Chinese and Taiwanese
The smaller Chinese community was initially descended from migrant workers who came to work in the gold mines around Johannesburg in the late nineteenth century. Some of those workers were repatriated. Those original descendants are vastly outnumbered by more recent Chinese immigrants, including immigrants from Taiwan, with which apartheid South Africa maintained diplomatic relations. Estimates vary, but the Chinese population is reckoned to have increased from 10,000 in the early 1980s to more than 100,000 in the early 2000s.
Chinese immigration caused difficulties for the apartheid regime. Based on the earlier status of Chinese as indentured laborers, the government classified immigrants from Mainland China as "non-white", and therefore subject to numerous restrictions in residence, voting, education, work, free movement, etc. For separate political reasons, the government had classified Taiwanese, Nationalist Chinese, Japanese and South Koreans, as honorary white, and thus granted the same privileges as whites. In 1984, South African Chinese, now increased to about 10,000, finally obtained the same official rights as the Japanese in South Africa, that is, to be treated as whites in terms of the Group Areas Act except that they could not vote or be conscribed.
In late 2006, the Chinese Association of South Africa filed suit to have Chinese South Africans recognised as having been disadvantaged under apartheid, in order to benefit from Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). Complicating this attempt was the presence of recent immigrant Chinese who had not been disadvantaged by apartheid. They much outnumber native Chinese South Africans. Because Chinese under apartheid had somewhat less rigid restrictions than indigenous blacks, some people argued against their receiving benefits. In addition, the status of Taiwanese, Japanese and South Koreans as honorary whites under apartheid complicated the case. Nonetheless, in June 2008, Chinese South Africans were fully recognized as having been disadvantaged and entered the BEE ethnic groups.
The term Indian is far more commonly used than Asian in South Africa, although examples of both usages can be found.
Read more about this topic: Asian South African