Asian diaspora

The Asian diaspora is the diasporic group of Asian people who live outside of the continent. There are several prominent groups within the Asian diaspora.

Asian diasporas have been noted for having an increasingly transnational relationship with their ancestral homelands, especially culturally through the use of digital media.

Asians have a long history of migrating internally within Asia. Overland trading routes such as the Silk Road, and maritime routes through the Indo-Pacific enabled ancient exchanges. Since the late 19th century, Asian migration has greatly increased because of the impacts of colonialism and globalisation, which enabled new types of migration; for example, European empires' global reach and consolidation paved the way for the Indian indenture system. Increasing border enforcement by modern nation-states has stymied traditional migration flows, however.

The Central Asian diaspora of the modern era is shaped to a significant extent by the expansion of and displacement caused by the Soviet Union.

Young people have started migrating from East Asia in much larger numbers since the 1990s.

Overseas Chinese people or the Chinese diaspora are a diaspora people of Chinese origin who reside outside Greater China (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan). As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese. As of 2023, there were 10.5 million people living outside mainland China who were born in mainland China, corresponding to 0.7 percent of China's population. Overall, China has a low percent of its population living overseas.

The Chinese people have a long history of migrating overseas, as far back as the 10th century. One of the migrations dates back to the Ming dynasty when a Chinese of Iranian ancestry Zheng He (1371–1435) became the envoy of Ming empire. He sent people – many of them Cantonese and Hokkien – to explore and trade in the South China Sea and in the Indian Ocean. It was during this time that the Malacca Strait and Malacca Sultanate developed as a maritime hub in the newly established Maritime Silk Road.

In the mid-1800s, outbound migration from China increased as a result of the European colonial powers opening up treaty ports. The British colonization of Hong Kong further created the opportunity for Chinese labor to be exported to plantations and mines.