Chinaman's chance is an American idiom first attested in 1903 meaning little or no chance at all, possibly as a reference to historical anti-Asian racism in the United States.
Potential origins
The origin of the phrase is not well documented. One potential origin of the phrase Chinaman's chance traces it to the construction of the U.S. transcontinental railroad. During its construction, unstable bottles of nitroglycerine were used for blasting. Chinese workers would be lowered over cliffs by rope and boatswain's chairs to set the nitroglycerine in place. In this work, if they were not lifted back up before the blast, serious injury or death would result. According to a newspaper article in 1870, of bones from Chinese workers who died building the railroad were shipped to China for interment. The article calculated the bones were from 1,200 workers. Another potential origin is from the California Gold Rush of 1849. The travel time for news of the gold rush to reach China was quite long, and by the time Chinese from China arrived to prospect, many of the rich mines were already taken. These Chinese immigrants who missed out had to work with only those lands which had already been exploited or which were rejected by others, meaning these late-arriving immigrants had a slim chance of success. The historical record, however, indicates that many Chinese combined efforts with each other and did very well in the goldfields, introducing mining techniques then unknown to non-Chinese. Alternatively, in 1920 the phrase was explained to describe the low probability for the Chinese in America to make a fortune at gold mining. Although there were Chinese in the gold mining camps soon after the news broke, "they were extremely unpopular the slightest excuse was sufficient to warrant their being beaten or chased away; consequently they had no chance to get a real foothold" to establish mining rights. Another unsubstantiated claim is that the phrase was cemented by murders of Chinese that were condoned by state law, thus giving them no chance of success in the courts. The conviction of a white man for murdering a Chinese miner was overturned in the case of In that ruling, the California Supreme Court expanded the definition of "black person" in the California Crimes and Punishments Act of 1850 to exclude "all races other than the Caucasian", throwing out evidence provided by a Chinese person's testimony. Bill Bryson believed the phrase could be traced to the Rock Springs Massacre of 1885, referring to the forced expulsion of Chinese American residents, whose chances of living were slimmed by the dual threat of armed mobs and freezing overnight temperatures. In 1887, as many as 34 Chinese gold miners were massacred along the Snake River in Oregon by a gang of white horse thieves, typical of the anti-Chinese violence of the time. Three were arrested and tried for the crime, but none were convicted.
In literature
"Asia is rising against me. / I haven't got a chinaman's chance. / I'd better consider my national resources." — Allen Ginsberg, America
