The background and the current status of Chinese newspapers in the United States are examined in this paper. The first section considers early immigration patterns of Chinese people, their immigration to the West Coast of the United States beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, laws passed to exclude Chinese from legally entering the U.S., and the recent liberalization of U.S. immigration quotas for Chinese. Among the topics discussed in the second section are the early history of Chinese newspapers in the U.S., the way in which the Chinese press in the U.S. has been linked with events in China, current readership for Chinese newspapers, problems involved in setting type for Chinese characters, and the trend toward use of a colloquial newspaper style. The third section describes ten currently published Chinese newspapers and presents tables of data about them that show the amount of newspaper space devoted to news, nonfiction, fiction and literature, and advertising; the space devoted to specified geographic areas in China and the U.S.; and the space devoted to the inauguration of Chiang Ching-kuo as President of the Republic of China and to Zbigniew Brzezinski's visit to Peking. A brief concluding section notes problems peculiar to the Chinese press in the United States. (GT)