After defining human smuggling and delineating the three main routes for smuggling Chinese into America, this paper cites the U.S. legislative enactments and presidential executive orders that first precipitated and then exacerbated the modern era of smuggling Chinese into the United States. Next, the paper reviews some of the socioeconomic conditions in China that foster the smuggling of Chinese into the United States. This is followed by a description of the tragic incident on American shores that transformed the depiction of Chinese smuggling from an international migration phenomenon into its current characterization as a transnational crime problem and, according to then President Clinton, a security threat to the United States. President Clinton's authorizing of the National Security Council to direct the U.S. response to Chinese human smuggling, along with China's concern about its reputation for smuggling, provided the contextual framework as the paper examined both the legal response by and the political perspective of China on the issue of smuggling Chinese into the United States. Finally, the paper outlined additional anti-smuggling measures China could undertake to counter the problem. The paper concludes that the smuggling of Chinese into the United States will stop only after the economic, political, and legal systems of China parallel those of the industrialized and democratic countries. 189 notes and 33 references