Chinese Americans (Chinese: 華裔美國人 or 美籍華人) are Americans of Chinese descent. Chinese Americans constitute one group of Overseas Chinese and also a subgroup of East Asian Americans, which is further a subgroup of Asian Americans. Within this community, the term Chinese American is often broadly defined to include not only immigrants from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau and their descendants but also immigrants and descendants of people from Ta...
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Chinese Americans (Chinese: 華裔美國人 or 美籍華人) are Americans of Chinese descent. Chinese Americans constitute one group of Overseas Chinese and also a subgroup of East Asian Americans, which is further a subgroup of Asian Americans. Within this community, the term Chinese American is often broadly defined to include not only immigrants from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau and their descendants but also immigrants and descendants of people from Taiwan and overseas Chinese people who have immigrated to the United States from places as diverse as Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Mexico.
The first Chinese immigrants arrived in 1820 according to U.S. government records. Fewer than 1,000 men are known to have arrived before the 1848 California Gold Rush which drew the first significant number of laborers from China who mined for gold and performed menial labor.
There were 25,000 immigrants by 1852, and 105,465 by 1880, most of whom lived on the West Coast. Most of...
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