Chinese American: Encyclopedia - Chinese American

Chinese American

Chinese Americans are residents or citizens of the United States who are of Chinese descent. Chinese Americans constitute one group of overseas Chinese and are a subgroup of Asian Americans. Numbering 2.3 million in 2000, Chinese Americans make up 22.4% of Asian Americans (larger than any other Asian American subgroup), and constitute slightly less than 1% of the United States as a whole.

Chinese American - Immigration

Main article: Chinese immigration to the United States

Chinese immigration to the United States has come in many waves. Like all the American immigration experiences, the Chinese immigration has seen both hardship and success. This experience has added richness to the American experience and is a triumphant story of the pursuit of the American Dream.

Chinese American - 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 required to renounce their former citizenship. The People's Republic of China does not recognize dual citizenship and considers this a renunciation of PRC citizenship. The Republic of China in Taiwan not only recognizes dual citizenship, but also does not recognize the American naturalization oath as renouncing citizenship. In addition, the PRC does not recognize the American citizenship of children born to PRC nationals in the United States.

Chinese American - Life in America

Chinese Americans have made many large strides in their lives in America. Today, Chinese Americans engage in every facets of American life, from elected office, to military, to media, to academics, to sports. There are those Chinese Americans (along with other Asian Americans) who have over the years adapted to the American lifestyle and are assimilated into the American melting pot with no noticeable physical traits (e.g. children with blonde hair and blue eyes or children who are mistaken for being of African American descent as oppose to being Chinese American or Asian American). Whereas others choose to remain within their subgroups and marry among themselves.

Chinese restaurants have become a commonplace in America. Chinese heritage is celebrated not only by most Chinese Americans, but also by mainstream America; the most prominent is the Chinese New Year celebration. However, not all Chinese Americans celebrate the Chinese New Year or observe other Chinese holidays. A few do not pass down the traditions to their children and prefer their offsprings to live as Americans do in America.

Chinese American income and social status vary widely. Although many Chinese Americans in Chinatowns of large cities are poor, others are well-educated upper-class people living in such suburbs as Cupertino, Palo Alto, Chino Hills, Diamond Bar, and San Marino. The upper and lower-class Chinese are also widely separated by social status. The lower-class Chinese is often looked down by the upper-class as being uneducated workers who are illegal immigrants. In the 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.

Chinese American - Major contributions

• Building the Transcontinental railroad
• Building California levee at Sacramento River Delta
• ...

Chinese American - Influence on American culture

• American Chinese cuisine
• ...

Chinese American - Demographics

Cities with large Chinese American populations include New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Seattle and Philadelphia. 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, particularly Vietnamese Americans. These relationships are helped by the fact that many Vietnamese Americans are ethnic overseas Chinese, although most ethnic Chinese Vietnamese Americans do not classify themselves as Vietnamese American.

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.

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 American whites, 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.

Chinese American - Different Chinese American identities

The Chinese American identities in the United States are quite varied. There are two main aspects to that identity: ethnicity and culture. A person can claim the Chinese American identity through either his/her ethnic affiliation or cultural affiliation, or both. For example, some Chinese Americans identify themselves as ethnic Chinese, but not cultural Chinese, and other Chinese Americans identify themselves as cultural Chinese but not ethnic Chinese.

Chinese American - Ethnic affiliation

• First generation Chinese Americans (recent immigrants, either residents or naturalized citizens)
• 1.5 generation Chinese Americans
• Second or beyond generation Chinese Americans, also known as American-born Chinese or ABC
• Chinese students studying in American universities
• Chinese babies adopted into American families
• ...

Chinese American - Cultural affiliation

People who consider themselves as Chinese Americans through their identification with the Chinese culture, but they may or may not identify themselves as ethnic Chinese.

Chinese American - Bicultural identity

Many Chinese Americans also claim bicultural identity - affiliating with both Chinese culture and American culture at the same time.

Chinese American - Politics

Chinese Americans are divided among many subgroups based on factors such as generation, place of origin, socio-economic level, and do not have uniform attitudes about the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China or Taiwan, 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 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 on mainland USA. Others include March Fong Eu, Matt Fong, Thomas Tang, Elaine Chao, David Wu, ... Chinese Americans have also strongly influenced politics in the People's Republic of China. The son of James Soong is an American-born Chinese with United States citizenship.

The current generation of top political leaders in People's Republic of China contains few persons educated in the United States: the Cold War period made for tenuous China-America links and the Cultural Revolution disrupted academic exchanges with the rest of the world. However, the middle ranks of the government contain a very large number of people who received their education in the United States, and a graduate degree from an American university has become an important benefit to political and economic career advancement. In addition, the sons and daughters of many Chinese political leaders, such as Jiang Zemin, are students in the United States. With the leadership transition to the fourth generation of Chinese leaders under Hu Jintao, American educated Chinese officials are increasingly found in powerful positions.

Chinese American - Racial discrimination

Two incidents have energized some Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans, particularly American-born Chinese in recent years -- the murder of Vincent Chin by white automotive workers in 1982 and the unsubstantiated charges of spying against Chinese American nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1999, whom many believe was a victim of racial stereotyping.

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. Chinese citizens with relatives in the United States faced extra suspicion and scrutiny. 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 development (economic and otherwise).

See also

• American-born Chinese
• List of Chinese Americans
• San Gabriel Valley for a detailed discussion of a typical Chinese American community in California
• 1421 theory
• Demographics of the United States
• hyphenated American
• Immigration to the United States
• List of U.S. cities with large Chinese American populations
• Jook-sing
• asian fetish
• model minority
• political correctness

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Chinese American", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki