Blogging from Shanghai, part 2

Dear Friends,

Chinese law students in Shanghai are very interesting in the history of Chinese immigration to the United States. Most have heard of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, but few knew that not long before that, in 1868, the U.S. convinced China to sign the Burlingame Treaty opening up China to trade and emigration to the U.S. Although anti-Chinese forces were already clamoring against the Chinese, especially in California, those who pushed through the Treaty celebrated the agreement that matched the ancient, cultured, revered China with the new, evolving U.S. Yet by 1882, the anti-Chinese activists and lobbyist got their way with a racist law that targeted Chinese laborers for an initial period of ten years. The law was extended indefinitely a few years later. With the exclusion law in force, the Chinese American population declined steadily for the next 50 years, especially because few Chinese women were in the United States compared with the mostly male Chinese immigrant and citizen population. Anti-miscegenation laws in a number of states like California barred Chinese men from marrying white women.

bh