The population of Cambodia today is about 10 million.
About 90-95 percent of the people are Khmer ethnic. The remaining 5-10 percent
include Chinese-Khmers, Khmer Islam or Chams, ethnic hill-tribe people, known
as the Khmer Loeu, and Vietnamese. About 10 percent of the population lives in Phnom Penh , the capital, making Cambodia largely a country of rural
dwellers, farmers and artisans.
The ethnic groups that constitute Cambodian society possess
a number of economic and demographic commonalties- for example. Chinese
merchants lived mainly in urban centers and play middlemen in many economic
cycles, but they also preserve differences in their social and cultural
institutions. They were concentrated mostly in central and in southeastern Cambodia , the
major differences among these groups lie in social organization, language, and
religion.
The majority of the inhabitants of Cambodia are
settled in fairly permanent villages near the major bodies of water in the
Tonle Sap Basin-Mekong Lowlands region. The Khmer Loeu live in widely scattered
villages that are abandoned when the cultivated land in the vicinity is
exhausted. The permanently settled Khmer and Cham villages usually located on
or near the banks of a river or other bodies of water. Cham villages usually
are made up almost entirely of Cham, but Khmer villages, especially in central
and in southeastern of Cambodia ,
typically include sizable Chinese communities.
The Khmer Loeu
The Khmer Loeu are the non-Khmer highland tribes in Cambodia . The
Khmer Loeu are found namely in the northeastern provinces of Rattanakiri, Stung
Treng, Mondulkiri and Crate. Most Khmer Loeu live in scattered temporary
villages that have only a few hundred inhabitants. These villages usually are
governed by a council of local elders or by a village headman.
The Khmer Loeu cultivate a wide variety of plants, but the
man crop is dry or upland rice growth by the slash-and-burn method. Hunting, fishing,
and gathering supplement the cultivated vegetable foods in the Khmer Loeu diet.
Houses vary from huge multi-family long houses to small
single family structures. They may be built close to the ground or on stilts. The
major Khmer Loeu groups in Cambodia
are the Kuy, Phnong, Brao, Jarai, and Rade. All but about 160,000 Kuy lived in
the northern Cambodia
provinces of Kampong Thom, Preah Vihear, and Stoeng as well as in adjacent Thailand .
The Cham
The Cham people in Cambodia descend from refugees of the
Kingdom of Champa, which one ruled much of Vietnam between Gao Ha in the north
and Bien Hao in the south.
The Cambodian Chams are divided into two groups, the
orthodox and the traditional- base on their religious practices. The orthodox
group, which make up about one-third of the total number of Chams in the
country, were located mainly in Phnom
Penh - Oudong area and in the provinces of Takeo and
Kapot.
The traditional Chams were scattered throughout the
midsection of the country in the provinces of Battambang, Kompong Thom, Kompong
Cham, and Pursat. The Chams of both groups typically live in villages inhabited
only by other Chams; the villages may be along the shores of watercourses, or
they may be inland. The inhabitants of the river villages engage in fishing and
growing vegetables. They trade fish to local Khmer for rice.
The women in these villages earn money by weaving. The Chams
who live inland support themselves by various means, depending on the villages.
Some villages specialize in metalworking; others raise fruit trees or
vegetables. The Chams also often serve as butchers of cattle for their Khmer
Buddhist neighbors and are, in some areas, regarded as skillful water buffalo
and ram breeders.
The Chinese
The Chinese in Cambodia formed the country es largest
ethnic minority. Sixty percent of the Chinese were urban dwellers engaged
mainly in commerce; the other 40 percent were rural residents working as
shopkeepers, as buyers and processors of rice, palm sugar, fruit, and fish, and
as money lenders.
It is estimated that 90 percent of the Chinese in Cambodia
were in commerce and that 92 percent of those involved in commerce in Cambodia
were Chinese. In rural Cambodia, the Chinese were moneylenders, and they
wielded considerable economic power over the ethnic Khmer peasants through
usury.
The Chinese in Cambodia represented five major linguistic
groups, the largest of which was the Teochiu (accounting about 60 percent), followed
by the Cantonese (accounting about 20 percent), the Hokkien (accounting about 7
percent), and the Hakka and the Hainanese (each accounting for 4 percent). Those
belonging to the certain Chinese linguistic groups in Cambodia tended to
gravitate to certain occupations.
The Teochiu, who make up about 90 percent of the rural
Chinese population, ran village stores, control rural credit and rice marketing
facilities, and grew vegetables. In urban areas they were often engaged in such
enterprises as the import-export business, the sale of pharmaceuticals, and
street peddling. The Cantonese, who were the majority of Chinese groups before
Teochiu migrations began in the late 1930s, live mainly in the city. Typically,
the Cantonese engages in transportation and in constriction, for the most part
as mechanics or carpenters.
The Hokkien community was involved import-export and in
banking, and it included some of the countryfs richest Chinese. The Hainanese
started out as pepper growers in Kompot
Province Phnom Penh , where, in the late 1960s, they
reportedly had virtual monopoly on the hotel and restaurant business. They also
often operated tailor shops. In Phnom
Penh , the newly arrived Hakka were typically folk
dentists, sellers of traditional Chinese medicines, and shoemakers.
The Vietnamese
The Vietnamese community is scattered throughout
southeastern and central Cambodia .
They were concentrated in Phnom Penh ,
and in Kandal, Prey Veng, and Kampong Cham provinces. No close cultural or
religious ties exist between Cambodia
and Vietnam .
The Vietnamese fall within the Chinese culture sphere, rather
within the Indian, where the Thai and Khmer belong. The Vietnamese differ from
the Khmer in mode of dress, in kinship organization, and in many other ways- for
example the Vietnamese are Mahayama Buddhists while most of the Cambodians are
Theravada Buddhists. Although Vietnamese lived in urban centers such as Phnom Penh , a substantial number lived along the lower
Mekong and Bassac rivers as well as on the shores of the Tonle
Sap , where they engaged in fishing.
