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Chinese Americans

Chinese Americans are Americans of Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans have ancestors from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan,[4] as well as other regions that are inhabited by large populations of the Chinese diaspora, especially Southeast Asia and some other countries such as Australia, Canada, France, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Chinese Americans include Chinese from the China circle and around the world who became naturalized U.S. citizens as well as their natural-born descendants in the United States.

"Chinese-born American" redirects here. For people with American birthright citizenship born in China, see Americans in China.

The Chinese American community is the largest overseas Chinese community outside Asia. It is also the third-largest community in the Chinese diaspora, behind the Chinese communities in Thailand and Malaysia. The 2016 Community Survey of the U.S. Census estimated the population of Chinese Americans of one or more races to be 5,081,682.[5] According to the 2010 census, the Chinese American population numbered about 3.8 million.[6] In 2010, half of the Chinese-born people in the United States lived in California and New York.[7]


About half or more of the Chinese ethnic people in the U.S. in the 1980s had roots in Taishan, Guangdong,[8] a city in southern China near the major city of Guangzhou. In general, much of the Chinese population before the 1990s consisted of Cantonese or Taishanese-speaking people from southern China, predominately from Guangdong province. During the 1980s, more Mandarin-speaking immigrants from Northern China and Taiwan immigrated to the U.S.[9] In the 1990s, a large wave of Fujianese immigrants arrived in the US, many illegally, particularly in the NYC area. [10] The Chinese population in much of the 1800s and 1990s was almost entirely contained to the Western U.S., especially California and Nevada, as well as New York City. Originally, Chinese immigrants and their descendants generally lived in Chinatowns (especially the ones in San Francisco and New York), or Chinese populated districts in downtowns of major cities.

Museums[edit]

There are a number of museums in the United States specifically focusing on and documenting the Chinese American experience, the most prominent being the Museum of Chinese in America in Manhattan's Chinatown, established in 1980; as well as others, including the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles, the Chinese American Museum of Chicago, the Chinese Historical Society of America in San Francisco, and the Chinese American Museum in Washington, D.C.

Genetics[edit]

Studies on the genetics of Chinese Americans[edit]

A research on the whole genome patterns of common DNA variation in different human populations (African-American, Asian-American and European American) finds some common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in these three populations with diverse ancestry.[137] In the samples of Han Chinese in America, 74% of the total SNPs have two alleles, and majority of the segregating SNPs have a minor allele frequency (MAF) greater than 10%. Another noticeable point is that MAFs show similar distributions in European-American and Han Chinese populations. Besides, rarer haplotype is found to be absent in the samples of Han Chinese, and they also possess a high level of redundancy.


A study analyzing East Asian Genetic Substructure using genome-wide SNP arrays is carried out with greater than 200,000 genotypes from people of East Asian ancestry.[138] The continental populations are from the Human Genome Diversity Panel (Cambodian, Yi, Daur, Mongolian, Lahu, Dai, Hezhen, Miaozu, Naxi, Oroqen, She, Tu, Tujia, Naxi, Xibo, and Yakut), HapMap (Han Chinese and Japanese), as well as East Asian or East Asian-American subjects of Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino and Chinese ancestry. A clear understanding of the genetic substructure of any population helps in the studies of complex diseases, as well as the design and execution of association tests. Results of this study have identified markers that can not only reduce type 1 errors in future genetic disease studies, but also identify homogeneous groups and hence make this study more powerful.


The group of Chinese Americans in the same study consists of subjects with origins from North China, South China and Taiwan. This group is paired with Han Chinese from Beijing, and results indicate that the population differentiation values was small (<0.0025). There is substantially less genetic substructure between Han Chinese and Chinese American, compared with that between Han Chinese, Japanese and Korean groups, yet there is still a substructure in principal component, according to the split half reliability test.


Another study aiming to estimate cardiometabolic risk profile of Chinese adults with diabetes is also useful to reveal the personal genomics of Chinese Americans.[139] In this study, all subjects are over 18 years old and non-institutionalized. Results derived from a complex, multistage, probability sampling design show that 12,607 out of 98,658 Chinese adults are suffering from diabetes, based on the criteria of 2010 American Diabetes Association. In addition, the study reaches a conclusion that for those Chinese adults defined with diabetes, cardiometabolic risk factors are highly prevalent, including metabolic syndrome, systolic blood pressure that is higher than 140mmHg, low fruit and vegetable intake, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol that is higher than 110 mg/dL.

Diabetes[edit]

The circumstance of the Asian-American population is informative in a way that some knowledge about Chinese Americans can be inferred from it. The statistics of diabetes in Asian-American population reveals that approximately 10% of the entire population are diabetic, and in which 90–95% are type 2 diabetes.[140] The current situation is that there are some challenges in diagnosing diabetes in many Asian Americans. The main obstacle is that many clinical features along with risks factors associated with diabetes are obtained from studies that focus on Caucasian populations, which might result in misdiagnoses between type 1 and type 2 diabetes for Asian Americans. In fact, the reason why classic features of type 1 and type 2 diabetes in America might not apply to Asian-American population is about shared absence of common HLA DR-DQ genotype, low prevalence of positive anti-islet antibodies and low BMI in both types of diabetes.[141]


Some other studies have pointed out that for people of Asian descent and without diabetes, their insulin resistance levels are higher than non-diabetic people of Caucasian descent. Thus, Asian Americans are relatively more predisposed to develop type 2 diabetes. This suggests that insulin resistance, rather than body mass index (BMI) should be targeted while making diagnoses. A potential biomarker to identify diabetes in young Asian-American population is adipocyte fatty acid binding protein that has a strong association with insulin resistance but is independent of adiposity. Nevertheless, more research studies should be carried out in order to confirm such finding. With further applying the above outcome on the population of Chinese Americans, it is rational that there is a higher tendency for type 2 diabetes among this group of people, who also face the challenge of correct diagnosis in America.

(28 March 1968 – 9 November 2004), historian, her publishings included: Thread of the Silkworm (1995), The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War Two (1997)

Iris Chang

popular food Youtuber (Strictly Dumpling).

Mike Chen

physicist, winner of Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009 for the work on fiber optics, using laser to transmit digital data through glass fiber.

Charles Kuen Kao

martial artist and actor, founder of Jeet Kune Do.

Bruce Lee

physicist, won the Nobel Prize in Physics (1957) with Yang Chen-Ning for their work on the violation of the parity law in weak interactions.

Tsung-Dao Lee

professional basketball player, played in NBA for several years and a Harvard graduate.

Jeremy Shu-How Lin

politician and diplomat, the 10th United States ambassador to China (2011–2014), 21st Governor of Washington (1997–2005) and served in the Obama administration as United States Secretary of Commerce (2009–11).

Gary Locke

New Hampshire State Representative and first Chinese-American elected to the New Hampshire General Court.[143]

Ben Ming

writer, author of The Joy Luck Club.

Amy Ruth Tan

physicist, one of the two winners of Nobel Prize in Physics in 1976 for the work on the discovery of J/ψ meson.

Samuel Chao Chung Ting

physicist, one of the winners of Nobel Prize in Physics in 1998 for the work on the discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations.

Daniel Chee Tsui

businessman, a co-founder and CEO of Computer Associates International, Inc. (later renamed to CA Technologies).

Charles B. Wang

physicist who was called by scientists, "The First Lady of Physics" for her experimental discovery of parity violation in weak interaction proposed by Chen-Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee, both of whom won Nobel Prize. She also made the crucial study that showed the problem with Xenon in nuclear reactors for the Manhattan Project. Her work was not publicly recognized except by top scientists until 1978 when she was given the Wolf Prize.

Chien-Shiung Wu

first Asian-American mayor of Boston, born in the U.S..

Michelle Wu

entrepreneur, politician, lawyer, and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.

Andrew Yang

mathematician, who won the Fields Medal in 1982 before becoming an American citizen in 1990.

Shing-Tung Yau

billionaire businessman and founder of Zoom Video Communications.

Eric Yuan

World Journal

Sing Tao Daily

Ming Pao

(1955–1972)

Chinese-American Times

Factfinder Chinese Americans 2005 American Community Survey

The Rocky Road to Liberty: A Documented History of Chinese American Immigration and Exclusion

Museum of Chinese in the Americas

Chinese Culture Center & Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco

Archived 12 April 2020 at the Wayback Machine

Organization of Chinese Americans

Chinese Historical Society of America

"Paper Son" – one Chinese American's story of coming to America under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

a PBS Bill Moyers special. Thomas F. Lennon, Series Producer.

Becoming American: The Chinese Experience

– Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum

Chinese American Contribution to Transcontinental Railroad

Comprehensive list of famous Chinese Americans organized by professions. Includes short biographical notes and Chinese names.

Famous Chinese Americans

Chinese Information and Networking Association (CINA)

hosts the memoir of the first Chinese American graduate of an American university (Yale 1854).

The Yung Wing Project

Chinese American Museum

Documentary about the Golden Venture tragedy

Archived 18 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine

Americans and Chinese : purpose and fulfillment in great civilizations