Chinese Filipinos

[26][27] While there is evidence that the Chinese had interactions with the island of Luzon and Mindanao, for the Visayas, not all historians agree such as William Henry Scott, and Isabelo de los Reyes.

[citation needed] "Sangley" was the term used during the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines to refer to any ethnic Chinese person, regardless of specific ancestral origin in China.

[33]: 142 The Spanish, who initially viewed the Sangley as a good source of manpower and commerce for the colony, gradually had shifting perspectives due to presupposed threats of Chinese invasion, which historically never materialized.

The 12-year-old traveler came from Amoy, the old name for Xiamen, an island known in ancient times as "Gateway to China"—near the mouth of Jiulong "Nine Dragon" River in the southern part of Fujian Province.

[35] Sin Lok together with the progenitors of the Lacson, Sayson, Ditching, Layson, Ganzon, Sanson and other families who fled Southern China during the reign of the despotic Qing dynasty (1644–1912) in the 18th century and arrived in Maynilad; finally, decided to sail farther south and landed at the port of Batiano river to settle permanently in "Parian" near La Villa Rica de Arevalo in Iloilo.

Some Chinese Filipinos who joined as soldiers were integrated into the 11th, 14th, 15th, 66th & 121st Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Armed Forces in the Philippines[citation needed] – Northern Luzon (USAFIP-NL) under the military unit of the Philippine Commonwealth Army started the Liberation in Northern Luzon and aided the provinces of Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, La Union, Abra, Mountain Province, Cagayan, Isabela and Nueva Vizcaya in attacking Imperial Japanese forces.

[56] Examples of those of Cantonese descent are people like Ma Mon Luk, the Tecson and Ticzon families descended from the three "Tek Sun" brothers from Guangzhou (Canton), Guangdong.

[56] Barred from owning land during the Spanish Colonial Period, most Cantonese were into the service industry, working as artisans, miners, househelpers, bakers, shoemakers, metal workers, barbers, herbal physicians, porters (cargadores / coulis), soap makers and tailors.

Chinese Filipinos and Chinese mestizos usually have multisyllabic surnames such as Angseeco (from ang/see/co/kho) Aliangan (from liang/gan), Angkeko, Apego (from ang/ke/co/go/kho), Chuacuco, Chuatoco, Chuateco, Ciacho (from Sia), Cinco (from Go), Cojuangco, Corong, Cuyegkeng, Dioquino, Dytoc, Dy-Cok, Dysangco, Dytioco, Gueco, Gokongwei, Gundayao, Kiamco/Quiamco, Kimpo/Quimpo, King/Quing, Landicho, Lanting, Limcuando, Ongpin, Pempengco, Quebengco, Siopongco, Sycip, Tambengco, Tambunting, Tanbonliong, Tantoco, Tinsay, Tiolengco, Yuchengco, Tanciangco, Yuipco, Yupangco, Licauco, Limcaco, Ongpauco, Tancangco, Tanchanco, Teehankee, Uytengsu and Yaptinchay among such others.

Important Philippine political leaders with Chinese ancestry include the current president Bongbong Marcos, and former presidents Rodrigo Duterte, Emilio Aguinaldo, Benigno Aquino III, Cory Aquino, Sergio Osmeña, Manuel Quezon and Ferdinand Marcos, former senators Nikki Coseteng, Alfredo Lim, Raul Roco, Panfilo Lacson, Vicente Yap Sotto, Vicente Sotto III and Roseller Lim, as well as several governors, congressmen and mayors throughout the Philippines.

In public safety, Teresita Ang See's Kaisa, a Chinese-Filipino civil rights group, organized the Citizens Action Against Crime and the Movement for the Restoration of Peace and Order at the height of a wave of anti-Chinese kidnapping incidents in the early 1990s.

Organizations belonging to this category include the Laspip Movement, headed by Adolfo Abadeza, as well as the Kadugong Liping Pilipino, founded by Armando "Jun" Ducat Jr. that stirred tensions around the late 1990s.

The couple and their mestizo offspring became colonial subjects of the Spanish crown, and as such were granted several privileges and afforded numerous opportunities that were denied to the unconverted and non-citizen Chinese.

The prospects and implications of the sustained trend of ongoing intermarriage between Chinese to native, mestizo Filipinos, and other outsiders, still continues to be shrouded in ambiguity, raising controversy, casting doubt, and posing uncertainty for all parties involved, even to this day.

[131] The Chinese have had a significant presence in Filipino business and industry, having been at the forefront of controlling the economy of the Philippines for many centuries long before the Spanish and American colonial eras.

[135] The American and Spanish colonizers who saw the indispensable benefit of the enterprising Chinese, harnessed their commercial expertise, contacts, capital, and presence to serve and protect their colonial economic interests.

[138][139][140][141][127][142][12][143][144][145][146][147][148][149][150][151] The enterprising Chinese minority, comprising 1 percent of the total population of the Philippines, control the country's largest and most lucrative department stores, supermarkets, hotels, shopping malls, airlines, and fast-food restaurants in addition to all of its major financial services providers, banks and stock brokerage houses, as well as dominating the nation's wholesale distribution networks, shipping lines, banks, construction, textiles, real estate, personal computer, semiconductors, pharmaceutical, mass media, and industrial manufacturing industries.

[156][157] The Chinese also dominate the Filipino telecommunications industry, where one of the current significant players in the Filipino telecom sector was the business taipan John Gokongwei, whose conglomerate JG Summit Holdings controlled 28 wholly-owned subsidiaries with interests ranging from food and agro-industrial products, hotels, insurance agencies, financial services providers, electronic components, textiles and garment manufacturing, real estate, petrochemicals, power generation, printing, newspaper publishing, packaging materials, detergents, and cement mixing.

[159] Gokongwei began his business career by starting out in food processing during the 1950s, venturing into textile manufacturing in the early 1970s, and then cornered the Filipino real estate development and hotel management industries by the end of the decade.

[162][164][165][166] Many prominent Filipino companies that are Chinese-owned focus on diverse industry sectors such as semiconductors, chemicals, real estate, engineering, construction, fibre-optics, textiles, financial services, consumer electronics, food, and personal computers.

[184] Emerging import-substituting light industries induced the active participation and ownership of Chinese entrepreneurs being involved in various several salt works in addition to a large number of small and medium-sized producers engaged in food processing as well as the production of leather and tobacco goods.

The Chinese also hold enormous sway over the Filipino food processing industry with approximately 200 outlets being involved in this sector alone predominating the eventual export of their finished products to Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan.

[201] By 1948, the economic standing of the Chinese community began to elevate even further allowing them to wield considerable influence by expanding their commercial business presence across the Filipino retail industry.

[13][193] On a microscopic scale, the Hokkien community have a proclivity to run capital intensive businesses such as banks, commercial shipping lines, rice mills, dry goods, and general stores while the Cantonese gravitated towards hotels, restaurants, and laundromats.

[217] From small trade cooperatives clustered by hometown pawnbrokers, Filipinos of Chinese ancestry would go on to establish and incorporate the largest financial services institutions in the country.

[193] Filipinos of Chinese ancestry also wield enormous clout over the Philippines's real estate sector with much of the modern industry's grip being commercially grasped in their shrewdly enterprising and investment-savvy clutches.

[230] Since the 1980s, Filipino businessmen and investors of Chinese ancestry have cornered much of the Philippines's real estate investment markets, land, and property development sectors, when much of the industry's grasp had long been held by the Spaniards.

These corporate partnerships were largely forged by Overseas Chinese business tycoons such as the investor Liem Sioe Liong, businessman Robert Kuok and dealmakers Andrew Gotianun, Henry Sy, George Ty and Lucio Tan.

[240] Instead of quixotically diverting excess profits elsewhere, many Filipino businesspeople of Chinese ancestry are known for their penurious and parsimonious ways by eschewing improvident lavish extravagances and frivolous conspicuous consumption but instead adhere to the Chinese paradigm of being frugal by pragmatically, productively, and methodically reinvesting substantial surpluses of their business profits devoted for the purpose of commercial business expansion and performing the acquisition of cash flow producing and income-generating assets.

A sizable percentage of the conglomerates managed by capable Filipino entrepreneurs and investors of Chinese ancestry that are armed with the necessary managerial capabilities, enterprising disposition, commercial expertise, entrepreneurial acumen, investment savvy, and visionary foresight were able to germinate from small budding enterprises to making headway into gargantuan corporate leviathans garnering widespread economic influence across the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and the global financial markets.