Shifts in the economy of smaller towns in British Columbia and immigration caused the size of Vancouver's ethnic Chinese community to increase.

The population included 60 sawmill hands, 30 cooks and washing persons, ten store clerks, five merchants, three married women, and one prostitute.

[16] According to the census, Vancouver's Chinese population increased to 6,500, including about 600 women and over 500 children attending public schools, due to immigration from 1911-1914 and in the immediate post-World War I period, by 1921.

People with origins from Hong Kong "have been especially notable in the flow of international migrants to British Columbia which, for all intents and purposes, has meant the Vancouver region.

In 2013 Young wrote that "Anecdotal evidence suggests mainland Chinese wives commonly stay in Vancouver to provide a citizenship toehold for their absentee husbands.

[61] By the 1960s and 1970s older voluntary associations were unable to properly assist or connect with new immigrants coming from Hong Kong, and so they declined in influence and popularity.

Graham E. Johnson, the author of "Hong Kong Immigration and the Chinese Community in Vancouver", wrote that older organizations were "flourishing" at that time.

[67] The Ming Sun Benevolent Association has its offices in 441 Powell, a Japantown structure which dates to 1891 and had a front section added in 1902 by the Uchida family.

In 1964 the Vancouver area had such associations for the six places in Guangdong where most Chinese Vancouverites originated from:[60] Enping, Kaiping, Panyu, Taishan, Xinhui, and Zhongshan.

Prior to the founding of Chinese-established groups it established a job skills program, distributed information about essential services in Cantonese and English, and provided counseling.

[78] It was founded by several persons of Hong Kong origin, including Maggie Ip, who became the first chairperson, Jonathan Lau, Linda Leong, Mei-Chan Lin, and Pauline To.

[100] China Southern was scheduled to begin service to Guangzhou from Vancouver on June 15, 2011, establishing Canada's first nonstop flights to that city.

Four Chinese-language daily newspapers, Ming Pao, Sing Tao, World Journal, and Rise Weekly cater to the city's large Cantonese and Mandarin speaking population.

[23] The English-language edition of the Epoch Times, a global newspaper founded by Chinese emigres, is distributed through free boxes throughout the metropolis.

[110] The Dai Luk Bo ("Mainland Times") began publication in 1908 in Vancouver, advocated in favor of revolution in China, and was disestablished the following year.

The Freemasons, which had contributed money to the revolution but was not given favors by the Kuomintang, competed with the KMT's Canadian subsidiary, Chinese Nationalist League for political influence, including control of the Vancouver CBA.

Existing White Canadians and others in the affected neighbourhoods perceived the Chinese and their new houses as being "an assault on traditional meanings associated with suburbia.

[136] In 2013 Kerry Starchuk wrote a petition arguing that Chinese-only signs were a problem in Richmond; it was submitted to the city council by two people with over 1,000 signatures.

[137] In a 2013 editorial in the National Post Chris Selley argued that the city council was correct in ignoring the petition, citing the United States's lack of compulsory language sign laws.

That year Tristin Hopper of the National Post wrote that "Nobody will dispute that the number of Chinese-only signs in Richmond is increasing, but the vast majority still feature English text.

W. T. Stanbury and John Todd, who wrote the report The Housing Crisis: The Effects of Local Government Regulation, stated that immigration had increased in the period 1987 through 1989 and that there were significant numbers of Hong Kong immigrants who bought large houses;[151] This report cited statistics from the British Columbia Ministry of Finance and Corporate Relations.

[49] By November 2015 an academic study was released stating that Chinese investors bought about 70% of free-standing houses on the west side of Vancouver in a six-month period.

[114] To help mark the city’s centenary in 1986, volunteers affiliated with the Vancouver Chinese Cultural Centre instituted Pearl River Delta style dragon boat races on False Creek, the first of this particular variety of long paddled watercraft regatta in North America.

The first international dragon boat races were held as part of Expo 86 and the city’s first ever Tuen Ng Jit (Duan Wu Jie) festival marking the fifth day of the fifth soli-lunar reckoned calendar month was celebrated on central False Creek between the Cambie St. and Granville St. bridges in June around the traditional time of the summer solstice.

The 2010 Olympic Winter Games torch was delivered to the Opening Ceremony at BC Place, in part, via dragonboat moving up False Creek.

[172] The city is sometimes called "Hongcouver",[26] by international media[citation needed] due to the size of the Chinese population; the term is no longer used locally and is regarded as derogatory.

John Belshaw, a University of Victoria faculty member[174] and author of Becoming British Columbia: A Population History, wrote that Vancouver's "bitter elite" created the term.

[177] David Ley, author of Millionaire Migrants: Trans-Pacific Life Lines, described it as an "imagined" term bringing an "exaggerated caricature" that was "fabricated" by media in North America and Hong Kong.

[180] Katie King, the author of Networked Reenactments: Stories Transdisciplinary Knowledges Tell, wrote that Vancouver was "lampooned in economic racist terms" through the word "Hongcouver".

[180] Ian Young, a correspondent of the South China Morning Post (SCMP), titled his blog about the Hong Konger population in Vancouver "Hongcouver".