The Chinese in Canada. 2nd ed.

Boon Ngee Cham is an associate professor specializing in Third World
politics at the Department of Political Science, Glendon College, York
University.

Sir John A. Macdonald once pointed out that without Chinese workers,
there would have no Pacific Railway, and without the Pacific Railway,
there would have no Canada. Notwithstanding this observation, after the
24,000 Chinese workers had completed the Pacific railroad, a head tax of
$50 (later increased to $500) per person was imposed to restrict the
inflow of Chinese workers. In 1923, the Chinese Exclusion Act banned all
Chinese immigration. The already mainly male Chinese community was to
remain as “a community of married-bachelors” until the repeal of the
Act in 1947. With the exception of the Native people, no Canadian ethnic
group had been the target of as much racial discrimination as the
Chinese.

In the last three decades, no visible minority in Canada has grown as
fast as the Chinese have. Today, numbering about 800,000, Chinese
Canadians are Canada’s largest visible minority. In contrast with
“their marginal status as second-class citizens and members of an
‘inferior race’ before the Second World War,” the Chinese-Canadian
community today is “upwardly mobile, financially successful, and
culturally cosmopolitan.” Despite the entrenchment of multiculturalism
and the Charter of Rights, there continue to be periodic outbreaks of
anti-Chinese incidents.

This second edition of a book originally published in 1988 has been
updated to include an analysis of the quantitative and qualitative
changes that the Chinese-Canadian community has experienced in the last
decade. Most important, Li has developed a theoretical framework of
institutional racism through which he examines the development of the
Chinese community and the sociopolitical forces that molded this
development. His excellent book is certain to remain the authoritative
work in the field for many years to come.