In the first three years of the Gold Rush, Chinese impact was minimal and most were driven out of the country by white Americans threatening violence.
[3] Chinese immigrants remain marginal figures in American understandings of the gold rush despite their presence in the labor force.
[6] In the preliminary two years of the gold rush contracted labor was the most common hiring method, but evidence shows contracts were not easily enforced as excerpts from sea captains show accounts of Chinese miners leaving their contractors once they arrived in America.
[8] While pull factors to America were present and prevalent a majority of Chinese miners hailed from Southern China, mainly in the Guangdong Province, and were escaping racial hostility.
Another influential push factor from China was shipping companies encouraging immigration to draw profits from people interested in mining in America.
[9] As Chinese people initially showed up to California they and most other individually contracted workers practiced alluvial mining along stream beds.
The only material people needed for alluvial mining was a rocker box which was a cheaply made piece of equipment that sifted gold out from stream beds.
Mining was a highly individualized and competitive industry in the first few years of the Gold Rush and resentment towards Chinese miners was violent immediately.
While proponents of exclusion outnumbered those that opposed it, exclusionary policy was not passed until the late 1850s because Chinese miners paid a tax for mining.
Favorability towards exclusion shifted from being attributed to competition to being financially feasible in 1858 as California gained its economic footing.