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No serious student of America should remain ignorant of the contributions of Chinese peoples on these shores. To that end, Iris Chang has written The Chinese in America: A Narrative History. It is a very fine book.
The Chinese in America is a comprehensive narrative that recalls Paul Johnson's History of the American People and Thomas Sowell's inclusive works on immigration and civilizations such as Migrations and Cultures.
Though Johnson and Sowell view the world through more politically conservative eyes than Chang, she refers to Sowell's work and draws some of the same conclusions.
She writes, "The Chinese in general brought distinctive cultural traits to America - such as reverence for education, hard work, thriftiness, entrepreneurship, and family loyalty - which helped many achieve rapid success in their adopted country. Many Chinese Americans, for example, have served an important `middleman minority' role in the United States by working in occupations in which they act as intermediaries between producers and consumers. As economist Thomas Sowell has noted, middleman minorities typically arrive in their host countries with education, skills, or a set of propitious attitudes about work, such as business frugality and willingness to take risks. Some slave away in menial jobs to raise capital, then swiftly become merchants, retailers, labor contractors, and money-lenders. Their descendants usually thrive in the professions, such as medicine, law, engineering, or finance."
Chang continues: "But as with other middleman minorities, the Chinese diaspora generally found it easier to achieve economic and professional success than to acquire political...