Chinese Americans are Americans of Chinese ancestry. They have ancestors from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, as well as other regions of the Chinese diaspora, especially Southeast Asia. Chinese Americans include naturalized U.S. citizens as well as their natural-born descendants.
The Chinese American community is the largest Chinese community outside Asia and the third-largest community in the Chinese diaspora, behind the Chinese communities in Thailand and Malaysia. The 2022 American Community Survey of the U.S. Census estimated the population of Chinese Americans at 5,465,428, including 4,258,198 who were Chinese alone, and 1,207,230 who were part Chinese. The 2010 census numbered the Chinese American population at about 3.8 million. In 2010, half of the Chinese-born people in the United States lived in California and New York. About half of the Chinese people in the U.S. in the 1980s had roots in Taishan. Much of the Chinese population before the 1990s consisted of Cantonese or Taishanese-speaking people from Guangdong province. During the 1980s, more Mandarin-speaking immigrants from Northern China and Taiwan immigrated to the U.S. In the 1990s, Fujianese immigrants arrived, many illegally, particularly in the New York City area. In the 1800s and 1890s Chinese and Chinese Americans lived almost entirely in Western states, especially California and Nevada, as well as New York City.
