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Chinese Americans

Chinese Americans, the largest Asian population group in the United States since 1990, are Americans whose ancestors or who themselves have come from China. Most of the early Chinese immigrants came directly from China. In recent decades, in addition to those from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, a large number of Chinese-ancestry immigrants also came from Southeast Asian and Latin American countries. The 2000 census counted nearly 2.9 million persons of Chinese ancestry in the United States.

Early Chinese Immigration and Labor

A small group of Chinese reached the Hawaiian Islands as early as 1789, about eleven years after Captain James Cook first landed there. Most of those who migrated to Hawaii in the early years came from the two Chinese southern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian. Some of them were men skilled at sugar making. Beginning in 1852, Chinese contract laborers were recruited to work on sugar plantations, joined by other laborers who paid their own way. Between 1852 and the end of the nineteenth century, about 50,000 Chinese landed in Hawaii.

Chinese immigrants arrived in California shortly before the gold rush in 1849. The vast majority of them came from Guangdong. By the time the United States enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, about 125,000 Chinese lived in the United States; the majority of them resided on the West Coast. (About 375,000 Chinese entries had been recorded by 1882, but this figure also includes multiple entries by the same individuals.) Unlike the contract laborers who went to Hawaii, the Chinese who came to California during the gold rush were mostly independent laborers or entrepreneurs. Between 1865 and 1867 the Central Pacific Railroad Company hired more than 10,000 Chinese, many of them former miners, to build the western half of the first transcontinental railroad. The Chinese performed both unskilled and skilled tasks, but their wages were considerably lower than those of white workers. In the winter of 1867, avalanches and harsh weather claimed the lives of many Chinese workers.

After the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869, thousands of Chinese found work as common laborers and farmhands in California, Washington, and Oregon. A small number of them became tenant farmers or landowners. In San Francisco and other western cities, the Chinese were especially important in the development of light manufacturing industries. They rolled cigars, sewed in garment shops, and made shoes and boots. A significant number of Chinese specialized in laundry businesses, although washing clothes was not a traditional occupation for men in China.

More than 90 percent of the early Chinese immigrants were men who did not bring their wives and children with them. This unbalanced sex ratio gave rise to prostitution. Before 1870, most female Chinese immigrants were young women who were imported to the United States and forced into prostitution. Chinese prostitutes were most visible in western cities and mining towns. In San Francisco, for example, prostitutes constituted 85 percent to 97 percent of the female Chinese population in 1860. In contrast, very few prostitutes were found in Hawaii and in the South. Prostitution declined gradually after 1870.

The transcontinental railroad facilitated the westward migration in the United States. As the western population increased, the presence of Chinese laborers aroused great antagonism among white workers. The anti-Chinese movement, led in part by Denis Kearney, president of the Workingmen'S Party, was an important element in the labor union movement in California as well as in the state's politics. Gradually Chinese workers were forced to leave their jobs in manufacturing industries. In cities as well as in rural areas, Chinese were subjected to harassment and mob violence. A San Francisco mob attack in 1877 left twenty-one Chinese dead, while a massacre at Rock Springs, Wyoming, in 1885 claimed twenty-eight lives.

In spite of strong prevailing sentiment against Chinese immigration, congressional legislation to suspend Chinese immigration was prevented by the Burlingame Treaty (1868) between the United States and China, which granted citizens of both countries the privilege to change their domiciles. In 1880 the two countries renegotiated a new treaty that gave the United States the unilateral right to limit Chinese immigration. In 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act was enacted, which suspended Chinese immigration for ten years (the law was extended twice in 1892 and 1902, and it was made permanent in 1904). The only Chinese who could legally enter under the exclusion were members of the five exempted categories: merchants, students, teachers, diplomats, and tourists. An 1888 law canceled all outstanding certificates that allowed reentry of Chinese who had left the country to visit their families in China. Because Chinese women were few and interracial marriage was illegal at the time, it was almost impossible for most of the Chinese immigrants to have families in the United States. Chinese population declined drastically during the period of exclusion. By 1930 the population had been reduced to 74,954. The 1882 act also made Chinese immigrants "ineligible to citizenship." In the early twentieth century, California and some other western states passed laws to prohibit aliens "ineligible to citizenship" to own land.

Community Organizations and Activities

Living and working in largely segregated ethnic neighborhoods in urban areas, Chinese Americans created many mutual aid networks based on kinship, native places, and common interests. Clan and district associations were two of the most important Chinese immigrant organizations. The clan associations served as the bases for immigration networks. With their own occupational specialties, they assisted members in finding jobs. Both the clan and district associations provided new immigrants with temporary lodging and arbitrated disputes among the members; the district associations also maintained cemeteries and shipped the exhumed remains of the deceased to their home villages for final burial.

Hierarchically above the clan and the district associations was the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA), known to the American public as the Chinese Six Companies. The CCBA provided leadership for the community. It sponsored many court cases to challenge discriminatory laws. When the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco passed an ordinance to make it impossible for Chinese laundrymen to stay in business, the Chinese took their case to court. In Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886), the court decided that the ordinance was discriminatory in its application and therefore violated the equal-protection clause of the Constitution. In another landmark case, United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the court ruled that anyone born in the United States was a citizen, and that citizenship by birth could not be taken away, regardless of that person's ethnicity.

Also important is the Chinese American Citizens Alliance (CACA), organized by second-generation Chinese Americans who were born in the United States. In 1930, after several years of CACA's lobbying activities, Congress passed a law that allowed U.S. citizens to bring in their Chinese wives, if the marriage had taken place before 1924. In 1946 this privilege was extended to all citizens.

World War II and Postwar Development

During World War II, about 16,000 Chinese American men and women served in the U.S. military; 214 lost their lives. In addition, thousands of Chinese Americans worked in the nation's defense industries. For the first time in the twentieth century, a large number of Chinese Americans had the opportunity to work outside Chinatowns. In 1943, as a goodwill gesture to its wartime ally China, the United States repealed the exclusion acts. Although China was given only a token quota of 105 immigrants each year, the repeal changed the status of alien Chinese from "inadmissible" to "admissible" and granted Chinese immigrants the right of naturalization.

The most visible change after the war was the growth of families. After the repeal of the exclusion acts, new immigration regulations became applicable to alien Chinese. The 1945 War Brides Act allowed the admission of alien dependents of World War II veterans without quota limits. A June 1946 act extended this privilege to fiancées and fiancés of war veterans. The Chinese Alien Wives of American Citizens Act of August 1946 further granted admission outside the quota to Chinese wives of American citizens. More than 6,000 Chinese women gained entry between 1945 and 1948. As women constituted the majority of the new immigrants and many families were reunited, the sex ratio of the Chinese American population underwent a significant change. In 1940 there were 2.9 Chinese men for every Chinese woman in the United States (57,389 men versus 20,115 women). By 1960 this ratio was reduced to 1.35 to 1 (135,430 men versus 100,654 women).

The postwar years witnessed a geographical dispersion of the Chinese American population, as more employment opportunities outside Chinatowns became available. But regardless of where they lived, Chinese Americans continued to face the same difficulties as members of an ethnic minority group in the United States.

The Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 significantly altered U.S.-China relations and intensified conflict among Chinese American political groups. As the Korean War turned China into an archenemy of the United States, many Chinese Americans lived in fear of political accusations. In the name of investigating Communist subversive activities, the U.S. government launched an all-out effort to break up Chinese immigration networks. The investigation further divided the Chinese American community. When the Justice Department began the "Chinese confession program" in 1956 (it ended in 1966), even family members were pressured to turn against one another.

Post-1965 Immigration and Community

The 1965 Immigration Act established a new quota system. Each country in the Eastern Hemisphere was given the same quota of 20,000 per year. In addition, spouses, minor children under age twenty-one, and parents of U.S. citizens could enter as nonquota immigrants. In the late 1960s and the 1970s, Chinese immigrants came largely from Taiwan, because the United States did not have diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China until 1979. Between 1979 and 1982, China shared with Taiwan the quota of 20,000 per year. Since 1982 China and Taiwan have each received a quota of 20,000 annually (later increased to 25,620). Hong Kong, a British colony until its return to China in 1997, received a quota of 200 from the 1965 Immigration Act. This number increased several times in subsequent years. From 1993 to 1997, Hong Kong received an annual quota of 25,620. With three separate quotas, more Chinese were able to immigrate to the United States than any other ethnic group. Beginning in the late 1970s, a large number of Chinese-ancestry immigrants also entered the United States as refugees from Vietnam. In addition, some immigrants of Chinese ancestry came from other Southeast Asian countries and various Latin American countries. The 1990 census counted 1,645,472 Chinese Americans. Ten years later, Chinese-ancestry population numbered near 2.9 million.

Because so many new immigrants arrived after 1965, a large number of Chinese Americans were foreign born in the year 2000. California had the largest concentration of Chinese Americans, followed by New York, Hawaii, and Texas. Unlike the early Cantonese-speaking immigrants from the rural areas of Guangdong province, the post-1965 immigrants were a diverse group with regional, linguistic, cultural, and socioeconomic differences. Many of them were urban professionals before emigrating. The new immigrants often found that their former education or skills were not marketable in the United States, and many of them had to work for low wages and long hours. A very high percentage of Chinese American women worked outside the home. New immigrant women often found work in garment industries, restaurants, and domestic services.

Scholars noticed that Chinese American families valued education very highly. Because of the educational achievements of Chinese Americans, and because the U.S. census counted a significantly higher proportion of professionals among the Chinese American population than among the white population, Chinese Americans have been stereotyped as a "model minority" group. According to a number of studies, however, even though a higher percentage of Chinese Americans were professionals, they were underrepresented in executive, supervisory, or decision-making positions, and the percentage of Chinese American families that lived below the poverty line was considerably higher than that of white families.

In addition to historical Chinatowns in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Honolulu, and other large cities, many suburban Chinatowns have flourished in areas with large Chinese American populations. New Chinese American business communities are most visible in the San Francisco Bay area, the Los Angeles area, and the New York–New Jersey area.

Bibliography

Chen, Yong. Chinese San Francisco, 1850–1943: A Trans-Pacific Community. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000.

Fong, Timothy P. The First Suburban Chinatown: The Remaking of Monterey Park, California. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994.

Glick, Clarence E. Sojourners and Settlers: Chinese Migrants in Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1980.

Yung, Judy. Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Zhao, Xiaojian. Remaking Chinese America: Immigration, Family, and Community, 1940–1965. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002.

—Xiaojian Zhao

 
 
Wikipedia: Chinese American
Chinese Americans
Jerry YangElaine ChaoMichelle Kwan
Jerry Yang, Elaine Chao, Michelle Kwan
Total population

3,565,458
1.2% of the US population (2006)[1]

Regions with significant populations
California, Hawaii, Northeast United States, Washington, Western United States
Language(s)
American English, Chinese: Mandarin, Cantonese, Taishanese, Fujianese, Hakka, Shanghainese (Wu)
Religion(s)
Buddhism, Christianity, Daoism, Chinese folk religion

Chinese Americans (Chinese language: 美籍華人 or 華裔美國人) are Americans of Chinese descent. Chinese Americans constitute one group of Overseas Chinese and are a subgroup of Asian Americans. The first Chinese immigrants arrived in 1820 according to U.S. government records. Fewer than 1,000 arrived before the 1848 California Gold Rush which drew the first significant number of laborers from China who performed menial work for the gold prospectors. There were 25,000 immigrants by 1852, and 105,465 by 1880, most of whom lived on the West Coast. Most of the early immigrants were young males with low educational levels from the Guangdong province.[2] Chinese people were some of the early immigrants to live in the U.S. but then were banned from emigrating between 1885 and 1965 when the ban on Asian immigrants was lifted by the Immigration Reform and Control Act.

Immigration

Chinese railroad workers in the snow – 19th century
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Chinese railroad workers in the snow – 19th century

Chinese immigration to the United States has come in waves. Similar to other American immigration experiences, Chinese immigration has resulted in both hardship and success.

Citizenship

Legally all ethnic Chinese born in the United States are American citizens as a result of the Fourteenth Amendment and the 1898 United States v. Wong Kim Ark Supreme Court decision. Upon naturalization, immigrants are not required to renounce their former citizenship.[3] The People's Republic of China does not recognize dual citizenship and considers this a renunciation of PRC citizenship. Taiwan is officially ambiguous about dual citizenship, but it does not recognize the American naturalization oath, by itself, as renouncing citizenship.

Major contributions

Professor Steven Chu is among the several Chinese Americans to have won the Nobel Prize. The others are Tsung-dao Lee, Samuel C. C. Ting, Daniel Chee Tsui, and Chen Ning Yang.
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Professor Steven Chu is among the several Chinese Americans to have won the Nobel Prize. The others are Tsung-dao Lee, Samuel C. C. Ting, Daniel Chee Tsui, and Chen Ning Yang.

Influence on American culture

See also: American Chinese cuisine, Chinatown, Chinese character tattoos, and Model Minority

Analysis indicated that most non-Asian Americans do not differentiate between Chinese Americans and Asian Americans generally, and stereotypes towards both groups are nearly identical.[4] A 2001 survey of Americans' attitudes toward Asian Americans and Chinese Americans indicated that 68% of the respondents had somewhat or very negative attitude toward Chinese Americans in general.[5] The study did find several positive perceptions of Chinese Americans: strong family values (91%); honesty as business people (77%); high value on education (67%).[4]

Demographics

See also: Demographics of the United States

The Chinese American community is the second largest ethnic group of Asian Americans, comprising of 22.4% of the Asian American population. They constitute 1.2% of the United States as a whole. In 2006, the Chinese American population numbered approximately 3.6 million.[1]

As a whole, Chinese American populations continue to grow at a rapid rate due to immigration. However, they also on average have birth rates lower than those of White Americans, and as such their population is aging relatively quickly. In recent years, adoption of young children, especially girls, from China has also brought a boost to the numbers of Chinese Americans, although most of the adoptions appear to have been done by white parents.

Locations

Cities with large Chinese American populations include Boston, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Houston, Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Portland. In these cities, there are often multiple Chinatowns, an older one and a newer one which is populated by immigrants from the 1960s and 1970s. In some areas, Chinese Americans maintain close relationships with other Asian groups.

In addition to the big cities, smaller pockets of Chinese Americans are also dispersed in rural towns, often university towns, throughout the United States. Chinese Americans formed nearly three percent of California's population in 2000, and over one percent in the Northeast. Hawaii, with its historically heavily-Asian population, was nearly ten percent Chinese American.

Life in America

Chinese Americans have made many large strides in American society. Today, Chinese Americans engage in every facet of American life including the military, elected offices, media, academia, and sports. Over the years, many Chinese Americans have blended the American lifestyle with a more natively Chinese one, further enhancing the accuracy of the term, melting pot.

Perhaps the most common landmark of the Chinese impact in America are the prolific Chinese restaurants that have cropped up in every corner of the U.S. Along with these culinary traditions, Chinese heritage is celebrated not only by most Chinese Americans, but also mainstream America; the most prominent of these is the Chinese New Year celebration.

Chinese American income and social status varies widely. Although many Chinese Americans in Chinatowns of large cities are often members of an impoverished working class, others are well-educated upper-class people living in affluent suburbs. The upper and lower-class Chinese are also widely separated by social status. In California's San Gabriel Valley, for example, even though the cities of Monterey Park and San Marino are both Chinese American communities lying geographically close to each other, they are separated by a large socio-economic and income gap.

Festivals

In most American cities with Chinese populations, the new year is celebrated with cultural festivals and parties. At other times of the year, Chinese cultural festivals provide a gathering point for the Chinese community, and help to educated others. In Seattle, the Chinese Culture and Arts Festival is held every year.

Language

Although Chinese Americans grow up learning English, some of them tend to make their children learn Chinese too, due to a feeling of pride in their cultural ancestry. However, some Chinese Americans make assimilation a priority and prefer not to make their children learn Chinese, instead letting them completely immerse in an English-speaking environment, while others make it the top priority for their children to speak both the native tongue and English together.

Politics

Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao is the first (and to date, only) Chinese American to serve in the federal cabinet. She is also the first Asian American woman and second Asian American in the Cabinet.
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Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao is the first (and to date, only) Chinese American to serve in the federal cabinet. She is also the first Asian American woman and second Asian American in the Cabinet.
See also: Racism in the United States and Anti-Chinese sentiment

Chinese Americans are divided among many subgroups based on factors such as a generation, place of origin, socio-economic level, and do not have uniform attitudes about the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China, the United States, or Chinese nationalism, with attitudes varying widely between active support, hostility, or indifference. Different subgroups of Chinese Americans also have radically different and sometimes very conflicting political priorities and goals. It is for this reason that Chinese Americans do not have any unified political groups or any unified political viewpoints.

In the days leading up to the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, John Kerry was favored by 58% of Chinese Americans, with George W. Bush being favored by 23% of Chinese Americans and 19% undecided.[6]

In recent decades, many Chinese Americans have started pursuing careers in politics, and succeeded in getting elected into political offices. The most prominent is Gary Locke who became the first Chinese American governor in U.S. history. Others include Hiram Fong, Daniel Akaka, March Fong Eu, Matt Fong, Thomas Tang, Norman Bay, Elaine Chao, Leland Yee and David Wu.

During the Cultural Revolution, Chinese Americans, like all overseas Chinese, generally speaking, were viewed as capitalist traitors by the People's Republic of China government. This attitude changed completely in the late 1970s with the reforms of Deng Xiaoping. Increasingly, Chinese Americans were seen as sources of business and technical expertise and capital who could aid in China's economic and other development.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b S0201. Selected Population Profile in the United States. United States Census Bureau. Retrieved on 2007-09-28.
  2. ^ International World History Project. Asian Americans. Accessed 2007-07-07.
  3. ^ U.S. State Department
  4. ^ a b Committee of 100 (2001-04-25). Committee of 100 Announces Results of Landmark National Survey on American Attitudes towards Chinese Americans and Asian Americans. Retrieved on 2007-06-14.
  5. ^ Matthew Yi, et al.. Asian Americans seen negatively. Retrieved on 2007-06-14.
  6. ^ Asian-Americans lean toward Kerry. Asia Times (2004-09-16). Retrieved on 2007-09-22.

External links

Further reading

  • Chinese American Understanding: A Sixty-Year Search, Chih Meng, China Institute in America, 1981, hardcover, 255 pages, OCLC: 8027928
  • Chinese Americans and Their Immigrant Parents: Conflict, Identity, and Values, May Pao-May Tung, Haworth Press, 2000, paperback, 112 pages, ISBN 0-7890-1056-9
  • Chinese Americans: The Immigrant Experience, Dusanka Miscevic and Peter Kwong, Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, 2000, hardcover, 240 pages, ISBN 0-88363-128-8
  • Compelled To Excel: Immigration, Education, And Opportunity Among Chinese Americans, Vivian S. Louie, Stanford University Press, 2004, paperback, 272 pages, ISBN 0-8047-4985-X
  • The Chinese in America: A Narrative History, Iris Chang, Viking, 2003, hardcover, 496 pages, ISBN 0-670-03123-2
  • Being Chinese, Becoming Chinese American, Shehong Chen, University of Illinois Press, 2002 ISBN 0-252-02736-1 electronic book
  • ABC Struggles in the Church
  • On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese American Family, Lisa See, 1996. ISBN 0-679-76852-1. See also the website for an exhibition based on this book [1] from the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program.

 
 

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