The modern Hmong reside mainly in Southwestern China and Mainland Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar.

[13][14][15] Yang Dao had insisted that the terms "Meo" and "Miao" were both unacceptable as his people had always called themselves by the name "Hmong," which he defined as "free men".

[13] Surrounding countries began to use the term "Hmong" after the U.S. Department of State used it during Immigration screening in Thailand's Ban Vinai Refugee Camp.

[18][19] Little is known about the origin of the Miao term and the people it referenced historically, since the Han used it loosely to identify non-Han in Southern China until the Tang Dynasty when evidence of its association with the Hmong became more apparent.

[21][22][23] The term Miao was more of a stereotype such as uncivilized, uncooperative, uncultivated, harmful, and inhumane than a name of an ethnic group and was used in daily conversations as an expression for ugliness and primitivity.

The Hmong–Mien and Sino-Tibetan speaking people are known as hill tribes in Thailand; they were the subject of the first studies to show an impact of patrilocality vs. matrilocality on patterns of mitochondrial (mt) DNA vs. the male-specific portion of the Y chromosome (MSY) variation.

[35] The author of Guoyu, written in the 4th to 5th century, considered Chi You's Jiu Li tribe to be related to the ancient ancestors of the Hmong, the San-Miao people.

[40] Conflict between the Hmong of southern China and newly arrived Han settlers increased during the 18th century under repressive economic and cultural reforms imposed by the Qing dynasty.

However, the migration process had begun as early as the late 17th century, before the time of major social unrest, when small groups went in search of better agricultural opportunities.

Arthur A. Hansen wrote: "In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while the Hmong lived in south-western China, their Manchu overlords had labeled them 'Miao' and targeted them for genocide.

The Taiping rebellion and other Chinese rebels spilled over into Vietnam and had caused anarchy; the Hmong communities thrived on either sides of the Red River, harmonizing with other ethnic groups, and were largely ignored by all factions.

In Laos, numerous Hmong genuinely tried to avoid getting involved in the conflict in spite of the extremely difficult material conditions under which they lived during wartime.

This "Secret Army" was organized into various mobile regiments and divisions, including Special Guerrilla Units, all of whom were led by General Vang Pao.

Though their role was generally kept secret in the early stages of the conflict, they made great sacrifices to help the U.S.[48] Thousands of economic and political refugees have resettled in Western countries in two separate waves.

[51][52] These events led to the yellow rain controversy when the United States accused the Soviet Union of supplying and using chemical weapons in this conflict.

[53] Small groups of Hmong people, many second or third generation descendants of former CIA soldiers, remain internally displaced in remote parts of Laos, in fear of government reprisals.

Faced with continuing military operations against them by the government and a scarcity of food, some groups have begun coming out of hiding, while others have sought asylum in Thailand and other countries.

The CPPA, backed by a bipartisan coalition of members of the U.S. Congress and human rights organizations, conducted numerous research missions to the Hmong and Laotian refugee camps along the Mekong River in Thailand, as well as the Buddhist temple of Wat Tham Krabok.

[70] The federal charges alleged that members of the group inspected weapons, including AK-47s, smoke grenades, and Stinger missiles, in order to buy and smuggle into Thailand in June 2007, where they were intended to be used by Hmong resistance forces in Laos.

Out of the 9 arrested, one was an American, Harrison Jack, a 1968 West Point graduate and retired Army infantry officer who allegedly attempted to recruit Special Operations veterans to act as mercenaries.

Simultaneous raids of the defendants' homes and work locations, involving over 200 federal, state and local law enforcement officials, were conducted in approximately 15 U.S. cities in Central and Southern California.

Multiple protest rallies in support of the suspects, designed to raise awareness of the treatment of Hmong peoples in the jungles of Laos, took place in California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Alaska.

Calls to Californian Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and President George W. Bush to pardon the defendants went unanswered pending a conclusion to the large, ongoing federal investigation.

[91] Linguistic data shows that the Hmong of the peninsula stem from the Miao of southern China as one among a set of ethnic groups belonging to the Hmong–Mien language family.

[93] Vietnam, where their presence is attested from the late 18th century onwards and characterized with both assimilation, cooperation and hostility, is likely to be the first Southeastern Eurasian country into which the Hmong migrated.

The traditional trade in coffin wood with China and cultivation of the opium poppy – not prohibited in Vietnam until 1993 – long guaranteed a regular cash income.

[98] As result of refugee movements in the wake of the Indochina Wars (1946–1975), in particular, in Laos, the largest Hmong community to settle outside Asia went to the United States where approximately 100,000 individuals had already arrived by 1990.

[107] There are smaller Hmong communities scattered across the United States, including those in Minnesota (Rochester, Mankato, Duluth); Michigan (Detroit and Warren); Anchorage, Alaska; Denver, Colorado; Portland, Oregon; Washington; North Carolina (Charlotte, Morganton); South Carolina (Spartanburg); Georgia (Auburn, Duluth, Monroe, Atlanta, and Winder); Florida (Tampa Bay); California (Merced); Wisconsin (Madison, Eau Claire, Appleton, Green Bay, Milwaukee, Oshkosh, La Crosse, Sheboygan, Manitowoc, and Wausau); Aurora, Illinois; Kansas City, Kansas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Missoula, Montana; Des Moines, Iowa; Springfield, Missouri; Arkansas, Fitchburg, Massachusetts,[107] and Providence, Rhode Island.

Hmong Catholics, Protestants, and animists have been subjected to military attacks, police arrest, imprisonment, forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and torture in Laos and Vietnam on anti-religious grounds.

[117] In Hanoi, Vietnamese government officials refused to allow medical treatment for a Hmong Christian leader, Duong Van Minh, who was suffering from a serious kidney illness, in February 2014.