Chinese Americans

SIGNIFICANCE: Chinese immigrants first came to the United States as laborers in the early to mid-1800s, finding considerable prejudice and discrimination, which diminished after World War II.

Chinese immigrants began to arrive in the United States in 1820, but their numbers remained small until the late 1840s, when the decaying empire of China was defeated in 1848 by Britain in the First Opium War. In 1849, gold was discovered in California, and the gold rush began. When word of the gold rush reached Canton (Guangzhou), in the southeastern province of Kwangtung (Guangdong), many Cantonese peasants, who had made their living as laborers, farmers, and fishermen for centuries, began to leave their impoverished homeland for the chance of riches just across the Pacific.

Most of these early Chinese immigrants worked with exceptional diligence, industry, and enterprise and led a reticent existence in the mining camps and cities. These positive qualities earned the early Chinese immigrants acceptance among the California business community. Although their appearance set them apart from the rest of the townspeople, they were warmly welcomed as a valuable and respected segment of the citizenry. That goodwill wore thin as increasing numbers of Chinese arrived. In 1852 alone, more than 20,000 Chinese landed at San Francisco, bringing the total number of Chinese on the coast to approximately 25,000. The flood of new arrivals severely taxed the city’s resources, particularly in Chinatown, where most settled, at least temporarily. The white settlers’ attitudes toward the Chinese and Chinatown began to shift from curiosity to contempt.

Under the slogan “California for Americans,” nativists began demanding legislation to restrict Chinese laborers and miners. In 1852, the California legislature responded by passing the state’s first discriminatory tax law, the Foreign Miners’ Tax. This law required all miners who were not citizens of the United States to pay a monthly license fee. Because the Chinese were the largest recognizable group of foreign miners and already were concentrated in easily accessible mining camps, they constituted the majority of those taxed. California governor John Bigler also began a crusade against Chinese immigration on the grounds that it constituted a danger to the welfare of the state. The efforts of California nativists culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, one of the earliest federal laws restricting immigration to the United States. Other legislation followed, including the alien land laws (1913–23), the Cable Act (1922), and the National Origins Act (1924).

As a result of the exclusion, and because males far outnumbered females, the American Chinese population remained stable until the 1950s.

Chinese American Experience, 1942–1965

The image of Chinese Americans improved during this period, which ranges from 1942, the first full year of the U.S. war against Japan, to 1965, the year of the Immigration and Nationality Act. This improvement was in part the result of China being an important ally of the United States in World War II. A public awareness of the difference between Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans began to develop, at the expense of the latter. The attitude shift was eventually reflected in the legislature, for in 1943 Congress repealed the Exclusion Act. However, the quota on Chinese immigrants remained in place, allowing only 105 Chinese immigrants per year. Chinese immigrants won another victory during WWII in that they were finally given the right to seek naturalization.

The Chinese American literature of this period is dominated by two sentiments, a diplomatic sentiment, which seeks to explain the values and virtues of the Chinese heritage to the general reader, and a sentiment of belonging, of claiming America as home. The sentiments reflect Chinese Americans' feelings towards their adopted country.

Chinese American Experience Since 1965

After 1965, the Chinese population of the United States rose from 250,000 in 1966 to 1.6 million in 1990. This gave rise to a debate over what, if any, distinctions should be drawn between the native-born and the foreign-born. Frank Chin and the other editors of Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers (1974) and The Big Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature (1991) attempted to differentiate between the native-born and the foreign-born, implying that Chinese American identity should be determined on the basis of an American, rather than Chinese, mindset. Newcomers (sometimes derided as “fresh off the boat,” source of the title of David Henry Hwang’s FOB, 1979) and more recent arrivals have brought with them significant resources and skills. These conditions render moot the American-centered definition of Chinese American identity. The increased diversity of the Chinese American community has made the issue of identity complex. In 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that more than 5 million Asian Americans identified as themselves as Chinese.

A common theme in 20th century Chinese American literature is the critical representation of social issues. Cultural conflicts, generation gaps, and gender troubles are common to the experiences of many Chinese Americans from diverse backgrounds. This literature, including Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1976) and Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989), is essential to Chinese American identity and tends to problematize rather than resolve its dualities. This exploration of social issues has given rise to critiques of the American Dream (for example, Gish Jen’s Typical American, 1991), of Western ideology regarding Asia (Hwang’s M. Butterfly, 1988), and of the intricate complicities between American and Chinese ideologies. These thoughtful works epitomize the complex maturity of the Chinese American identity.

Bibliography

Barth, Gunther. Bitter Strength: A History of the Chinese in the United States, 1850–1870. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1964.

Chin, Frank, et al., eds. Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers. Washington, DC: Howard UP, 1974.

Chin, Frank, et al., eds. The Big Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature. New York: Meridian, 1991.

Miller, Stuart Creighton. The Unwelcome Immigrant: The American Image of the Chinese, 1795–1882. Berkeley: U of California P, 1969.

Rico, Brittany, Joyce Key Hahn, and Cody Spence. “Chinese, Except Taiwanese, Was The Largest Asian Alone or in Any Combination Group; Nepalese Population Grew Fastest.” U.S. Census Bureau, 21 Sep. 2023, www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/09/2020-census-dhc-a-asian-population.html#:~:text=The%20Chinese%2C%20except%20Taiwanese%20alone,second%20largest%20group%20in%202020. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024.

Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. New York: Penguin, 1989.