Chinese in the United States

According to historical linguists, Sino-Tibetan Chinese is more like a language family than a single language made up of a number of regional dialects. [Page 129]However, Chinese people often prefer to use the generic term Chinese when collectively referring to the various languages used in the country. This entry will adhere to that convention except as otherwise noted.

Usually, the Chinese language can be disaggregated into seven major dialect groups, called Fangyan: Mandarin, Wu, Gan, Xiang, Hakka, Yue, and Min. The northern varieties of Chinese are known as the Mandarin dialects. These dialects are spoken by more than two thirds of the Chinese people. Almost all of the Mandarin dialects are mutually intelligible. Cantonese, which is widely used in Hong Kong and the Guangdong province, falls under the Yue dialect group. In 1956, Mandarin Chinese was adopted as the official language of the People's Republic of China (PRC).

After the founding of the PRC in 1949, the country faced the problem of a very low literacy rate. To eliminate mass illiteracy, the government actively supported the simplification of Chinese traditional characters. Currently, simplified Chinese characters have been adopted in the PRC and Singapore, although in Taiwan, traditional characters are still widely used. In Chinese instruction overseas, both traditional and simplified Chinese characters are taught, depending on whether the textbooks were published in Taiwan or the PRC.

The Chinese people and their various languages have a long history in the United States. According to the decennial census, conducted in April 2000, the Chinese immigrant population in the United States exceeded 2 million persons, thus making up 0.8% of the total population. This group has been growing rapidly and constitutes a significant ethnic and linguistic group. Many of the children of recent immigrants, especially in New York and California, participate in bilingual education programs.

The history of Chinese immigration to the United States occurred in three major waves. The first wave of immigration started in the mid-19th century but was stopped by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This U.S. federal law arose from fears that too many Chinese immigrants would somehow damage the fabric of American culture. Public sentiment against Chinese immigrants of the times was similar to what is now being expressed against Spanish-speaking immigrants, especially Mexicans. A large proportion of Chinese immigrants from the first wave were poor peasants from Guangdong Province (Canton). Most of them spoke Cantonese.

The second wave of immigration started in the mid-20th century but decreased during the 1970s. This group of immigrants included anti-Communists from mainland China, bureaucrats, businessmen, and intellectuals, as well as some professionals from Taiwan and Hong Kong. The immigrants from mainland China and Taiwan spoke mostly Mandarin, and those from Hong Kong spoke Cantonese; both groups continued to use traditional Chinese characters as a means of communication. As social and political conditions in the PRC began to stabilize, the second wave of immigrants decreased considerably.

The third wave of immigration started in the last decades of the 20th century and continues today. The immigrants were composed of mainland Chinese from various socioeconomic backgrounds, with professionals as the most represented group. They spoke mainly Mandarin and used simplified Chinese characters to communicate. Part of the motivation to emigrate, specifically from Hong Kong, was the change in the political status of this territory, which was associated with the turnover of political control to the PRC.

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