Chindian (Hindi: चीनी-भारतीय; Chinese: 中印人; pinyin: Zhōngyìnrén; Cantonese Yale: Jūngyanyàn; Tamil: சிந்தியன்; Telugu: చిండియన్స్); is an informal term used to refer to a person of mixed Chinese and Indian ancestry; i.e. from any of the host of ethnic groups native to modern China and modern India. There are a considerable number of Chindians in Malaysia and Singapore. In Maritime Southeast Asia, people of Chinese and Indian origins immigrated in large numbers during the 19th and 20th centuries. There are also a sizeable number living in Hong Kong and smaller numbers in other countries with large overseas Chinese and Indian diaspora, such as Jamaica, Martinique, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname and Guyana in the Caribbean, as well as the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and also in Mauritius.

The term "Chindian" is a portmanteau for both "Chinese" and "Indian" people.

There are around 45,000–48,000 Indian nationals/expatriates living in mainland China as of 2015.

25,000 of the Muslims in Hong Kong trace their roots back to what is now Pakistan. Around half of them belong to 'local boy' families, Muslims of mixed Chinese (Tanka) and Indian/Pakistani ancestry, descended from early Indian/Pakistani male immigrants who took local Chinese wives and brought their children up as Muslims and many remained there after the handover from Britain to China in 1997 as part of the SAR. These "local Indians" were not completely accepted by either the Chinese or Indian communities.

There are tiny communities of Chinese who migrated to India during the British Raj and became naturalised citizens of India and there are 189,000 estimated total ethnic Chinese of Chindian or full Chinese ancestry. The community living in Kolkata numbers around 4,000 and 400 families in Mumbai, where there are Chinatowns. Chinese Indians also contributed to the development of fusion Indian Chinese cuisine (Chindian cuisine), which is now an integral part of the Indian culinary scene.

There are an estimated 5,000–7,000 Chinese expatriates living in India as of 2015, having doubled in number in recent years. Most work on 2 to 3 year contracts for the growing number of Chinese brands and companies doing business in India.

During the British Raj, some Chinese "convicts"^{[clarification needed]} deported from the Straits Settlements were sent to be jailed in Madras in India. The "Madras district gazetteers, Volume 1" reported an incident where the Chinese convicts escaped and killed the police sent to apprehend them: "Much of the building work was done by Chinese convicts sent to the Madras jails from the Straits Settlements (where there was no sufficient prison accommodation) and more than once these people escaped from the temporary buildings' in which they were confined at Lovedale. In 186^ seven of them got away and it was several days before they were apprehended by the Tahsildar, aided by Badagas sent out in all directions to search. On 28 July in the following year twelve others broke out during a very stormy night and parties of armed police were sent out to scour the hills for them. They were at last arrested in Malabar a fortnight later. Some police weapons were found in their possession and one of the parties of police had disappeared—an ominous coincidence. Search was made all over the country for the party and at length, on 15 September, their four bodies were found lying in the jungle at Walaghát, half way down the Sispára ghát path, neatly laid out in a row with their severed heads carefully placed on their shoulders. It turned out that the wily Chinamen, on being overtaken, had at first pretended to surrender and had then suddenly attacked the police and killed them with their own weapons." Other Chinese convicts in Madras who were released from jail then settled in the Nilgiri mountains near Naduvattam and married Tamil Paraiyan women, having mixed Chinese-Tamil children with them. They were documented by Edgar Thurston. Paraiyan is also anglicised as "pariah".

Edgar Thurston described the colony of the Chinese men with their Tamil pariah wives and children: "Halting in the course of a recent anthropological expedition on the western side of the Nilgiri plateau, in the midst of the Government Cinchona plantations, I came across a small settlement of Chinese, who have squatted for some years on the slopes of the hills between Naduvatam and Gudalur and developed, as the result of ' marriage ' with Tamil pariah women, into a colony, earning an honest livelihood by growing vegetables, cultivating coffee on a small scale and adding to their income from these sources by the economic products of the cow. An ambassador was sent to this miniature Chinese Court with a suggestion that the men should, in return for monies, present themselves before me with a view to their measurements being recorded. The reply which came back was in its way racially characteristic as between Hindus and Chinese. In the case of the former, permission to make use of their bodies for the purposes of research depends essentially on a pecuniary transaction, on a scale varying from two to eight annas. The Chinese, on the other hand, though poor, sent a courteous message to the effect that they did not require payment in money, but would be perfectly happy if I would give them, as a memento, copies of their photographs." Thurston further describe a specific family: "The father was a typical Chinaman, whose only grievance was that, in the process of conversion to Christianity, he had been obliged to 'cut him tail off.' The mother was a typical Tamil Pariah of dusky hue. The colour of the children was more closely allied to the yellowish tint of the father than to the dark tint of the mother and the semimongol parentage was betrayed in the slant eyes, flat nose and (in one case) conspicuously prominent cheek-bones." Thurston's description of the Chinese-Tamil families were cited by others, one mentioned "an instance mating between a Chinese male with a Tamil Pariah female" A 1959 book described attempts made to find out what happened to the colony of mixed Chinese and Tamils.