural, and patron-client ties based on personalized and informal trust.

[61][90] The modern Cambodian business sector is highly dependent on Chinese-owned companies who control virtually the country's entire economy with their augmented patronage being enhanced by the larger presence of lawmakers and politicians who are of at least part-Chinese ancestry themselves.

The increased resurgence of Chinese cultural and economic activity in 21st-century Cambodia has triggered distrust, resentment, and anti-Chinese sentiment among the poorer indigenous Khmer majority, many of whom eke out a rudimentary daily living engaging in rural agrarian rice peasantry or fishing in stark socioeconomic contrast to their modern, wealthier, and cosmopolitan middle-class Chinese counterparts.