研究ノート

How did they become invisible?

Chinese American Activism in the Cold War ― Civil
Rights Movement Era
Zhenxing ZHU

Ⅰ. Introduction
My project aims to reexamine the history of Chinese Americans in the Cold
War-Civil Rights Movement era from the perspective of Chinese American
activism. The purpose of this paper is to identify the causes impacting Chinese
American activism from early 1950s to late 1960s.
The African American Civil Rights Movement coincided with the Cold War.
It greatly influenced racial relations in American history. In this particularperiod, the United States had to propagate the superiority of U.S democracy
over communism in order to counter the Soviet Union and also to extend its
allies in the world. However, due to the racial problems in the domestic sphere,
the US was condemned by communist propaganda which stressed that
American racism was undermining the benefits of the American way of life.1 In
order to counter this, the President’s Committee on Civil Rights made aninvestigation into racial problems resulting in the report To Secure These
Rights, which suggested to change unjust laws and to end the residential
segregation in order to silence the critics from the outside world. 2 Afterwards,
the Committee on Race and Housing3 produced a report to advocate thatminorities should learn about American values and behavior so that they could
move out of the slums and into the white suburban neighborhood 4. Moreover,suburbanization became the facilitating process for assimilation and a strategy
to advocate the superiority of American democracy. 5
By examining the previous studies of Chinese American history in the Cold
War period, most of them follow this ideology and their narratives reflect the
point of view of assimilation6. They usually focused on the outward migration ofChinese Americans from the ghetto, so-called Chinatowns, to the suburbs
where they lived among whites. Therefore, the idea was formed that Chinese109

研究ノートAmericans gradually entered into mainstream American society and became
middle class, and such an idea was reinforced by the repealing of Chinese
Exclusion Act in 1943.
In fact, the number of Chinese Americans who assimilated into mainstream
society and joined the middle class was limited, and most of them had tocontinue to live in Chinatowns during that period.7
Unlike historians focusing on “suburbanization” and “assimilation”, I try todeal with the history of common people who lived in Chinatown from theperspective of Chinese American activism. This paper explores how Chinese
American activism became invisible by examining three specific factors which
impacted them profoundly: the international and domestic sociopolitical context;
the informal sociopolitical structure of the Chinese American community; andthe transition of sociological theories stereotyping Chinese Americans.

Ⅱ. T
 o be Contained or to be Integrated: Chinese Americans
at the Center of the Triangular Relations among the U.S,
PRC and KMT.
As cu lt u ra l h istor ia n Ch r ist i na K lei n st ated i n her work C ol d Wa r
Orientalism, “containment and integration constituted the two ideologicalfoundations of U.S. postwar foreign policy.” 8 The policy of containment aimed toprevent communism from threatening the “free world.”, while the ideology ofintegration reflected the expansion of US economic and political hegemony inthe world. In fact, after World War Ⅱ the strategy of the US towards China
typically reflected such ideologies. In the meantime it also greatly influenced
the fates of Chinese Americans in the Cold War years.
1. Containing the Communist Mainland while Integrating “Free” Taiwan
In reaction to the U.S. policy of non-recognition of the PRC, Mao Zedong
published a sarcastic article “Farewell, Leighton Stuart”, calling Stuart “asymbol of the complete defeat of U.S. policy of aggression.” 9 In 1950, the Korean
War broke out. This war thoroughly changed the attitude of the US government
towards the PRC.10
On December, 1950, President Harry S. Truman declared an order toestablish The Division of Foreign Assets Control in the United States Treasury
110How did they become invisible?

Department. The new organization was used to ban any flow of capital fromthe Chinese American community to relatives in the PRC. The US government
also used the Trading with the Enemy Act to silence newspapers’ pro-China
views. For example, in New York’s Chinatown, China Daily News, which was
founded by laundrymen, was exceptional in its independence from the control ofallies of Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT government in Chinatown and in covering theposit ive cha nges occurri ng i n Chi na u nder Mao. But in 19 52 , t he U. S .
government charged several staff members of China Daily News with violationof the Trading with the Enemy Act and the Treasury Department’s Foreign
Assets Control Regulation because China Daily News published advertisements
for the PRC-owned Nanyang Bank of Hong Kong, informing Chinese Americans
that they could use the bank to send money to their relatives in the PRC.11
Collapse of the Nationalist regime in mainland China shocked Washington.
The pro-KMT China lobby pushed the State Department to consider who “lost”
China, and demanded that the Truman government continued to support
Chiang Kai-shek’s Taiwan government. The U.S. government supplied enormous
economic aid to Taiwan, moreover, after the outbreak of the Korean War,president Truman ordered to send the U.S. Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait
to prevent the Chinese communist army from attacking Taiwan. Thus Taiwan
was integrated into US’s economic and military allies as the “unsinkablecarrier” in East Asia.12 Besides providing huge economic and military aid for
the Taiwan government, US also spent lot of money to support Taiwan’s
cultural and educational programs through the United States Information
Agency (USIA). The aim was not only to enhance American cultural influence
on Taiwan but also to build Taiwan as a model of the “free world” against the“dictatorial” communist mainland.13
2. R epressing Chinese Dissents while Utilizing Assimilated Chinese forCultural Diplomacy.
Due to the establishment of PRC and the subsequent Sino-Soviet alliance, theChinese Americans faced suspicions of disloyalty. On December 9, 1955, an
official report entitled the “Report on the Problem of Fraud in Hong Kong” wassubmitted to the State Department by the U.S. consul in Hong Kong, Everett F.
Drumright, pointed out that the PRC was planning “a criminal conspiracy toevade the laws of the United States” through a well-organized system in Hong111

研究ノートKong, dispatching immigrants to New York and San Francisco. It had become
the major channel for immigrants who had ties with communists in the PRC.14
This report reawakened the American fear of “Red China.” The FBI and the
Immigration and Naturalization Service（INS）began to investigate Communist
subversive activities in Chinatowns throughout the country. The progressive
organizations and newspapers that were suspected of being pro-PRC became
the first scapegoats of this investigation.
In 1956, the U.S. government initiated a “confession program” to encourage
the Chinese Americans who had illegally immigrated by means of “papersons” 15 to volu nta rily con fess t heir true status . At t hat t ime, Chinese
community leaders (Kiu Lings 僑領) began to reassert their declining leadershipin the community by attacking leftist organizations and cooperating actively
with the FBI and the INS. The INS heralded “the Confession Program as oneof its greatest accomplishments” because it rooted out “paper families” one after
another and silenced pro-PRC activists.16
Nevertheless, at the same time U.S. policymakers were perplexed by internal
racial conflict of the “black/white paradigm” and external pressures from
communist ideological antagonism. Thus, assimilated Chinese Americans were
presented as a “model” of integration into the American way of life. On the one
hand, the successful stories of Chinese Americans were used to inspire otherminorities and helped to paint desegregation as a necessary and possible goal,on the other hand, to further the containment of Communist China the federal
government utilized assimilated Chinese Americans to attest to the credibilityof U.S. democracy, and to bolster U.S. efforts to rally the newly decolonizedcountries in Asia.17 One example is the experience of Jade Snow Wong who wascommissioned by the US State Department to travel abroad in order to promote
the “benefits of American way of life” after the outbreak of the Korean War.
Jade Snow Wong travelled throughout East, Southeast, and South Asia toespouse the “superiority of US democracy over communism”, able to do so
because of her racial identity as a Chinese American and her autobiography,
Fifth Chinese Daughter became “the first nationally acclaimed commerciallysuccessful book written by a Chinese American.” But she did not achieve thedesired results, as she remarked that there was no “shared Asian sensibility”.18
In Fifth Chinese Daughter, she expressed her discomfort being a Chinese andhow she longed for the American way of life.19
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How did they become invisible?

However, sometimes the international and domestic sociopolitical climatechanged in the blink of an eye. After the New Immigration Act of 1965 went
into effect, many new overseas Chinese surged into America from Southeast
Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The demographics in the Chinese communitychanged rapidly. In addition to the influence of the civil rights movement thatspread around the whole nation, Chinese Americans were inspired and many
younger activists emerged, signaling that the forces of change were stirring in
Chinese American communities.

Ⅲ. Transition of the Sociopolitical Structure in the Chinese
American Community
1. Internal Power Structure of Chinese American Community
During the Chinese Exclusion period, Chinese immigrants were denied
naturalization. In order to protect themselves from discrimination and to havesupport within their own ethnic enclaves, they created many Chinese-likeassociations for mutual aid based on kinship, native places, and common interests.
According to Him Mark Lai, Huiguan (會館) and Fong(Cantonese 坊)were twokinds of the most important Chinese immigrant organizations in the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The members of Huiguan always
consisted of “sojourning merchants” or “artisans” who were from the same
locality in China. Huiguan supplied services to protect group economic interestsand performed certain charitable and social functions for fellow members while
they were away from home. In contrast to Huiguan, Fong was at a low levelwithin the “well-defined hierarchical organization structure” and “evolved under
the umbrella of the Huiguan.” Its members mainly shared knowledge of trade,manufacturing and types of labor. The aims of Fong associations were
especially important in establishing immigration networks and assisting
members in finding jobs, and also crucial to the development of both ethnic
businesses and Chinatowns. 20 The most powerful association hierarchicallyabove Huiguan and Fong was the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association(CCBA). It was commonly known as the Chinese Six Companies which wasrecognized by the larger society as the voice of the Chinese community in the
United States. As Lai claimed in his works: “The CCBA/Huiguan systemevolved in response to the need of the Chinese to organize for social, economic,113

研究ノートand political reasons”. 21 (see Appendix 1)
The association leaders always came from among the merchant elites. They
were called Kiu Lings (Cantonese 僑領) in Chinese American communities, whowere the owners of restaurants, laundry shops, and garment factories, andalways controlled the community power structure. They were wealthy andbecame famous through activities in the family, clan, and regional associations.
During the Chinese Exclusion period, Chinese immigrants were isolated from thewider society. In their mind they would forever be considered as foreigners by
the white-dominated society, and their roots were in China not in America. They
stayed in the U.S. in order to make money and save for their poor family andrelatives in China. They would return to China to reunite with their families one
day in the future. And many Chinese Americans believed that making China
strong would be the key to improving their status in the United States. Therefore,
Chinese American had great interest in Chinese political developments.22
Moreover, the community power structure was strengthened with thesupport of the Chinese government, as Zhao pointed out, after the KMT gained
control of a large part of China in 1927, it began to regulate overseas Chinese
communities and to expand their membership to include overseas Chinese. It
also established headquarters in Chinatown in the United States and appointed
several heads of Huiguans and the CCBA as the officials of its branches abroad.
In order to receive and maintain their loyalties to the Nationalist government,
the KMT gave them honorary posts in the central committee of the KMT or
central government, meanwhile the Party also helped these Kiu lings maintaint heir cont rol i n Chi natowns . This condit ion cont i nued a f ter t he K MT
government retreated to Taiwan. 23 However, the elites did not always control
Chinese communities smoothly. Apart from the internal disputes between
huiguans and Fongs, many intellectuals, workers and young people also began
to challenge the power of the elites in the communities. They began to see thatthe merchant-dominated power structure had little interest in providing
protections for common Chinese Americans. Some of them were inspired by
Marxist theories and became sympathetic to Chinese Communists and founded
their new organizations, such as Chinese Handy Laundry Alliance (CHLA.,
founded in New York Chinatown in 1933) on the East Coast of the United States
and the Chinese Workers Mutual Aid Association (CWMAA, established in San
Francisco in 1937) and the Chinese American Democratic Youth League
114How did they become invisible?

(CADYL, the predecessor of Min Qing, established in San Francisco Chinatownin 1940) on the West Coast of the United States. In Him Mark Lai’s work, hecalled this “new power” as the old activists and their organizations were old
activist organizations in contrast to some activist organizations founded by “newleft” Chinese American activists 24
2. Internal Political Struggles of the Post World War Ⅱ
Naturally, the Civil War in China garnered great attention in the Chinese
commu nit ies of A merica . The “wa r” in Chinatowns between t he ma in
community institution leaders (Kiu Lings) who shared the same interests with
the KMT party and the old political leftists who were inspired by the ideologyof Mao’s communist party became heated. For example, a mass rally forcelebrating the founding of PRC (held by members of CWMAA and CADYL in
San Francisco on the evening of October 9) was full of hostility. According to a
Chinese American community newspaper’s report, half an hour after the
ceremony began, a “KMT-hired goon squad” busted into the auditorium andtore down the red PRC flags, destroyed the flowers, and sprayed blue dye allover the crowd. Posters titled “Mop up Chinatown’s Bandits”, which were pasted
on buildings and walls, announced that fifteen Chinese American leftists were
wanted and five thousand dollars rewarded for each one’s death. People in San
Francisco’s Chinatown were terrified the following days. 25
Because the U.S. government declined to recognize the PRC and continued tosupport the KMT, the Chinese American communities were largely dominatedby the KMT and its supporters. Moreover, after the Korean War, they formed
Anti-Communist League and helped the informants of the FBI and the INS toinvestigate and repress leftist activists. 26 At that time, some activists andjournalists, who supported neither CCP nor KMT but strove for their equal
rights, also suffered repression. For example, Gilbert Woo, a liberal Chinese
American journalist, who had established the Chinese Pacific Weekly which was
nonpa rt isa n . However, because some reports crit icized K MT roughly
dominating and interfering Chinatown affairs, the KMT supporters accused thepaper of being pro-Communist and threatened to close the paper 27
After the crisis atmosphere of investigating Chinese immigration fraud
permeated the whole Chinese American communities in the mid-1950s, it
compelled Chinese Americans become acutely aware that neither the PRC nor
115

研究ノートthe KMT government in Taiwan could protect them. They called Chinese
community organizations to get together and fight for their community
interests. In 1957 a National Conference of Chinese Communities, which wasconvened by New York’s CCBA, held in Washington D.C. from March 3 to 7.
The 124 delegates from 34 cities throughout the U.S. gathered to discuss how
to face the investigations. However, a few participants proposed that the stanceof the conference should be anti-communist and pro-KMT. Their agenda wasresisted by most representatives. Furthermore, Chinese American journalists
also pressured the conference organizers to place the focus on the problems
which the Chinese American community faced. As Gilbert Woo wrote in his
paper China Pacific Weekly:
If some people enjoy a conference on [China] politics, let them go. I strongly
advise all citizens of the United States not to be involved… For decades,
involvement in China’s political struggle has caused endless conflict in the
Chinese American community and brought about zero benefit… If the
primary purpose of this conference is a political power struggle rather thanan attempt to benefit the entire community, our delegation should withdraw
and hold a conference of its own. If they were too myopic to see the harm,
why should we follow them down the path? 28
It mea nt that a new consciousness emerged in the minds of Chinese
Americans. They were weary of China’s political conflicts within Chinese
American communities, and advocated the struggle for their communities as
Chinese Americans instead of being Chinese sojourning in the United States.
This was a growing trend leading to the establishment of Chinese American
identity in the activist movement of the late of 1960s.

Ⅳ. F
 rom Oriental Alien to “Model Minority”: Transition of the
Image of Chinese in America
1. The Oriental as A Racial Problem
The Chinese of America were socially isolated and lacked communications
with the larger American society, sociological scholars of the dominant society
had great interest in their life styles and their communities. They called those116

How did they become invisible?

Chinese as “the Orientals” and Chinatown as embodiment of the exotic Orient. 29
In academia, Chicago sociologists (Robert Park and his colleagues) put forth anumber of approaches and theories in order to understand the Oriental in
America, Park thought the main point of the “Oriental problem” was that
Orientals could not achieve the last step of the “assimilation cycle” due to “raceconsciousness” among whites. 30 In order to examine the detailed situation ofChinese society in U.S., Park and his peers recruited several Chinese Americans
as graduate students and utilized them as informants to conduct many
fieldworks. Paul C.P. Siu was a brilliant student among them. As an insider
sociologist, by conducting much fieldwork in New York Chinatown, Siu argued
that “sojourner” was more appropriate than “marginality” to describe thementality of Chinese in America because “a sojourner clings to the culture of
his own ethnic group as in contrast to the bicultural complex of the marginalman.” 31 Therefore, in the Chinese Exclusion era most of Chinese immigrants
were “sojourners” because their lives were characterized by living outside of
their homeland and enduring racial discrimination from the white dominatedsociety. Similarly, the “old left” Chinese American activists who shared the“same mentality oriented to towards Chinese culture and revolutionary politics
in China” could also be categorized as “sojourners.” 32
2. Assimilation as a Slogan for Becoming “Model Minority”
Compared to the situation of Chinatown in the 1920s when the history ofChinese Americans was being shaped by the Chinese exclusion period, thesituation of Chinese Americans had changed greatly in the 1950s, especiallyafter the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943, and Chinese Americans
had the chance to get white-collar professions. Thus, a few well-educatedChinese Americans gradually became middle class and began to escape fromghetto-Chinatown to live in suburban neighborhoods with whites. At that time,
Rose Him Lee, as a Chinese American sociologist who grew up and lived in awhite suburb, reexamined Park’s theories in her works in the 1950s. Leesuggested that only assimilation could erase the “Oriental problems.” In order toreach the absolute “cultural assimilation”, it is inevitable to “eradicate all physicalevidence of foreignness.” 33 Since World War Ⅱ the idea of assimilation became “aset of political dogma” to extend cultural hegemony or to reformulate social
policies towards minorities in order to exploit Chinese Americans and to prevent117

研究ノートmore people from becoming communist activists. 34 For instance, before outbreakof the Civil War in China many American-born Chinese believed that if theyfailed to establish themselves professionally in the U.S they could always findcareers in China. That was no longer an option because of the war. Therefore,
assimilation became a much more attractive possibility, especially for those who
were born in U.S. and scared in the shadow of the repressive anti-Communist
climate of the 1950s. For example, in 1949, the participants of the Chinese Young
People’s Summer Conference in Lake Tahoe urged youth not only to leave
Chinatowns, but to also discard Chinese tradition altogether. They thought it
was the best way to advance “understanding” between the races. 35 Whenassimilationist theory spread around whole communities, the “sojourner” oldactivists were marginalized and their voices also disappeared. On the contrary,tales of the well-assimilated Chinese Americans were common in mainstream
media and eulogized by politicians in the process of policy-making. Gradually,
Chinese Americans were labeled as a “Model Minority.” 36 However, the showy“Model Minority” image in suburbs could not cover the bleak reality of theextreme unemployment, delinquency, and severe gang violence in Chinatowns. 37
Nonetheless, the civil rights movement inspired many young professionals andyoung college students who began to re-identify themselves with and willingly
participate in struggles for the interests of the ghetto-Chinatown deserted bytheir parents. This did not only directly challenge the repressive political andeconomic order maintained by the association leaders and merchant elites (Kiu
Lings) but also contradicted the dominant ideology of assimilation. 38 Moreover,
the Third World Student Strikes, which happened at San Francisco State
University and U.C. Berkeley in 1968-1969 paved the way for Ethnic Studies
and Asian American Studies founding at San Francisco State College and U.C.
Berkeley, and then at UCLA. The founding of Ethnic Studies and Asian
American Studies in colleges and universities catered to the need to establish aseparated institutional existence where Asian Americans as a self-identified
group could research their history and culture. The people who had been
identified as Orientals came to define themselves as Asian Americans andAsian American activists also created institutions that rejected the goal of
assimilation into white-dominated society and absolutely rejected the notion of
having to become white.

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How did they become invisible?

Ⅴ. Conclusion
Throughout the whole Cold War- Civil Rights Movement era, Chinese
American activists struggled to claim rights denied to them by those outside of
Chinatown, as well as to change the social and political power within Chinatown
itself. The process of claiming their rights and searching for their identity was
not a smooth one, but full of setbacks. First, international relations in thecontext of the Cold War led to utilizing integrated Chinese immigrants to
propagating the superiority of US democracy while suppressing the pro-PRC
activism. Second, internal political struggles made pro-KMT elites cooperatewith the FBI and the INS to root out old leftists and their organizations,
meanwhile the non-partisan activism also suffered repression. Third, spreading
assimilationist theory around the community made “sojourner” old leftists lose
their voices and their activism to become invisible.
However, the Civil Rights Movement inspired new leftists who rejected thegoal of assimilation into white-dominated society and began to learn tactics ofAfrican Americans’ struggling so that they could serve for Chinese communities.
APPENDIX 1
Organizational Relationships in the CCBA-SF/Huiguan System in San
Francisco Chinatown

Chinese Consolidated Benevolent

Anti-Communist League

Association (CCBA)

Ning

Hop

Kong

Yeong

Sam

Yan

Sue

Yen

Yung

Wo

Chow

Wo

Yup

Wo

Hing

Hing

BEN.

BEN.

BEN.

BEN.

BEN.

BEN.

BEN.

BEN.

ASSN

ASSN

ASSN

ASSN

ASSN

ASSN

ASSN

ASSN

(BEN. ASSN = Benevolent Association)

HuiguanFong

119

研究ノートNotes:
This relation chart is drawn by the author on the basis of descriptions of the CCBA-SF/
Huiguan system in Lai, Him Mark. “Historical Development of the Chinese Consolidated
Benevolent Association/Huiguan System.” Chinese America: History and Perspectives (SanFrancisco, CA: Historical Society of America, 1987):13-51.
CCBA- SF was established on November 19, 18 82 . Because it was founded by six
companies (six Huiguans, which including Ning Yung, Hop Wo, Kong Chow, Yeong Wo, Sam
Yup, and Yan Wo), it was also known as the Chinese Six Companies in the white society.
Later, the Sue Hing Association and Yen Hoy Company successively joined in the CCBA-San
Francisco.

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How did they become invisible?

注
1 Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University, 2000), 12.
2	The Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, To Secure These Rights (NewYork: Simon and Schuster, 1947), 147-148.
3	The Committee on Race and Housing is a citizens' group founded in 1955 for the
purpose of inquiring into problems of residence and housing involving racial and ethnic
minority groups in the United States.
4	Where Shall We Live? Report of the Commission on Race and Housing (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1958), 6.
5	At the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow, Vice president Richard Nixon
specially explained the superiority of American democracy and capitalism by displaying
the advantage of the suburban home. See Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound:
American Families in the Cold War Era (United States: BasicBooks, 1988), 20.
6	There are a lot of works written from this perspective, such as Cindy I-Fen Cheng, “Outof Chinatown and into the Suburbs: Chinese Americans and the Politics of Cultural
Citizenship in Early Cold America,” American Quarterly, Vol. 58, No.4 (Dec., 2006),
1067-1090; Cheng, Citizens of Asian America: Democracy and Race during the Cold
War ( N Y: New York University, 2 013). Ellen D. Wu, “ ‘America’s Chinese’ : AntiCommunism, Citizenship and Cultural Diplomacy during the Cold War,” Pacif ic
Historical Review, Vol.77, No.3 (2008), 391-422; Wu, The Color of Success: Asian
Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University,2013).
7	According to Mely Giok-lan Tan’s work, Chinese Americans who could assimilate into
the majority society and become middle class were mainly limited to the well-educatedprofessional category, and the proportion of those in manual occupations remained
usually high. Those mostly continued to live in Chinatown of San Francisco. See Mely
Giok-lan Tan, The Chinese in the United States: Social Mobility & Assimilation (Taipei:
The Oriental Service, 1971) 231-285.
8	Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 19451961 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 24.
9	John Leighton Stuart (Chinese: 司徒雷登) was born in Hangzhou, China on June 24, 1876.
He was born in a Presbyteria n missionary family from the US . Stuart started
missionary work in China from 1905. On July 11, 1946, Stuart was appointed U.S.
ambassador to China. After Chinese Communist forces controlled Nanjing, Stuart wasrecalled to the U.S. on August 2, 1949. After he departed to Washington, Mao publishedthe sarcastic article Farewell, Leighton Stuart. In the article, called Stuart “a loyal
agent of U.S. cultural aggression in China,” and his departure from China as “a symbolof the complete defeat of the U.S. policy of aggression.” See Mao Tse-Tung, “Farewell,
Leighton Stuart,” in Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Vol. Ⅳ (Beijing: Foreign Language
Press, 1961), 433-440.
10	Iris Chang, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History (New York, NY: Penguin
B o o k s , 2 0 0 3 ) , 2 3 9 , 2 4 2 , 2 4 8 ; Me re d it h O ye n , T h e D i p l o m a c y o f M i g r a t i o n :Transnational Lives and the Making of U.S.-Chinese Relations in the Cold War(Ithaca,
Cornell University, 2015), 69-70, 99-100.
11	Wang Shigu, “Meizhou huaqiao ribao.” [China Daily News] in Huaqiao Huaren Bauke
Quanshu: Meiti &Chuban juan [The Encyclopedia of Chinese Overseas: Volume ofMedia &Publication], Zhou Nanjing, ed. (Beijing: Zhongguo Huaqiao Chubanshe, 1999),

121

研究ノート250; Lai, Chinese American Transnational Politics, 144-146; Renqiu Yu, To Save China,
To Save Ourselves(Philadelphia, PA: Temple University, 1992),187-189; Amy Chen, The
Chinatown Files (documentary), (NY: Third World Newsreel, 2001).
12	Meredith Oyen, The Diplomacy of Migration: Transnational Lives and the Making of
U.S.-Chinese Relations in the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornel University Press, 2015) , 99100; Wanli Hu, “Mao’s America Strategy and the Korean War,” in China and the United
St at e s: A New Col d War Hi stor y, Xiaobing Li and Hongshan Li, eds. ( Lanham,
Maryland: University Press of America, 1998), 310-313; William C. Kirby, “The Changing
International Scene and Chinese Policy toward the United States, 1954-1970,” in Reexamining the Cold War U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954-1973, Robert S. Ross andChangbin Jiang, eds. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 39-45; Chang,
The Chinese in America, 247; Shin-shan Henry Tsai, The Chinese Experience inAmerica (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986), 123.
13	Hongshan Li, “The Visible Hand: Washington’s Role in the U. S.-Taiwan Cultural
Relations in the Cold War,” in China and The United States: A New Cold War, Xiaobing
Li and Hongshan Li, eds. (Lanham, Maryland: University of Press of America, 1998),
154-155.
14	Everett F. Drumright, “Report on the Problem of Passport Fraud at Hong Kong,”
Foreign Services Dispatch 931, December 9, 1955, 4-26, file 122.4732/12-955, Central
Files, Dept. of State.
15	Thomas Chin, ed., “The History of the Chinese in California.” Virtual Museum of theCity of San Francisco, accessed September 17, 2016, http://www.sfmuseum.net/hist11/
papersons.html. In 1906, the San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed local publicrecords. Dating from the fire, many Chinese claimed that they were born in San
Francisco. With this citizenship the father then claimed citizenship for his offspringborn in China. Sometimes, the father would report the birth of a son when in reality
there was no such event. This was what was termed a “slot” and would then be
available for sale to boys who had no family relationships in the United States in orderto enable them to enter the country. Merchant brokers often acted as middlemen tohandle the sale of slots. Sons who entered the country in this fashion were known as“paper sons.”
16	Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 218-224; Lai, Becoming Chinese
America, 30-32; Zhao, Remaking Chinese America, 173-183.
17	Cheng, Citizens of Asian America, 85-89; Wu, “‘America’s Chinese’: Anti-Communism,
Citizenship, and Cultural Diplomacy during the Cold War,” 391-395.
18	Cheng, Cit izen s of As i an Am er i c a, 18 , 9 5 -10 5; Wu, “ ‘America’s Chinese’: A ntiCommunism, Citizenship, and Cultural Diplomacy during the Cold War,” 402-420.
19	As an acquaintance of Jade Snow Wong, the Chinese American activist L. Ling-chi
Wang mentioned his opinion to Wong’s life experience in an interview. He said, “… It isvery sad when you read the chapter about how she eventually had to return toChinatown to start her tourist oriented pottery-making business and had to get‘reacquainted with Chinatown’ because she had completely forgotten about how to be a
Chinese living in Chinatown… Living in her time, quite different with mine, was difficult
if not impossible for her and her generation to speak out about racism. Even in the
1970s, when the younger generation was openly denouncing racism, her generation
remained quiet if not uneasy and resentful of the boat-rocking going on…” See more in
Kui-lan Liu, Bian huan de bian jie: ya yi zuo jia he pi ping jia fang tan lu.《变换的边界
(
：

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亚裔美国作家和批评家访谈录》) (The Shifting Boundaries: Interviews with Asian American
Writers and Critics) (Tianjin: Nankai University Press, 2012), 253.
20	H im Ma rk La i , Be co min g Chin e s e Am er i c an: A Hi st o r y of C o mmunit i e s an dInstitutions ( Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2004), 39-69; Stanford M. Lyman, “Conflict
and the Web of Group Affiliation in San Francisco’s Chinatown, 1859-1910,” PacificHistorical Review 43, No.4 (1974), 473-499.
21	Lai, Becoming Chinese American, 39, 49-54
22	Xiaoqian Zhao, Remaking Chinese America: Immigration, Family and Community (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 94-107; Him Mark Lai, “China Politics
and the U.S. Chinese Communities,” in Emma Gee, ed., Counterpoint: Perspectives on
Asian America (LA: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 1976), 152-159.
23	Zhao, Remaking Chinese America, 98; Him Mark Lai, “Historical Development of theChinese Consolidated Benevolent Association/Huiguan System,” in Chinese America:
History and Perspectives (San Francisco, CA: Chinese Historical Society of America,1987), 39-42. As for the relations between KMT and Kiu lings in the Chinese American
community, Woo Chin-fu gave detailed description in an editorial article of Chinese
American Weekly (which was a famous Chinese newspaper circulated in Chinese
American community). See Woo Chin-fu, “Qiaotuan, qiaoling yu qiaozhong,” [Kiu Lings,
overseas Chinese and their organizations], Chinese American Weekly, Vol. 1056 (May 2,1952).
24	Zhao, Remaking Chinese America, 101-3; Victor G. and Brett de Bary Nee, Longtime
Californ’: A Documentary Study of An American Chinatown (Stanford University, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1972), 200-213; Lai, “A Historical Survey of the Left in
America,” 73.
25	China Weekly, October 22, 1949; Zhao, Remaking Chinese America, 117-119.
26	Zhao, Remaking Chinese America, 186; Lai, Chinese American Transnational Politics,
146-148; Sun Xun, “Meiguo huaqiao huaren yu Taiwan dangju dui qi zhengce yanjiu,
1949-2002.” [Study on Chinese Americans and Overseas Chinese Affairs Policy of
Taiwan Government, from 1949 to 20 02] (Ph.D. diss., PLA University of Foreign
Language, 2007), 50-55.
27	Interview with Gilbert Woo, in Victor G. and Brett de Bary Nee, Longtime Californ’: A
Documentary Study of An American Chinatown (Stanford, CA: Stanford University),
222-227.
28	Gilbert Woo, “Quanqiao dahui,” [On the Chinese American National Conference], Chinese
Pacif ic Weekly, March 1, 1957. Quoted the translation of the article from Zhao,
Remaking Chinese America, 182.
29	Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America(New York and London: Oxford University, 2001),6-12.
30	Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 1921), 760-761; Park, “Racial Assimilation in SecondaryGroups,” Publication of American Sociological Society 8 (1914), 66-72.
31	In his work, Siu mentioned the essential characteristic of sojourner is that the sojournerconnects with the culture and customs of his own ethnic group or ancestral land. Fromthe psychological view, a sojourner is unwilling to recognize himself as a permanent
resident in his host country. See Paul C. P. Siu, “The Sojourner,” The American Journalof Sociology, 58(July, 1952), 34; Siu, The Chinese Laundryman: A Study of Social
Isolation, John Kuo Wei Tchen, ed. (NY: New York University, 1987), Xxiii-Xxxv.
32	Zhenxing Zhu, “From Sojourner to Chinese American: Changing Identities of Chinese123

研究ノートAmerican Activists during the Civil Rights Era,” An Occasional Supplement to Doshisha
American Studies, 21 (Kyoto: International Institute of American Studies at Doshisha
University), 109.
33	Rose Hum Lee, “The Marginal Man: Re-evaluation and Indices of Measurement,”
Journal ]of Human Relations 5 (Spring 1956), 27-28; Yu, Thinking Orientals, 128.
34	Wang, Post-War Development in the Chinese American community, 273.
35	Chang, The Chinese in America, 246
36	The concept “model minority” was first put forward by social scientist William Peterson
to extol Japanese Americans. Soon after the focus shifted from Japanese to Chinese andattributed their success to “a tight network of family and clan loyalties.” Chinese wereexalted for their “strict discipline” leading Children to “attend school faithfully, work
hard at their studies―and stay out of trouble.” See Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals, 188189; Stephen Steinberg, “The Myth of Ethnic Success: Old Wine in New Bottles,” The
Oxford Handbook of American Immigration and Ethnicity, Ronald H. Bayor ed. (Oxford
Handbooks Online, 2014).
37	Chiou-Ling Yeh, “Contesting Identities: Youth Rebellion in San Francisco’s Chinese New
Year Festivals, 1953-1969,” in The Chinese in America: A History from Gold Mountainto the New Millennia (Alta Mira Press, 2002); Gloria Heyung Chun, “Shifting Ethnic
Identity and Consciousness: U.S.-Born Chinese American Youth in the 1930s and 1950s,”
in Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity and Ethnicity, Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou,eds. (NY: Routledge, 2004), 125.
38	Liu, Bian huan de bian jie, 271

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Abstract

How did they become invisible?

Chinese American Activism in the Cold War-Civil Rights
Movement Era
Zhenxing ZHUMy project aims to reexamine the history of Chinese Americans in the Cold
War-Civil Rights Movement era from the perspective of Chinese American
activism. The purpose of this paper is to identify the causes impacting Chinese
American activism from early 1950s to late 1960s.
The African American Civil Rights Movement coincided with the Cold War.
It greatly influenced racial relations in American history. In this particularperiod, the United States had to propagate the superiority of U.S democracy
over communism in order to counter the Soviet Union and also to extend its
allies in the world. However, due to the racial problems in the domestic sphere,
the US was condemned by communist propaganda which stressed that
American racism was undermining the benefits of the American way of life. In
order to counter this, the President’s Committee on Civil Rights made aninvestigation into racial problems resulting in the report To Secure These
Rights, which suggested to change unjust laws and to end the residential
segregation in order to silence the critics from the outside world. Afterwards,
the Committee on Race and Housing produced a report to advocate thatminorities should learn about American values and behavior so that they could
move out of the slums and into the white suburban neighborhood. Moreover,suburbanization became the facilitating process for assimilation and a strategy
to advocate the superiority of American democracy.
By examining the previous studies of Chinese American history in the Cold
War period, most of them follow this ideology and their narratives reflect the
point of view of assimilation . They usually focused on the outward migration ofChinese Americans from the ghetto, so-called Chinatowns, to the suburbs
where they lived among whites. Therefore, the idea was formed that Chinese
Americans gradually entered into mainstream American society and became
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middle class, and such an idea was reinforced by the repealing of Chinese
Exclusion Act in 19 4 3 . I n fact , the number of Chinese America ns who
assimilated into mainstream society and joined the middle class was limited,
and most of them had to continue to live in Chinatowns during that period.
Unlike historians focusing on “suburbanization” and “assimilation”, I try todeal with the history of common people who lived in Chinatown from theperspective of Chinese American activism. This paper explores how Chinese
American activism became invisible by examining three specific factors which
impacted them profoundly: the international and domestic sociopolitical context;
the informal sociopolitical structure of the Chinese American community; andthe transition of sociological theories stereotyping Chinese Americans.

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