CHINESE AMERICAN

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'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.International World History Project. Asian Americans. Accessed 2007-07-07. 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

Main articles: Chinese immigration to the United States

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.^[2] 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.

★ Building Western half of the Transcontinental railroad

★ Building levees in the Sacramento River Delta

★ Developing and cultivating much of the Western US farmland

★ Chinese food (see ''American Chinese cuisine'')

Influence on American culture

★ American Chinese cuisine

★ Chinatown

★ Chinese character tattoos

★ 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. Committee of 100 Announces Results of Landmark National Survey on American Attitudes towards Chinese Americans and Asian Americans Committee of 100 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. Asian Americans seen negatively Matthew Yi, et al. The study did find several positive perceptions of Chinese Americans: strong family values (91%); honesty as business people (77%); high value on education (67%).

Demographics

San Francisco Chinatown.

The Chinese American community is the 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 2005, the Chinese American population numbered approximately 3.4 million.^[3]
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.

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.

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.
Chinese Americans tend to be more liberal than the average American, and generally favor the Democratic party . 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. [1]
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, 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.

References

1. US demographic census
2. U.S. State Department
3. Chinese American population, US Census

External links

★ Museum of Chinese in the Americas

★ Chinese Culture Center & Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco

★ Organization of Chinese Americans

★ Chinese Historical Society of America

★ The Asians in America Project - Chinese American Organizations Directory

★ "Paper Son" - one Chinese American's story of coming to America under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

★ Becoming American: The Chinese Experience a PBS Bill Moyers special. Thomas F. Lennon, Series Producer.

★ Chinese American Contribution to Transcontinental Railroad - Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum

★ Emerging Information Technology Conference (EITC), organized by several Chinese American organizations

★ Famous Chinese Americans Comprehensive list of famous Chinese Americans organized by professions. Includes short biographical notes and Chinese names.

★ Chinese Information and Networking Association (CINA)

★ Northwest Chinese Professionals Association

★ The Yung Wing Project hosts the memoir of the first Chinese American graduate of an American university (Yale 1854).

★ Chinese American Museum

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CHINESE AMERICAN

Immigration

Citizenship

Major contributions

Influence on American culture

Demographics

Locations

Life in America

Language

Politics

See also

References

External links

Further reading

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