English Articles

Between 1943 and 1947, the Chinese Government established Annual Qualifying Examinations for studying abroad in order to promote the country’s modernization after WWII. Thousands of students came to the US between 1947 and 1949. In 1949, some of them returned to China after their graduate studies. In 1953, due to the Korean war, the US government prohibited those STEM students from returning to China, and for the first time in US history, some of these students were allowed to gain permanent resident status in the US. Soon the students started mobilizing to fight for their rightful cause by sending petitions to the Congress, executive branch, and mainstream media. They also got the backing of the new Chinese government. In 1955 US and China held negotiations in Geneva regarding the US airmen who were held in China during the Korean War and the Chinese students residing in the US who wanted to go back to China. Between 1949 and January 1957, there were around 1,200 Chinese students returned to China.

The year of 1982 marked the awakening of the Chinese American Civil Rights Movements. On June 23, 1982, 陈果仁 (Vincent Chin) was beaten to death by two white men in Detroit. The lenient sentence led to an outcry from Asian-American community. Some six hundred miles away in New York City, on November 19, tens of thousands of Chinese New Yorkers marched in the streets of NYC protesting the city’s proposal of building a new prison in the vicinity of Chinatown. Over the next forty years, as the number of jails increased, the political participation of Chinese New Yorkers increased as well. After many years of efforts, Chinese New Yorkers began to win more and more elected city seats.