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The article discusses the comparison of the American-Chinese with other overseas Chinese communities. This research has been of a descriptive rather than a comparative nature. More than ninety percent of the Chinese in the United States are drawn from or at least descended from inhabitants of the Southeastern Chinese province of Kwang-tung. Whereas, the Chinese in Southeast Asia are almost exclusively drawn from the southeastern provinces of Fukien, Kwang-tung, and Kwangsi. Migration has produced disproportionate sex ratios among the emigrants. Formerly, in Southeast Asia but not America, this considerable unbalanced sex ratio served to encourage racial intermarriage in all the Southeast Asian countries except Malaya. The migrants to Southeast Asia come from a more varied dialect ("tribal") background than the Chinese in America. In the socio-economic realm there are significant contrasts between these two groups. In America the Chinese are passive and withdrawn into non-competitive occupations. Whereas, in the semi-colonial "plural society" of Southeast Asia it is the native population which is passive and defeatist. In America all too often the Chinese American have been treated as being inferior racial and culturally. But the situation is completely reverse in Southeast Asia.