"The Chinese in America: A Narrative History."

By Iris Chang. Viking, 2003. US$29.95. 496 pp.

IRIS Chang, an award-winning Chinese-American author who lives in San Jose, California, has written a new book called "The Chinese in America: A Narrative History." The same author also wrote the highly regarded "Rape of Nanjing," about the Japanese massacre of 300,000 Chinese in 1937 during the Sino-Japanese War.

Chang says she wrote her book in part to show how false and unjust racial stereotypes of Chinese are. Chinese came as labourers to America but soon became entrepreneurs working not only as owners of restaurants and laundries, but as grocers, horticulturists, independent ranchers, farmers, and experts in herbal medicine and in acupuncture. During the Industrial Revolution, Chinese were both capitalists and labourers.

Today, Chinese are prominent in every profession and the first Chinese-American has been elected governor of a state, Governor Gary Locke of Washington State.

The writer divides Chinese immigration to America into three distinct periods: Pre-Cold War (19th century), Cold War, and post-Cold War.

The first major wave came in the mid-19th century during the California gold rush. Those immigrants were mostly able-bodied adult labouring men who also provided the bulk of the workers for the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. Chang points out that this wave came to an ignominious end during the "Exclusion Era" (1882-92) when Chinese were legally prohibited from entering the US.

The second wave, Chang continues, came in response to the Chinese Revolution of 1949, and it included Chinese students and diplomats who were already in the US. Some of the immigrants of this wave had arrived a little before the Revolution, but they remained.

During the Cold War, immigration from the Chinese mainland to the US practically ceased. However, people from Taiwan came to America during this period. The third wave occurred after Mao's death when China opened up to the West and thousands of people came to the US.

Chang explains that there has not only been racism and discrimination against Chinese-Americans in the past, but that there remains some racism today. She points out that in the 1980s, the Chinese were applauded as "the model minority". Then in the 1990s, things changed because China was viewed as a rival to the US. All of a sudden, there were articles about the "New Cold War" and these developments in China effected Chinese in the US, Chang believes.

There was an effect on the visa programme too, which applied to a lot of Chinese in the sciences and the term "High Tech Cooliesm" began to emerge, Chang writes. She also notes that the kind of atmosphere that existed then effected promotions and in addition, Chinese, whether they were immigrants or born in the United States, started to face an atmosphere of suspicion in the American National Laboratories. All of a sudden they were seen as potential spies, Chang writes in what is a very intriguing and informative book.

Chang is now at work on an Oral History of the Pacific War including, of course, China's War of Resistance against Japan. Glenn Speer