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October 29, 1997
Among Chinese-Americans, Differing Views on Summit
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Congressman Tom Lantos, Democrat of California Forum
Join a Discussion on President Jiang Zemin's State Visit
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
ASHINGTON -- If President Jiang Zemin of China studies the official receptions here this week and the disparate throngs protesting or quietly watching beyond, he will be able to sample a range of Chinese-American concerns as wide as China itself.
Kung-Lee Wang, an economist and business consultant who co-founded the influential Committee of 100 Chinese-American leaders, says he will be at the reception for Jiang on Wednesday because he yearns to see a fuller opening of China's vast economic and cultural marketplace to America.
"We are not there," Wang warned. "The Europeans and the Japanese are there." Counseling creative patience on human rights matters, he said, "I would not let that one issue become the veto issue."
But half a block from Jiang's meeting with Wang and 30 other local Chinese-American leaders at Blair House, vocal dissidents will mass in Lafayette Park to focus on human rights, not economic opportunity, as the prime issue of the China leader's visit with President Clinton.
"We have been stripped of our nationality and forced to become stateless international refugees," Liu Binyan, a celebrated victim of Beijing's intolerance, said on the eve of a protest that will echo with the grievances of the brutal crackdown on the Tiananmen Square democracy protest eight years ago.
Daphne Kwok is one Chinese-American activist who will be studiously ignoring human rights and economic issues as her focal point. "I'm monitoring how the visit may or may not play into the campaign finance issue," said Ms. Kwok, devoted in her role as director of the Organization of Chinese Americans.
She says her group has 10,000 members and a sense of absolute outrage at the "systematic stereotyping" of Asian-American citizens in the investigations into alleged political fund-raising abuses by foreign-born donors.
"This is the real issue for Chinese-Americans," she said. "Here we are in 1997 with a major feeling tolerated among the American public that it is OK to make fun and stereotype Americans who have Chinese features."
Darting somewhere between Blair House and the park protest will be Norman Fu, U.S. correspondent for China Times, a Taiwan newspaper, taking notes as a reporter fascinated by Jiang's presence here as "a paradoxical figure" who has had a classical education but a "callous" rise to power.
"What is no less interesting is my impression that there may be more AMERICANS than Chinese-Americans opposed to his visit because of the human rights issue."
Beyond these individuals, the mood among the 1.7 million Americans of Chinese ancestry about Jiang's arrival can be found ranging from the blase to the prideful.
"I'm kind of ambivalent," said Wu-Lang Lee, a federal economist unstirred by the media drumbeat.
"It's a routine matter to me," said Lee, a Taiwan-born American who cares deeply about the security of Taiwan but expects Clinton to win no great reassurances in that regard.
And pride? Shu-Ping Chan, a community relations specialist with the government of Maryland, insisted: "Listen, even among my friends who work for the Taiwan government I'm finding political differences put aside. There's a bit of lingering pride that the Chinese government is being recognized as a coequal. This is a chance for China to shine -- that's what I'm sensing."
Studying these facets and more, American scholars like Marshall Bouton, vice president of the Asia Society, find Chinese-Americans feeling "whipsawed," as he put it, by the Chinese leader's visit. There is a distinct sense of welcome, but wariness, too, that the visit might somehow redound negatively on them by feeding controversies like the foreign-money campaign inquiry.
"The visit is and ought to be a very welcome development in putting U.S-China relations back on an even keel after the very traumatic Tiananmen events," Bouton said. "Many in the community felt the trauma personally. But there was also that sort of shudder, if you will, at the tendency in our history for the Chinese community to be victimized when state relations turn sour."
Just a mile from all the toasting and protesting about Jiang, Duane Wang, Shanghai-born and an American for four decades, intends to stay busy all week at his lumberyard in Washington's Chinatown.
"It all depends on where you're from and when you got here," was his summary of Chinese-American views. "I speak as an American. I find the visit a good thing because China is a very old country, and since Nixon opened it up, it has changed tremendously, even in human rights."
"Think of it this way: if it hadn't been opened up, there would have been no Tiananmen Square," said Wang, his faith in time and China strong. "President Jiang will learn. He will find out our system is good, and he will go home with a different attitude."
Others are not so sure.
"Personally, I think business will be foremost with President Clinton in the visit, not human rights, and I don't agree with that," said the Rev. Samuel Yau, pastor of the Chinese Christian Church of Greater Washington, which serves 350 Americans from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong in nearby Silver Spring, Md.
Yau finds no special discussion or protest this week among his hard-working parishioners. He speaks of the campaign inquiry issue not as an outraged Chinese-American, but as as an American with faith in the political system. "I don't worry about the fund-raising charges," he said. "The system is very much stable in our country."
G. Greg Chen, a worker here in the Mayor's office, earns his living tracking and celebrating the grand disparity of views about China within Chinatown, but also fathoming the relative ignorance of non-Chinese Americans about his birthplace. He hopes the visit will ease both the simplistic "Communist dragon" image of China and local anxiety over racist stereotyping.
"We have lots of people contributing to their new country," Chen said. "You cannot treat Asian-Americans this way."
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