2021/09/01 by Juliette Huber · 2 citations
Social Sciences · #Ethnology #Geography #International Development and Aid #International Relations and Foreign Policy #Law #Peacebuilding and International Security #Political science #Portuguese #Scholarship #Social science #Sociology #Southeast asia #Thriving #Timor leste
paper · pdf · doi:10.1163/9789004473263_004
openalex publication_date 2021/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Before 1975, Timor-Leste was home to a small but thriving Chinese community, numbering around 8,000 individuals. Many fled the country during Indonesia’s 24-year occupation (1975–2002) of the former Portuguese colony. Today, some 4,000 Chinese-Timorese live in Timor-Leste, while many remain abroad. Both in Timor-Leste itself as well as abroad, community members strongly identify as Chinese-Timorese. The vast majority of Chinese-Timorese are Hakka. However, the Hakka variety of Timor-Leste is endangered due to a decline in language competence among the younger generations. Until very recently, the Chinese-Timorese community was poorly represented in the scholarship on Chinese-descended communities worldwide. This chapter thus aims to give greater visibility within the field to this little-known community. It also contributes to our knowledge of Hakka varieties in Southeast Asia by offering a preliminary discussion of the linguistic properties of Timor Hakka.