Conference on Global Entrepreneurship: Economic Development for Asia and the U.S. – General Session 2: U.S. Attitudes Towards Greater China: A National Survey Report

S. Alice Mong: Good morning. It is a pleasure for me to be here. My name is Alice Mong. I am the Executive Director of the Committee of 100. For those of you who may not be familiar with the Committee of 100, let me give you a brief introduction. The Committee of 100 is a membership organization founded in 1989 by prominent Chinese Americans Yo-Yo Ma and I.M. Pei and our dual mission is betterment of Sino-U.S. relations and domestic fund, betterment of opportunity for all Chinese American, Asian American on all aspects of American life. Currently, we are 130 members. And one of the best jobs in the world I have is to tell 130 high achiever type-A personalities what to do. So I really do have the best job and this morning it is my pleasure to moderate this panel.

We are unveiling Phase III of our survey results on American attitudes towards China. Phase I of our survey was unveiled at our Greater China Conference in January of this year. In Phase I of the survey, we surveyed opinion leaders and general public on their attitude toward China. Phase II of the result was unveiled recently at our 14th Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., where we surveyed congressional staffers and business leaders. Phase III of the results we will unveil today and I am delighted to be here to co-chair this conference with Tom and the White House Initiative on AAPI. This month, for those of you who are not familiar, May is APA heritage month and as a leading Asian American organization, we are delighted to take part in this conference. Some of the initiatives of the Committee of 100 you may be familiar with. We are working with Asia Society on an educational initiative to introduce Asian and Asian American curriculum in K-12.

On the corporate side, last year we launched a ground breaking survey of corporate boards, lack of Asian Americans on corporate boards. Our finding on that particular survey report card was very interesting. Asian Americans make up four to five percent of the American population and we are on less than one percent of Fortune 500’s corporate board. On the other hand, on NASDAQ, Asian Americans are over 30% corporate board members. So, I think that finding fits the theme of today’s conference on entrepreneurship. Once we hit the glass ceiling, we have a tendency to find our own companies. Another initiative that we’re very proud of is mentoring. For the past two years, we have used our resources, using our members as resources, mentoring young people and young professionals at our annual conferences as well as at regional forums. So, it’s very important to have role models and I think all of us remember our role models are. Mine was I.M. Pei, the founder of Wang Laboratories, when I was growing up. I think we feel that’s an area where the Committee of 100 members, and we’re currently 130 members, play that role in the Asian American community.

Without further ado, I will introduce Carolyn Chin, I think many of you already know her and the bios are already available. Carolyn is the co-chair of our research committee and has worked tirelessly on this survey. She will give you about a fifteen minute presentation on the current finding. After Caroyln’s presentation we will have two of our members, Betty Lee Sung, I’m sure no introduction is necessary to this audience, as well as Professor Xiaobo Lu, director of Colombia’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute. Also co-chairing the research committee as well as community leader, Chester Lee, giving you their feedback on the finding of the survey results. And then we will leave some time for Q&A. So, Carolyn…

Carolyn Chin: Thank you Alice. As Alice mentioned, this is the third phase of a three phase research project. In this particular phase, we surveyed 352 Chinese Americans. These were in-depth interviews done by phone and they were chosen at random nation­wide. This is a very large sample and very few studies of this nature are done; they are not easy to do. The margin error is about 5.3 %. We have been using Zogby as our pollster in all these phases. Zogby is often considered one of the most accurate pollsters that we have in America. Furthermore, Zogby does a lot of work in the whole area of ethnic and minority research and public opinion research, so it has a special expertise in this area.

As we discussed previously, the first phase was general public and opinion leaders. This poll was done in December 2004 and presented in January in Hong Kong and Beijing. It was followed by March where we polled congressional staff and business leaders. In this particular analysis that we’re going to present today, we will focus primarily on the comparison of the general public results and what Chinese American opinions were. I know this is an eye chart, but this includes some of the demographic comparison of the general public sample versus that of the Chinese Americans that were polled. There may be some skewing that looks a little funny, as it did to me when I first saw it, but indeed this is a reflection of the Census data and for example you see an age skew there. Let’s go into the key findings. I’m going to cover the key findings and they include areas on the attitudes toward China, American attitudes toward China, and I‘m not going to go into detail right now because we’re going to go into each chart. The key areas we covered were: what was the feeling abut China among these very segments, what is the favorable impression of China, what was the view of the relationship with China over the past ten years, how we could improve the relationship between the U.S. and China, the point of view on human rights: is this a subject, how big an issue is this? The other thing we wanted to asses was: is China viewed as more of a military threat, an economic threat, both or neither; is China viewed as an ally on the war on terror, since this is such a big issue for this country; and the view on the cross-strait relations. I’m going to go into the detailed charts. Then we included, just for the Chinese American sample, very specific questions that we thought would be timely and would deal with some issues that either related to the Committee of 100 projects or we thought would provide meaningful insight into Chinese American opinions. One of the areas we dealt with was the impact of China on Chinese American relations. If something happens in China that creates tension between U.S. and China, does this adversely impact Chinese Americans. Image of Chinese American; what impacts Chinese Americans; do we think that movies and cultures and Kung Fu things actually improve the image of Chinese Americans. Corporate board representation, as Alice mentioned, Asian Americans in general are very underrepresented on corporate boards. We wanted to compare the opinions of Chinese Americans versus those of the business leaders that we had polled in March. And we wanted to know whether Chinese Americans felt that they had been discriminated against or had been subject to racial slurs.

Another thing we wanted to gauge was how Chinese Americans felt about having teaching materials in schools that dealt with China, Chinese culture, Chinese language, and things like that because, as you know, most of the teaching material today is still Euro-centric. Then we asked on an unaided basis, no names were given, who Chinese Americans felt were role models. As you can see, the top role model that came out was Yao Ming, who is not Chinese American. But nevertheless, he’s tall. Another thing that was very interesting: we asked Chinese Americans what areas, what fields did they want to see Chinese Americans make more progress in. And they included areas like science and technology, education, business, etcetera. I was surprised to find that the number one area was public service and government service. Let’s go to detailed findings.

First we’ll cover the attitudes toward China and U.S.-China relations. One of the things about this study is that we patterned many of the questions after a study we had done ten years ago. We are doing a longitudinal study where we can see changes over time as well as a point in time study. In the comparison of the study we did in 1994, we found that the general public favorable opinion of China in 1994 was 46% and the Chinese American favorable opinion was 59%. Now, ten years later, the general public’s favorable opinion has gone up significantly to 59% and Chinese Americans are also favorable, but even more so. During those ten years there are many ups and downs, but as we looked at doing a regression analysis, we can see that the trend has been a positive uptake.

How favorable is your impression of China? As I said, the direction is the same. Chinese Americans have the same directional view as the general public, but more intensely—not necessarily surprising. We don’t cover some of the results, but one of the more notable things is that of all the segments we polled, we found that congressional staff was generally less favorable towards China. If we had some congressional staff here, you’d see that it was not as enthusiastic. Next one: do you believe that the relationship between China and the U.S. is better or worse or the same compared to ten years ago? 50% of the public said better and 70% of Chinese Americans said things were better.

The next one we asked was do you believe that currently the relationship between the U.S. and China is improving, getting worse, or no change? You see that here we have the public’s 45% said it was improving and Chinese Americans felt at a higher level, 52%, that it is improving. We then asked, what is the most important thing that the U.S. and China need to do to improve their relationship? There were a lot of similarities between the general public view and the Chinese American view. Number one was more communication, better communication, and trying to work some of these issues out. You can see also that Chinese Americans indicated that more trade, more balanced trade, more free trade would be a positive and then there was the whole issue with resolving Taiwan.

We asked Chinese Americans what issues do you think would arise in the future that would be problems? Number one was the conflict over Taiwan and number two was the issue of the growing trade deficit. When we asked both the general public and Chinese Americans, what were the greatest areas of concern over China? The general public again, as it did ten years ago, stated that human rights was the first issue. 46% of the general public said it was the top issue. On the other hand, only 20% of Chinese Americans said it was a big issue, which is a lot lower than the general public one. Interestingly, number two was the environmental impact and that was 17%. Ten years ago the environmental concern didn’t even show up on the radar screen. This time we found that in all the segments, environment came out as a key concern and Chinese Americans put human rights slightly higher but almost on par with environmental issues.

We asked: has the human rights situation in China improved over the past decade? The general public agreed and Chinese Americans agreed even more strongly; 68% said things have improved. We asked whether access to U.S. markets should be linked to the human rights record. The general public said at a pretty high level, 68% yes; Chinese Americans, much lower at 47% said yes. We asked the question, how do you view China’s emergence as a military power, as a threat to the U.S. or as an ally? Here if you look at serious and potential threat, 15% of the general public said that China is a serious threat; Chinese Americans only 10%. You will see that you have a high potential threat in both categories. One of the reasons the pollsters believe is that China, being as big and as powerful as it is, will always come out as at least a potential threat. The proper way to gauge this as we do these surveys over time is to see whether the needle changes when we talk about how big a serious threat it is. One of the key findings we had in our Phase I study is that the general public believes that China is more of an economic threat than a military threat.

The next one was an interesting finding, and it was very different between the general public and Chinese Americans. Despite the fact that China has played a role in the war on terrorism, when we asked the general public whether they thought that China was a dependable ally or friend of the U.S. in the war on terror, the general public said no, 56%. On the other hand, as almost a direct swing, 56% of Chinese Americans said yes. As we speculate on why there is such a radical swing, we feel that it is perhaps because Chinese Americans work with a larger number of media sources including Chinese language media and use the Internet as major source much more.

We asked whether the U.S. should play a greater role in China-Taiwan relations. The general public at 47% said no and Chinese Americans at 53% said no. It’s about the same. The next one is very complex. We asked, regarding Taiwan, whether there should be a one-China policy maintained, let Taiwan decide, or discourage Taiwan from seeking independence. This is a rather sophisticated question and the pollsters will say that anytime you ask the general public whether you should let someone decide their fate, it’s almost American motherhood, the answer is usually yes because this is so ingrained in us. Among Chinese Americans, it gets much more sophisticated in terms of response. If you ask the general public about maintaining one-China policy, frankly a lot of people don’t even know what the one-China policy is. 14% said yes; of the Chinese Americans 48% said yes. Let Taiwan decide, not surprisingly, the general public, 77%, said let Taiwan decide, whereas among Chinese Americans it was 38%. For those that said let Taiwan decide, as a subset of the overall group, we said if there is a declaration of independence by Taiwan that leads to hostilities, should the U.S. commit military forces to defend Taiwan? The general public said no at a 59% level; Chinese Americans said no at a 46% level. We know that at the general public level, there is a wariness. People do not want to, as with Iraq and hotspots such as Korea…Taiwan does not loom very large in the grand scheme of things. The thought of having more military resources being deployed for Taiwan is not a very large prospect. Chinese Americans tend to be more knowledgeable about this issue and you will see some differences in opinion based on where one was born.

Let’s look at the global economy issues that we asked on the survey. How do you view China’s emergence as a global economic power? Serious threat, the general public said 24% and as you may recall, this is much higher than the 15% that the general public mentioned as a military threat. Chinese Americans said not a serious economic threat either, at 14% and it was 10% for the military threat. Does trade with China benefit the

U.S. economy? Everybody loves trade. The general public thinks this is great and that trade is important. We had a lot of other questions in the survey and this is a summary, but one of the issues was to probe whether the loss of jobs and the economy would weigh on the public and they would blame China. The conclusion was that the general public was not blaming China for many of these economic issues that we’re facing. The general public, at a 73% level, said trade with China is great. Chinese Americans at an even higher level, 83%, said trade with China is good for the economy. We asked, do low cost Chinese products benefit American consumers? The general public agreed at a 63% level Chinese Americans, who like bargains even more, at 85% said yes. This was an interesting finding because Americans are consumers first so Americans place a great deal of priority and weight on the benefits of having low cost goods. It would appear that this benefit of low cost goods offset a lot of the negatives that might have turned out in the polls.

Is China’s government responsible for the U.S. trade deficit, these are government policy issues. The general public was about the same as Chinese Americans; 57% of the general public agreed, 53% of Chinese Americans agreed. We were trying to gauge where people felt jobs were being lost to. When asked where they thought the U.S. manufacturing and technical jobs were going to, China came out as number one versus India and Mexico. However, you can see that the Chinese Americans placed India closer to China, whereas for the general public China came out much higher as being the top source of loss of jobs in those areas—manufacturing and technology.

We then asked the question, given the changes in China and that in recent years China has allowed more free market ventures, do you agree that China is no longer a true Communist country? Here we had interesting results. On the agreement level, the Chinese Americans and business leaders are in sync, agreed at a 68, 63% level. When we asked the congressional staff, this is an indication of the kind of deviances we got relative to congressional staff. Congressional staff only agreed at a 47% level. Then we asked as a follow-up to the overall concern about the environment, does China’s economic industrial growth hurt the global environment? The public agreed at a 56% level, Chinese Americans agreed at a 48% level, but interestingly there was a high percentage, 46% of Chinese Americans, that disagreed on that particular subject.

Now we’re going to go into other factors: we asked, do you feel that Hong Kong is better or worse off since the handover from Britain to China in 1997. The general public perceived that Hong Kong is worse at a 30% level, as do Chinese Americans. Then we asked do you believe that the arrival of Chinese immigrants is a positive development, serious development, or neither for the U.S.? It’s generally viewed as a positive environment by the general public at a 29% level, but at a much higher level, 48% by Chinese Americans. Again this is not surprising when we look at the demographics of the surveys; the bulk of them are either near term immigrants or longer term immigrants, so Chinese immigration is considered positive. The next one surprises. We asked, have you visited China, Taiwan or Hong Kong? Not surprisingly, 10% of the public said yes, because a very large percentage of the public has never been out of the

U.S. But among the Chinese American sample we had, 83% said yes, a very high number. We said, why did you visit China, Taiwan or Hong Kong? The number one reason was visiting family and the second reason was for vacation.

As I mentioned we asked first specific questions on domestic issues just for this sample. We asked, do you agree that China and Chinese people are portrayed negatively in the U.S. media? 51% agreed, but it wasn’t with a high intensity. The next one we asked is that some surveys have suggested that some Americans have a negative opinion of China. In your opinion, does negative public opinion of China adversely impact the status of Chinese Americans in the U.S.? Chinese Americans at a 66% level said yes. This can vary, of course, depending upon what China events are. Obviously if there’s a major conflict in China, you might have even a more intense reaction; this was conducted at a time when things were fairly neutral. The next one we asked was do you agree that movies, fashion, and culture from China and Hong Kong improve the image of Chinese Americans? Chinese Americans at a 70% response said yes. Do you believe that increased business contact and economic ties between the U.S. and greater China improve the image of Chinese Americans? 47% of Chinese Americans strongly agreed. When you look at the strongly agreed and somewhat agreed, the overall agreed category is very high. We asked whether Asian Americans were underrepresented on corporate boards. 79% of Chinese Americans agreed and this is in major contrast to the 44% of business leaders. We asked, what field or profession would you like to see Chinese Americans make greater gains in? As I mentioned earlier, government and public service came out number one, and 46% responded with that category.

We then tried to get a gauge of discrimination factors: we asked, have you ever been discriminated against because you are of Chinese descent. Have you eve been made fun of or called a name because you are of Chinese descent? It’s about split, about half said yes and half said no. Interestingly, in the more detailed findings it is the younger Chinese Americans that felt they had faced more discrimination. We asked, do you agree that school should include more Chinese and China-related teaching materials? Chinese Americans agreed very strongly at 84%. In this next one you’ll see more detailed names. Please name who you consider to be Chinese American role models. Yao Ming, who is not Chinese American, came up number one at 9%, Connie Chung came in at number two, 8%, Michael Chang, so I guess it helps if you play a sport or are on TV, came in at 8%. Elaine Chow 6%, Bruce Lee, you did not have to be alive to be a role model, 6%, Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Yo-Yo Ma, and then we had a whole host of other names. Interestingly 28% said ‘not sure’ and did not name anybody. We asked, when thinking about the Chinese people and their culture, what are some positive things that come to mind? This closely parallels that of the general public. The positive stereotypes about Chinese Americans: hard-working, diligent, family-oriented, intelligent, value education. The next question was to gauge how optimistic Chinese Americans were about their opportunities in America. At one time Chinese came here, this was the gold mountain. Are Chinese Americans still optimistic about their prospects in this country? We found that 89% are still optimistic about their future in America.

Let’s look at some of the demographic questions. We have many more demographics, we’re just going to cover some of the key ones with you. Were you born in the U.S., China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, or elsewhere? We found that in this sample, 26% were born in the U.S. and the bulk were born outside the U.S. This is perhaps not surprising because under the Chinese Exclusionary Act, it was not until 1965 that we were able to have a groundswell of immigration to this country. The next question we asked is do you have relatives in China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan? The answer is yes at a 73% level, which is not surprising because they were born over there and many have relatives. Of course when we first asked these questions, we didn’t know what the findings would be. Then we tried to understand the generational issues. Who in your family was the first person to come to the U.S.? We found that most respondents were either first or second generation in this country. The next one I personally found surprising, which was, do you read or speak Chinese? And 92% of the Chinese respondents said yes. Then we tried to gauge the dialects: which dialect of Chinese do you speak? 29% spoke Cantonese, 51% spoke Mandarin and then you have the other subsets of dialects. This was a surprising one in terms of sources of information and news about China; we asked, where do you get your information about China? Internet came out number one. 20% of Chinese Americans indicated that. Unlike the general public, you will see that there is a diversity of media and news sources including Chinese language newspapers, Chinese TV, and a much higher use of the Internet. That concludes the key findings we have. For those of you that would like more information or like a copy of this, we have it on our website.

S. Alice Mong: I want to keep time for a Q&A, so I would ask each of the panelists to do the findings quickly to two or three minutes. Xiaobo Lu…

Xiaobo Lu: Thanks Alice. Since the final third phase result just came out last week, we are still in process of making more analysis; this is sort of preliminary, because we haven’t done all the cross-tab analysis yet. Early impression and early analysis shows that Chinese American survey results did not show a lot of surprises. As a researcher and someone who researches and teaches, this provides some evidence of some of the impressions we have been having before, but certainly this has provided some empirical data and evidence.

I want to make a few remarks about the results, three remarks really. The first is about how Chinese Americans see themselves as a group. I think Chinese Americans obviously are, first and foremost Americans, so you can see that on many issues they share the view and are basically in sync with the general public. Particularly on issues of economics and the global economy, to some extent on U.S.-China relations, and on a number of other issues, you can see that they are basically in sync, it’s just that intensity may be somewhat different. We didn’t show you the other subgroups, especially the congressional staffers; that is striking. If you’re interested, you can look online at the Committee of 100, www.committee100.org, you can see some of the results. That is really where you see the gap and that is really striking.

At the same time, I think Chinese American is a unique ethnic group and rightly so, and they reflect it in the view about China and U.S.-China relations. There are three aspects that show that distinction. First is obviously with China and U.S.-China relations, Chinese Americans show a better and deeper understanding of the relationship of this country. That shows in terms of how they view China and serious issues, I will give you some examples a little later. This had probably to do with direct ties with China, relatives, more sources of news, and so on. And on the Taiwan issue as well, you can see the difference between the general public and Chinese Americans. The second difference shows that Chinese Americans, out of their culture, out of their historical background, the concerns are difference. One of the charts on the human rights issue is particularly interesting. You can see that even though it ranked number one as the major concern, the intensity is way off. 46% for the general public, ranking it as a number one concern when it comes to China and only 20% of Chinese Americans. That is slightly higher than the second issue, environmental degradation. You see the difference and that the concerns of Chinese Americans are somewhat different. Maybe one also could argue that their understanding of China’s history and where China has come from help to form their opinion on that. The third aspect, as you also see from the survey results, is that they have a very strong identity. They identify with China, being Chinese, and they also take pride in being Chinese. So the three aspects show that, in terms of an ethnic group, it is somewhat unique when it comes to the view on China and U.S.-China relations.

The second point I want to make is that Chinese Americans show a very strong tie and identify themselves very much with China and with what is going on in China. One question we asked is do you think a negative image of China and a negative development of U.S.-China relations would negatively affect their welfare in this society and many of them said yes. Obviously they’re concerned. One may say that Chinese Americans see a higher stake in this relationship. Obviously they’re very much interested and concerned with the developments in China. That poses an interesting question and a larger question, that is, we always say that for the United States how to manage the rise of China is very important, one of the major challenges. In fact, in this morning’s New York Times, as an editorial, very interesting, about the rise of China. But at the same time, as Chinese Americans, how we see this, manage is not a good word, but how we look at this rise of China is also very important in the years to come.

Finally, another thing about this survey, for those of us involved in the survey, is to look at the general public. How much they know about China and U.S.-China relations. I must say that in general, they’re basically on the mark. I think they’re certainly to some extent informed about China and U.S.-China relations. I have to say the knowledge about China is still limited. This has a lot to do with the source of information. If you look, we didn’t have the general public source of information, base of TV, newspaper, and so on. Only 10% ever visited greater China, not just China mainland, but Hong Kong and Taiwan. One issue that we don’t have the time or space to put in is the congressional staffers. We asked them one interesting questions, that is, can you name the president of China? And guess what percentage of congressional staffers. They’re supposed to be policy-makers for God’s sake, they’re supposed to at least know something. They’re in public service, shall we say. Can you guess what the percentage is? [Male Audience Member: Ten percent]. Johnny, you’re too generous. Ten percent is too generous. It’s four percent. That’s four out of one hundred we surveyed. The names are off the charts, it’s very interesting. [Betty Lee Sung: They’re dead people]. Deng Xiaoping was named. So, obviously it’s all a challenge, because those are the people who are in the business of education. And this being educational institution, I think education about China and about Chinese Americans is still very much a challenge. It’s not surprising that many Chinese Americans view that there is a need for teaching materials on China and Chinese Americans to be included in the curriculum. That’s a very important aspect too.

S. Alice Mong: Okay. Xiaobo, thank you for that five minutes. Betty Lee Sung…

Betty Lee Sung: Thank you Alice. I wear two hats. I’m a member of the Committee of 100, where we decided to do the survey, and also as chair of the AAARI. When we started planning for this conference, almost a year ago, our concern at that time was the negative attitude of the media and the general public towards China and India about the outsourcing and the taking away of jobs and the economic threat that China posed to the United States. We had emphasized in having this conference that we would bring out some of the facts that it was a win-win situation. But now, within the short period of less than a year, we have seen the favorable climate of attitudes towards China. This is what this survey and surveys like this accomplish; that is, it establishes what really is the situation. We were very surprised that most of the general public does not view China as an economic threat; they like the low cost of goods. Even union members are not concerned about their loss of jobs, although this has affected union workers considerably. So, we can see the value of these surveys.

One thing that I’m supposed to do is react to the survey form a Chinese American perspective. The first thing is that historically, China-U.S. relations have impacted tremendously upon the treatment and attitude toward the Chinese in this country. That has been proven over and over again. It was only a year or two ago that a U.S. plane was downed in China, and we could have seen the negative reaction almost immediately; then the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Europe. At that time I remember being at a conference of the Committee of 100 and everybody was buying papers to see how that was going to impact us. So, I think that is going to have a great impact, although this survey now shows a very favorable attitude towards the Chinese in this country. I want to follow up on the general survey and when it was presented at the Committee of 100 conference just a month ago, I was very concerned about the attitude of the congressional staff. These were in-depth interviews with the members who make the laws in this country. When laws are made, we have to abide by them. It was very disturbing to see the gap between the American public and the lawmakers. This is very disturbing because when they make the laws, it’s going to be the law of the land. This is where we’re going to have to pay very close attention. One thing that was not mentioned too much was the attitude toward immigration. In the past, we know that the Chinese were excluded from this country and there were very strong restrictions against Chinese coming into this country because we were undesirable people. Today the survey shows that the American public is more favorably disposed toward Chinese immigration, although that is going downward. There seems to be more economic opportunities in the homeland.

The other thing I wanted to comment especially about is the third phase of the survey, which just came off the press. It was done in April. That was just a few weeks ago…last week, oh my goodness, even more recent. The interesting thing that I saw, and I only got this information last night, so I’m commenting on it, and Professor Lu commented on it, the Chinese American attitude and response to the questions are quite similar to the general American public. I’m wondering to what extent the media, the very strong American media, has on “brainwashing” us as much as the American general public.

I was interested, in many respects, about the demographics of the respondents. This was 26% U.S.-born and 74% foreign-born, which corresponds to what the demographic picture seems to be. I was very curious that for 51% of the respondents, their families spoke Mandarin. We know that in the past most of the immigrants were from the Canton area, the Guangdong area. I wonder if this is a big shift or whether it’s just that the Mandarin interviewees were more willing to respond to questions than the Cantonese. That was I question that I had.

I had a question about discrimination. About half of us said yes, there was discrimination and half said no. What surprised me was that the younger people more often said they were discriminated against. That’s very surprising because anybody who knows a little about the history of the Chinese in this country knows that prior to 1965 we experienced a great deal of discrimination. It was not just saying a racial slur or calling you names or anything like that. It was denying you a job, denying you housing, denying you education, and very serious forms of discrimination. It really puzzles me why younger people, who I think today enjoy a much more open society, feel that they have been discriminated against. This is an area we should look into.

The other thing that struck my eye was government service. In the past, we hardly had anybody in the public service. Number one, you had to have citizenship and be accepted and there weren’t many people in that category. Today, the fact that young people want to go into public service and aspire to it is very heartwarming because, again, remember, that’s where the action takes place. It is the government that determines the kind of behavior and the kind of things you can and cannot do. It is heartening to know that they want to go into public service. One last thing: the role models, the heroes. I was very taken aback about it. Why are athletes and TV celebrities and movie celebrities our role models? They don’t seem to jive with our values. I don’t see an educator in there. That was very surprising to me and whether that is a reflection of the mass media…It’s interesting to question the type of role models we look up to.

S. Alice Mong: Thank you Betty. Carolyn would like to address your question about that.

Carolyn Chin: I would like to make two quick comments based on research methodology. We’ve done research in corporations, such as at IBM. We were also surprised. It’s not the older workers who were indeed more discriminated against, who felt they were discriminated against. In many cases they were grateful that they had steady jobs. It was the really the younger workers that say, these guys have the jobs, but they’re not chairman of the company; they’ll never be chairmen of the company. We don’t have the same opportunities. So that may explain some of the discrepancy. The second thing is if you look at role models, studies done by the Anti Defamation League and other people, you’ll find that figures of media and sports tend to be the role models regardless of your ethnic background.

S. Alice Mong: Ok, we’re really running short. Chester…

Chester Lee: Morning everybody. I’m delighted to be here, I see a lot of old faces. I’d like to thank the Committee of 100 for asking me to serve on this panel. I’m here to give my personal reactions as a Chinese American who is active in the Chinese American community to the survey results. These things came out last night, so I asked my son, who is sitting over there, Michael, who works for the Committee of 100, what he thought. I’m going to try to regurgitate what he said to me.

First of all, it’s obvious that Chinese Americans don’t believe everything they read in the media, because there’s some very strong anti-China bias in the media. They do their research on the Internet, as some of the results indicate, and they are definitely more informed about China and therefore I think their feelings about China are more accurate about what’s really going on there.

I was struck by the Chinese American idols. Where are the politicians and the business people, the scientists and the professors? Why are there no charismatic figures, no public intellectuals? What happened to these people? What it means to me is that there are a lot of accomplished people who are not visible in our society; that’s a problem.

Chinese Americans claim they haven’t experienced any racial slurs. I think that’s because the survey was done among people who were concentrated in very liberal-leaning areas. I figure if you went to different parts of the country that might be different.

I know when I served in the military in Missouri, there were only two Asians in the entire fort. I don’t think there were any overt feelings toward us, but once you get more than six, you became part of a group and you could feeling the tension rising. That result is going to change over time because the country is becoming increasingly conservative and if the negative perception of China continues, that will adversely affect Chinese Americans.

There were some results regarding board representation. I think there has to be a lot more pressure from below; the more successful young professionals that are coming up from the bottom need to acquire the social skills to make them feel comfortable in that rarified strata. The political tension between China and the U.S. needs to be mitigated for Asian board representation to increase. The number of Asians on corporate boards is really a function of what our relationship is with China.

We asked the American public whether China has too many U.S. bonds in their portfolio. As you know, China has about 600 billion dollars in foreign reserve, most of which is invested in U.S. treasuries. That the American public says that China owns too many bonds is an indication that they don’t really understand economics. It’s a benefit that China is buying these bonds, because it lowers the interest rates, which makes mortgages affordable. It allows them to buy Chinese goods, which are cheap, therefore financing the trade deficit. That allows the U.S. government to finance its budget deficit, which allows us to fight the war in Iraq. So there are a lot of benefits that the American people don’t realize. They’re blaming China for the wrong reasons.

In general, we need to look at these results in terms of the background of a very strong anti-China bias in the media. A lot of people in the media still see China as a nasty Communist regime, as a very dangerous rival. All negative perceptions you read about people having about China comes from the media: official corruption, violation of human rights, the environmental degradation, religious suppression, Tibet. You name it, this stuff comes from the media. Some of it might be true, but a lot of it is overblown and colors and shapes the perceptions of the American public. The same anti-China bias exists in the Congressional debate, and I think these staffers are still living with an anti-Communist, Cold War kind of mentality. If they don’t know the name of the president of China, they’re being driven or influenced by false impressions of what the country’s all about. I think the anti-China bias is going to eventually change American attitudes towards China for the worse and that will impact how we’re treated as Chinese Americans in America.

In fact, I’m very nervous about a sever backlash, maybe a return of the fear of the Yellow Pearl. I think there could be things like conscious discrimination, open hatred, intentional violence towards Chinese Americans. That’s very possible, especially if war breaks out between China and Taiwan, if China continues to be viewed as an economic and military threat. If China becomes more aggressive in rural affairs, as it has been doing lately, they’re going to have to take some stances where they’re opposed to America and that will impact us. The competition for natural resources is heating up and I think there will be disputes and fights in the future over the resources and that the U.S. and China will clash in many ways.

What would be the consequences for Chinese Americans? I already have friends who are relocating back to China, so there might be a reverse brain drain. There might be anti-Chinese, anti-immigrant legislation. There’s definitely going to be American protectionalism and elimination of a lot of free trade agreements. That’s going to hurt China’s growth and its stability, as well as its political liberalization and its emerging democracy. If that’s the case, it’s going to impact not only China, but also our standing here as Chinese Americans, as Americans of Chinese descent. It’s going to force us as Chinese Americans to overtly demonstrate our loyalty and patriotism to America in ways that we might not be comfortable with. In the worst case, there could be detention, like they did to the Japanese in World War II. Unless we fight for our rights, we’re going to be marginalized.

Getting back to this conference, in terms of what global entrepreneurship is all about, I have a lot of friends who are using their roots to tap into their heritage and using that to begin to do things in China. I have friends investing real estate, they have manufacturing companies; I know someone who is doing an IP start-up. I’m associated with a bank in Chinatown and we’re beginning to engage in letters of credit, financing trade activities with China; I know people who are making technology investments. So there are a lot of people who are using their roots to begin to leverage that so they can begin to take advantage of the growing U.S.-China trade. American companies are also interested in their Chinese American employees to see how they could begin to use them as they think about expanding in Asia.

One last thing: how can Chinese Americans act as a bridge between the two superpowers and to help foster greater global entrepreneurship? We have a big role to play. We as Chinese Americans believe in diplomacy, we believe in communications between the U.S. And China and that alone will ensure that we have a role to play. We are loyal citizens, we are, as Zogby says, caring descendents of immigrants, and we can play a useful role in building a bridge across the Pacific. With that in mind, I’d like to thank you, and hopefully these results will not become negative in the future. Thank you.

S. Alice Mong: Thank you Chester. I know we’re running late, I know we’re eating into your break, but I really would love to get a few minutes for you to ask some question of the panelists. Carolyn…

Carolyn Chin: I just want to talk about why we do this research. There’s so much emotionalism, there’s so much rhetoric that goes on on these subjects. We want to bring facts to the table and we do research over time, so we can see what the results are over time. With these facts we can come up with action plans. We know Congress is out of sync and needs to be educated about China and Chinese Americans, so now we can do programs on it. We know business leaders…they get it. The general public actually gets it. So we can work with these findings and go to the media, we can go to Congress, there are programs we can develop to help address some of the issues we’re seeing in the research. We’re dealing with facts, so we’re not dealing with she said, he said, I said, that kind of thing.

S. Alice Mong: Ok. Xiaobo, would you like to address that?

Xiaobo Lu: Quickly, Chester raised an interesting question about the geographical bias. It’s interesting, it actually reflects the patterns of Chinese Americans. Each coast is about 30% and the rest…If you look at the demographic and geographic spread, it’s pretty good. But I think you’re absolutely right that in the more liberal coastal areas is where the racial discrimination was probably felt less. I also want to make a point about slide 30, we don’t have it up here, on the question of is China still a Communist country? It’s a little tricky, because the trick is we want to see how people look at the reaction of what is China? China, depending on how you look at it, is half full or half empty. Everything you point out about China is probably right, but it depends what you point out. Is it the problem side or the change? Chinese Americans see change; they see the changes that are taking place. Whereas a congressional staffer…Actually we didn’t ask the general public this question.

Carolyn Chin: Actually, we asked what they thought of China among opinion leaders and some of these other segments. It used to be, in the old days, that the first thing was Communism. The biggest thing that comes to mind is big. In the old days, it would have always been Communism, so we are seeing a change. In some respects, Chester, I think that things are better than you may see it, because the public really likes China. It’s just the congressional staff.

S. Alice Mong: Ok, let’s open it up to the public. Question over there.

Male Audience member: I’d like to focus on the congressional staffers. First, my guess is that it’s a similar to a survey of editors of newspapers who rate their equivalents in the electronic media, with a similar view. With the staffers, my curiosity was, is this because much of Congress is Republican, therefore that’s reflected in the staffers. But as soon as you stop and think about that and think of Senator Schumer and his recent protectionist against China proposal, which he has put on the table. One question would be where is this coming from? I have a theory. You tell me if this is anywhere near. Within the Beltway, there are groups that believe in what used to be called, and may still be called, the China Threat Theory. And there are active foundations that promote that concept. Maybe [inaudible] and Olin, I don’t know. This is something for the Committee of 100 to look in to. There’s an active lobbying effort to place China in a negative light on any event: intellectual property, human rights, you name it. What we’re looking at is not just what people think on a Friday afternoon in May, but we’re at the issue of who is promoting what view of China and who is promoting what counter-view of China. Betty’s comment about what happens when you get an American spy plane shot down over Hainan and conversely when you get an American bomb going into the Belgrade embassy during the Kosovo war. That crisis situation brings out what’s really there and that is an inherent problem with any study or research. I’m not faulting research, I’m just reminding us of the reality that when the rubber hits the road, that’s when you really know where things are at. So, where do the congressional people get their views, what might be going on underneath the generally favorable view, and what’s the reality within the Beltway versus the national reality?

Xiaobo Lu: Frank, a good question. You said who is presenting the counter anti-China view? Very few people, because the post-1989 basic alliance is still there. You see that both on the very left, the Holy Alliance, Jessie Holmes and the Teddy Kennedy’s, that alliance is basically intact. If you look at China since 1989, the modern China view is central, the moderate Republicans and the moderate Democrats, not on either side. Concerns are different; I don’t want to get into that. The right wing’s and the left liberal’s concerns about China are different, but they’re both critical of China. Nancy Palosi versus Tom Delay. They’re less on the China issue, but the basic line is still there and that’s a long-term one. If you recall, the Beltway always needed some sort of boring target to be criticized. In the 1980’s with Japan; Japan-bashing was cost-free political game. Now China-bashing, I argue, is a cost-free game too today. Nobody’s going to suffer if you say something bad about China. Voters won’t vote you out.

Carolyn Chin: Let me point out that there were major differences between the party affiliations, but there were no countervailing forces. These congressional staffers are impacted by who lobbies them and there’s a major Taiwan lobby, there are a lot of special interest groups that tend to be more anti-China than pro-China. So there are no countervailing forces there.

Xiaobo Lu: Let me also add that as the middle becomes smaller, as a result of the last election, now everybody says that in D.C. that the right has become righter. I think that poses a challenge in terms of China and relations with China because the middle ground is getting smaller.

S. Alice Mong: Okay. Another question over here.

Male Audience member: My name is Edward Ma, I am a psychotherapist. I am very honored to be here and I would like to thank Chester Lee, my friend, and also thank Betty Lee Sung for the feedback. My point is this: we have so many resources here. We are underutilizing our resources—things like Internet. The Asian people are very accomplished and how does it come to be that accomplished people are invisible. They won’t come out! We have to share with the Chinese to pursue such work, share and participate. We have to promote democracy to share and participate. We have to utilize the resource of the media; it’s a very powerful issue. And we have to reach the congressional staff. I remember the Chinese investors coming to New York. She felt that the American people are very friendly but government is very hostile. I think that’s a small group of people. Therefore I challenge the Committee of 100, since you are in the room. I am also a member of 80/20, [S.B. Woo] has been very effective using the web site to mobilize the 15,000 to advertise to get rid of Senator Trent Lott. All these negative campaigns against Asia. And the Asian economy is very impacted. Therefore I suggest that the Committee of 100, since you have this connection nationwide…

S. Alice Mong: Thank you, we are really out of time. Betty Lee Sung will have the last word, as one of the chairs of this conference.

Betty Lee Sung: Chester and I were responding to Frank Keihl’s question. Actually, the congressional staffers were more than half Democrat. My question is, I also watch the Channel 13 Bert Lehrer show and I always think that he is so impartial. But lately I realized in his comments on China and so forth, that, actually, the people he brings on as China experts are the same non-Chinese, non-Asian people who are supposedly knowledgeable, but I feel they are way out of touch with the real situation. This is what I mean; the media is very powerful in this country. And it’s important that we, who are, you might say, intellectuals or business people, should try to get on the media and influence the audience, the general public. Just to mention another thing, Carolyn said that the lobbyists are ones who influence the congressional people the most. We did have a very favorable impression from the business community and I think they’re a very powerful force in this country. Perhaps that will bring about some change, but I think that we ourselves have to try to get on the media and correct some of the wrong impressions that are created up there.