Cambodia: A 1920 photograph of a Chinese vendor outside his store in Phnom Penh.

A community of Chinese people has lived in Phnom Penh since at least 1620 CE. Known as 'Khmer-Chen', which also applies to people of mixed Cambodian and Chinese descent, the majority of Chinese in Cambodia are Teochew (accounting for about 60%), followed by Cantonese (20%), Hokkien (7%), and Hakka and Hainanese (4% each). During the late 1960s and early 70s, the Chinese were the largest ethnic minority in Cambodia with an estimated 425,000. However, by 1984, there were only 61,400 Chinese Cambodians left. This has been attributed to a combination of warfare, economic stagnation, Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese persecution, and emigration.