The Chinese community is centered mainly in Toronto and Vancouver in Canada. Most new immigrants from China tend to settle in these cities.
After World War II, the repeal of the Exclusion Act and the War Bride Act brought the end of legalized racism and discrimination. A once bachelor society began to grow families and businesses.
Family life
The family is central to Chinese life. It is the unit that binds the community together and provides stability. The traditional Chinese family has a hierarchical structure where the man is the protector, provider and maintainer of his wife and children. He has the final say in any major decisions that affect the family. The family also teaches children the value of work, frugality and obedience.
In earlier times, family was synonymous with clan-based kinship, and the most distant paternal relative was considered closer in kin than the nearest maternal one. Women were expected to obey their fathers before marriage, their husbands after marriage, and their sons after their death.
China’s unique birth control policy, initiated in 1978, produced unintended consequences which have changed family relationships. Among them have been a switch from instrumental to emotional relations, a dramatic rise in women’s status and the creation of a generation of singletons without siblings. This has changed the way people relate to each other and how they see themselves in their work and personal lives.
Education
The Chinese community is very active in promoting education. They have created several community schools. They have also established many libraries. They have also organized a series of workshops to teach people about recycling waste. They have also helped to promote the new regulation on garbage sorting.
Education in China has shifted from traditional trends toward fewer students and high scholastic standards to greater enrollment at all levels. Educators hope that the nine-year compulsory school system will create a foundation for future development.
Chinese emigrants have become a dynamic presence in Canada. They represent a substantial share of the population in some provinces. They are especially important in British Columbia and Alberta. Canadians of Chinese descent have high proportions of university graduates. They are particularly likely to have degrees in sciences and technical fields. They are also well represented in management positions. Compared to the overall foreign-born population in Canada, men of Chinese origin are more likely to have a university degree than women.
Religion
The majority of China’s population are adherents of either Buddhism or Taoism. Christians make up an estimated 3 percent of the population; and Muslims 4 to 6 percent, mainly in the Xinjiang and Ningxia autonomous regions. Other religious practices, such as visiting gravesites and burning’spirit money’ to honor deceased family members, are widespread, and the 2018 CGSS reported that three-quarters of respondents visited their ancestors at least once in the past year.
Bitter Winter and UCA News report that the Chinese government continues to label numerous religious groups as ‘cults’ (xie jiao) including the CAG, Shouters, All-Sphere Church and Guanyin Method. The government also punishes property owners who rent space to unregistered groups by confiscating their income and properties, as well as imposing fines. Embassies and consulates continue to meet with registered and unregistered religious leaders, their families and NGOs to reinforce the Department of State’s support for religious freedom in China.
Politics
Unlike in competitive democracies, ideological positions in China do not cluster neatly along a left-right spectrum. Instead, they loosely align around preferences for pro-market policies versus state intervention in the economy and more versus less nationalistic sentiment.
Outside the Party-State ambit, political participation assumes a bottom-up character, rooted in specific interests and emerging in response to localised grievances or issues. These could include labour strikes, environmental protests or online movements rallying against specific policies.
While Western scholars often exclude such behaviours from their definition of political participation, they are a form of political engagement. Even watching authority-initiated TV programs or reading official newspapers could be considered forms of political participation, as they provide platforms for the government to restructure opinions and transform society (Wu 1994). Moreover, these activities are a form of support.