Overseas Chinese
Overseas Chinese (華僑 in pinyin: huαqiαo, or 華胞 huαbāo, or 僑胞 qiαobāo) are ethnic Chinese who live outside of Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan. There are approximately 60 million overseas Chinese mostly living in southeast Asia where they make up a majority of the population of Singapore and significant minority populations in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. The overseas populations in those areas arrived between the 16th and the 19th centuries from mostly the maritime provinces of Guangdong and Fujian (the Hoklo ethnic group), followed by Taiwan and Hainan.
More recent emigration has been directed primarily to western countries such as United States, Canada and Australia being destinations. (see entries on Malaysian Chinese, Indonesian Chinese, Chinese Australians, Burmese Chinese, Chinese Singaporean, Chinese Canadian, Chinese Cuban, Chinese Filipino, Chinese Peruvian, Chinese Puerto Rican,Chinese Cayman Islander Chinese American, American-born Chinese, Taiwanese American and Chinese British).
Overseas Chinese vary widely as to their degree of assimilation, their interactions with the surrounding communities (see Chinatown), and their relationship with China. In Thailand, overseas Chinese have largely intermarried and assimilated with the native community. In Myanmar, the Chinese rarely intermarry, but have adopted the Burmese culture, maintaining both Chinese and Burmese identities. On the other hand, in Malaysia and Singapore, overseas Chinese have maintained a distinct communal identity.
Often there are different waves of immigration leading to subgroups among overseas Chinese such as the new and old immigrants in Cambodia and Indonesia.
The Chinese in southeast Asian countries have often established themselves in commerce and finances. In North America, because of immigration policies, overseas Chinese tend to be found in professional occupations, including significant ranks in medicine and academia.
Both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan maintain highly complex relationships with overseas Chinese populations. Both maintain cabinet level ministries to deal with overseas Chinese affairs, and many local governments within the PRC have overseas Chinese bureaus. Both the PRC and ROC have some legislative representation for overseas Chinese. In the case of the PRC, some seats in the National People's Congress are allocated for returned overseas Chinese. In the Legislative Yuan, there are a small number of seats allocated for overseas Chinese. These seats are apportioned to the political parties based on their vote totals on Taiwan, and then the parties assign the seats to overseas Chinese party loyalists.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the ROC tended to seek the support of overseas Chinese communities through branches of the Kuomintang based on Sun Yat-sen's use of expatriate Chinese communities to raise money for his revolution. During this period, the People's Republic of China tended to view overseas Chinese with suspicion as possible capitalist infiltrators and tended to value relationships with southeast Asian nations as more important than gaining support of overseas Chinese, and in the Bandung declaration explicitly stated that overseas Chinese owed primary loyalty to their home nation.
After the Deng Xiaoping reforms, the attitude of the PRC toward overseas Chinese changed dramatically. Rather than being seen with suspicion, they were seen as people which could aid PRC development via their skills and capital. During the 1980s, the PRC actively attempted to court the support of overseas Chinese by among other things, returning properties that were confiscated after the 1949 revolution. More recently PRC policy has attempted to maintain the support of recently emigrated Chinese, who consist largely of Chinese seeking graduate education in the West.
Overseas Chinese have sometimes played an important role in Chinese politics. Most of the funding for the Chinese revolution of 1911 came from overseas Chinese, and many overseas Chinese are overseas for political reasons. Many overseas Chinese are now investing in mainland China providing financial resources, social and cultural networks, contacts and opportunities.
Population (1998) Area % Number
Asia 17,070,000
Americas 5,020,000
Europe 945,000
Oceania 564,000
Africa 126,000
Total 33,720,000
The Americas have about 5 times more Chinese than Europe. America also has the most overseas Chinese.
A list of famous people with Chinese ancestry living outside of China in countries other than the USA and Canada.
Alan Budikusuma, badminton, Olympic gold medalist, Indonesia
Victor Chang, surgeon, Australia
Chen Kenichi, chef, Japan
Mai Chen, constitutional lawyer, New Zealand
Franηois Cheng, writer, France
John Chong-Nee, music producer, New Zealand
Jimmy Choo, designer, Malaysia, England
Arthur Chung, former president, Guyana
Rudy Hartono, badminton legend, Indonesia
Pi Hongyan, badminton player, France
Ding Junhui, athlete, England
Raybon Kan, comedian, columnist, New Zealand
Takeshi Kaneshiro, actor, Japan
Li Li, badminton player, Singapore
Liem Swie King, badminton legend, Indonesia
Sadaharu Oh, baseball player, Japan
Sudono Salim, enterpreneur, Indonesia
Susi Susanti, badminton, Olympic gold medalist, Indonesia
John So, Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Australia
Zang Toi, fashion designer, Malaysia
Anote Tong, president, Kiribati
Ho-Pin Tung, race driver, Netherlands
Kenneth Wang, politician, New Zealand
Pansy Wong, politician, New Zealand
Huaiwen Xu, athlete, Germany
Gao Xingjian, writer, France
Jack Yan, publisher, author, New Zealand
Jiang Yanmei, badminton player, Singapore
Jie Yao, badminton player, Netherlands
Michelle Yeoh, actor, Malaysia
Alex Yoong, race driver, Malaysia
Chinese American
A Chinese American is an American who is of ethnic Chinese descent. Chinese Americans constitute one group of overseas Chinese and are also one group 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 just over 1% of the United States as a whole.
Immigration
Chinese railroad workers in the snowChinese immigration to the United States has come in several waves.
According to records from the United States government, the first Chinese arrived in the United States around 1820. Subsequent immigrants that came from the 1820's up to the late 1840's were mainly men, who came in small numbers. However, due to the lack of Chinese women in the United States at that time, many of them intermarried with Americans of European descent. The best known Chinese immigrants that came during this period are the world-famous Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker.
The major initial wave only started around the 1850s. This was when the West Coast of North America was being rapidly colonized during the California Gold Rush, while southern China suffered from severe political and economic instability due to the weakness of the Qing Dynasty government, internal rebellions such as the Taiping Rebellion, and external pressures such as the Opium Wars.
As a result, many Chinese emigrated from the poor Say yup area (四邑 the four-county area including Sun Wui 新會, Toi Shan 台山, Hoi Ping 開平, and Yun Ping 恩平) in Guangdong province to the United States in order to work on the railroads. People in Say yup lived in such poor living conditions that many were willing to sign up for prepaid long term labor contracts to work in the US. Many gave the sum of money to their family and didn't expect to be able to return home alive. They considered this act to be akin to selling themselves as pigs (賣豬仔). These Chinese, who mostly spoke Cantonese and its variant Toisanese (or Taishanese) clustered in Chinatowns, the largest population was in San Francisco. Some estimated over half of these early immigrants were from Taishan. This immigration (encouraged by the Burlingame Treaty of 1868) was stopped by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which made Chinese immigration illegal until 1943. Many Western states also enacted discriminatory laws which made it difficult for Chinese and Japanese immigrants to own land or even find work. These laws were not overturned until the 1950s, at the dawn of the modern civil rights movement.
With the loosening of American immigration laws in 1952 and 1965, a second wave of Chinese immigration began. These Taiwanese Americans consisted of professionals from Taiwan who arrived in the United States on student visas. With the improving economy in Taiwan, immigration from the island began to decrease in the 1970s and was accompanied by an increase in immigration of professionals from Mainland China, which began to allow for emigration in 1977. Both groups of Chinese tended to cluster in suburban areas and tended to avoid urban Chinatowns. These Chinese tended to speak fluent Mandarin often in addition to their native dialect, which in the case of the Taiwanese Americans was often the Taiwanese language (also known as Hokkien, a variant of the chinese Min dialect, but in Taiwan is called 台语 literally: Taiwanese)
A third wave of recent immigrants consisted of undocumented aliens, chiefly from Fujian province who came to the United States in search of lower-status manual jobs. These aliens tend to concentrate in urban areas such as New York City and there is often very little contact between these Chinese and higher-educated professionals. They generally speak some Mandarin but mostly Min dialect, which is close to the Taiwanese language although this fact does not produce much affinity between this group and Taiwanese Americans. The amount of immigration from this group has begun to decrease as the economic situation in Fujian improves. Typically, an immigrant from Fujian will pay a snakehead several tens of thousands of dollars to be transported to the United States, as well as room and board. The funds for the trip are financed by family and village. The immigrant will usually work for three years, the first two to pay off the debt and the third as profit.
Ethnic Chinese immigration to the United States since 1965 has been aided by the fact that the United States maintains separate quotas for Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
Absent from the list of Chinese Americans are immigrants from Hong Kong, who because of immigration law, tended to immigrate to Canada.
In the 1980s, there was widespread concern by the PRC over a brain drain as graduate students were not returning to the PRC. This exodus worsened after the Tiananmen protests of 1989.
Many immigrants from the PRC benefited from the Chinese Student Protection Act of 1992 which granted permanent residency status to immigrants from the PRC. One unintended side effect of the law was that the primary beneficiaries of the law were undocumented Fujianese immigrants, who unlike the Chinese graduate students, would have had no chance to gain permanent residency through normal means.
In the late 1990s, large numbers of professional Chinese Americans began to return to the PRC, creating a brain gain. In a typical career pattern, a Chinese graduate student would emigrate to the United States and enter the job market and return to the PRC after encountering the glass ceiling; Chinese students had once been favored under affirmative action programs, but that was no longer the case after 1990. The number of Chinese graduate students returning to the PRC increased dramatically after 2000 and the dot-com bust resulted in worsening job prospects in the United States.
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 renounciation of PRC citizenship. The Republic of China on 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.
Demographics
San Francisco Chinatown, one of the largest in North America. This photo shows Washington Street at Grant Avenue looking West.Cities with large Chinese American populations include New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Houston. 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 American are ethnic overseas Chinese, although most ethnic Chinese Vietnamese Americans do not classify themselves as Chinese 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 1990, and over one percent in the Northeast. Hawaii, with its historically heavily-Asian population, was nearly five percent Chinese American.
As a whole, Chinese Americans 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.
Politics
March Fong Eu, a Chinese American politician from CaliforniaChinese 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 on 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, although some subgroups such as independence oriented Taiwanese Americans do have some effective lobbying groups such as the Formosan American Professional Association.
In addition, many see the People's Republic of China as a potentially powerful rival to the United States.
Among Chinese in Mainland China and Taiwan, second-generation Chinese Americans known as American-born Chinese are often perceived as being a bit exotic. Chinese Americans have also strongly influenced politics both in Taiwan and the People's Republic of China. A large number of major political figures in Taiwan (including Peng Ming-min, Shih Ming-teh, and Lee Yuan-tze) have had either permanent residency or citizenship in the United States, and many Taiwanese political figures including Lee Teng-hui, Ma Ying-jeou, and James Soong have advanced degrees from the United States. The son of James Soong is an American-born Chinese with United States citizenship.
The large number of Taiwanese with either dual American citizenship or relatives with American citizenship have led to some concerns about political loyalty on Taiwan and has resulted in the requirement started in the 1990s that high government officials (although not ordinary people) must renounce any dual citizenships. However, Taiwanese Americans make up important bases of support for both the pan-Green coalition and pan-Blue coalition and neither party appears interesting in pushing this issue much. During the 2000 Republic of China Presidential election, both pan-Green and pan-Blue ran active campaigns among Taiwanese voters in the United States, and an estimated 10,000 Taiwanese Americans returned to Taiwan to vote in the election.
In Communist China, the top leadership 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 People's Republic of China government contain very large numbers 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.
Racial discrimination, 20th & 21st centuries
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).
Love Boat
One institution well known among Chinese Americans is colloquially called the Love Boat, a cultural and educational study tour to Taiwan whose overt purpose is to reacquaint American-born Chinese teens with their cultural roots. However, it also has a side motive for Chinese American parents wanting to stem out-marriage (i.e., miscegenation) by increasing the chances their children meet other Chinese Americans.
List of U.S. cities with large Chinese American populations
Cities with large Chinese American populations with a critical mass of at least 1% of the total urban population and at least 10% of the total suburban population. Information based on 2000 Census.
Urban and suburban cities with a pan-Asian American majority population are denoted in bold lettering.
Multi-generation Chinese Americans include those descended from earlier immigrants - from the 1850s to 1950s -and fully become Americanized and they often have very little social connections and interactions to the new Chinese immigrants and their U.S.-born descendants. In the post-1965 era, first- and second-generation immigrants include those from Mainland China (Mandarin-speaking), Taiwan (Mandarin and Taiwanese-speaking), and Hong Kong (Cantonese-speaking) Also included in the Chinese American population are ethnic Chinese Vietnamese (who speak Cantonese or Chaozhou Chinese) who might consider themselves more Chinese than Vietnamese, thus skewing Census reporting.
Regions with significantly large Chinese American populations include the San Gabriel Valley and Silicon Valley in California and the Tri-State Region (New York and New Jersey) of the East Coast. The San Gabriel Valley region in particularly has the largest collection of U.S. suburbs with foreign-born Chinese-speaking populations. They generally range from working-class Chinese Vietnamese refugees and immigrants residing in gritty Rosemead and El Monte, California, to wealthy Taiwanese immigrants living in the upscale communities of San Marino, California and Diamond Bar, California.
Areas with growing Chinese American populations include southern Orange County, California, Edison, New Jersey, Plano and Richardson, Texas.
Large cities
The following list of cities with a population of more than 250,000 have a Chinese American population in excess of 1 pecent of the total.
San Francisco, California - 19.6% (152,620)
Honolulu, Hawaii - 10.7% (39,600)
Oakland, California - 8.0% (31,834)
San Jose, California - 5.7% (51,109)
Sacramento, California - 4.8% (19,425)
New York City, New York - 4.5% (361,531)
Queens - 6.3% (139,820)
Manhattan - 5.7% (86,974)
Brooklyn - 4.9% (120,662)
Staten Island - 1.7% (7,490)
Seattle, Washington - 3.4% (19,415)
Boston, Massachusetts - 3.3% (19,638)
Los Angeles, California - 1.7% (63,075)
Portland, Oregon - 1.4% (7,181)
Houston, Texas - 1.2% (24,001)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - 1.2% (17,783)
Medium-size cities
The following list of cities with a population of between 100,000 and 250,000 have a Chinese American population in excess of 1 pecent of the total.
Fremont, California - 14.4% (29,240)
Daly City, California - 13.6%
Sunnyvale, California - 9.56% (12,597)
Berkeley, California - 7.4% (7,585)
Smaller cities and towns
The following list of municipalities with a population less than 100,000 a Chinese American population in excess of 1 pecent of the total.
Groups listed (e.g., Mainland Chinese, Taiwanese) after these cities form a large proportion of the Chinese-origin population.
California - Los Angeles - San Gabriel Valley
Monterey Park, California - 41.2% (24,758) - Predominantly Mainland Chinese, generally pan-Chinese
San Marino, California - 40.6% (5,260) - Taiwanese
Arcadia, California - 34.0% (18,041) - Taiwanese
San Gabriel, California - 33.6% (13,376) - Chinese Vietnamese, but generally pan-Chinese
East San Gabriel, California (unincorporated, but also called San Gabriel) - 28.2% (4,096)
Alhambra, California - 33.1% (28,437) - Mainland Chinese, Chinese Vietnamese
Rosemead, California - 29.3% (15,678) - Mainland Chinese, Chinese Vietnamese
Rowland Heights, California - 29.0% (14,057) - Taiwanese, growing number of Mainland Chinese
Walnut, California - 28.6% (8,590) - Taiwanese
Temple City, California - 27.9% (9,322) - Taiwanese
Hacienda Heights, California - 22.4% (11,921) - Taiwanese
Diamond Bar, California - 17.9% (10,091) - Taiwanese
El Monte, California - 10.3% - Chinese Vietnamese
Source for above information: Wei Li "Building Ethnoburbia: The Emergence and Manifestation of the Chinese Ethnoburb in Los Angeles San Gabriel Valley." Journal of Asian American Studies 2(1): 1-28 (1999)
California - Los Angeles - Cerritos Valley
Cerritos, California - 15% - Taiwanese
California - Orange County
Irvine, California - 10.5% - Taiwanese
California - San Jose - Silicon Valley
Cupertino, California - 23.8% (12,031) - Taiwanese
Millbrae, California - 16.5% - Taiwanese
Foster City, California - 16.3% - Taiwanese
Milpitas, California - 12.9% - Taiwanese, Hong Kong Chinese, Mainland Chinese, Chinese Vietnamese, Chinese Filipinos, Chinese Indonesians, Macanese, and Chinese Burmese (Milpitas, California has one of the most regionally diverse Chinese populations in the United States.)
The following is a list of Chinese Americans who are famous, have made significant contributions to the American culture or society politically, artistically or scientifically, or have appeared in the news numerous times:
(Chinese name may be placed, if available, beside those persons who currently do not have articles yet. Otherwise, place them in their articles. People in this least must have at least a permanent resident status or American-born.)
Jin Au-yeung - rapper
Chang and Eng Bunker - Siamese twins pioneer immigrants
Bette Bao Lord (包柏漪) - writer, novelist
Anna Chan Chennault (陳香梅) - wife of Claire Chennault, of the Flying Tigers
Eileen Chang, writer
Iris Chang (張純如) - writer
Lia Chang - actor, photographer, writer
Michael Chang - tennis player
Elaine Chao - Secretary of Labor^
Rosalind Chao - actor
Christine Chen - Executive Director of the Organization of Chinese Americans
Joan Chen
Julie Chen - newsreader on The Early Show and host of Big Brother
Steve Chen - computer scientist, supercomputer designer, Cray
Shiing-shen Chern - mathematician
Katherine Sui Fun Cheung - first female Asian-American pilot
Leroy Chiao - NASA astronaut
Maj. Arthur Chin (陳瑞鈿) - WW II pilot and fighter ace
Frank Chin (趙健秀) - novelist, playwright, and essayist
Ming W. Chin (陳惠明) - Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court
Tiffany Chin (陳婷婷) - figure skater
Vincent Chin - victim of racial crime
Alex Chiu - eccentric
Annabel Chong - adult film actress
Amy Chow (周婉儀) - gymnast and Olympic medal winner
Norm Chow (周友賢) - USC offensive coordinator
Wen Tsing Chow (周文俊) - missile guidance scientist, digital computer pioneer
David Chu (朱欽騏) - fashion designer and founder of Nautica
Paul C.W. Chu (朱經武) - physicist, superconductivity
Steven Chu - 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics, first Asian American to run one of the
16 national laboratories operated by the Department of Energy (Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory)
Kam Fong Chun, actor
Connie Chung - TV news anchor
Fan Chung - mathematician
Dong Kingman (曾景文) - watercolor artist and professor
Hiram L. Fong - U.S. Senator
Ben Fong-Torres (方振豪) - journalist, Rolling Stone
David Ho - AIDS researcher
Kelly Hu - actress
Jen-Hsun Huang (黃仁勳) - cofounder, CEO, Nvidia
David Henry Wang (黃哲倫) - playwright
William Hung - of American Idol fame
Maxine Hong Kingston - writer, novelist
James Wong Howe (黃宗霑) - cinematographer
Gish Jen - writer, novelist
Andrea Jung (鍾彬嫻)- CEO, Avon products
Michelle Kwan (關穎珊) - figure skater
Nancy Kwan (關南施) - first Chinese-born star in Western cinema website
(http://www.nancy-kwan.com)
Ang Lee - movie director
Bruce Lee - actor, kung fu
Brandon Lee -actor
Ching Yang Lee (黎錦揚) - novelist, Flower Drum Song
Coco Lee - singer
Corky Lee - photographer
Gus Lee (李健孫) - writer
Henry C. Lee - forensic scientist
Jason Scott Lee (李截), actor
Li-young lee - poet
Susan Lee (李鳳遷) - Maryland State Delegate and first Asian American woman in
the Maryland State Assembly
Tsung-dao Lee - Nobel laureate, Physics
Wen Ho Lee (李文和) - nuclear physicist, accused spy, acquitted
Will Yun Lee (李威勇) - actor
Katrina Leung - businesswoman, Republican activist, and accused spy
Lena Li - Playboy model
Carol Lin - news anchor
Justin Lin (林詣彬) - film director of Better Luck Tomorrow
Maya Lin (林瓔) - architect (Vietnam Veterans Memorial)
T. Y. Lin - civil engineer (bridgebuilder)
Bai Ling - actress
Lisa Ling (凌志慧) - TV show host
Eric Liu - writer, a speechwriter of Bill Clinton
Lucy Liu - actress
Gary Locke - Democratic Governor of Washington
Edward Lu - NASA astronaut
Victor R. Lu - Lance Corporal of the United States Marine Corps
Keye Luke - actor
Lue Gim Gong - In 1888, he invented an orange, which is still grown in Florida,
that survives cold weather
Adeline Yen Mah (馬嚴君玲) - author and physician
Yoyo Ma - cellist
Teresa Meng (孟懷縈) - founder, Atheros Communications
Jenny Ming (明珍尼) - president of Old Navy, a unit of Gap, Inc.
Kim Ng - baseball executive
I. M. Pei (貝聿銘) - architect
Gordan Quan (關振鵬) - Houston City Councilman and Asian American advocate
Soong Mei-Ling a.k.a. Madame Chiang Kai-Shek
Robin Shou (仇雲波) - martial artist
Anna Sui - fashion designer
Vivienne Tam (譚燕玉) - fashion designer
Amy Tan - writer
Thomas Tang - judge
Chang-lin Tien - professor, former chancellor UC Berkeley
Samuel C. C. Ting - 1976 Nobel laureate, Physics
Ming Tsai (蔡明)- chef and restauranteur, writer
Daniel Chee Tsui - 1998 Nobel prize, Physics
An Wang - computer engineer
Charles Wang (王嘉廉)- founder, CEO, chairman, Computer Associates
Lili Wang - murdered at her university
Garret Wang - actor in Star Trek: Voyager
Taylor Wang - first ethnic Chinese scientist to go into space, 1985 on space shuttle
Challenger
Vera Wang - fashion designer
Wayne Wang - Hollywood director
Pei-Yuan Wei - creator of ViolaWWW
Ming-Na Wen - Macanese-born actress
Anna May Wong - first female Asian-American star of the screen
B.D. Wong (黃榮亮) - actor in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Wong Ching Foo (黃清福) - civil rights activist against Chinese Exclusion Act
David Wong Louie - writer
Jade Snow Wong - writer
Russell Wong (王盛德) - actor
Victor Wong (黃自強) - Hollywood actor
S.B. Woo (吳仙標) - former attorney general and lieutenant governor of Delaware,
current president of the 80-20 Initiative
David Wu - first and only Chinese American U.S. Representative, Democrat from
Oregon
Frank H. Wu (吳華揚) - a professor of law at Howard University, writer of Yellow:
Race in America beyond Black and White, soon to be Dean of Law at Wayne State
University in Michigan
Harry Wu - human rights activist
Kiko Wu - adult model and actress
Chien-Shiung Wu - female scientist
Martin Yan - host of Yan Can Cook
Chen Ning Yang - Nobel laureate, Physics
Henry Yang (楊祖佑) - chancellor, UC Santa Barbara
Jeff Yang - founder of A Magazine
Jerry Yang (楊致遠) - founder of Yahoo!
Welly Yang - actor and artist
James Yee - Army Captain formerly charged with sedition
Shing-Tung Yau - mathematician
Laurence Yep - author of children's books
Katherine Young - world's oldest user of the Internet
Kaila Yu - model and singer
Judy Yung - writer
Helen Zia (謝漢蘭) - community activists and writer
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_Americans"
Chinese Canadians
A Chinese Canadian is a person of Chinese descent or origin who was born in or immigrated to Canada. Considered from the perspective of China, they are a group of overseas Chinese. In 2001 there were 1,094,700 Canadians of Chinese descent, making them Canada's seventh largest ethnic group.
History
The first record of Chinese in what is known as Canada today can be dated back to 1788. British Captain James Meares hired a group of Chinese carpenters from Macau and settled them on Nootka Sound part of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. However, there is surviving information related to the whereabouts of these early immigrants to Canada or their possible survivors.
The next wave of Chinese immigrants into British North America began in 1858. Most of these Chinese were "sojourners" in a sense, in that most of them planned on returning to their homeland after working in British North America for a period of time. They were mostly rural Cantonese who were at the lower end of the social ladder. Most of them came to British Columbia as "coolies" (苦力 in Chinese) and most were paid in vouchers. Gold rushes at the BC interior also attracted a significant number of Chinese to BC.
Many workers from Fujian and Guangdong Province arrived to help build the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 19th century. Many of these workers accepted the discriminatory disadvantages of working long hours, lower wages than non-Chinese workers and dangerous working conditions such as explosions for the mountain passes, in order to support their families that stayed in China. Their willingness to endure hardship for low wages enraged fellow non-Chinese workers who thought they were unnecessarily complicating the labour market situations. From 1885, the Canadian government began to charge a substantial head tax for each Chinese person trying to immigrate to Canada. In 1923 the Canadian government banned Chinese immigration completely.
Some of those Chinese Canadian workers settled in Canada after the railway was constructed. But most could not bring the rest of their family, not even their immediate family, to Canada because of government restrictions and enormous processing fees. Their contacts with non-Chinese were restricted as well, officially and unofficially. They established Chinatowns and societies in undesirable sections of the cities.
Some educated Chinese arrived in Canada during the war as refugees. Since the mid-20th century, most new Chinese Canadians come from university-educated families, one of whose most essential values is still quality education. These newcomers are a major part of the "Brain gain" the inverse of the infamous "Brain drain", i.e., Canadians leaving to the United States of America.
Chinese Indonesians first arrived in Canada in 1960s during anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia. From 1970s 1999, many more Chinese Indonesians settled Canada.
Many Chinese from Vietnam, Laos, and Kampuchea came to Canada as refugees in the aftermath of Vietnam War. Early Chinese Canadians have close relationships with them as a result of their Chinese heritage. They lived mostly in Quebec province.
Many Chinese from Latin America also came in large numbers. Most important are Nicaraguans who fled from the dictatorial Somoza rule and dangerous earthquake in 1980s, Peruvians who also escaped from earthquake and cruel Velasco regime, and Brazilians. These Chinese are concentrated in Victoria, Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.
There was a significant influx of wealthy Chinese from Hong Kong in the early and mid-1990s. These Chinese immigrants were worried about the pending handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China and Canada was a preferred location, in part because investment visas were significantly easier to obtain than visas to the United States. Vancouver, Richmond, and Toronto were the major destinations of these Chinese.
Few Chinese came from Pacific Islands, mostly Fiji, French Polynesia, and New Zealand. Chinese Australians also stayed in Canada.
Prominent Chinese Canadians
Within Canada
Raymond Chan, former Secretary of State for the Pacific Rim and currently the
Minister of State for Multiculturalism
Wei Chen, newscaster
Denise Chong, writer
Michael Chong, Member of Parliament
Tommy Chong, comic and actor (born in Canada, though famous mainly for work
in the U.S.)
Olivia Chow, Toronto politician and wife of Jack Layton
Raymond Chow, painter
Wayson Choy, writer
Adrienne Clarkson, journalist, novelist, publisher, current Governor General of
Canada
Won Alexander Cumyow, first Chinese baby to be born in Canada, 1861 in Port
Douglas, BC.
Chan Hon Goh, first Chinese-Canadian princial dancer with the National Ballet of
Canada
Sandrine Holt, actress of Chinese and French ancestry
Douglas Jung, first Canadian of Chinese origin elected to Parliament
Kristin Laura Kreuk, actress and model (mix of Dutch and Chinese ancestry)
Norman Kwong, aka "The China Clipper", fullback, won four Grey Cups and 30
individual CFL records; later became Lieutenant Governor of Alberta
Jenny Kwan, British Columbia MLA
David Lam, philanthropist and former British Columbia Lieutenant Governor (1988-
1995)
Evelyn Lau, writer
Sophia Leung, former Member of Parliament
Victor Li, businessman
Inky Mark, Member of Parliament
Vivienne Poy, first senator of Chinese ancestry
Mina Shum, filmmaker
Alfred Sung, fashion designer
Bob Wong, first Chinese elected to a cabinet post
Joseph Wong, medical doctor, founder of The Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care
William Kwong Yu Yeung, astronomer
Wing Yee, Singer-Songwriter and Musician.
Ying Chen, writer
Zhai Zhenhua, writer and ex-Red Guard
Education
Some second-generation Chinese Canadians are sent to after-school Mandarin and/or Cantonese Chinese schools to maintain or improve their Chinese language
ability. Many, but not all, first-generation parents encourage or persuade their children to attend the life science, engineering, or commerce faculties of universities, since they believe that only those studies will lead to a stable career and prominence in society.
Given names
Most Chinese Canadians have the Romanization of their Chinese given names as their middle name, or the other way around, but generally prefer to be called in their English name. Some have French names, those from Macao and Brazil generally already have Portuguese names, and Chinese Hispanics and some Chinese Filipinos have Spanish names. However, some consider their names easily pronounced by non-Chinese, so their only given name is in Chinese. However, there are those whose first and middle names are entirely Western.
Chinese-born
Many first-generation children who spend their entire childhood and adolescence in Chinese regions may find, without proper guidance, that it is extremely difficult to fit into the mainstream Canadian culture, and have thus isolated themselves individually or in a small group of Chinese-speaking Canadians. Among themselves they discuss Chinese popular music, news, and books, in Chinese. This trend may continue into university and after that into work, where they get employed in a Chinese Canadian-owned company. A small number of isolated Chinese Canadians immediately return to their birth countries or the USA after they receive their education in Canada. On the other hand, there are also those newcomers who try hard to participate in various aspects of Canadian society and strive to speak native-level English or French. But such embraces of Canadian culture do not necessarily guarantee a successful fit into Canadian society. They still find it difficult to get into any of the careers of their choice. As a result, some such people also have to return to China. But due to their high degree of acculturation into Canadian culture and the growing distance from Chinese culture, they sometimes have a difficult adjustment back into their Chinese society, most noticeably linguistically.
The most recent Canadian census showed that 29% of immigrants from China couldnt speak either official language; the highest level among all measured countries of origin. Taiwan came in third at 13% (behind India at 15%). This likely reflects the relative ease with which Chinese persons, as the third-largest ethnic group in Canada (behind old-stock English and French Canadians), can conduct themselves exclusively within the Chinese community. It may also reflect the recent nature of Chinese immigration to Canada.
Canadian-born
Some refer to those Chinese Canadians of later generations as "CBC" (Canadian-born Chinese), a parallel to ABC (American-born Chinese). While the name emphasizes their Chinese-ness, some "CBCs" themselves use it as well, usually simply out of convenience and may not fully agree with it. These people also sometimes refer to themselves as "Bananas" since they may look Asian, yet they do not speak Chinese and/or share little with Chinese culture.
Some of the labeled "Jook-sing" reject the possibility that China has anything to do with themselves as individuals.
Chinese illegal aliens in Canada
Groups of Fujianese refugees illegally arrived on Canada by boat in poor conditions in the late 20th century, but virtually none of them became Canadian citizens or residents and were mostly sent back to the People's Republic of China in a few months after time in isolated detention camps.
Further reading
Chinese Americans and Their Immigrant Parents: Conflict, Identity, and Values, May Pao-May Tung, Haworth Press, 2000, paperback, 112 pages, ISBN 0789010569
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 080474985x
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 0252027361 electronic book (http://www.press.uillinois.edu/epub/books/chen/toc.html)
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