 Good morning, this is ThinkTech, I'm Jay Fidel. And today we're gonna talk about the middle way, the middle way is a show about China. And we have our old friend Russell Liu, he joins us from Honolulu, and Chang Wang, he joins us from the Midwest. He's a practicing lawyer and an academic in the Midwest. Chang, where are you exactly? St. Paul, Minnesota. St. Paul, Minnesota. Okay, we're gonna talk about the Chinese in America, especially here on Martin Luther King Day. We're gonna talk about the civil rights movement and how that has affected Chinese Americans. And I suppose the history of Chinese Americans in the United States, which is not so simple and not so pretty. Russell, you wanna lead off, give us a little background? Yes, good morning, Jay. Good morning, Chang. Jay's pleasure to be in this show. Again, the middle way really is a show which we are attempting to bridge between China and the US. All of us have had unique experiences, being in China and the US. And this show, Jay, being the middle of the Pacific, it's the Asian Pacific Century. So that's why we're called middle way. But today's topic what we're talking about is really the what does Martin Luther King Day, the civil rights movement means to Chinese Americans and how it's viewed in the different segments of the Asian American community, the Chinese American. And so we have a very interesting discussion and viewpoint. And the overriding consensus we start off with and now pass it back to Jay, is that, you know, this is Martin Luther King Day today. And so it's really a mixed bag on how the Chinese Americans view the Martin Luther King Day and the civil rights movement. And it depends what generation you're in. I had a little quip with Chang Wang. We're talking about, we have friends who are first generation immigrants from China, as well as some of our Chinese academic scholars in China, the progressives who all embraced Donald Trump and who have very little knowledge of the civil rights movement. And it's ironic. And, you know, let me pass it to Jay and then Chang, you can to share some of the thoughts there. Well, let me go to some of the history here. A couple of thoughts just to sort of paint the canvas. One is the Chinese had a terrible time in the 19th century. Things weren't so good in China and they came for these jobs on the railroad west and they were treated badly. But their culture carried them through. I think the most interesting story that sticks in my mind is the story of Typhoid. And what happened on the railroads is that there were two kinds of workers. There were the Chinese and there were the Hullies. And the Hullies were dying at a rapid rate, getting very sick over Typhoid. The Chinese knew how to cook their food and boil their water and they survived. They didn't have a problem with that at all. And so what you have is a cultural strengths in Chinese and in China. And that should be a thread of our show today, that cultural strength because it differentiates the Chinese as a culture from many, many other cultures. The other thing is that the United States was not kind to the Chinese in the 20th century. And I think right on through from the immigration limitations the Chinese Exclusion Act and the McCarran Walters Act in 1921, they've had a rough time over immigration and they haven't been treated well. But over the years, I think the Chinese have done well in integrating. They have stuck together as families and communities and that has helped them. And so that cultural strength again has helped them. But then arrives Trump and he takes us backward. He tries to do escape code on Xi Jinping and China and every Chinese person in the country suffers over that because he's been blaming them for the COVID which is really inappropriate. And finally, I wanna get to the point that Chang Wang made before the show began. And that is that there are a lot of Chinese who support Trump and I wanna examine how many, I mean in broad terms and why. Good morning, Chang. Tell us your thoughts about whether there are Chinese people in this country who support Trump and why. Morning, Jay and good morning, Russell. Thank you for having me on the show. So let's start with the statistics. So in 2020 election, according to the Asian-Pacific the Justice Project, the Chinese-American voting 56% voting blue and 20% voting Trump and the Republican. So, and there are 23%, they are considered themselves independent and this is very consistent with other major Asian-American communities like Korean 57 for Democrats and Filipino 52% for Democrats and 34% for Republican. And there are two extreme examples among Asian-American community that is the Vietnamese vast majority voting Republican, 43% and only 36% of voting Democrats. And on the opposite, the Indian-American community only 28% of voting Republican and a 65% voting Democrats. So with these all this said, but there is a very loud voice among the Chinese-American community supporting Trump agenda, even including the racial discrimination against the Chinese. It's very bizarre phenomenon, but as Russell said, we have to distinguish different generation of immigrants, the second generation or above third generation, fourth generation. There are very, very few Trump supporters as we can observe, but among the fourth generation Chinese immigrants in this country, there is a considerable critical mass, a very loud voice supporting Trump, supporting Trump's agenda, anti-immigration and even the anti-Chinese rhetoric. So again, we consider this is very bizarre, but they are both a deeper reason for that and there are some apparent reasons for that. Appearance reason to keep my response short, the most obvious reason is this first generation Chinese-Americans, they do not, they are not familiar with American culture, cultural norm, political system, judicial system and they gather almost all of the information from WeChat, from some WeChat group, like Chinese version of Facebook and Twitter. So there are a lot of misinformation, disinformation rapidly spread it among Chinese-American communities. So that's the most obvious reason, but there's a deeper reason and that is what Russell and I considered why the civil rights movement is vitally important for the new immigrants to understand, because this is part of your public education, citizen education is part of your gene, but for a lot of new immigrants, the civil rights movement is legacy. They are not common sense to them and this is not something they inherited from their parents. So they have to learn from the very beginning. So that I really appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation on Martin Luther King Day. Yeah, well, it's important that we have this conversation today. I want to mention that you talk about the Chinese, I mean, a significant number of Chinese who essentially are voting against their interests when they support Trump, because Trump is not friendly to the Chinese at all. And he has created an environment in this country where if you walk down the street and dozens of American cities, you ask people, what do you think of the Chinese? They will come out with a negative remark and they will remember it. At the beginning when he was blaming them, nobody wanted to go to Chinese restaurant, remember that, at the very beginning and that was just a superficial kind of thing, but he's been racist through so many races, including the Chinese. And it always amazes me that the Chinese will or that any group like that will support him when he is working against them and they are therefore working against their own interests. Another group that falls, that comes to mind is Latinos, a lot of Latinos support Trump, but he hates Latinos. He, remember, he's the guy that wanted to build the wall. He's the guy that treated the children so badly and the immigrants from the South so badly and yet a lot of Latinos support him. That's hard to understand. It's worth having another show on that point. But here we are on Martin Luther King Day and I think what's interesting here is to compare the Chinese experience in the United States with the African American experience in the United States, then see what the similarities and differences are. And as you say, Chang, what can we learn from all of that? We need to be aware of it and the Chinese as a parallel trajectory, they need to be aware of it. In fact, every minority group needs to be aware of it. All, let me say this, all minority groups need to be aware of racial bias and prejudice against other minority groups. We can solve this problem. I don't understand why, you know, the schools have not helped us, but they have not helped us. Then we have a threatened American society that keeps on going and a guy like Trump just exacerbates it. So Russell, can you help me compare the Chinese cultural experience? Both the Chinese who have lived in this country, you know, for 170 years, meaning the Chinese came in 1850 or so to Hawaii and probably earlier through the mainland. Can you help me understand the Chinese cultural experience and the cultural, you know, parameters, the cultural characteristics of Chinese living in the United States for a long time as opposed to the African American experience who have lived in the United States for 400 years, but they came as slaves? Can you talk about that? Well, I think, Jay, that's a very good question. I think the first I would look to the similarities a lot for the second, third, fourth generation Chinese Americans who have grown up the US, you know, actually there's a lot of similarities in the history, in the, the Chinese that came here really came from China as indentured servants, as we know, to build the railways, to work on the plantations. And roughly, you know, if you read some of the actual diaries which I've read, they were treated very, very badly. They could not intermarry for one thing. They could not bring, they didn't want to bring, they wouldn't allow Chinese women to come here. So many of the men ended up, a lot of them intermarrying. As we know, in Hawaii, you know, there were a lot of Chinese who could not bring women so they had to intermarry with Hawaiian women. So that's part of the history where it's a lot of that shared background. And, you know, many things happened along the way. They had, they were not allowed to vote. They're, you know, many of their civil liberties that they did not have. And again, so that's the experiences that Chinese Americans have, the generations that have been here. And I know I also have friends who are the first generations from China. And their very point is very different because they haven't shared or have ever felt what demonstration is, you know, they don't have that same sentiment. And they kind of remind me of the Latino community in Florida where many of them have a political orientation that they are going to be strong Americans. So what that means is equates to becoming a certain kind of American that share the same thoughts as the people who actually rioted, you know, Washington, D.C. I mean, it's interesting that Proud Boys, the leader is actually comes from a Latino background. He is half African American, half Cuban. And a lot of the Cuban community in Florida actually supports Trump, you know. Again, so I think there are a lot of Chinese who have come here recently who support Trump. And I think there's a second dimension to that. It's a lot of the Chinese that who come here in Great D.U.S., they look at a world where they have to work very hard. They will sacrifice everything for their children. So they are not in line with some of the democratic ideals, helping the indigent poor. They feel that they have to do on their own and nobody should be given a so-called, as they see in their mind, a handout. So I think that's an important point. And Cheng, you know, is more like first generation, call him Issei. And I wonder, you know, there's a huge difference between a Chinese family, because family is so important, that has lived here for 100, 170 years. And a Chinese person who has come over in recent years, and I'm reminded, it's just a flashback, but in Vancouver, which is a largely Chinese community, and the Chinese people there have brought money with them from China, maybe to, you know, be safe to have a plan, you know, when China might try to take their money or worse. So they bring their money to Canada, and they buy these fabulous condominiums on the water in Vancouver, and they are the community there. And you say to yourself, gee, that's different. That's different than the people who came here 170 years ago. And you know, I wonder if you can speak to what has happened in your time, in our time, if you will, to the change in the Chinese visitor who turns to be an immigrant, who settles in the United States, say in a first generation wave of immigration. Thank you, Jay. It's less limit our discussion to fall to the first generation Chinese immigrants for now, for the purpose of our discussion. For the first generation Chinese immigrants, basically start from, we have to say that why we are in debt to the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement led to 1964 Civil Rights Act signed by LBJ, and then next lead to the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which eliminated the immigration quota and dramatically increased the immigration from the Asian countries. And after that, the immigrants from Asian countries become a significant, became significant, that after 1965 Immigration Act. And the further wave of Chinese immigrants to the United States were not from mainland China, but actually from Taiwan is understandable because in 1965 until 1979, there was no diplomatic relationship between the United States and the people of China. The official diplomatic relationship was with the United States and the Republic of China, which was in Taiwan. And in 1979, President Jimmy Carter re-attablished, according to the Chinese terminology, re-attablished the diplomatic relationship between Beijing and Washington, and Taiwan was out in 1979. And only after 1977, so before 1979, the first generation immigrants from Asian countries, from China were mostly from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Then after 1979 and in early 1980s, the Chinese, mainland Chinese began to study abroad and began to come to United States, come to other countries to find their family relative and recital elsewhere. So that in 1980s, you'll see a large wave of immigrants from mainland China to United States and to Europe and also to other Asian countries. That's 1980s. So they are still living today. It's only about 35 years ago. So the fourth wave of Chinese immigrants, still now they are already, some of them already grandparents, they are from mainland China. Those are, they share strikingly similar background. Both of them are academics. And they came here to study mortally at a graduate level. Yeah, that's a very important point. I should have made that point myself. A lot of the waves of immigrants from China over our lifetimes have been for academic purposes, for study and in various areas, but especially including science, but medicine, technology, and they've done very well. And I like to add that, they've stayed here. It's a story that has been repeated millions of times. They've stayed here and they've done well. So, and look at you, I mean, for example, the lawyers, the lawyers. I remember how interesting it was that the government and the Chinese Bar Association were encouraging lawyers to go overseas and study law, to take master's degrees in various law schools all over the country and in Europe. And they did. It was, I guess it was a career pass. And thousands, maybe even millions, hundreds of thousands anyway of lawyers from China took those graduate degrees, including right here in Honolulu, at the University of Hawaii. And I guess a fair number of them stayed. Some of them went back to China. Some of them stayed. Some of them stayed to practice law. And there are a lot of lawyers like Yu Cheng, who were born in China, but who trained in US law and who are practicing in various areas. Not only, and what's interesting, not only in big firms, but in small firms. It's an entrepreneurial activity and it's really all over the country. And I don't think people realize the, you know, the degree to which Chinese lawyers are successful in the practice of law all over. No, thank you, Jay. This is the first great wave of immigrants from mainland China that was in 1980s. And then the second wave is from the 1990s, late 1990s to early 2000s. And I was among these wave, the second wave. And I have to say that probably the first wave were STEM major. And because they were more eager to learn STEM disciplines. And for the second wave, there are more humanity, economics, and law major, graduate students from mainland China. And then the third wave, most recent and remotely under George W. and Obama administration, that they were coming here to settle. They were not coming here to study. The vast majority of the new immigrants in the third wave in the 21st century, they were, as you mentioned, the immigrants you saw in Vancouver, they were pretty wealthy middle class or upper middle class. They came here to Canada and United States to transfer the wealth out of mainland China. And they resettled here. And they probably want to retire here or at least purchase second or the third home here. And they also want to send their kids to the elite school in North America. This is third wave. So back to our original observation, there were a lot of Chinese Americans, they don't quite identify with the core value of this country, which is the equal protection due process and the rule of law. They strongly support some very hatred speech by the authority, they were most of them or from our own observation, all of them are from the third wave of immigrants from the mainland. None of them, very few of them are from the first gen, first wave or the second wave, who we came here to study and to view the United States as the beacon of the freedom of the humanity. And came here to identify with the core value of this country. That's a little bit different. And but they are the third wave, those very strong Chinese American Trump supporters, they make a very, very vocal voice. You see some, you know, fly your Chinese American for Trump everywhere. And there's a mass DC information and a missing information campaign spread it on Facebook and WeChat. Even New York Times published several featured article regarding this phenomenon, which is a disappointing and a disheartening to people like Ross and me. Yeah, well, you know, what's interesting, I think it's important to recognize that with each succeeding wave, the Chinese immigrants have become more liberal and less likely to support Trump. And now here we are in Martin Luther King Day. And the question is, you know, have they come together? Do they support as a group or maybe individually, the MLK movement and the Black Lives Matter movement? Is there a convergence and why? I think Russell, you have some good thing to say about this. I think Jay that it's still a work in progress, I think as Chang has pointed out, the different generations, ways of Chinese Americans that have come to America have to some extent varying degrees of experiencing the American culture. And I think Jay, I think maybe it's the fourth generation, the very recent, you know, I have a lot of lost and swear to each from China that come to the U.S. And I'm amazed that the English literacy profession is very high, so they read more, that they're able to read the different viewpoints the same level as an American. And I think this new wave that's maybe after the third wave that are coming into areas like law and humanities, you know, may start to learn it better, understand it better. And I've seen that because some of my former law students from China who actually come here and are doing very well, Jay, I'm going to tell you that one of them is like a 3.92 GPA at a top 10 law school in the U.S., you know, she's competing with all America. That happens all the time, you know, you look at the leaders of the classes and the Chinese are right up there and top of the class. But let me go back to the point of the merger or the support of the Black Lives Matter movement. You know, there are a lot of cultural differences. The Chinese have never lost their emphasis on education and family and on business. But I think those, you know, to me, those three things are important cultural parameters for the Chinese and Chinese immigrants. Those things are not necessarily baked into the Black Lives Matter movement. You know, the African Americans were slaves for a long time. And to the extent they had a culture in Africa that was tamped down by being a slave for a long time, they didn't have the opportunity at all to do any of that. They didn't even have the opportunity in many cases to retain family, much less education, much less business. Those parameters that you find in the Chinese thread of culture elsewhere and here are really different. So my question is, the question to you is, you know, given those similarities in terms of, you know, looking for civil rights between the African Americans and the Chinese, what are the points of connection now? What are the points on which a Chinese person, Chinese immigrant or a Chinese who has lived here for 170 years, you know, find as a common denominator with the African American community? Let me add something to your Jay real quickly. I think the thing that they find in common was in 1982. I think what shook the Asian American Chinese American world was the brutal killing of Vincent Chin, who was supposed to get married and was caught in a bar in Detroit. It was an anti-Japanese of time because the Japanese were developing cars that were, and these two guys had lost their jobs in American carpet and they beat him to death. And these guys didn't go to jail. And that was a flash point, as I see it, where the Chinese Americans all galvanized and said, wake up, this has happened to us too long. It never thought about it. And now we fast forward to the George Floyd incident. It galvanized more to say, this is what's been going on, but now we have smartphone camera videos that are showing live. This is what happened. And I think for the Chinese American, the fact that the US Department of Justice in 1982 opened an investigation, the Chinese Americans were now part of a protected class. So when we have hate speech done in the last, by Trump and his administration, a lot of people were doing a lot of hate things. You know, the FBI would investigate that because it's part of a protected class, the Asian Americans, the Chinese Americans. And again, I think more and more are getting more realizing that. And I can tell you from the second wave of Chinese who I know very closely, they voted for Trump for the second time. They said, we're not voting for Trump because he's racist and he's beating up on people like the Chinese, you know, and Chinese Americans. So I think there's a realization of that where even among that second wave that Chang talks about and the third wave, you know, they are starting to realize it. But I still think that more information, more experiences that the Chinese Americans face like in the Vincent Shen situation, they will understand it much more clearly. So Chang, you know, is there an evolution happening? Do the Chinese feel a kinship to the African Americans? Do they feel a kinship to the African American movements? I mean, after all, the African American, you know, economic situation arguably has improved. Cultural situation has changed. It has evolved in our lifetimes. It isn't what it was, you know, 50 or 100 years ago, it's better. But at the same time, you know, they're still at the wrong end of the discrimination arc, if you will. And I'm wondering if the Chinese feel the same kind of feeling and whether they feel that they're in a kinship. I'm telling you that, you know, the Jewish Americans feel they're in a kinship with anybody who is suffering from prejudice, okay? And it's always been the case and it's still the case today, as far as I know. So Quiri, whether that same phenomenon exists in the Chinese community or vis-à-vis the African American community? Very well said. I think we are running out of time, but let's quickly respond. I do, I do a kinship to all the minorities and to underrepresented the class. And I hope that, you know, the other Chinese American will feel the same way. Okay, well, you're right though. We're almost out of time. So I want to ask you guys to leave some last words. Let's go to you first, Cheng. What is your advice to the country and especially to Joe Biden on how to minimize or end this kind of racial prejudice we have seen here on Martin Luther King Day and to the Chinese and I suppose the African Americans and all of the minorities that have suffered at the hands of racial prejudice. What is your advice to the new administration? I think that is, I'm not sure I mean the position to advise new administration, but I do want, I do hope the new administration will implement some, you know, regulatory policies to reverse the tremendous damage that has been done in the past four years. And otherwise I have total confidence in the new administration. And I admire President Biden. I believe he has tremendous empathy and humanity and because of his personal tragedy, he's a people have endured so much suffering and loss and I think he's a totally ready to lead this country out of the tragedy over the past four years. Yes, it has been a tragedy. Russell, let me reframe it a little bit for you to close. And that is what advice would you give the Chinese community on how to look at this all the generations? And what advice would you give the African American community? And is it different advice? What should they be doing, thinking, aspiring to in the years to come? Well, I think the main important thing is that we're all Americans, no matter if we have to endure some of these pains, I think we have to just reach out and, you know, especially for the new immigrants from the Chinese Americans, that you're in the same lot with everybody else and that we all have to kind of find common ground. You know, I think among Chinese, one thing that keeps him going, I would tell the African American community, is the culture, I think. I think you raised that point earlier, Jay. I think the thousands of years of culture for the Chinese is survival. And they survive by looking at things like education, no matter if your generation suffers, you have to do it obligation for the child and you have to save all your money to put them to school, maybe it takes two generations, family households to put the child to higher education, you do that, that's part of the survival. And I think that just where it's an article that came out this morning somewhere, it talked about the whole fact is that as Americans, you know, the whole idea, even for the people who protested, they have to learn how to survive, you know, how to survive in this world without doing what they did. And this whole thing about survival, it goes back to culture and that makes reexamining maybe that we have to find something in our American culture to put us all together, to put us on the same page. And that's not gonna be an easy job, but I think that's one of the things that Biden has to do. There's a little discussion on one of my TV channels the other day when somebody said, you know, this is not who we are, this is not who the country is. And then one of the other participants in the conversation said, no, that's wrong, this is who we are. It's not who we should be, it is who we are. And we really have to get that out of our system. There is no reason why this country cannot be exceptional and not prejudice. There's no reason. In fact, this country would be much more exceptional if we got that out of our system. And I think we all are to work together for that. Thank you so much, Chang-Wong, Russell Liu, thanks for coming on, we'll see you in two weeks. Okay, and the world will be different. The world will be different in two weeks, so. I look forward to it. Yeah.