In one of the most high-profile sports signings of the year, NBA's Houston Rockets last week signedChinese American basketball star Jeremy Lin for $25 million over four years. Part of the reason the Rockets signed Lin, who has starred in only a handful of NBA games until now, was his marketing potential, especially among the Chinese Americans in the Houston area.
Since his departure, the Forbes magazine reported that the share value of Madison Square Garden, the home games venue of Lin's former team New York Knicks, plummeted by more than $93 million.
Lin's meteoric rise earlier this year as the first big league star athlete from the Chinese American community — the largest Asian American group — had become a global media story. Yet, the Harvard graduate is not the first bona fide celebrity from the community.
1854 & Beyond
The 3.8-million strong Chinese American community has a host of international modern icons like film starBruce Lee, director Ang Lee, cellist Yo Yo Ma, the co-founder of Yahoo!, Jerry Yang, and fashion designer Vera Wang, among many super achievers in different walks of life, to idolise as their own here, but Chinese Americans still revere Yung Wing, the first Chinese student to graduate from a US university, from Yale College in 1854.
Wing, who favoured reform in China, went back after his stint at Yale, but eventually with the Chinese government's approval, paved the way for a group of 120 Chinese students to immigrate to the US. Many of those students in turn went back to their home country, and were later credited with helping shape China's civil services and build new engineering projects that were a precursor to modern China's infrastructure boom.
In our times, in the age where "brain circulation" — a term devised by AnnaLee Saxenian, professor and Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Information, who propounds the theory of immigrant entrepreneurs taking their ideas back to the country of their origin in increasing numbers — or "reverse brain drain", as propagated by the likes of technology entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa, the life of Wing offered an early insight into immigrant behaviour, the deviation to better opportunities, wherever in the globe it may be.
It's a different matter that in time, Wing returned to the US to become a naturalised citizen. Fifty years later, he was shorn of that right by the US government and barred from entering the country after his reformist views were frowned upon in China and there was a price of $70,000 on his head. He eventually fled Shanghai, and managed to sneak back into the US to see his son graduate from his alma mater, and died in Connecticut.
For the Chinese Americans, there are no dearth of luminaries and stars to take up as role models, in just about any field one can think of, but the vision and struggle of Wing and the life of the original "Siamese Twins" Chang and Eng Bunker, the conjoined twins of Chinese origin, who were born in what is now known as Thailand, but became entrepreneurs and naturalised citizens in the US in the 19th century, raising almost two dozen children between them on their plantation in North Carolina, have ensured them a long history to look back on in developing as one of the most powerful overseas diasporas in the world.
Sweet Sixties
For the Indians, who have a history of entering the US as slaves and labourers in the 19th century, the immigration floodgates opened up in the 1960s, when skilled professionals were allowed to emigrate. The Chinese, though they also came to the US as labourers in the 19th century in large numbers, faced horrendous immigration regulations, including the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which outlawed all Chinese immigration to the US and denied citizenship to those already settled in the country. US President Grover Cleveland, who supported the Act, in 1888 proclaimed the Chinese community as "an element ignorant of our constitution and laws, impossible of assimilation with our people and dangerous to our peace and welfare".
It was only after the US and China became allies in World War II that the US welcomed Chinese immigrants and eased restrictions. They started to flourish here, matched perhaps only by the Indian American community in terms of overall achievements and accomplishments, and not to forget in the land of capitalism, accumulation of wealth.
Elaine Chao, who served as the secretary of labour in the cabinet of President George W Bush from 2001 to 2009, the first Chinese American to be appointed to a cabinet position, and who is married to Mitch McConnell, the current senate minority leader, laid bare the ridiculousness of Cleveland's words.
The Chinese community, though have been undoubtedly late in taking to politics here — take for example Dilip Singh Saund, the first Indian American to serve the US House of Representatives from California, in 1957, and compare it to the first Chinese American to be a political heavyweight in that state: March Fong Eu, who became California's secretary of state, in 1975. She also served as US ambassador to the Federated States of Micronesia, from 1994-96.
Political Edge
But in the past decade, the Chinese have showed a sudden panache for politics and governance, and there are a growing number of Chinese Americans clamouring for national attention in politics. In California itself, where no other Indian American has managed to come close to emulating the feat of Saund, the Chinese have made steady progress. Wilma Chan became the first Asian American California state assembly majority leader, in 2002, and in 2009, Judy Chu became the first Chinese American to be elected to the US House of Representatives, from the high-profile Los Angeles County.
And emulating the feat of Chao is Steven Chu, the current United States secretary of energy, and a Nobel Laureate to boot; the winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for research in laser cooling. Gary Locke, the former secretary of commerce and the first Asian governor of any state in the US, becoming governor of the state of Washington, in 1997, is currently the American ambassador to China, a man who is now famous around the world as the humbler ambassador who relishes lugging his own baggage around airports.
But the number of Chinese in politics pales when it comes to their achievements in the arena of business, where like the Indian Americans they have carved an indelible mark in the US and the rest of the world.
Interestingly, if one were to try do an analysis of how many CEOs each community has, the Indian Americans will seemingly come off better, with some of them currently heading some of the Fortune 500 companies, but the Chinese Americans have a long history of being the pioneers of the Internet business, and the leaders of technology in some of the biggest breakthroughs of the past 50 years.
Valley Voices
Apart from Jerry Yang, some of the top corporate honchos include, John Chen, the CEO of Sybase, Steve Chen, the co-founder of YouTube, Andrew Cheng, co-founder of Panda Express, Weili Dai, co-founder of Marvell Technology Group, Ming Hsieh, co-founder and CEO of Cogent Systems, Kai Huang, co-founder of Guitar Hero franchise, Andrea Jung, CEO of Avon, Norman Liu, the CEO of GECAS, and Charles Wang, founder, CEO and chairman of Computer Associates, apart from Wendi Deng, the wife of Rupert Murdoch.
And tech and innovation wizards like Feng-hsiung Hsu,IBM developer of Deep Blue, which beat World Chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997; Min Chueh Chang, co-inventor of the first birth control pill; and Yuan-Cheng Fung, founder of Modern Biomechanics, will find a place in history for posterity.
But some of the richest Chinese are also those who studied in the US and then went back home to start their own businesses, like the MIT-educated Charles Zhang, who is the founder, chairman and current CEO of Sohu.com Inc. He is regarded as one of China's Internet pioneers and was named by Forbes magazine as one of the richest men in China in 2003.
Charles Chao, the chief executive officer and president of Sina.com, received his master of professional accounting from University of Texas in Austin, and also holds an MA degree in journalism from University of Oklahoma. The giant search engine, Baidu.com, established in 2000, was the brainchild of Robin Li and Eric Xu, who both did stints overseas.
Chinese nationals, like their Indian counterparts, have a tough choice in an increasingly globalised world when it comes to choosing whether to continue to live and work in the US after they get their graduate degrees here, or to try their luck back home in a business environment where the opportunities are limitless and creativity will yield instant rewards and fame.
And more often than not, their decisions are being shaped by the years of waiting for permanent residency, points out Rong Xiaoqing, a senior reporter for the Sing Tao Daily, a Chinese community newspaper, based in New York city.
When asked if she thinks the Chinese Americans have accomplished more than the Indian American community, Xiaoqing says: "One has to look at the strengths and weaknesses of each country. In the US, the visa issue is limiting people's opportunities, not giving them a chance to fulfil their potential. Also, times have changed. There are now more opportunities in China back home. A lot of Chinese individuals have been moving back steadily since the mid-nineties."
Unlike the Indian American community, whose quest for a gold medal in the Olympics and an Oscar in the mainstream section finally got quenched recently after decades of waiting, for the Chinese, the fountain of talent and international recognition keeps flowing unabated in the field of entertainment and sports, and is a source of pride for each one of them living here.
One of the best known Chinese names in Hollywood is not that of Ang Lee, the Oscar winning director of Brokeback Mountain, but a cinematographer by the name of James Wong Howe, who was nominated for 10 Academy Awards for cinematography, and won twice, in 1955 for The Rose Tattoo, and in 1963 for Hud. He was a pioneer of deep-focus cinematography, photography in which both foreground and distant planes remain in focus, and was recognised as one of the 10 top cinematographers ever. Haing Ngor, a Chinese Cambodian actor won an Oscar for best supporting actor in The Killing Fields, marking a landmark day for the community.
And if there is one arena where even the Chinese fear the Chinese Americans it's in sports: the training regimen might not be so rigorous outside the borders of China, but the impressive results the athletes of Chinese origin have brought to the US, have helped them and the community acclimatise and be accepted here faster than anything else combined.
Michael Chang broke a glass ceiling when he became the youngest male tennis player to win a Grand Slam tournament, the French Open in 1989, at the age of 17. And while Jeremy Lin, the first Chinese American to play in the NBA and star of the New York Knicks may be the player of the year, one can never forget the winsome smile and grace of Michelle Kwan, arguably the greatest female skater of all time. A twice Olympic medalist, in 1998 and 2002, she is a five-time World champion and nine-time US champion, the all-time record which is yet to be bested.
Since his departure, the Forbes magazine reported that the share value of Madison Square Garden, the home games venue of Lin's former team New York Knicks, plummeted by more than $93 million.
Lin's meteoric rise earlier this year as the first big league star athlete from the Chinese American community — the largest Asian American group — had become a global media story. Yet, the Harvard graduate is not the first bona fide celebrity from the community.
1854 & Beyond
The 3.8-million strong Chinese American community has a host of international modern icons like film starBruce Lee, director Ang Lee, cellist Yo Yo Ma, the co-founder of Yahoo!, Jerry Yang, and fashion designer Vera Wang, among many super achievers in different walks of life, to idolise as their own here, but Chinese Americans still revere Yung Wing, the first Chinese student to graduate from a US university, from Yale College in 1854.
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Wing, who favoured reform in China, went back after his stint at Yale, but eventually with the Chinese government's approval, paved the way for a group of 120 Chinese students to immigrate to the US. Many of those students in turn went back to their home country, and were later credited with helping shape China's civil services and build new engineering projects that were a precursor to modern China's infrastructure boom.
In our times, in the age where "brain circulation" — a term devised by AnnaLee Saxenian, professor and Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Information, who propounds the theory of immigrant entrepreneurs taking their ideas back to the country of their origin in increasing numbers — or "reverse brain drain", as propagated by the likes of technology entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa, the life of Wing offered an early insight into immigrant behaviour, the deviation to better opportunities, wherever in the globe it may be.
It's a different matter that in time, Wing returned to the US to become a naturalised citizen. Fifty years later, he was shorn of that right by the US government and barred from entering the country after his reformist views were frowned upon in China and there was a price of $70,000 on his head. He eventually fled Shanghai, and managed to sneak back into the US to see his son graduate from his alma mater, and died in Connecticut.
For the Chinese Americans, there are no dearth of luminaries and stars to take up as role models, in just about any field one can think of, but the vision and struggle of Wing and the life of the original "Siamese Twins" Chang and Eng Bunker, the conjoined twins of Chinese origin, who were born in what is now known as Thailand, but became entrepreneurs and naturalised citizens in the US in the 19th century, raising almost two dozen children between them on their plantation in North Carolina, have ensured them a long history to look back on in developing as one of the most powerful overseas diasporas in the world.
Sweet Sixties
For the Indians, who have a history of entering the US as slaves and labourers in the 19th century, the immigration floodgates opened up in the 1960s, when skilled professionals were allowed to emigrate. The Chinese, though they also came to the US as labourers in the 19th century in large numbers, faced horrendous immigration regulations, including the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which outlawed all Chinese immigration to the US and denied citizenship to those already settled in the country. US President Grover Cleveland, who supported the Act, in 1888 proclaimed the Chinese community as "an element ignorant of our constitution and laws, impossible of assimilation with our people and dangerous to our peace and welfare".
It was only after the US and China became allies in World War II that the US welcomed Chinese immigrants and eased restrictions. They started to flourish here, matched perhaps only by the Indian American community in terms of overall achievements and accomplishments, and not to forget in the land of capitalism, accumulation of wealth.
Elaine Chao, who served as the secretary of labour in the cabinet of President George W Bush from 2001 to 2009, the first Chinese American to be appointed to a cabinet position, and who is married to Mitch McConnell, the current senate minority leader, laid bare the ridiculousness of Cleveland's words.
The Chinese community, though have been undoubtedly late in taking to politics here — take for example Dilip Singh Saund, the first Indian American to serve the US House of Representatives from California, in 1957, and compare it to the first Chinese American to be a political heavyweight in that state: March Fong Eu, who became California's secretary of state, in 1975. She also served as US ambassador to the Federated States of Micronesia, from 1994-96.
Political Edge
But in the past decade, the Chinese have showed a sudden panache for politics and governance, and there are a growing number of Chinese Americans clamouring for national attention in politics. In California itself, where no other Indian American has managed to come close to emulating the feat of Saund, the Chinese have made steady progress. Wilma Chan became the first Asian American California state assembly majority leader, in 2002, and in 2009, Judy Chu became the first Chinese American to be elected to the US House of Representatives, from the high-profile Los Angeles County.
And emulating the feat of Chao is Steven Chu, the current United States secretary of energy, and a Nobel Laureate to boot; the winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for research in laser cooling. Gary Locke, the former secretary of commerce and the first Asian governor of any state in the US, becoming governor of the state of Washington, in 1997, is currently the American ambassador to China, a man who is now famous around the world as the humbler ambassador who relishes lugging his own baggage around airports.
But the number of Chinese in politics pales when it comes to their achievements in the arena of business, where like the Indian Americans they have carved an indelible mark in the US and the rest of the world.
Interestingly, if one were to try do an analysis of how many CEOs each community has, the Indian Americans will seemingly come off better, with some of them currently heading some of the Fortune 500 companies, but the Chinese Americans have a long history of being the pioneers of the Internet business, and the leaders of technology in some of the biggest breakthroughs of the past 50 years.
Valley Voices
Apart from Jerry Yang, some of the top corporate honchos include, John Chen, the CEO of Sybase, Steve Chen, the co-founder of YouTube, Andrew Cheng, co-founder of Panda Express, Weili Dai, co-founder of Marvell Technology Group, Ming Hsieh, co-founder and CEO of Cogent Systems, Kai Huang, co-founder of Guitar Hero franchise, Andrea Jung, CEO of Avon, Norman Liu, the CEO of GECAS, and Charles Wang, founder, CEO and chairman of Computer Associates, apart from Wendi Deng, the wife of Rupert Murdoch.
And tech and innovation wizards like Feng-hsiung Hsu,IBM developer of Deep Blue, which beat World Chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997; Min Chueh Chang, co-inventor of the first birth control pill; and Yuan-Cheng Fung, founder of Modern Biomechanics, will find a place in history for posterity.
But some of the richest Chinese are also those who studied in the US and then went back home to start their own businesses, like the MIT-educated Charles Zhang, who is the founder, chairman and current CEO of Sohu.com Inc. He is regarded as one of China's Internet pioneers and was named by Forbes magazine as one of the richest men in China in 2003.
Charles Chao, the chief executive officer and president of Sina.com, received his master of professional accounting from University of Texas in Austin, and also holds an MA degree in journalism from University of Oklahoma. The giant search engine, Baidu.com, established in 2000, was the brainchild of Robin Li and Eric Xu, who both did stints overseas.
Chinese nationals, like their Indian counterparts, have a tough choice in an increasingly globalised world when it comes to choosing whether to continue to live and work in the US after they get their graduate degrees here, or to try their luck back home in a business environment where the opportunities are limitless and creativity will yield instant rewards and fame.
And more often than not, their decisions are being shaped by the years of waiting for permanent residency, points out Rong Xiaoqing, a senior reporter for the Sing Tao Daily, a Chinese community newspaper, based in New York city.
When asked if she thinks the Chinese Americans have accomplished more than the Indian American community, Xiaoqing says: "One has to look at the strengths and weaknesses of each country. In the US, the visa issue is limiting people's opportunities, not giving them a chance to fulfil their potential. Also, times have changed. There are now more opportunities in China back home. A lot of Chinese individuals have been moving back steadily since the mid-nineties."
Unlike the Indian American community, whose quest for a gold medal in the Olympics and an Oscar in the mainstream section finally got quenched recently after decades of waiting, for the Chinese, the fountain of talent and international recognition keeps flowing unabated in the field of entertainment and sports, and is a source of pride for each one of them living here.
One of the best known Chinese names in Hollywood is not that of Ang Lee, the Oscar winning director of Brokeback Mountain, but a cinematographer by the name of James Wong Howe, who was nominated for 10 Academy Awards for cinematography, and won twice, in 1955 for The Rose Tattoo, and in 1963 for Hud. He was a pioneer of deep-focus cinematography, photography in which both foreground and distant planes remain in focus, and was recognised as one of the 10 top cinematographers ever. Haing Ngor, a Chinese Cambodian actor won an Oscar for best supporting actor in The Killing Fields, marking a landmark day for the community.
And if there is one arena where even the Chinese fear the Chinese Americans it's in sports: the training regimen might not be so rigorous outside the borders of China, but the impressive results the athletes of Chinese origin have brought to the US, have helped them and the community acclimatise and be accepted here faster than anything else combined.
Michael Chang broke a glass ceiling when he became the youngest male tennis player to win a Grand Slam tournament, the French Open in 1989, at the age of 17. And while Jeremy Lin, the first Chinese American to play in the NBA and star of the New York Knicks may be the player of the year, one can never forget the winsome smile and grace of Michelle Kwan, arguably the greatest female skater of all time. A twice Olympic medalist, in 1998 and 2002, she is a five-time World champion and nine-time US champion, the all-time record which is yet to be bested.
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