In the nineteenth century, Chinese mestizos played a significant role in

Philippine society. They were crucial in the development of the Filipino middle class,
the push for reforms, the 1898 revolution, and the creation of the current Filipino
nationality. And up until now they are still play a big role in the nations economy.
The Evolution of the Chinese Meztizo
Although the Chinese who lived on the islands before the Spanish
colonization had married native women, it was not until the Spanish colonial
government that the Chinese Mestizo emerged as a legally distinct class. A sizable
Chinese colony grew up not long after the Spaniards founded the city of Manila in
1571. Chinese people provided a wide range of services for the requirements of the
capital, including trade, crafts, and domestic work. The Chinese population grew
tremendously as a result of encouragement for immigrants to come and settle.
However, the Spaniards perceived this as a possible threat to their own power in this
rapid increase. They were concerned that the Chinese, an ethnic group with Chinese
roots, would be less devoted to the Spanish government than the Christianized
locals, also known as Indios during the Spanish colonial era. As a result, the Spaniards
were in a difficult situation they desired the Chinese for their crucial contributions to
the economy but were afraid and skeptical of their expanding numbers. However,
this problem was overcome by the conversion of the Chinese and the
encouragement of unions between Catholic Chinese and Catholic Indios. The
missionaries helped make this objective a success. The friars made a concerted effort
to evangelize the Chinese as they followed their calling among them. This gave rise
to the justification for the establishment of Chinese special communities, the most
significant of which was the Binondo Community that was established in 1594.
By 1600, there were more than 500 married Catholics living there thanks to
the Dominicans' aggressive conversion of the area. Mestizo descendants and Chinese
residents were both enrolled in the same Gremio de Chino (Chinese Guild) when it
was established in 1687. Around 5,000 Chinese mestizos lived in Binondo in 1738.
Similar Chinese mestizo populations have grown elsewhere. In the Santa Cruz
neighborhood, the Jesuits had founded a Catholic Chinese community, which later
gave rise to a mestizo community . The calced religious of St. Augustine were in
charge of the Chinese mestizos and the Indios in Tondo Village . In Iloilo around the
beginning of the 17th century, more than 100 Chinese were wed to indigenous
women . Following a massacre of Chinese in Manila in 1603, a large number of
Chinese fled to Pampanga and got married to indigenous women . The Parian of
Cebu was a predominately Chinese mestizo group in the early 18th century.
neighborhood .
The Limahong expedition, which established a transient colony in the
Lingayen Gulf in 1574–1575, intermarried with the upland women, the Igorots and
Tinggians, in northern Luzon, where marriages between Chinese and lowland natives
had already occurred. Numerous writers have credited this Chinese infusion for the
Igorots' lighter skin tone and graceful build. It is noteworthy that Lingayen, a town in
Pangasinan where Limahong had established a brief kingdom, had the highest
concentration of Chinese mestizos. They made up 2,793 of the 6,490 native people in
1787. An expanding class of Chinese mestizos was created by the widespread
marriages of many Chinese with Indio women. The issue of Chinese mestizos' legal
standing developed as their number grew. The people of the Philippines were
divided into three groups from the start of the Spanish occupation until around
1740: Spaniards, Indios, and Chinese. The legal status of Chinese mestizos was finally
resolved in 1741 when the entire population was reclassified for the purposes of
tribute or tax payment into four classes: Indios, Chinese mestizos, and Chinese, who
were all tribute-paying classes although each class was assessed a different amount.
Spaniards and Spanish mestizos were exempt from the tribute. 121,621 Chinese
mestizos were present in the 2,395,676 person Indio population by 1810. The
number of Chinese mestizo people rose to over 240,000 in 1850, compared to more
than 4,000,000 Indios. Chinese mestizos made up at least one-third of the
population in a dozen provinces, while they made up between 5% and 16% of the
population in another dozen of the residents in the area. By this point, every town
had a noticeable inflow of Chinese blood. By the end of the nineteenth century,
there were around
46,000 Chinese mestizos live in Manila out of the 500,000 total.
Chinese mestizos were defined as anyone born to an Indio mother and a
Chinese father. Children of mestizas who wed Chinese or other mestizos were also
recognized as mestizos. Nevertheless, a Chinese mestiza who wed an Indio was listed
as Indio, along with her children.
Sometimes a mestizo kept the name of his Chinese father, giving rise to
surnames like Co, Tan, Lim, Yap, Ong, and Uy that are transliterated from the
Chinese ideograph. A second option was to develop a Filipino name created by
merging elements of the Chinese father's complete name. Therefore, the mestizo
children may elect to create a new name, Teehankee, even though the Chinese
father's full name was Tee Han-kee.
The same theory explains the proliferation of names that were originally
Chinese and were later romanized into forms like Yuzon, Limkao, Limcauco, and
Leongson. For example, if a Chinese name like Yap Tin-chay had been known as Yap-
tinco, the new name might have been Yaptinco by adding the Hokkien polite suffix
Ko (meaning "elder brother") to the personal name. This explains why there are
several Filipino names with the letter "co" in use today, including Sychangco,
Angangco, Tantoco, Tanchanco, Tantuico, Tanlayco, Cojuangco, Syjuco, Ongsiako,
Soliongco, Yupangco, Tanco,  Yangco, and many more.

The Chinese Mestizos as Middle Class

The formation of the Philippine middle class was made possible by the
Chinese mestizo's growth as an entrepreneur between the 1750s and the 1850s.
John Bowing noted that they were "more active and enterprising, more cautious and
pioneering, and more oriented to trade and commerce than the Europeans,"
inheriting the economic dynamism of their Chinese ancestors.
Chinese mestizos were allowed to enter marketplaces that had previously
been out of reach because to the deportation of many of them in the late 1760s for
their assistance with the British who had occupied Manila in 1762–1764 and the
prohibition of those who remained in Manila from traveling to the provinces being
the Chinese's domain.
In the absence of much of the Chinese traders, the Chinese mestizos became
the provisioners of the colonial government, the foreign enterprises and citizens of
Manila. In the capital, the Chinese mestizos shared economic power with the
Chinese as exporters-importers, wholesalers, retail dealers and owners of majority of
the artisan businesses. In the provinces around Manila, they basically took over from
the Chinese as retailers. Chinese mestizos south of Manila, mainly in Laguna and
Pasay, were involved in landholding and wholesale trade by the early 1800s. North of
Manila, the Chinese mestizos of Tondo, Malabon, Polo, Obando, Mey- cauayan and
Bocaue were involved in rice growing as lessees of estates and as intermediaries
dealing between Manila and the Pampanga-Bulacan area which produced rice and
salt. Chinese mestizos in Pasig, which is east of Manila, were experts in wholesale
and retail trading between Manila and Laguna.
Chinese mestizos managed wholesale trade between the islands of the
Visayas. Coastline trade among the several islands in Manila was sparked by the
opening of the port of Manila in the 1830s, followed by those of Sual, Iloilo, and
Cebu. The country's opening to international traders permitted an increase in the
export of tropical goods for the global market, including indigo, sugar, coffee,
coconut, tobacco, and hemp.With Cebu, Molo, and Jaro in Iloilo, as well as Cebu,
Manila conducted a profitable intra-island trade. Mestizo traders sailed from Cebu to
Leyte, Samar, Caraga, Misamis, Negros, and Panay to collect native goods like
tobacco. Mother-of-pearl, chocolate, coconut oil, coffee, gold, wax, rice, sea slugs,
and so on. These items were delivered to Manila, where they were bought by
Chinese buyers and sold to European buyers, who brought back produced goods for
distribution all around the Visayas. Chinese mestizos in Molo and Jaro gathered
related things in the Visavas for shipment to Manila and purchased goods from
Europe to resell in Molo, Jaro, and other cities. Mestizos from Molo and Jaro also
produced pina cloth for export. This flourishing coast-to-coast trade made Cebu and
affluent Iloilo. Tobacco was purchased by Chinese mestizo traders in Nueva Ecija and
Cagayan and shipped the merchandise to Manila . Numerous Chinese mestizo and
Indio merchants were motivated to clear and cultivate increasingly larger quantities
of land by the demand for sugar and other tropical goods. The manufacturing and
selling of sugar was carried out by Chinese mestizos in Pampanga, Bulacan, Bataan,
Batangas, Laguna, Cebu, Negros, and Iloilo. The Spanish colonial rulers in the 1840s
pushed the Chinese to return to the Philippines to hasten the growth of the
economy when the port of Manila was opened.
 From 6,000 in 1847 to 18,000 in 1865, 30,000 in 1876, and 100,000 in the
1880s, Chinese immigration accelerated. As wholesalers and dealers, the newcomers
who dispersed to the provinces started to supplant the Chinese mestizos. Many of
the uprooted mestizos transitioned to export crop farming and acquired land. more
changed careers to become doctors, attorneys, writers, or journalists, and still more
went into different jobs. The development of the Chinese mestizo middle class as an
economically independent group, both in Manila and the provinces, coincided with
the shift of Philippine agriculture from subsistence to export production in the
middle of the 19th century. Thus, although being eased out of the retail trade, the
Chinese Mestizo did not lose all of their sources of economic income or their social
prestige.

The Rise of the Middle Class to Social Prestige

The economic prosperity of the Chinese mestizos significantly raised their
level of living and raised their social standing. The people of this middle class would
express themselves in innovative artistic ways because they were unwilling to accept
the limitations of the past. In the homes of the wealthy by the middle of the 19th
century, elegance had replaced simple comfort. The Hispanic-European paradigm of
the new middle class, which was frequently graceful and well-bred, was becoming
firmly established in many pueblos and towns. The mestizo's elegantly crafted house
and exquisitely carved furniture demonstrated his acquaintance with European
customs. Nearly every pueblo in the villages surrounding Manila, according to
Bowing, has some larger and better-designed homes than the others, primarily
occupied by a  mixed race of Chinese descent. The riches they accumulated and how
they spent it, According Wickberg, designated them as the arbiters of taste,
traditions, and way of life. Like the natives, they wear their skirts over their trousers,
but the shirts are made of pina or sinamay and fastened with buttons of valuable
chains, and a gold chain is rarely lacking, suspended around the neck. John Bowing
wrote in 1850 that "many of them adopt the European costume, but where they
retain the native dress it is finer in quality, gayer in color, and richer in ornament."
The sexes displayed a significant level of dandyism and coquetry, with the men
frequently donning European hats and stockings.
They (the Chinese mestizos) are luxuriously dressed and more attractive and
handsome than the Indians. Some of their women are unquestionably stunning.
However, they serve the majority of Indian customs because they pay
exceptional attention to detail and religious obligations due to their superior
intelligence.
The economic and political elite made up the intellectual elite throughout the
colonial era because higher education remained a luxury of affluent families. The
Chinese mestizo middle class may have appeared nearly insignificant in terms of
numbers, but thanks to their high levels of education, affluence, and social standing,
they were able to shape public opinion. Regardless of their origins in terms of race,
class, or economics, Chinese migrants frequently held prominent positions in local
communities' political as well as social spheres. The frequent recurrence of names of
Chinese mestizos in the cabeza of governor-nadorcillo lists for the provinces around
the turn of the 19th century revealed significant assimilation of the native
aristocracy ranked by Chinese mestizos.
The Rise of Chinese Mestizo

In a larger perspective, the fast rhythm of economic progress in the

Philippines during the 19th century expedited by some mentioned factors resulted in
the rise of a new breed of rich and influential Filipino middle class. Non-existent in.
earlier centuries, this class, composed of Spanish and Chinese mestizos ascended to
a position of power in the Philippine society and in due course became leaders in
education and finance. This middle class included:
“ the ilustrados who belonged to the landed gentry and who were highly
respected in their respective pueblos or towns, though regarded as filibusteros or
rebels by the friars. The relative prosperity of the period has enabled them to send
their sons to Spain and Europe for higher studies. Most of them later became
members of freemasonry and active in the Propaganda Movement. Some of them
sensed the failure of reformism and turned to radicalism, and looked up to Rizal as
their leader." (Vallano, n.d.)