Chinaman was the most used term in Newspaper Articles involving Chinese, 1870s-1940s

 

Newspaper articles from the mid-19th century until around 1940 that involved Chinese typically referred to them as "Chinaman" regardless of whether the topic was negative such as Chinese being robbed, attacked, or murdered or mocking such as descriptions of "strange" Chinese customs, attire, or food, or positive such as financial success, positive contributions to their communities. 

Examples of some of the headlines for these articles are presented here. After the end of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943, there was a pronounced drop in the use of "Chinaman" which was viewed as derogatory.

A visual representation of this shift can be seen in the use of Chinaman in books using Google's Ngram.  Although the corpus of text for books is not the same as for newspapers, there is probably a positive correlation between the two sources.