The formation of the Kuomintang in 1912 was the culmination of a period of reform and revolution. The reformist movement in China began with the rise of men like K'ang Yu-wei, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and Chang Chih-tung, who saw in the foreign penetration a threat to China's territorial integrity. These reformists prevailed upon the Emperor Kuairg Hsu, to adopt modern measures with a view to strengthening China. In 1898 a series of edicts were speedily passed for the reformation of China. These edicts, commonly known as the “Hundred Days Reform”, came to. nought when the Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi carried out a coup d'etat and China returned to her former ways.

Emigration from China to Singapore in particular and South-East Asia in general during the nineteenth century was not an easy process at all. The Chinese authorities at first frowned on it and sometimes the emigrants were refused re-entry into their homeland. At the same time these emigrants were not well treated on the voyage down and on arrival at their destination. Yet despite this hazardous existence once a person left China, the emigrants increased in number from 2,069 in 1838-1839, to 10,928 in 1849-1850. By 1890 the annual figure had risen to 95,400 and it passed the 100,000 mark in 1895, with 190,901. The reasons for this phenomenal rise in the number of emigrants were to be found partly in the conditions in China which were so bad that the Chinese -were willing to brave any danger to make a new start in life, but mainly in the new attractions of Singapore and South-East Asia which were so promising that they could induce the Chinese, a people naturally conservative and tied to the homeland for ancestral reasons, to emigrate, even permanently in some cases. These may seem to be sweeping statements, but a further analysis of the the facts will confirm them.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the revenue of the Straits Settlements Colony was derived to a very considerable extent from opium. Imported from India, opium in bulk was sold by the Government to Chinese merchants in Malaya who applied for the right to retail it. This monopoly, or farm, supplied the Government with almost half of its annual revenue. By 1904, in fact, it accounted for 59% of the revenue, and although measures of control were introduced in 1910, leading reluctantly to measures of restriction, the sale of opium provided Singapore and the two other Straits Settlements (Penang and Malacca), with a revenue right up to the outbreak of the Pacific War.

Soon after Raffles founded Singapore in 1819, the Chinese began to arrive in slowly increasing numbers and to form an important section of its population. Most of the immigrants came from the two southernmost maritime provinces of Kwangtung and Fukien. In the Straits there were five major groups: the Macaos, natives of Canton and neighbouring towns and villages; the Khehs from the interior of the province of Kwangtung; the Teychews, from Swatow and its vicinity; the Hailams, natives from the Island of Hainan; and the Hokiens, from Amoy and the other places in the province of Fukien.