It takes a lot to wow film critics and audiences at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. But apparently, a new independent film about Vietnamese American refugees is doing just that, recently receiving rave reviews among the film festival attendees::

Director Hàm Tran’s “Journey from the Fall” got it first test before a non-Vietnamese audience at the Sundance Film Festival, passing with flying colors. . . . The plight of the post-war Vietnamese was not lost on the crowd. As the screening ended, the audience stood to give the movie a standing ovation.

Producer Lâm Nguyen, 30, was taken by surprise. “I was astounded. Usually audiences at film festivals, especially an A-list festival like Sundance, are very jaded. You will get applause, but to get a standing ovation? That was incredible,” he said. . . . Now, to have the buzz generated at Sundance to transfer to another important audience: distributors.

As the article describes, the film chronicles the struggles of a South Vietnamese family split up by the fall of Sài Gòn and each side’s desperate journey to reunite with the other. The article also notes that when the screening was over, there was hardly a dry eye left in the theater, with emotions overflowing among Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese alike.

I’ve since learned that the film will air at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival on March 23 at 7pm at the March Palace of Fine Arts theater at 3301 Lyon Street, San Francisco.

Big props to Lâm Nguyen, Hàm Tran, and everybody associated with this film. If you’re in SF soon, make sure to check it out. I also hope that the film finds a distributor because I personally cannot wait to see it.

Is it hypocritical that American companies that supposedly champion freedom of speech and exchange of information also aid in censorship overseas? In the context of recent criticisms against American Internet powerhouses such as Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. helping the Chinese government censor information, the company that is apparently at the forefront of the censorship, somewhat surprisingly, is Google:

Several of the biggest media and technology companies have come under attack for helping the Chinese government police the Web. Yahoo provided information about its users’ e-mail accounts that helped the authorities convict dissidents in 2003 and 2005, Chinese lawyers say.

Microsoft closed a popular blog it hosted that offended Chinese censors. Cisco has sold equipment that helps Beijing restrict access to Web sites it considers subversive. But few have cooperated as openly as Google. Google’s local staff works closely with Chinese officials to ensure that search results from Google.cn do not include information, images or links to Web sites that the government does not want its people to see.

Google.com, the company’s main international search engine, is still available in China, though it often operates inefficiently because it produces links that cannot be opened inside China’s firewall. Google.cn, Google says, works faster and serves its users better — and Google places a blunt but discreet disclosure of censorship on the bottom of Web pages that include elided search results.

Even so, critics say, the service violates Google’s motto, “Don’t Be Evil.” They say the company has lent its expertise and good name to blocking information on religion, politics and history that the Communist Party feels might undermine its monopoly on power.

Echoing other Internet giants like Yahoo, Google’s defense is that censorship is the practical reality of doing business in China and that the far greater reward is helping to shape China’s emerging Internet landscape:

Google officials characterized the censorship concessions in China as an excruciating decision for a company that adopted “don’t be evil” as a motto. But management believes it’s a worthwhile sacrifice.

“We firmly believe, with our culture of innovation, Google can make meaningful and positive contributions to the already impressive pace of development in China,” said Andrew McLaughlin, Google’s senior policy counsel.

As an interesting side note, a group of former Chinese communist leaders issued an open letter criticizing the current attempts in China to censor information. Quite interesting indeed.

Nonetheless and once again, we arrive at the age-old dilemma — capitalism or conscience? Profits or professional dignity? I understand Google’s perspective and rationale for cooperating with China’s censorship demands, but nonetheless, I am very disappointed that a company like Google who prides itself on democracy, freedom of speech, and other idealistic-sounding principles caved in and placed money before its founding principles.

Alas, as Darth Vader might say, “You don’t know the power of capitalism!“

As news organizations like CNN are reporting, there is another allegation of domestic spying for China:

The man, identified as Ko-Suen Moo of Taipei, is charged with being a covert Chinese agent, and working with a Frenchman to try to ship sophisticated high-tech military equipment from the United States to China.

Moo and Serge Voros of Paris have been indicted in Miami, Florida with attempting to export an F-16 aircraft engine, Black Hawk helicopter engines, cruise missiles, and air-to-air missiles to China.

The accused in this case appears to be a Taiwanese national, rather than a Taiwanese American. Nonetheless, it is inevitable that these latest allegations will only serve to cast more suspicion on Asian Americans as a whole, with our loyalties as Americans getting called into question one more time.

A recent article from the Christian Science Monitor describes bilateral efforts between the U.S. and Viet Nam to strengthen not only economic, but also military ties between the two former enemies, mostly in an effort to offset the rise of China as a global superpower:

Vietnam has agreed to send Army officers on a US training program, and has hosted US warships at its ports. Last year, after Prime Minister Phan Van Khai made a state visit to Washington, the two sides agreed to share intelligence on terrorism, drugs, and other transnational threats.

Vietnam is also considering joining UN peacekeeping operations as a prelude to seeking a non-permanent seat on the security council. Hanoi last year sent a joint military-civilian delegation to Haiti to observe the UN mission there, according to a senior Western diplomat, and has agreed to commit to international peacekeeping “when circumstances allow.” . . .

“For Vietnam to step forward [on security cooperation], they have to step forward in two directions. They don’t want to be roped into a US containment policy towards China…. They want the US to remain engaged [in Asia], but they don’t want to get too close,” says Carl Thayer, a veteran Vietnam-watcher at the Australian Defense Force Academy.

Vietnam’s balancing act is echoed by other Southeast Asian countries that want to share in the benefits of China’s economic rise without losing sight of the disquiet it provokes among US policymakers who are suspicious of Beijing’s military buildup.

International geo-politics at its best — the U.S. and Viet Nam both “using” each other to offset China’s increasing power and potential for domination on the international stage. Whatever the motivations, I can see how this developing relationship might result in positive outcomes for both sides, and for Asian Americans.

That is, the U.S. gets another “friend” in Asia and trade continues to grow between the two countries, which will hopefully serve to improve the overall quality of life in Viet Nam. Viet Nam gets to elevate its global status somewhat and in the process of participating in more regional and international activities, may actually facilitate less political repression at home.

And finally, warmer relations between the two countries may reflect well on Vietnamese Americans (and by implication, many Asian Americans) as allies within the U.S. That being said, international relations can be prone to sudden changes and instability, so nobody should take anything for granted at this point.

Inside Higher Education has an article that describes an increasingly common trend among colleges and universities these days: looking to India to attract students, form distance learning ventures, and to tap other education-related resources:

India has long been a place of study for scholars of the region’s history, religions and cultures. And India has long been a major supplier of foreign students for American colleges, but the numbers have shot up dramatically in the last decade, such that India now sends more students to the United States than any other country. . .

For American higher education, “India is the next China,” says Philip Altbach, director of Boston College’s Center for International Higher Education. In many ways, Altbach and others say, India logically should have been attractive to American colleges looking for partners years ago. India has long had a large share of well educated students who speak English and an interest in technology — and the government is democratic.

But that government has historically been dubious of American institutions, and bureaucratic roadblocks were numerous for any American university leader trying to do much more than visit. In the past few years, however, India’s government has become much more receptive — and while complicated regulations are by no means gone, they are not seen as insurmountable.

The article goes on to list several recent examples of American universities forming agreements and ventures with various institutions in India. In particular, the article singles out the University of Southern California as a leader in developing and maintaining educational and economic ties with India.

I’ve written before that many economists and observers predict that India will eventually lose its stranglehold on being the international center for outsourcing. Nonetheless, as this article shows, India still has plenty of resources to draw upon in its continuing efforts to modernize and connect itself more directly into American institutions, in this case education.

In other words, despite some possible bumps along the road, India’s march toward becoming an economic — and possible educational — superpower continues to gather steam.

The Washington Post has an article that describes different ways in which immigrant residents of the U.S. are increasingly becoming a potentially powerful and sought-after constituent group for many politicians around the country. The article focuses specifically on the situation in the Baltimore-Washington D.C. area:

Pollsters and political consultants say it will probably be a few years before foreign-born residents are major factors in statewide elections. But candidates this year aren’t taking any chances. . . .

“These are people you simply cannot ignore,” said Isiah Leggett, former chairman of the Maryland Democratic Party and a candidate for county executive. “Not only are they voting, they are giving money and volunteering, so I think candidates who ignore them do so at their own peril.” . . .

“As a percentage of the statewide likely vote, these immigrant populations will still be in the modest single digits, but when you look within the greater Washington marketplace, particularly Montgomery County, these new immigrants can tip the balance,” said Keith Haller, a Maryland independent pollster.

This is just another example of what demographers have been saying all along — the U.S. population is gradually becoming less of a predominantly White, native-born population and the proportions of Americans who are non-White or foreign-born continues to increase each year. Native-born Whites will still be the largest and most powerful group of course, but they are likely to cease being a numerical majority in the next few decades.

Of course, this kind of demographic change is not going to occur without some resistance or conflict. Groups in power are not going to give up their power without a fight. Further, people of color and immigrants still have a long way to go to even begin approaching the level of institutional power held by native-born Whites.

But as the article describes, their presence is becoming increasingly significant within American society and whether native-born Whites like it or not, they will have to eventually deal with that reality, sooner or later.

A recent article from the Pacific News Service describes a practice that apparently is increasingly common in Korea: parents paying American (almost always White) couples to adopt their children so that their kids can enjoy a better educational opportunities and supposedly a better life in the U.S.:

One out of three Korean parents are willing to send their children abroad for the sake of a better education. . . .Putting a child up for adoption in the United States allows Korean parents to skirt around normal immigration procedures, a drawn-out process with no guarantee of approval. Parents generally seek retired American couples, whose own children often have left and have room to spare.

The American couples receive an agreed-upon sum of money in exchange for adopting the child and providing food and housing. Couples receive upwards of $30,000, with additional payments as necessary to cover room and board for each child they adopt. In return, the child gains legal status in the United States, as well as the privilege of attending American schools. The Korean birth parents relinquish all legal claims to their children, sending them instead to grow up in a house with people they have never met. . . .

Despite the benefits, some young Koreans adopted in this manner have shown signs of emotional distress, reflected in their schoolwork and behavior at home. . . . Peter Chang, who heads the Korean Family Center in Los Angeles, says kids like this “often grow up feeling betrayed by their parents.”

I’ve written before about the incessant, almost obsessive drive among many Asians and Asian Americans to be materially successful. Unfortunately, I see this emerging phenomenon as another example of that drive taken to extreme and dysfunctional ends.

Unlike the vast majority of young Korean parents who relinquish custody of their very young children to be adopted, the Korean parents who pay Americans to adopt their child obviously have money, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to complete this transaction. And I suspect that these Korean parents think that they’re doing their children a favor so that they can have a better life.

However, adoptions at a young age frequently involve significant emotional turmoil and feelings of abandonment on the part of the child. Think of how these emotional difficulties are intensified when the child is older and has already formed a bond with his/her natural parents. I can certainly see how emotional distress can be a common consequence among those adopted children.

In the end, it’s hard for me to see how this arrangement is beneficial. I suppose there is a chance that the adopted child may have a better life in the U.S., but at what emotional cost? As a developed industrial society, is life in Korea that bad for parents to resort to this extreme? I try to be as non-judgmental as possible but this phenomenon just strikes me as unhealthy and a recipe for disaster in so many ways.

As I’ve said before, the drive for material success has to have its limits and to me, the limit in this case is when you risk permanently damaging a child’s emotional security just so s/he may be able to earn a little more money over the course of their life.

The Associated Press/Yahoo News describes an increasingly common phenomenon occurring in Japan: Americans adopting the traditional Japanese custom of publicly apologizing for its misdeeds and mistakes:

Taking a cue from Japanese culture, in the past few weeks a raft of U.S. officials — from the U.S. military, the U.S. Embassy, and the departments of State, Agriculture and Defense — have gone before Japanese officials to humbly ask for forgiveness. The reasons have been serious.

In one instance, a U.S. sailor was accused of beating a Japanese woman to death outside Tokyo. In the other, a shipment of American beef violated Japanese food safety rules, prompting a halt to further imports. In both cases, American officials have gone out of their way to pour on the regret — challenging stereotypes among a people who consider themselves the world’s premier apology artists. . . .

The contrite attitude apparently was well-received by the Japanese. “I’ve never seen Americans being so apologetic,” said a Japanese Foreign Ministry official. Niceties aside, the American effort to satisfy the Japanese makes hard-nosed diplomatic sense — the U.S. can hardly risk a blowup of anti-American sentiment as it realigns its military position in Japan.

As the article suggests, there are obvious ulterior motives for this recent spate of apologies by Americans to the Japanese — military support and cooperation, and economic interests. Nonetheless, it is encouraging to see that at least temporarily, American officials are casting off the arrogant, bullying, imperialistic attitude that gives the U.S. such a bad reputation around the world, in favor of a more reflective and (hopefully) sincere approach to dealing with the Japanese.

Now if American officials can transfer this new attitude to its treatment of other nations and its own minority groups inside the U.S. . . .

The Christian Science Monitor has a very interesting story about about an emerging academic and cultural controversy regarding Asian Indian history — nationalist (some would even call right wing) Hindu groups are trying to literally rewrite textbooks books to more positively reflect on Indian history and cultural achievements:

The foes – who include established historians and Hindu nationalist revisionists – are familiar to each other in India. But America may increasingly become their new battlefield as other US states follow California in rewriting their own textbooks to bone up on Asian history.

At stake, say scholars who include some of the most elite historians on India, may be a truthful picture of one of the world’s emerging powers – one arrived at by academic standards of proof rather than assertions of national or religious pride. . . . Here in India, Hindu nationalists have pushed forcefully for revisionism after what they see as centuries of cultural domination by the British Raj and Muslim Mogul Empire. . . .

This year, as California’s Board of Education commissioned and put up for review textbooks to be used in its 6th-grade classrooms, these two groups came forward with demands for substantial changes. . . . The hottest debate centered on when Indian civilization began, and by whom.

The article goes on to describe that the nationalist Hindu groups want to change textbooks to note that new research suggests that Hinduism (and the foundation of Indian history) actually originated within India, rather than from Aryan groups who migrated into India., although this theory has not been widely accepted by historians.

I’m certainly not an expert on Indian history, but this story should serve as a reminder that “history” is not a static phenomenon. In other words, it is not simply a collection of “facts” that stand by themselves for all eternity. Instead, as this story illustrates, “history” is constantly being modified, renegotiated, and fought over as a tool for political purposes.

And as the saying goes, “The victors get to write history.”

The New York Times has an article about the emergence of entrepreneurship among Vietnamese Americans, perhaps best symbolized by the opening of the first two banks owned by Vietnamese Americans in the U.S., both of which are located in Little Saigon, Orange County, CA:

[Until recently] the banking needs of the immigrant companies were served by major institutions, like the Bank of America and Wells Fargo, or by Chinese and Korean banks. But now, two new banks with investors and owners from the Vietnamese community have opened, indicating the rising prosperity of Vietnamese businesses in America and growing economic connections with a vibrant entrepreneurial sector back in Vietnam.

First Vietnamese American Bank raised more than $11 million in capital and opened in May. More than pride is at stake for ethnic groups in having banks of their own, said John J. Kennedy, president of the other new institution, Saigon National Bank, which opened in November. . . . Mr. Kennedy was hired to get Saigon National going by its founding investors, led by Kiem D. Nguyen, owner of one of the largest supermarkets in Little Saigon.

The article goes on to describe several other examples of Vietnamese American entrepreneurs who have opened businesses that have the ability to operate transnationally, in the U.S. and Viet Nam. In addition to banks that specialize in handling remittances (immigrants sending money back to family and relatives in Viet Nam), they include travel agencies, clothing and apparel import/export, software development and computer engineering, telecommunications, food processing, etc.

This is a positive development for Vietnamese Americans and American society in general in a lot of ways. Clearly the most obvious benefit is that as Vietnamese American entrepreneurship burgeons and businesses such as these prosper, it helps the American economy and the Vietnamese American economy.

But one indirect benefit that’s likely to result is that as more Vietnamese Americans do businesses with the government of Viet Nam, hopefully old tensions and hostilities between the two sides will gradually fade into the background. Instead, the spirit of commerce and capitalism will be paramount, which will hopefully benefit the Vietnamese American entrepreneurs but also improve the standard of living among the citizens of Viet Nam.

This entrepreneurial phenomenon is still in its infancy of course, but it definitely shows potential. Who would have thought that rather than dividing people up, capitalism is poised to bring people closer together in this case?

As part of their feature on emerging trends in corporate outsourcing, BusinessWeek Magazine has one particular article entitled “Angling to be the Next Bangalore” that summarizes how rising wages, a growing shortage of skilled workers, and desires by companies to diversify their outsourcing options are all likely to lead to a decline in India’s share of the total outsourcing pie. With that in mind, several countries are positioning themselves to be viable outsourcing options in the future:

China leads the pack, thanks to its huge human resources and success attracting manufacturing work. Already a force in writing software built into other products, China is now chasing India’s lucrative IT and business services work. Russia, Brazil, and Mexico are likewise piling in, offering costs and skills often on par with India’s, plus advantages such as closer proximity to U.S. and European markets.

Even tiny countries such as Nicaragua, Botswana, and Sri Lanka are trying to grab the brass ring. To lure clients, they’re sending trade missions to outsourcing expos, subsidizing training and office parks, and offering tax breaks. . . . To compete, countries often must improve their telecoms, airports, and even business laws — moves that pay long-term dividends. Clean, well-paying service jobs boost demand for educated workers, an impetus to improving schools and training. . . .

Egypt is selling itself as a low-cost specialist in European language call centers. Singapore and Dubai say their safety and legal systems give them an edge in handling high-security and business-continuity services. The Philippines, a former U.S. colony, draws on long-standing cultural ties and solid English skills to snare Anglophone call-center work. And Central and South American countries use their Spanish skills to grab call-center contracts for the Hispanic market in the U.S.

You should definitely read the article to get the full story — it’s very descriptive and easy to digest. I don’t have too much to add here except to say that although India is likely to lose some of its luster as the international king of outsourcing, I think this trend toward greater outsourcing options is a positive development — in one key aspect. That is, as more countries get outsourced labor, the hostility and anger that many Americans have toward Indians who they accuse of “taking over their jobs” is likely to decline.

In other words, the “blame” will be spread around the world more uniformly, instead of being almost solely concentrated on India, as is the case now. Being the anti-capitalist liberal that I am, I’m still not a big fan of outsourcing in general. But if any good is coming out of these trends, hopefully it will make Americans see that their jobs are being outsourced to plenty of other countries, not just India.

The New York Times has an article that describes an emerging phenomenon in many Asian countries, but particularly prominent in Japan — hikikomori — or withdrawaling oneself from any social interaction and shutting oneself in one’s house for months or even years on end:

Some hikikomori do occasionally emerge from their rooms for meals with their parents, late-night runs to convenience stores or, in Takeshi’s case, once-a-month trips to buy CD’s. And though female hikikomori exist and may be undercounted, experts estimate that about 80 percent of the hikikomori are male, some as young as 13 or 14 and some who live in their rooms for 15 years or more.

South Korea and Taiwan have reported a scattering of hikikomori, and isolated cases may have always existed in Japan. But only in the last decade and only in Japan has hikikomori become a social phenomenon. Like anorexia, which has been largely limited to Western cultures, hikikomori is a culturebound syndrome that thrives in one particular country during a particular moment in its history.

As the problem has become more widespread in Japan, an industry has sprung up around it. There are support groups for parents, psychologists who specialize in it (including one who counsels shut-ins via the Internet) and several halfway programs like New Start, offering dorms and job training.

For all the attention, though, hikikomori remains confounding. The Japanese public has blamed everything from smothering mothers to absent, overworked fathers, from school bullying to the lackluster economy, from academic pressure to video games.

The article goes on to emphasize the economic factors and pressures to be economically successful that may lead to hikikomori — how many Japanese feel that their value as a Japanese society is entirely dependent on their academic and job/ salary achievements and how that leads to an overwhelming sense of anxiety, alienation, and/or rejection of such prevailing norms.

The article also stresses that Japanese parents may be a primary contributor to the problem by first putting too much pressure on the child, along with not giving him enough affection and validation, then being too lax in allowing this phenomenon to go unaddressed.

Whatever the causes are, it’s a pretty sad phenomenon. Plus it does not bode well for Japan’s future. The article implies that the causes result from norms and customs that are fundamental embedded into the fabric of Japanese society and that are now clashing with postindustrial and globalized 21st century reality. In other words, don’t be surprised if this hikikomori phenomenon gets worse before it gets better.