Chinese South Africans () are Overseas Chinese who reside in South Africa, including those whose ancestors came to South Africa in the early 20th century until Chinese immigration was banned under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1904. Significant numbers of Taiwanese industrialists immigrated to South Africa between the 1970s and early 1990s, and post-apartheid immigrants to South Africa (predominantly from mainland China) now outnumber locally-born Chinese South Africans. South Africa has the largest population of ethnic Chinese people in Africa,
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! Gender || 1904 || 1911 || 1921 || 1936
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! scope="row" colspan="5" style="color:teal;"| Natal Province
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| Male || 161 || 161 || 75 || 46
|-
| Female || 4 || 11 || 33 || 36
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! scope="row" colspan="5" style="color:green;"| Cape Province
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| Male || 1366 || 804 || 584 || 782
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| Female || 14 || 19 || 148 || 462
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! scope="row" colspan="5" style="color:#900;"| Transvaal Province
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| Male || 907 || 905 || 828 || 1054
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| Female || 5 || 5 || 160 || 564
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! scope="row" colspan="5" style="color:#900;"|
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| Total || 2457 || 1905 || 1828 || 2944
|}
First settlers
The first Chinese to settle in South Africa were prisoners, usually debtors, who were sent from Batavia by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to the Dutch Cape Colony. The VOC originally planned on recruiting Chinese immigrants to settle in the Cape Colony as farmers, thereby helping secure the colony's existence and create a tax base which would ensure the Cape Colony was less of a drain on Dutch coffers. However, the Dutch failed to find anyone in the Chinese community in Batavia who was prepared to volunteer to go to such a far off place. There were also some free Chinese settlers in the Cape Colony. They made a living through fishing and farming and traded their produce for other required goods. From 1660 until the late 19th century the number of Chinese people in the Cape Colony never exceeded 100. through to the early 20th century initially in hopes of making their fortune on the diamond and gold mines in Kimberley and the Witwatersrand respectively. Most were independent immigrants mostly coming from Canton Province. Due to anti-Chinese sentiment and racial discrimination at the time they were prevented from obtaining mining contracts and so became entrepreneurs and small business owners instead.
The Chinese community in South Africa grew steadily throughout the remainder of the 19th century, bolstered by new arrivals from China. The Second Boer War, fought between 1899 and 1902, pushed some Chinese South Africans out of the Witwatersrand and into areas such as Port Elizabeth and East London in the Eastern Cape. Areas recorded to have Chinese populations moving in to settle at the time include Pageview in Johannesburg that was declared a non-white area in the late 1800s and known as the "Malay Location" Large-scale immigration into South Africa during this time was prohibited by the Transvaal Immigration Restriction Act of 1902 and the Cape Chinese Exclusion Act of 1904. A host of discriminatory laws similar to the anti-Chinese laws that sought to restrict trade, land ownership and citizenship were also enacted during this time. These laws, similar to the earlier Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States, derived from widespread anti-Chinese sentiment across the Western world during the early 1900s and the arrival of over 60,000 indentured Chinese miners after the Second Boer War.
Contracted gold miners (1904–1910)
right|thumb|upright|1903 [[Punch (magazine)|Punch cartoon; the Randlord's employment of Chinese labour on the Transvaal gold mines was controversial and contributed to the Liberal victory in the 1906 UK general election.]]
thumb|Liberal Party poster for the [[1906 United Kingdom general election|1906 UK general election, criticizing the Conservative Party for supporting the introduction of indentured Chinese laborers into South Africa.]]
thumb|Around 4,200 miners at the Simmer and Jack mine on the Witwatersrand, taken between 1904 and 1910.
Following the end of the Second Boer War in 1902, production levels in Witwatersrand gold mines were generally low due to a lack of labour. Government officials and businessmen in South Africa were eager to restore pre-war production levels as part of their overall efforts to rebuild from wartime devastation. Due to the war, unskilled African laborers had returned to rural areas and were more inclined to work on rebuilding infrastructure as mining was more dangerous work. Unskilled white labour was being phased out because it was deemed too expensive; mine owners found recruiting and importing labour from China the most expedient way to solve this problem. It is a myth that the contracted miners brought into South Africa at this time are the forefathers of much of South Africa's Chinese population today. The first shipment of 2,000 Chinese workers arrived in Durban from Qinhuangdao in July 1904. By 1906, the total number of Chinese workers increased to 50,000, almost entirely recruited and shipped by CEMC. When the living and working conditions of the laborers became known, public opposition to the scheme grew and questions were asked in the British Parliament. The scheme was abandoned in 1911. The mass importation of Chinese labourers to work on the gold mines contributed to the fall from power of the conservative government in the United Kingdom. However, it did stimulate to the economic recovery of South Africa after the Second Boer War by once again making the mines of the Witwatersrand the most productive gold mines in the world. In 1907, the government of the Transvaal Colony passed the Transvaal Asiatic Registration Act that required the Indian and Chinese populations in the Transvaal to be registered and for males to be fingerprinted and carry pass books. The Transvaal Chinese Association made a written declaration saying that the Chinese would not register for passes and would not interact with those that did. Mahatma Gandhi started a campaign of passive resistance to protest the legislation that was supported by the Indian and Chinese communities. The secretary of the Chinese Association informed Gandhi that the Chinese were prepared to be jailed alongside Indians in support of this cause.
Apartheid era (1948–1994)
As with other non-White South Africans, the Chinese suffered from discrimination during apartheid, and were often classified as Coloureds, but sometimes as Asians, a category that was generally reserved for Indian South Africans. Today this segment of the South African Chinese population numbers some 10,000 individuals.
Chinese South Africans, along with Black, Coloured and Indian South Africans, were forcefully removed from areas declared "Whites only" areas by the government under the Group Areas Act in 1950. Suburbs in Johannesburg with Chinese South African populations that were subject to forced removals include Sophiatown starting in 1955, Marabastad in 1969 and the adjacent suburbs of Pageview and Vrededorp, known colloquially as 'Fietas', in 1968. Chinese South Africans were also among those removed from the South End district of Port Elizabeth beginning in 1965. These removals resulted in the formation of a Chinese township in Port Elizabeth.
In 1966 the South African Institute of Race Relations described the negative effects of apartheid legislation on the Chinese community and the resulting brain drain: