100 years after Chinese racist exclusion law, new threats loom

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A hundred years ago, Chinese community leaders from across Canada traveled to Ottawa to attend Senate hearings on the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923.

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Seven or eight members of the race decorate the Senate galleries daily during the discussion of the bill, so the Province of Vancouver put it.

Far from being decorations, Joseph Hope, TC Mark and other community leaders fought the fight of their lives, hoping to convince senators to amend Bill 45, or the Chinese Immigration Act, passed by the House municipalities a few days earlier. He effectively barred any new immigrants from China and required anyone of Chinese descent to register with the government.

In defending the bill, then-Liberal Prime Minister Mackenzie King argued that it is not in Canada’s interest to allow large numbers of people from the Orient into this country. .

Vancouver MP HH Stevens immediately agreed, saying unless action was taken thousands of Chinese could land here and experience another riot, referring to the 1907 Anti-Asian White Riot in Vancouver that had international repercussions.

Victoria MP and future British Columbia Premier Simon Fraser Tolmie has denounced the fact that the Chinese do not and never will assimilate to our people.

In the United States at the end of the Civil War, there was a colored population of just 400,000, he warned. This grew until today there are over 10 million. Surely that is enough for Canadians to sit up and take notice of this Asian issue.

No Chinese-Canadian voice was heard. Along with the First Nations, they had been disenfranchised from 1872. They also could not stand for election.

The bill that reached the Senate was draconian. It prohibited the entry of people of Chinese origin or descent, regardless of their allegiance or nationality; and forced those who were already in Canada to register in government offices within 12 months. Even if registered, Chinese Canadians could only be absent for a maximum of two years or they would lose their right to return. Those who do not register by the deadline could be fined, arrested or deported.

Joe Hope, or Low Kwong Joe, was a community leader who helped found the Chinese Canadian Club in Victoria, supported the 1922 anti-segregation school strike, and traveled to Toronto and Ottawa to lead the movement against Chinese Exclusion Act. Photo via John Adams.

Hope, Mar and other community leaders fought back, lobbying senators to change the law. They did so as representatives of a mobilized community. Nearly 2,000 Chinese Canadians gathered at Toronto’s Victoria Hall in April to protest the legislation. They formed associations to fight the bill in Edmonton, Medicine Hat, Saskatoon, Kelowna, Kamloops, Sault Ste. Marie, Prince Rupert, Vernon, Revelstoke, Trail, Fernie, Nelson, Cumberland, Nanaimo, Victoria and Vancouver.

A call to delay legislation and open trade talks from the leader of the Republican Revolution in China, Sun Yat-sen, fell on deaf ears.

Eventually, the Senate introduced several amendments, but the final version of the Chinese Exclusion Act, royally assented to on June 30, 1923, was terribly discriminatory and its effects immediate.

Over the next 20 years, only a handful of Chinese newcomers arrived in Canada. Forced family separations have imposed severe trauma, with many brides in China left to fend for themselves and their children.

When the Chinese in Canada were counted, questioned, excluded Read more

Meanwhile, Europeans were offered free entry, free land, and free passage to Canada.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was no fluke. As we reveal in an upcoming research report, 1923: Challenging Racisms Past and Present, that year saw a racist backlash, emanating from British Columbia, with further genocidal measures imposed by federal and provincial governments against Indigenous peoples, including making residential school attendance compulsory and violently suppressing the movement for First Nations sovereignty.

Indigenous, black, and racialized communities remained sites of resistance, but the next two decades were particularly difficult, culminating in a spasm of ethnic cleansing of Japanese Canadians from British Columbia during and after World War II.

A lot has changed since 1923. Or has it? Certainly, racialized communities fought and won important battles against white supremacy in the post-war decades. Other social movements (including labor, women’s, and LGBTQ2S+ rights advocates) have made significant progress on equity. Yet systemic racism remains entrenched, giving rise to a continued resurgence of Indigenous people, Black Lives Matter, the movement to end anti-Asian racism.

Yet even now we are witnessing growing resistance to social change, murderous Islamophobia, and growing Sinophobia under the guise of Chinese interference.

Are we witnessing the formation of a conservative backlash similar in some respects to what happened in the 1920s?

Recently, longtime feminist and activist Judy Rebick suggested the need for a huge increase in progressive social movements to meet the challenges ahead. We agree. Otherwise, we face the specter of a 1923-like throwback.

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