and export. The French would shrewdly and astutely cultivate and champion Chinese entrepreneurship. The French colonial administrators welcomed Chinese immigrants and saw valuable significance within the Chinese community's entrepreneurial acumen in paving the way for French colonial rule as well as sustaining economic prosperity within it. The Hoa population rose from 25,000 in the 1860s to more than 200,000 in 1911. In addition, Hoa businessmen also served as intermediaries by operating as agents for the French as well as their own. Hoa businessmen also collaborated with the French and other European capitalists in tapping the natural riches and exploiting the indigenous Kinh via the laissez-faire economic system at the expense of the Kinh in order to enrich themselves. During the colonial era, imports were completely under the control of the French authorities. Almost all the major import items such as machinery, transport equipment, building materials, and luxury goods were undertaken by French companies, while the Hoa operated as intermediaries for the French colonial authorities in exchange for a commission. Chợ Lớn or Big Market during the late nineteenth-century was a major business epicenter for Hoa entrepreneurs and investors as it was the place that was at the center of Hoa economic influence in Vietnam at that time. However, obtrusive resentment and pronounced hostility directed against Chinese economic success in the vicinity sparked recurrent anti-Hoa reprisals, including the infamous 1782 massacre of some 2000 Hoa in Cholon's Chinatown. The 1782 massacre in which an estimated ten thousand Hoa were mercilessly slaughtered. According to official Vietnamese records, Chinese-owned shops were burned and looted, and the victims, including "men, women, and children," were indiscriminately "killed and their corpses were thrown into the river." During the French colonial epoch, Chợ Lớn was well-known for its extensive rice endowments, which was a leading source of wealth that formed much of the success of capital accumulation among Hoa-owned rice processing enterprises. Under French rule, the collection of rice paddies in the Mekong delta was completely under Chinese hands who resold it to French companies for export. Industrial commodities imported from France by French companies in Vietnam were retailed to the rural Kinh populace in the South by Hoa merchants, with some of them holding exclusive distribution rights. In 1865, Hoa rice merchants in Cholon created contacts with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank to export rice and other agricultural products to Qing China. By 1874, there