I’ve written several posts recently about how Asian American are beginning to flex their political power as voters and as politicians. The New York Times now has a recent article that summarizes the rise of Asian American as a potential political power bloc in California:

California’s 4.4 million Asians constitute the state’s second-largest ethnic minority group (after Latinos) and the largest Asian population in the country, but they have been underrepresented in elected office. Now they are moving beyond fund-raising, where they have long been a force, to elect representatives of their own. . . .

There are now nine Asian-Americans in the State Legislature, compared with one 10 years ago. In November, a Chinese-American, John Chiang, was elected state controller. Three of the five members of the Board of Equalization, which administers the state’s tax policies, are Asian-American, including Mr. Chiang.

“If you look back a decade or two ago, there was a considerable amount of talk about Latinos being the sleeping giant in politics, that they’d reached a certain level of potentially having impact,” said Paul Ong, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has written about Asians’ growing influence in the state. “Asians are at that point.” . . .

Should the number of Asian-American elected officials continue to grow, the issues many of them have pursued — bilingual language assistance, equitable admissions standards at state universities and affordable health care — will become increasingly visible.

The article notes that one challenge still to overcome is that Asian American voting rates of are still lower than that for Whites and Blacks, even among those Asians who are U.S. citizens and therefore eligible to vote. Still, progress has been made. Now Asian Americans like myself can confidently predict that soon, our community will be represented in the halls of political power in California and beyond.

Of course, that’s not to say that we will all agree ideologically, but having the critical mass in terms of numbers of Asian American political leaders is certainly a nice start.

For several years now, many hospitals, police stations, and other public facilities around the country have programs (Massachusett’s is called the “Safe Baby Haven“) where anyone can leave a newborn baby for someone else to adopt, no questions asked. The argument is that it’s better to give desperate mothers (and fathers) the option of giving their baby up for adoption anonymously rather than abandoning them to die. In Japan, a similar program exists, informally called the “baby box”:

Japan has also set up “public cradles against abortion”. Following India, which last week launched a “cradles scheme” against abortions and foeticide of girls, the Japanese Health Minister approved a decision taken by a hospital in Kumamoto to have a “baby box” for the public. Hospital officials said the box was intended to ensure absolute privacy for those parents who wanted to abandon their newly born babies. . . .

According to officials of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the proposal “does not violate any law but should be supported because it protects the safety of unwanted babies.” Clearly, they added, from a legal point of view, the hospital would have to answer for the safety of the children. All the same, “the government will do everything possible to help through adoption and tax reduction campaigns”.

Supporters of such programs also argue that such “baby boxes” or “safe baby havens” eliminate the need for abortions, since parents can now just give up their child anonymously. Personally, I don’t think that it needs to be an either-or proposition — women should still have the right to an abortion within current medical guidelines (i.e., before their third trimester) while such “baby boxes” can still be available to parents who need to use them.

In other words, I believe that regardless of what country you’re in, more choices are always better than fewer choices.

As Spring Training gets into ‘full swing,’, you’re probably familiar with a few of the more notable Japanese players who have achieved some success in Major League Baseball, such as Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui, etc. This year, several more Japanese players are set to join their ranks and with them, as the New York Times reports, are their interpreters who help to make their transition to America as smooth as possible, on and off the field:

As the internationalization of Major League Baseball continues and more Japanese players come here to play, teams have increasingly been hiring interpreters to help ease their transition. Unlike Latin American players, who can usually find teammates, coaches and club officials who speak Spanish, Japanese players rarely have that option.

In this evolving aspect of the game, the interpreters are becoming a more visible presence in the daily routines of numerous teams. General managers say they want the players who are acclimating to the United States to feel as comfortable as possible. Coaches say they want to know their instructions are being understood. And the players, who have achieved success in Japan and are expected to produce instantly here, want to express themselves, too. . . .

Some perform the tasks of a personal assistant, too. Cashman said that players who could not read or speak English needed help with routine tasks like acquiring a driver’s license, renting an apartment and opening a bank account. The Yankees give interpreters a job description, and it includes some off-the-field responsibilities.

“You can’t say you’re only going to help him within the confines of the stadium and then leave him alone,” said Roger Kahlon, who has interpreted for Yankees left fielder Hideki Matsui since 2003. As Cashman said: “It’s not just translating. It’s assimilating them into the new culture.”

I applaud teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, and Mariners, etc. who have accepted that it is in everyone’s interests to spend a little more money and have full-time interpreters to help their Japanese players play well and adjust well to their new surroundings.

Now just imagine how nice it would be and how much better America would operate if all immigrants — ordinary, everyday immigrants, not just superstar athletes — who needed this kind of help actually received it.

Did you have a happy Lunar/Chinese New Year celebration a few weeks ago? Chances are that you did if you were in Las Vegas because as the New York Times reports, Las Vegas has been pulling out all the stops to incorporate the Lunar/Chinese New Year into its attractions, with the goal of attracting high-spending, big-roller Asian and Asian American gamblers:

“This is a Las Vegas version of Chinese New Year,” Mr. Zhu said. “It’s its own thing, but we love it.” So do casino executives. Chinese New Year . . . has become one of the city’s most profitable events, drawing thousands of Asian and Asian-American visitors and hundreds of millions of their dollars each year. Executives with Las Vegas Sands Inc., say more money is bet during the two-week period than at any other time during the year.

Casinos drape enormous banners with New Year’s greetings in Chinese across their porte-cocheres and add tables for baccarat and pai gow poker, two games favored by Asian gamblers. They hold parties where managers hand invited guests red envelopes stuffed with money or special gambling chips adorned with the animal symbol of the year. At Caesars Palace, Celine Dion and Elton John are given a few days off so that Jacky Cheung, the Canto-pop sensation, can hold forth in the 4,100-seat Colosseum.

Most Chinese restaurants on the Strip stay open longer and add traditional New Year’s dishes or rename some regular ones with lucky or upbeat words. It is not unusual for a family to spend more than $20,000 for a Chinese New Year dinner. . . . At the Bellagio, the theme of the 14,000-square-foot Conservatory is changed only five times a year, and Chinese New Year is one of those times. The current display features live tangerine trees, a 45-foot-tall pagoda, and a mechanical pig with a moving eyes, tail and snout.

“You’ll see a lot of Chinese lanterns hanging in groups of six because multiples of six are lucky numbers,” said the Conservatory manager, Sharon Hatcher. . . . “The highest quality players will get whatever they want. The Chinese are the highest and best quality players in the world, so they’ll have preference. We don’t care how tall you are, how short you are, how fat you are, what color you are. Green is the most important color.”

The article goes on to describe how many of the major casinos have changed their operations to accommodate and attract Asian/Asian American patrons, many of them based on traditional Asian and Chinese beliefs about feng shui and luck/superstition.

On the one hand, I am very glad to see that major American corporations are actively courting Asian/Asian Americans as customers and have in fact significantly changed many aspects of their particular practices to suit Asian/Asian American tastes. It does go a long way toward institutionalizing Asian Americans as as a legitimate consumer group with significant purchasing power.

On the other hand, as this site’s article on Gambling, Addiction, and Asian Culture describes, many Asians and Asian Americans have a very serious gambling addiction problem that has led to financial disaster, families torn apart, and even death. In that context, it’s not surprising to know that gambling establishments of all sizes have been more actively courting Asians and Asian Americans because they know that’s where the money is, as the last line in the quoted material above shows.

Ultimately, I see this development as another example of the complicated nature of Asian American assimilation — it’s nice to be wanted and incorporated into mainstream aspects of American society and commerce, but why did they have to pick this particular aspect of Asian/Asian American culture that can have many serious negative consequences for our community as the focal point?

Many Asian American Democrats like me are still undecided about which candidate we should support — Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, or someone else. In this context, Senator Clinton’s campaign just acquired one strike against it when it barred Chinese language media journalists from a recent fundraiser luncheon:

A spokesperson from Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign apologized to the Chinese-language media after journalists were denied access to a Feb. 23 fundraising luncheon with Sen. Clinton in San Francisco. Event staff told reporters that the briefing was not open to “foreign press,” according to the Chinese-language World Journal and Sing Tao Daily. . . .

Howard Wolfson, spokesperson for the Hillary Clinton for President Exploratory Committee, apologized to the World Journal the next day, saying this was a “learning lesson and a learning opportunity,” the World Journal reports. Wolfson told the World Journal that Sen. Clinton’s campaign understands the importance of Chinese media in the presidential election. The campaign will make sure that all media, including Chinese and ethnic media, has equal opportunity to report the news, he said.

“Certainly you are not foreign press,” he told the newspaper. . . . Portia Li, a writer for the World Journal in San Francisco, was one of the reporters denied access to the luncheon. According to her Feb. 24 report in the World Journal, several Chinese-language media reporters were initially told that because they had not arrived early, they could not enter the fundraiser.

When a World Journal reporter told Clinton’s staff that the Chinese media had not received a press release about the luncheon in advance, Li writes, a staff member from Clinton’s campaign said that the event was only for local media, not foreign press.

Li explained that Chinese-language media is an American media, she writes, but a spokesperson from Clinton’s staff told her that because Chinese newspapers like the World Journal have national distribution, they are not considered local media.

The Clinton campaign can use the excuse that the event was only for local media all it wants, but Asian Americans know that the real reason the Chinese American journalists were turned away was because the Clinton campaign is deathly afraid of being associated with foreigners who are perceived to be “un-American” and trying to illegally contribute to the campaign, which is the legacy of the disastrous 1996 fundraising scandal in which the Democratic party initially accepted campaign contributions that originated in China.

I thought that Clinton’s campaign was better than this — that it knew the difference between Chinese and Chinese American. Apparently not. Unfortunately, this does not bode well for her campaign’s general sensitivity to our community. However, there’s still time for the Clinton campaign to make amends and to show us that we are welcomed participants in their efforts.

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Update: On March 25, Clinton held a special roundtable discussion with Asian American media outlets to apologize for this incident and to reiterate her commitment to Asian American issues and concerns.

You might have heard the accusations that throughout history, the U.S. government — mainly the CIA — has repeatedly recruited, supported, and/or promoted right-wing extremist political groups and governments that served some useful purpose for them, and ignored the atrocities that such groups and governments perpetrated on innocent victims. As the Associated Press reports, newly declassified documents illustrate how we can now add Japanese war criminals from World War II to that list:

The records, declassified in 2005 and 2006 under an act of Congress in tandem with Nazi war crime-related files, fill in many of the blanks in the previously spotty documentation of the occupation authority’s intelligence arm and its involvement with Japanese ultra-nationalists and war criminals, historians say. The CIA also cast a harsh eye on its counterparts . . . Japanese operatives often bilked gullible American patrons, passing on useless intelligence and using their U.S. ties to boost smuggling operations and further their efforts to resurrect a militarist Japan. . . .

The files, hundreds of pages of which were obtained last month by the AP, depict operations that were deeply flawed by agents’ lack of expertise, rivalries and shifting alliances between competing groups, and Japanese operatives’ overriding interest in right-wing activities and money rather than U.S. security aims. . . . Historians long ago concluded that the Allies turned a blind eye to many Japanese war crimes, particularly those committed against other Asians, as fighting communism became the West’s priority.

I raised an eyebrow when I first read about this development, but ultimately, I can’t say that I’m completely shocked by these revelations. After all, it is just another example of how the CIA has supported right-wing dictatorships and fringe groups who they felt could be useful “allies” in their war against communism. South America, Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia — you name it, the U.S. has been there and left their bloody handprints.

As history also shows, in almost all cases, such political arrangements produced not just incalculable oppression and misery for innocent civilians, but also significantly damaged the U.S.’s reputation around the world, the consequences of which we’re increasingly having to deal with right now. I also find it interesting that U.S.’s use of right-wing nationalists in Japan happens to coincide with the persistence — and recent renewal — of militaristic nationalism among Japan’s government through the years. Very interesting . . .

One consistent theme in this blog is the clash of tradition and modernity in Asian countries such as China. As another example of this increasingly common and intense phenomenon, Salon.com/The Associated Press reports that a recent murder of a journalist in China has prompted the Chinese to critically reexamine the nature of corruption within the media and journalism profession:

President Hu Jintao has ordered a probe into the killing of China Trade News reporter Lan Chengzhang, who Chinese media say may have been trying to collect money from the owner of an illegal coal mine in return for not writing about the business. Hu’s call for an investigation was extraordinary because the government usually doesn’t publicly discuss problems with media, still officially hailed as the “throat and tongue” of the ruling Communist Party.

Talking about bad press behavior could tarnish the party’s image, while officials themselves often have their own reasons for covering up disasters and corruption. Hu appears to have been prodded into action by Chinese media reports on the killing and a public outcry on the Internet chastising both greed within the news profession and the government’s restrictions on media. . . .

Media extortion is relatively common in China’s mining industry, which is rife with illegal practices, but elsewhere press corruption is more subtle. Reporters at news conferences are routinely offered envelopes of cash, ostensibly to cover travel costs but with the unspoken assumption they will write what the sponsor wishes to see.

Businesses also buy advertising to ensure positive coverage, often at the behest of reporters who are required by their employers to meet revenue quotas. Commissions on such contracts can more than double a reporter’s pay, which is often as low as $150 a month.

As we can see, corruption exists not just among government officials — it seems to be rife among many sectors of Chinese society, even one that is normally seen as critical and impartial such as the media. As with other clashes of tradition vs. modernity in China, this tension between “how things have always been done” and the new openness prompted by advancing technology and capitalism will probably get worse before it gets better.

Will this sector of Chinese society eventually retreat into social obsolescence or will it transform itself into a vanguard for social change and public democracy (within the confines of communist society)? Stay tuned to find out . . .

During the Viet Nam War, the U.S. military and CIA recruited several thousand members of the ethnic Hmong minority to help them fight the communists. Eventually, Congress recognized the contributions that the Hmong made and granted them refugee status that enable tens of thousands to immigrate to the U.S. But as the Associated Press reports, since 9/11, provisions of the Patriot Act have labeled Hmong as terrorists and have therefore prevented more from obtaining refugee status and coming to the U.S.:

Under provisions of the USA Patriot Act and the Real ID Act, the Hmong who fought alongside the Americans in the “secret war” against communists in Laos are considered terrorists and are therefore ineligible for asylum or green cards. These are laws from the same Congress that in 2000 passed a law easing the citizenship requirements for the Hmong in recognition of their Vietnam era efforts.

The anti-terror restrictions, which have ensnared other groups as well, also bar people who provided “material support” to terrorist organizations. Last month the Bush administration announced it was granting waivers of that restriction to eight groups, but the Hmong was not among them. . . .

Last year, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. and Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., unsuccessfully tried to get an appropriations bill amended to change the restrictions. Coleman said he would continue to seek a legislative fix. “Hmong refugees, who dedicated their service to America during the Vietnam War, have looked to the U.S. as a place of hope and a sanctuary from persecution,” he said in a statement.

I suppose this is typical of the current administration’s ‘war on terrorism’ — enacting overly sweeping powers and draconian regulations that ultimately lead to more harm than good. In this case, it’s preventing thousands of Hmong refugees from immigrating to the U.S. as they deserve to do. Isn’t this the same kind of “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality that is responsible for why so many people loathe and despise the U.S. all around the world?