The opportunities that arose out of the economic transformation initiated by the western colonial industrialists were very quickly taken up by the Chinese immigrants instead of the local or indigenous people. There were several reasons for this. These included high adaptability of the Chinese immigrants in foreign lands, the Confucian values system that the Chinese immigrants brought along with them (such as the ability to withstand hardship, working under extremely harsh and alien conditions), the attitude of the Chinese who behaves as an opportunist and by default, the risk taking nature of Chinese immigrants.