Amanda M.

Labrado
U.S. History 1
Clardy
11/20/09

How did the U.S. treat Chinese Immigrants?

Like any other immigrant group, the Chinese came to America in hope
of gaining wealth and prosperity; However, former immigrants who came
before the Chinese-the Europeans, now “nativists”- limited Chinese rights
and confiscated many opportunities America had to offer to the Chinese-that
America had offered to the Europeans when they had arrived-in the years
following the arrival of the Chinese on the west coast.
During the late 19th century, China’s population grew to approximately
450 million, leaving China’s southern and central provinces filled to capacity
with people, and not much farm land. This overpopulation left just one tenth
of China’s land arable, giving farmers an average of three acres to cultivate,
with the majority of farmers having just one acre. Furthermore, China’s
political control began weakening due to the growth in population; the ratio
of the district magistrates to the Chinese people was 1:250,000, leaving
governmental control and responsibility more and more up to “local leaders
whose allegiances were to their localities and families, rather than to the
state.”1 China also suffered a series of foreign and internal conflicts plus
natural disasters between the years of 1839 and 1900, including the Opium
War(1839-42), The Henan Province Drought of 1847,The Guangxi Province
Famine of 18492,Yangtze River Floods (1848,’49,’60,’70)3, The Taiping
rebellion(1850-64)4, and The Sino-French war (1884-5)5. In contrast, America
was 230 years young and had a population of roughly 23 million6; there were
better wages and work for everyone, and a new discovery of gold in
California created possibilities the Chinese would have never dreamed of in

1 http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/timelines/china_modern_timeline.htm

2 http://books.google.com/books?
id=uVTgFozv8ssC&pg=PR24&lpg=PR24&dq=china+henan+drought+1847&source=bl&ots
=Slp42W9zBj&sig=513XOi3xP04HnR4a3MJmqEgzYZk&hl=en&ei=33EKS7vnNZOesgP_3qTBC
Q&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=
%201847&f=false

3 http://www.mwr.gov.cn/english1/20060110/20060110104550YJLPPE.pdf

4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion

5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-French_War

6 http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1850a-02.pdf
their homeland. Also, The Burlingame Treaty of 1868 Encouraged the
Chinese to emigrate to the U.S. because they would be offered “the same
privileges, immunities, and exemptions in respect to travel or residence, as
may there be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored
nation.”7
Chinese began immigrating to America after news of a “Gold
Mountain” reached Canton in 1848.8 Nearly all Chinese immigrants made
their way to San Francisco, California to mine gold, while the remaining
immigrants went elsewhere, west of the Rocky Mountains, to try their
fortunes.9Within the first couple years of the Gold Rush, a Foreign Miner’s tax
was imposed on all non-American born miners for $20 a month, to
discourage immigrants from mining. 10Even though the Chinese “were careful
not to antagonize [the] whites by prospecting ahead of them,”11 Many
Americans were not as lucky as the Chinese had been and blamed their luck
on foreigners for drying up the mine, “These newcomers did not find it so
easy as their predecessors had done to amass large fortunes in a few days.
[…]These gold-seekers were disappointed. In the bitterness of their
disappointment they turned upon the men of other races who were working
side by side with them and accused them of stealing their wealth.”12After the
gold mines ran dry, the Chinese moved on to the railroad Industry; However,
because of their frail figures they were seen as incapable of doing work the
white men usually did, but after being put to the test, “[The contractors]
resorted to hiring Chinamen to fill the places of those who left [for the gold
fields of the Fraser River]; the result is that they now have some fifty
Chinamen employed, and they find them very good working hands. They do
not work as rapidly as the white men, but they keep constantly at it from
sunrise until sunset. The experiment bids fair to demonstrate that Chinese
laborers can be profitably employed in grading railroads in California....”13
The railroads were completed in the late 1870s and the Chinese attempted

7 http://immigrants.harpweek.com/ChineseAmericans/2KeyIssues/BurlingameTreaty1868.ht
m

8 http://www.calgoldrush.com/part3/03asians.html

9 http://nchs.ucla.edu/NH164-preview.pdf

10 http://www.duke.edu/~agf2/history391/nativism.html

11 http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist6/chinhate.html

12 http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist6/chinhate.html

13 http://cprr.org/Museum/Chinese_Syllabus.html
to find work elsewhere in industries such as farming, fishing or in the large
cities “[manufacturing] cigars, shoes, and garments, while others opened up
their own restaurants, laundries, and grocery stores.”14 Few Chinese
immigrants returned home unless they were refused entry to the U.S. in the
first place. Many Chinese planned on returning home, but because of a lack
of money, only those who had made enough for themselves and had family
back home returned; Some Chinese would return to their homeland because
of the imbalanced sex ratio on the west coast; the ratio was 27 men to every
one woman in 1890.15 And some were forced to stay in America because they
no longer had Queues because white men would cut these off; the act was
considered a crime back home “punishable by beheading”.16
Today, the Chinese Americans most populate California (near the west
central coast, southern California near Los Angeles, and The Central valley),
parts of north coast Oregon, northern Washington, and several states on the
northern east coast.17 There are several prominent Chinatowns in the U.S.
today including San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Honolulu, and Seattle,
just to name a few.18 In modern society, the Chinese are prosperous and are
still known to be the most hard-working because of their “long term
orientations”, a value acquired from China.19

14 http://nchs.ucla.edu/NH164-preview.pdf

15 http://library.thinkquest.org/20619/Chinese.html

16 http://teachingresources.atlas.uiuc.edu/chinese_exp/introduction04.html

17 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e6/Pctchinese.png

18 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_significant_Chinese_American_populat
ions

19 http://hep.oise.utoronto.ca/index.php/hep/article/viewFile/658/716
http://www.clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensions/long-term-orientation/