According to historical records, as far back as the late Tang Dynasty and the Song Dynasty, Guangdongnese began to migrate overseas. After the Opium War, colonialists contracted to send large batches of Chinese laborers to America, Australia and Southeast Asia.

In 1862, the US Congress approved the Pacific Ocean Railway Bill, which resulted in more than 10,000 Chinese laborers, mostly from Taishan in Guangdong Province, being sent to the United States.

The Tang dialect, once prevalent among Chinese Americans, was actually the Taishan dialect rather than pure Cantonese.

Although these overseas Chinese laborers were at the bottom of the social ladder, with low incomes and virtually no opportunities for education, some of them managed to save money, and on their return home opened factories. These people were the forefathers of modern industry in Guangdong.

In establishing the earliest factories in Guangdong, the overseas Chinese introduced both technologies and the necessary capital, and in the 1980s when the Chinese government decided to put into practice the reform and opening policy, overseas Chinese, once again, made great contributions to the motherland's economic revitalization.

Now, of all overseas Chinese in the world, those originating from Guangdong number 22 million, accounting for 70% of all the overseas Chinese around the world. In addition, Guangdong has a returned overseas Chinese population of 20 million.

Guangdong is noteworthy for the great number of its people who have immigrated abroad.

Most of them live in Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, the United States, Canada, Peru and Australia. The majority of the 6 million citizens in Hong Kong and Macao are descendants of people from Guangdong.

In Canada, for instance, there are many of the Chinese community of close to 1 million coming from counties on the west bank of the Pearl River Delta (the so-called "4 Counties" of Taishan, Kaiping, Enping and Xinhui).

The overseas Chinese are playing an important role in Guangdong's development through substantial remittances to their family members in the province.

They have also contributed a majority of the foreign capital invested and donations of money and materials toward construction or renovation of many schools, hospitals and other welfare projects.

Editor: Wangr