Chinese people in the New York metropolitan area

The New York metropolitan area has the largest ethnic Chinese population outside Asia: an estimated 924,619 in 2024. As of 2025, New York City proper had an estimated 635,355, the most by far of any city outside Asia.

Many ethnically Chinese people live in 12 Chinatowns—districts with large ethnic Chinese populations and numerous culturally Chinese businesses—in the metropolitan area, which includes Long Island and parts of New Jersey. Many American Chinatowns originated as enclaves of physical safety and economic opportunity during the "exclusion era" (1882–1943) when the Chinese Exclusion Act placed racial limits on immigration and prevented Chinese immigrants from becoming US citizens. Today, these neighborhoods are important sites of tourism and urban economic activity. The city proper includes six Chinatowns (or nine, if the emerging Chinatowns in Elmhurst and Whitestone, Queens, and East Harlem, Manhattan, are included). There are also Chinese communities in suburban areas, such as Jersey City, New Jersey; Nassau County, Long Island; Edison, New Jersey; West Windsor, New Jersey; and Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey.

China City of America in Sullivan County, New York, was proposed in 2012, but its development has stalled. Dragon Springs (in Deerpark, Orange County, New York) serves as the de facto headquarters for the global Falun Gong movement and its performing arts troupe, Shen Yun.

The Chinese American community has grown in recent decades, particularly in major metropolitan areas. Immigration from mainland China has contributed to the growth in the New York metropolitan area. In 2023, unauthorized Chinese immigration to New York City rose, particularly in Queens.

In 2026, Gothamist and AsAmNews reported that the city's Chinese immigrant population had grown to rival the Dominican immigrant population as the city's largest.

History

In the 1830s, among the earliest documented arrivals of Chinese immigrants in New York City were "sailors and peddlers". In 1847, three students came to further their education in the United States. One of these scholars, Yung Wing, soon became the first Chinese American to graduate from a U.S. college, when he completed his studies at Yale University in 1854.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the number of Chinese immigrants settling in Lower Manhattan grew. By 1880, the enclave around Five Points was estimated to have from 200 to as many as 1,100 members. However, the Chinese Exclusion Act, which went into effect in 1882, caused an abrupt decline in the number of Chinese immigrants to New York and the rest of the United States. Later, on December 17th, 1943, the Magnuson Act was passed and repealed the Chinese exclusion act, and a small immigration quota of around 105 visas annually was established for Chinese people. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 contributed to a revival in Chinese immigration, and the community's population gradually increased until 1968. In that year, the quota was lifted and the Chinese American population grew rapidly.

In 1992, New York City began providing electoral materials in Chinese. The Sino-American Friendship Association was established in Midtown Manhattan in 1992. In 2022, "police service stations" serving as espionage arms of the Chinese Communist Party were discovered and shut down in Manhattan's Chinatown and Flushing's Chinatown.

Demographics New York City boroughs

New York City has the largest Chinese population of any city outside of Asia, with an estimated population of 573,388 in 2014. It continues to be a primary destination for new Chinese immigrants. New York City is subdivided into official municipal boroughs, which themselves are home to significant Chinese populations, with Brooklyn and Queens, adjacently located on Long Island, leading the fastest growth. After the City of New York itself, the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn encompass the largest Chinese populations, respectively, of all municipalities in the United States.

Immigration from China during the 2010s

The city's Chinese-immigrant population saw significant growth since the beginning of the 21st century, rising from 261,500 in New York City in 2000 to 350,000 in 2011. Chinese nationals filed 12,000 asylum requests in fiscal year 2013 in fiscal year 2013, of which 4,000 were filed with the New York-area asylum office. In 2013, 19,645 Chinese immigrants legally immigrated from Mainland China to the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA core-based statistical area. This exceeded the combined totals for the Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas, the next two largest Chinese American gateways. The corresponding figures for earlier years were 24,763 in 2012, 28,390 in 2011, and 19,811 in 2010. These numbers do not include the remainder of the New York-Newark-Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA Combined Statistical Area, nor do they include the smaller numbers of legal immigrants from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Since the 1980s, NYC has seen a rise in undocumented Chinese immigration, including Fuzhou people from Fujian and Wenzhounese from Zhejiang in mainland China.

The city's 150,000 to 200,000 Fuzhounese Americans account for the bulk of the group in the United States, many of whom are employed in or operate businesses within the Chinese restaurant industry.

Many airlines connect Asia to New York metropolitan area. As of April 2026, John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) is a primary hub for several mainland Chinese carriers, including Air China (Beijing), China Eastern Airlines (Shanghai), China Southern Airlines (Guangzhou), and XiamenAir (Xiamen). They are joined at JFK by major regional players like Cathay Pacific Airways, and Philippine Airlines. The Taiwan-New York route is particularly well-served at JFK by China Airlines (non-stop to Taipei) and EVA Air.

Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) remains a critical gateway, primarily through United Airlines, which operates an extensive non-stop network to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong currently suspended following the Russo-Ukrainian war and COVID-19 pandemic continues to operate Tokyo and Delhi. Singapore Airlines continues to operate its world-renowned ultra-long-haul service to Singapore from both Newark and JFK (with Newark flight maintaining its status as one of the longest nonstop commercial routes in existence)

Movement within and outside the metropolitan area As many immigrant Chinese in New York City move up the socioeconomic ladder, they relocate to the suburbs for more living space and to seek specific school districts for their children. As a result of this process, new Chinese enclaves and Chinatown commercial districts have emerged and are growing in these suburbs, particularly in Nassau County on Long Island and in some counties of New Jersey. Some Chinese New Yorkers are also migrating to Boston, Philadelphia, and eastern Connecticut.name=NYCChinesePhiladelphia>

Geography

Little Fuzhou in Manhattan is an ethnoculturally distinct neighborhood within the Manhattan Chinatown itself, populated primarily by Fujianese people. The Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn houses another such Little Fuzhou. Queens and Brooklyn are home to other Chinatowns. The Flushing as well as Elmhurst areas of Queens, Bensonhurst and Homecrest, neighborhoods in Brooklyn also have spawned the development of numerous other Chinatowns. Most of Manhattan, as well as Corona in Queens, the Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope areas of Brooklyn, and northeast Staten Island, have also received Chinese settlement.

Chinatowns For many decades in the 20th century, Manhattan's Chinatown was the only Chinatown of NYC until the 1980s when other satellite Chinatowns began to emerge out in Queens and Brooklyn and since the 1990s and especially the 2000s onward, each of these boroughs has evolved multiple large Chinatowns in various sections and far surpassing Manhattan's Chinatown as the largest Chinese population base of NYC. Since the 2010s, Staten Island has also experienced a boom in Chinese residents and authentic Chinese businesses where now New Dorp is being considered the growing Chinatown of Staten Island, which means almost every borough of NYC now has large growing Chinese enclaves leaving The Bronx as the only borough in the city to lack a significant growing Chinese enclave.

Manhattan (曼哈頓華埠) Manhattan's Chinatown holds the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere.*

Manhattan's Chinatown is also one of the oldest Chinese ethnic enclaves. The Manhattan Chinatown is one of nine Chinatown neighborhoods in New York City, as well as one of twelve in the New York metropolitan area, which contains the largest ethnic Chinese population outside of Asia, comprising an estimated 893,697 monoracial individuals as of 2017. Manhattan's Chinatown is divided into two different portions. The western portion is the older, original part of Manhattan's Chinatown, primarily dominated by Cantonese populations and colloquially known as Cantonese Chinatown. Cantonese were the earlier settlers of Manhattan's Chinatown, originating mostly from Hong Kong and from Taishan in Guangdong Province, as well as from Shanghai. They form most of the Chinese population of the area surrounded by Mott and Canal Streets.

However, within Manhattan's Chinatown lies Little Fuzhou or The Fuzhou Chinatown on East Broadway and surrounding streets, occupied predominantly by emigrants from the province of Fujian in mainland China. They are the later settlers, from Fuzhou, Fujian, forming the majority of the Chinese population in the vicinity of East Broadway. This eastern portion of Manhattan's Chinatown developed much later, primarily after the Fuzhou immigrants began moving in.

Areas surrounding "Little Fuzhou" consist of Cantonese immigrants from the Guangdong of China; however, the main concentration of people speaking the Cantonese language is in the older western portion of Manhattan's Chinatown. Although the Mandarin-speaking communities were becoming established in the Flushing and Elmhurst areas of Queens during the 1980s–1990s, and even though the Fuzhou emigrants spoke Mandarin often as well, however, due to their socioeconomic status, they could not afford the housing prices in Mandarin-speaking enclaves in Queens, which were more middle class, and the job opportunities were limited. They instead chose to settle in Manhattan's Chinatown for affordable housing as well as the job opportunities that were available, such as the seamstress factories and restaurants, despite the traditional Cantonese dominance until the 1990s. Brooklyn's Sunset Park Chinatown eventually replicated this pattern, albeit on a larger scale.

The Cantonese dialect that has dominated Chinatown for decades is being rapidly swept aside by Mandarin, the national language of China, which is becoming the lingua franca. This can be attributed to the influx of immigrants from Fuzhou who often speak Mandarin, as well as the increase in Mandarin-speaking visitors coming to visit the neighborhood.

The modern borders of Manhattan's Chinatown are roughly Delancey Street on the north, Chambers Street on the south, East Broadway on the east, and Broadway on the west.

Queens (皇后華埠)