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发帖数: 4796 | 1 这个傻逼只字不提AA
黄亚生：为什么第一代大陆华人支持特朗普？
原创 2016-11-04 黄亚生 event全知道
本文作者为 麻省理工学院斯隆管理学院黄亚生教授，授权“event全知道”公众号发表。
（注：本文是根据作者在2016年10月30日的一次讲话的录音整理稿。语言比较口语化。
因为时间仓促文章可能会有一定的表达和数据的误差。仅供参考。图表来源于网上。具
体出处没有一一注明。）
在中文的网上和微信上似乎支持特朗普的声音非常强大。我看到的很多的帖子都是支持
特朗普的。但从统计上来看，现在没有看到任何强烈的证据表明华人的第二代、第三代
移民整体而言，是支持特朗普的。下面这张图做的是亚裔美国人的调查，做得很细，把
中国人、菲律宾人、越南人、日本人、韩国人都分开。是今年９月份UCLA的一个团队做
的。美籍华人对希拉里的支持率是54%，对特朗普是19%。
再看另外一组数据，这是２０１６年１０月３０日《纽约时报》的数据，把选民分成几
类。亚裔在1992年时大部分都是支持共和党的，但逐年在改变。我跟真正搞美国政治的
人聊过，他们的结论跟这个数据完全一致，亚裔美国人以前是支持共和党的，现在变成
不支持。
但有没有可能大陆的第一代移民更支持特朗普呢？ 是有这个可能性的。下面这个图表
是一位朋友转给我的，据说是文学城上的数据。你一听是文学城就知道这里选择偏差了
，因为我从来没见过二代华人天天在家里上文学城的。这一组数据确实表明第一代华人
似乎很多是支持特朗普的。
接下来的问题就是怎么解释所谓的“特朗普现象，”为什么有这么多第一代华人支持他
？ 我在下面提出几个假设，不是结论，因为我没有这方面的数据，不能做出结论。我
的数据是针对美国人的数据但是我认为这些针对美国人的数据实际上有可能解释第一代
华人的政治倾向。
有一个对“特朗普现象”的解释认为支持他的人都是经济全球化和技术进步的失利者。
这个解释显然不符合第一代华人的情况。第一代华人是全球化和技术进步最大的赢家。
第二个流行的解释是教育。这个解释是有很强的实证支持的，在美国白人中教育程度低
的支持特朗普，教育程度高的支持希拉里。但这个解释也不符合第一代华人的情况。第
一代华人的教育程度是很高的。
我马上会回到教育这个题目。我看到对“特朗普现象”有三个其他的解释我认为可以解
释第一代华人的政治倾向。这三个解释都是围绕社会和心理因素，和经济因素无关或者
联系不大。这三个因素是：１）种族单一性， ２）社会活动，ＮＧＯ和公益活动的参
与，３）对权威和权威主义的认同。这三个变量是我看到统计研究里解释“特朗普现象
”最有力的变量。
对第一个和第二个问题的研究是盖勒普的一个经济学家做的。他的名字是Jonathan
Rothwell. 这是他的文章：
这是他的研究结论：支持特朗普的美国白人多居住在种族单一的选区。种族的单一性，
或者表现在种族歧视或者表现在种族自我隔离，比经济和其他变量更能解释“特朗普现
象。”（这是他文章的原话：“In the primary models and throughout
thisanalysis, segregation was measured from the perspective of white non-
Hispanics,since those constitute the bulk of Trump’s base of political
support. Yet, asshown in Table 10, the strong relationship between
segregation and support forTrump remain using an alternative measure of
segregation, which compares thediversity of one’s CZ to the diversity of
one’s zip-code.People living in relatively less diverse zip-codes, whatever
the racialcategories, are more likely to view Trump favorably.”）
Rothwell发现另外一个解释“特朗普现象”是社会资本， 就是公众参与政治活动程度
（比如每次选举都参与投票），参与社区，民间团体，NGO,志愿组织活动， 所谓 “
civic engagements.” 他发现那些这种类型的社会资本越高的选区就越不支持特朗普
。RobertPutnam在他的书里对这个问题讲得非常清楚，这种类型的些社会活动、这种社
会资本跟自由主义（liberalism）是成正比的，自由主义越强的地区越不支持特朗普。
第三个解释“特朗普现象”的变量是一个心理学的概念。政治心理学家在60年代发明了
一个概念，叫“right-wing authoritarianism scale”—可以翻成右翼权威主义指标
。这本书，OurPolitical Nature，对这个概念有很详细的阐释。
大量的研究表明具有右翼权威主义倾向的美国人更多地支持共和党，在欧洲多支持保守
党。研究也表明支持特朗普的美国人是具有右翼权威主义倾向的群体。请看下面这张图
。在共和党党员中右翼权威主义倾向最强的最支持特朗普， 52%，次强的是42%， 再次
强的是33%， 再下面的是38%。
我们现在可以提出解释大陆第一代移民为什么会支持特朗普的假设了。
第一，很多大陆人在中国肯定都生活在一个高度种族单一的环境下， 对其他种族的文
化，习惯没有起码的认知。在这种环境长大的人经常缺乏一些应该如何在一个种族多元
的社会运行的基本意识。比如教育程度高的美国人对牵涉种族方面的言论是很小心的，
但我自己认识的中国人里面，即使有各种高等学历的中国人，发表和种族有关的言论时
可以完全没有任何顾虑和忌讳。这就是所谓“政治正确”的问题。特朗普和好多中国人
认为政治正确是一个荒唐的规矩，是禁锢言论自由的。但是你从另一个角度来看这个问
题，在一个种族多元的社会，特别是美国这种过去有过很长的种族压迫和冲突的历史的
国家，政治正确是维系一个社会和谐，种族和睦的一个工具和方法，是有它的社会价值
的。（必须要指出的是，这种“政治不正确”的行为在其他种族单一的国家，比如日本
和韩国，也很普遍。这不是我们中国人固有的特征。）
和这个假设有关的假设就是有可能大陆的中国人有一定的种族歧视倾向性。我不是这方
面的专家，但我想种族歧视有一个很重要的原因就是和其他种族缺乏接触，缺乏了解。
肯定不是中国人天生是种族歧视，是因为我们来美国以前可以说对种族这个问题根本就
没有意识。另外一个原因就是因为我们是一个单一种族的国家我们也缺乏一个民族压迫
另一个民族的历史。我们历史上有大规模的内战和血淋淋的政治运动，但我们一般不把
它们看作是一个种族之间的冲突。你和犹太人交流各自国家的历史时你马上就意识到这
个区别。今天西方社会之所以如此刻意强调种族平等我认为是和它有一个很不光彩的压
迫非洲人，残杀印第安人，和它几百年的丑恶奴隶历史有关系的。可能有一定的负罪和
负疚感。而我们中国人是没有这个意识的。
因为我们大陆人种族意识不强（如果强的话也是歧视性的），没有“政治正确”的感觉
，特朗普就显得很有感召力。这里又点出我们和白人的一个区别。在白人群体里受教育
程度越高越支持种族平等，越反对种族歧视。但在中国的教育里面完全没有这个内容。
这也能解释下面两个事。一个是我发现在美国受过本科教育的大陆人一般在这个问题上
更接近美国主流意识。另外一个是在美国的二代华人肯定不支持特朗普。我在上面已经
提供数字了。 华人整体是不支持特朗普的。
第二个解释第一代华人支持特朗普的假设是我们大陆人普遍缺乏Putnam强调的那种社会
资本，就是参与社区活动，志愿组织，另外积极参与政治。我认识的很多人加入美国国
籍后从来不投票而且也不关心政治。我估计相当一批支持特朗普的大陆人可能是这辈子
第一次对政治这么着迷。另外也是因为我们中国大陆本身就缺乏任何实质意义的“
civic engagements。” 中国第一代移民有很高的人力资本，教育很好，博士学位、硕
士学位。但我们这些人在中国没有参加过任何真正意义的选举和政治参与。我们没有形
成参加社团组织活动的传统，到美国以后我们一般也不去参加这类的活动。所以我们大
陆人的政治行为更靠近教育程度水平比较低的白人。教育在白人里绝对是个分水岭，受
教育程度越高，政治参与程度越高，而这个群体是支持希拉里的，而不是特朗普。但政
治参与在中国人里，教育不是一个没有分水岭。教育高低和我们中国人参与不参与政治
无关。我们中国人在中国根本没有这种长期的政治参与的传统，也根本不可能有政治参
与传统。特朗普对这类人－－政治参与程度低，社会团体参与程度低――是非常有感召
力的。我们大陆人，即使是教育水平很高的大陆人，就是属于这个群体。
第三个假设是我们大陆人长期在一个集权的国家，我们很多人是很崇尚权威、奉行权威
主义的。我上面已经讲了支持特朗普的人在权威主义指标上得分很高。也就是说更支持
民主的人更不支持特朗普，而是支持希拉里。那有没有可能大陆人具有这种右翼权威主
义特征，使他们感觉到特朗普是非常有吸引力的？也就是说我们大陆人之所以支持特朗
普，之所以更支持共和党是因为我们带有中国集权体制文化很深的烙印。我大胆的假设
就是支持特朗普的大陆人可能他们自己本身就根本不认同民主的价值和概念。他们信奉
的是普京和特朗普这种强人政治。
我这里说的权威主义不光是政治意义上的权威主义，还有家长和家庭层面的。我们在大
陆接受的是虎妈式的教育模式。家长和老师对孩子严加管教，对孩子规定这个，规定那
个，不给孩子探索和发现的自由。这种师道尊严，严父严母的教育观念本身也会造就政
治上的保守。我上面提到的那本书，Our Political Nature，讲了一个非常有意思的研
究，是斯坦福在60年代做的。研究者从小孩上幼儿园开始收集他们的数据，然后跟踪他
们二十多年，研究他们的政治行为，看他们投谁的票。在幼儿园的时候，在小孩4、5岁
的时候，老师会给这些孩子划分，说这个孩子调皮捣蛋，不听话，说那个孩子非常安静
，非常听老师的话。研究者发现调皮捣蛋的孩子，长大以后都是支持民主党的；安安静
静的、听老师话的都是支持共和党的。我本人从小就调皮捣蛋，所以今天对于我自己的
行为不感到奇怪，但我估计那些在中国属于三好学生，课代表，班长的那拨人到了美国
以后可能都投奔共和党了，他们可能会倾向支持特朗普。
黄亚生是MIT斯隆管理学院副院长及政治经济学教授。同时也是复旦大学管理学院特聘
教授和湖南大学名誉教授。他曾任职于哈佛商学院和密歇根大学。 | W*****B
发帖数: 4796 | 2 这个是另外一个华奸写的，看起来很焦虑：怎么华人不再顺服听话了？怎么办啊！
http://supchina.com/2016/11/03/many-first-generation-chinese-immigrants-supporting-donald-trump/
SupChina
Donald Trump rally in Anaheim, California on May 25, 2016 (AP Photo/Jae C.
Hong)
FEATURED
Why are so many first-generation Chinese immigrants supporting Donald Trump?
3 hours agoBy Kaiser KuoKaiser Kuo
This is the first of a series of monthly columns by Sinica Podcast host
Kaiser Kuo in which he answers questions about all matters Chinese. Please
email questions for consideration to [email protected]/* */
My wife, Fanfan, dislikes politics. It’s an attitude not at all uncommon
among Chinese of her generation, who still remember the Cultural Revolution
and have an instinctive aversion to ideological stridency in any form. By
contrast, I’m fascinated by things political and will confess that as a
general rule (and only to a point), the more conflict involved, the greater
the fascination politics holds for me. And so as I prepared to repatriate to
the U.S., as we did in June of this year after 20 years in Beijing, I was
naturally excited not only to be doing so in a presidential election year,
but also to be moving to a bona-fide battleground state: North Carolina.
With its 15 electoral votes and important gubernatorial and Senate races
this year, I was eager to plunge in.
When we were still living in Beijing, Fanfan indulged my occasional rants on
American politics. But these were directed against the folly of liberal
interventionism — my own party’s grave sin — as often as they were
against some fresh GOP affront to decency I’d just read about online. In
Beijing we rarely socialized with Republicans. There were, after all,
vanishingly few of them among my American acquaintances. For the most part,
political discussions Fanfan witnessed among Americans in Beijing were
marked by strenuous agreement. The few Republicans I spent any time with
were genuinely decent people with whom I had, in the grand scheme of things,
mere quibbles over things like school vouchers, or cap and trade, or the
right Federal minimum wage.
And so I understand why she was caught off guard by the ferocity of politics
once we arrived, and especially after Trump emerged in July as the
inevitable GOP nominee. She had assumed that the election would be divisive,
but she never would have guessed that it would impact her so personally.
Sure, it’s true that from her first glimpse of him, Fanfan had a visceral
dislike for Trump: the hair, the spray-on tan, the hand gestures, the lips,
the whole package. And she didn’t need my encouragement to pile onto that
foundation each new unimaginable outrage in a long summer of outrages. But
the presidential race was still something she didn’t feel too invested in.
She wouldn’t gain U.S. citizenship for years still, and besides, I was
donating time and money to the Hillary campaign, as were many of my friends.
Surely everyone could see what a bully, a creep, and a con man Trump was.
Little did she know that the election would divide the very community of
which, by virtue of having come to America, she was now a part: Chinese
immigrants.
By August, it was clear that many, if not indeed most, first-generation
Chinese immigrants to the U.S. were supporting Donald Trump. Fanfan told me
that she had concluded this was the case one morning while reading through
posts in a WeChat group — a kind of mobile messaging chat room comprising
hundreds of Chinese parents of school-age kids in North Carolina’s Triangle
region. This was something she’s done with me for years — given me the
rundown on the debates of the day on Chinese social media to supplement my
own reading. Fanfan has long been a great source of information about what’
s happening in China, and since we moved to the States, I’ve come to count
on her for her uncanny knack for knowing what might be of interest to me,
for dispassionately presenting the various sides on the contentious issue du
jour, and for assessing which way the scales are tipping. And so when she
told me that Trump was winning among first-generation Chinese immigrants, I
took her very seriously. “What was the ratio of Trump to Clinton supporters
on this list?” I asked? Her answer was grim: Of those engaging on politics
, she reckoned, it was at least three to one pro-Trump.
I’d gotten strong inklings of a shift in the months before. Puttering
around the house on weekend mornings, she liked to listen to a podcast
recorded by a Chinese immigrant in Southern California — an often quite
insightful guide, in Chinese, to adjusting to life in the U.S., from
immigration rules to the ABCs of American schooling to driving to filing
taxes. Every now and then, though, my ears would prick up at some deeply
racist remark he’d casually toss out about African-Americans or Latinos (or
, as this particular podcaster said, blacks and Mexicans): He used “black
neighborhood” and “Mexican neighborhood,” for instance, interchangeably
with “high-crime neighborhood” in a way that I imagine most Chinese wouldn
’t even notice. In an episode where he tackled the topic of affirmative
action in university admissions, his partisan leanings became clear; he
later talked about how he had gone from voting consistently Democratic to
supporting the GOP. We stopped listening some time ago, and we never did
learn whether he was actually supporting Trump, but it wouldn’t surprise me
at all if he were.
It wasn’t just the WeChat group for parents of school-age kids, either.
Chinese Trump supporters were sharing anti-Hillary memes in another hugely
popular regional WeChat group of which Fanfan is a part: A group ostensibly
for people interested in buying seafood from some guy who sells it out of
the back of his van in inconspicuous parking lots across the state. Then
they took over another local Chinese WeChat group, this one for placing
orders for group grocery runs to Flushing, Queens, where even the rarest of
Chinese foodstuffs can be found. The WeChat lists were filled with pro-Trump
and anti-Hillary memes, many of them familiar to me, just translated into
Chinese from English originals. Encouragingly, there are a good number who
initially pushed back; discouragingly, they were mostly browbeaten into
silence.
The appeal of Trump to so many first-generation Chinese immigrants quickly
became a topic I obsessed about. Fanfan and I had lunch the other day at the
home of a lovely, retired Chinese-American woman (she asked that I not use
her name) in Chapel Hill, and this disturbing development was almost all we
could talk about. A native Beijinger and member of the Class of 1977 — the
first crop of students to matriculate in universities after the Cultural
Revolution — she shared our horror at Trump’s popularity among recently
arrived immigrants, and confirmed that, as I had suspected, this rightward
tilt was an entirely new phenomenon and was certainly not the case either
four or eight years ago. The stridency among these Trump supporters, she
said, reminded her of nothing so much as the Red Guards during the Cultural
Revolution.
Beyond the first-generation immigrants, things look better, at least
anecdotally. Her son, a lawyer in Raleigh active in Chinese-American
politics, assured me that the second generation of Chinese Americans, as
well as Chinese immigrants who came over relatively young as his mother had,
was still overwhelmingly Democrat. But I worry that the views of the more
recently arrived Trump supporters will be passed down; the jury is still out
on the likelihood of political views of parents being adopted by their
children, and don’t hold your breath for studies that look just at Chinese
immigrants and their descendants.
Based on this conversation, and on dozens of others Fanfan or I have had
with Chinese and Chinese Americans since moving here, these are, to the best
of my knowledge, the chief reasons behind the popularity of Trump with
first-generation immigrants from the PRC:
Affirmative action: This is a topic so ubiquitous on these threads that it’
s just abbreviated as “AA” and, as it would alphabetically, has to top the
list. “We came here for one reason and one reason alone, and that is to
get our kids into good schools,” the reasoning goes. “Now they’re
unfairly raising the bar and imposing de facto quotas on Chinese and other
East Asian students, and giving the places our kids deserve to less-
qualified African-American and Latino kids. Our kids work hard, and we’ve
sacrificed so much. Underrepresentation of black and Hispanic students is
not our fault. Why should we suffer for it?” That opposition to “AA”
would be so loud on a WeChat group for parents of students perhaps isn’t
surprising, but this appears to be a top issue for many Chinese immigrants
supporting Trump. Resentment at preferential treatment allegedly given to
other underprivileged minorities easily elides into opposition to anything
labeled “politically correct,” and they come to admire Trump’s open
contempt for the whole liberal agenda of social justice.
Sexual conservatism: China may have come a long way since the days when
homosexuality was criminal; it’s no longer even regarded as a form of
mental illness in China, and attitudes among young people in China have
certainly changed. But among immigrants in the groups we’ve been
interacting with — mainly people aged 35 to 55, if I had to guess —
attitudes are still profoundly conservative. You could drive a truck through
the gap between this group’s mores and the cultural norms among American
elites and among younger Americans when it comes to LGBTQ issues. Here in
North Carolina, which passed the infamous HB2 “Bathroom Bill,” requiring
people to use the bathroom corresponding to their biological sex as listed
on their birth certificates, many Chinese see this as simple common sense.
Even some otherwise liberal Chinese I’ve spoken to in North Carolina think
that making an issue of this law and fighting for its repeal is going too
far.
Racism: Whatever its causes — and they are too numerous to get into here —
Chinese racism is well attested, and many Americans would be shocked were
they privy to conversations about race taking place in Chinese when
participants think no one else is listening. The conflation of blackness
with criminality among immigrant Chinese in America is appallingly
commonplace. Anyone who pushes back on those assumptions is seen as simply
denying the obvious, and is barraged by statistics on violent crime rates
showing, of course, disproportionately high criminality among African
Americans — devoid, of course, of any context. They are uninterested in
hearing historical arguments: Invoking centuries of chattel slavery, or Jim
Crow, or housing discrimination, or the grossly unequal sentencing standards
for powder and crack cocaine makes no difference at all. All too often,
there is this belief that it’s an American problem and that their only
interest is to ensure the short-term safety of their own families.
Adding fuel to this is the so-called “Asian Lives Matter” movement, which
focused initially on the manslaughter conviction of a Chinese-American NYPD
officer named Peter Liang in the shooting death of an unarmed black man;
similarly, an alleged surge in “Black-on-Asian” violence, in which African
Americans are said to be deliberately targeting Asians, seeing them as cash
rich and largely defenseless. A video by rapper YG for the track “Meet the
Flockers,” the lyrics of which advise robbing Asian houses, has not helped
the situation. It’s been a rallying cry for many Chinese Trump supporters,
as was the bust, in August, of a Southern California robbery ring by
Torrance, California police. The East Coast Crips-affiliated gang behind
those robberies, police said, specifically targeted Asian-owned homes —
discernible by the shoes left on the front porch — and was responsible for
a reported 5,000 burglaries.
Schadenfreude: It’s astonishing to me how many Trump supporters among the
first-generation immigrants acknowledge that a Trump presidency would
actually do significant damage to the American economy, to the image of the
U.S. abroad, or to democracy itself — and still either dismiss that damage
as “not my problem” or even take some pleasure in the prospect of America
being knocked down a peg or two. I would hope that these are the exception,
and that most Chinese immigrants come to the U.S. and place the interests of
their new country at least on par with the one they’ve left. Regrettably,
though, a distressingly high number understand that a Trump victory would
take the wind out of the America’s sanctimonious sails when it comes to
pushing liberal democracy and would cherish just such an outcome.
Hillary’s hawkishness: This is related, of course, to the schadenfreude
described above. The kind of blustering anti-trade talk coming out of Trump
sounds, to the Chinese ear, like what they’ve heard from every American
presidential candidate for the last 20 years or more. They’re accustomed to
a quadrennial bout of China bashing that ends in early November and is
followed, come late January, by business as usual. But among Chinese with
very few exceptions, it’s an article of faith that Hillary Clinton is not
only a liberal interventionist who is hawkish on China, but also someone
entirely likely to aggressively pursue the so-called Rebalancing (née “
Pivot”) — a policy that many if not indeed most Chinese see as a species
of containment.
Zhen xiaoren and wei junzi: Chinese speak of their preference for “the
genuine petty person” (真小人, zhēn xiaoren) over “the
hypocritical gentleman” (伪君子, weí jūnzi). Not only do they see these
two types reflected in the presidential candidates — Trump seeming to revel
in his pettiness and in the willful ignorance of so many of his supporters,
Clinton supposedly an unalloyed elite intoning sanctimonious homilies, as
their leaders back home do, and feigning disgust with Trump’s conspicuous
moral failings despite her own — but more than that, they feel free to give
rein to their own pettiness, and to own it. Several first-generation
immigrants supporting Trump on local WeChat groups have been totally up-
front about their self-interest, whether in voting for lower taxes, or to
abolish “AA,” or to reduce competition by curtailing immigration. Can’t
imagine where this zero-sum, hypercompetitive, amoral, and assertively
selfish attitude could have come from!
Taxation: This one is relatively straightforward. No one actually likes
paying higher taxes, but many pro-Trump Chinese immigrants don’t feel any
obligation to contribute, and feel no long-term stake in America — despite
their stated desire to give their children the benefit of an American
university education.
Legal vs. illegal immigration: While the irony that members of a non-white
immigrant community should be falling over one another to praise Donald “
Build-a-Wall, Ban-the-Muslims” Trump might not be lost on most folks, it’s
entirely so on many Trump-supporting first-generation Chinese immigrants.
“We waited in line and did everything legally. Why should they get to jump
the queue?” they ask, as yet more irony sails overhead.
Personality: Lastly, there’s the factor that Fanfan believes to be the real
underlying reason that anti-Trump or pro-Clinton people in these groups
haven’t been able to gain any share of voice: Personality. The pro-Trump
Chinese immigrant is a type familiar to her. They’re the same shrill,
obnoxious busybodies who would, were they back in China, be wearing the red
armbands of the Neighborhood Party Committee and acting the petty tyrant on
their own little plot of dirt.
There are other factors, too: Some predictably admire Trump’s supposed
business acumen; others like his stance on “radical Islam” and vows to
annihilate ISIS; perhaps others are even drawn, if only subconsciously, to
the strongman authoritarianism he exudes, reminding them of a more familiar
leader.
Fanfan has her theories as to why the Chinese Democrats, most of whom were
earlier immigrants, aren’t fighting back. They’re successful intellectuals
better understanding for how politics actually works in America. They aren’
t in that zone of insecurity, where so many immigrants exist. They know
America by experience, and not the movie version in the minds of so many
recent Chinese immigrants — the version in which any scene shot in a
convenience store means a stickup is about to go down, where a woman walking
alone in a parking garage is inevitably sexually assaulted, and where
people of color are usually the perps in those scenes. Their kids are
already done with school, and they aren’t personally affected by
affirmative action. They’re not accustomed to the rough-and tumble of Weibo
or WeChat, whereas the generally younger and newer immigrants are inured to
the nastiness, to the ubiquity of ad hominem attack. They’d rather put
their ideas down in essays, or talk things over in person. They won’t
condescend to explain what’s so ridiculous and shortsighted about Trump
support.
It’s hard to gauge how worrisome this all should be. How many of these
people, after all, are actually citizens and not Green Card holders? How
many will actually vote? How likely are they to have contributed
significantly to the Trump campaign? And is this support going to outlive
the results of the election? None of this is at all clear. But what is
certain is that a growing number of immigrants from China feel passionately
enough about Trump to take to the streets in support of him in New York and
attend rallies in Southern California.
Organizations that have long called for more participation in American
political life by Chinese Americans — groups like the 80-20 Initiative,
founded by former Delaware lieutenant governor S. B. Woo — have
traditionally assumed that such participation would strengthen the Democrats
, even if they’re nominally nonpartisan. Now, in the age of Trump, they
might want to be careful what they wish for.
See also: Chinese Americans Against Trump
By Kaiser Kuo Kaiser Kuo is co-founder of the Sinica Podcast and editor-at-
large of SupChina.
More from SupChina
OUR PODCAST SINICA
Sinica Podcast: Love and journalism in wartime China: An interview with Bill
Lascher
An interview with the author of "Eve of a Hundred Midnights."
Audio Player
00:0000:00
FEATURED
Why are so many first-generation Chinese immigrants supporting Donald Trump?
FEATURED
Sinica extra: Bombing Chongqing
HEALTHvia Reuters
First Chinese to get Zika virus is quarantined and recovering, and officials
say winter cold reduces the risk of any spread
The 34-year-old man had recently traveled to Venezuela and showed symptoms
that included a fever, headache and dizziness.
CRIMEvia WSJ
Potent and lightly regulated chemicals made in China fuel a vast global
trafficking network for fentanyl, a deadly drug
Limited regulation and enforcement in China allows for a thriving trade in
fentanyl, a drug that can be 50 times more potent than heroin, along with
similar drugs and the ingredients used to make them.
POLITICSvia The Guardian
Artist Anish Kapoor participates in a Chinese exhibition despite earlier
comments indicating a boycott in solidarity with Ai Weiwei's exclusion
Kapoor had said the censorship of Ai's work by organizers of the
Yinchuan Biennale was unacceptable, but his own pieces appeared in the show
when it opened on Friday.
MISSION|WORK WITH US|NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE|PRIVACY POLICY|TERMS OF USE
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| W*****B
发帖数: 4796 | 3 另一个华奸写的，很焦虑：华人不听话不顺服了，怎么办啊？
SupChina
Donald Trump rally in Anaheim, California on May 25, 2016 (AP Photo/Jae C.
Hong)
FEATURED
Why are so many first-generation Chinese immigrants supporting Donald Trump?
3 hours agoBy Kaiser KuoKaiser Kuo
This is the first of a series of monthly columns by Sinica Podcast host
Kaiser Kuo in which he answers questions about all matters Chinese. Please
email questions for consideration to [email protected]/* */
My wife, Fanfan, dislikes politics. It’s an attitude not at all uncommon
among Chinese of her generation, who still remember the Cultural Revolution
and have an instinctive aversion to ideological stridency in any form. By
contrast, I’m fascinated by things political and will confess that as a
general rule (and only to a point), the more conflict involved, the greater
the fascination politics holds for me. And so as I prepared to repatriate to
the U.S., as we did in June of this year after 20 years in Beijing, I was
naturally excited not only to be doing so in a presidential election year,
but also to be moving to a bona-fide battleground state: North Carolina.
With its 15 electoral votes and important gubernatorial and Senate races
this year, I was eager to plunge in.
When we were still living in Beijing, Fanfan indulged my occasional rants on
American politics. But these were directed against the folly of liberal
interventionism — my own party’s grave sin — as often as they were
against some fresh GOP affront to decency I’d just read about online. In
Beijing we rarely socialized with Republicans. There were, after all,
vanishingly few of them among my American acquaintances. For the most part,
political discussions Fanfan witnessed among Americans in Beijing were
marked by strenuous agreement. The few Republicans I spent any time with
were genuinely decent people with whom I had, in the grand scheme of things,
mere quibbles over things like school vouchers, or cap and trade, or the
right Federal minimum wage.
And so I understand why she was caught off guard by the ferocity of politics
once we arrived, and especially after Trump emerged in July as the
inevitable GOP nominee. She had assumed that the election would be divisive,
but she never would have guessed that it would impact her so personally.
Sure, it’s true that from her first glimpse of him, Fanfan had a visceral
dislike for Trump: the hair, the spray-on tan, the hand gestures, the lips,
the whole package. And she didn’t need my encouragement to pile onto that
foundation each new unimaginable outrage in a long summer of outrages. But
the presidential race was still something she didn’t feel too invested in.
She wouldn’t gain U.S. citizenship for years still, and besides, I was
donating time and money to the Hillary campaign, as were many of my friends.
Surely everyone could see what a bully, a creep, and a con man Trump was.
Little did she know that the election would divide the very community of
which, by virtue of having come to America, she was now a part: Chinese
immigrants.
By August, it was clear that many, if not indeed most, first-generation
Chinese immigrants to the U.S. were supporting Donald Trump. Fanfan told me
that she had concluded this was the case one morning while reading through
posts in a WeChat group — a kind of mobile messaging chat room comprising
hundreds of Chinese parents of school-age kids in North Carolina’s Triangle
region. This was something she’s done with me for years — given me the
rundown on the debates of the day on Chinese social media to supplement my
own reading. Fanfan has long been a great source of information about what’
s happening in China, and since we moved to the States, I’ve come to count
on her for her uncanny knack for knowing what might be of interest to me,
for dispassionately presenting the various sides on the contentious issue du
jour, and for assessing which way the scales are tipping. And so when she
told me that Trump was winning among first-generation Chinese immigrants, I
took her very seriously. “What was the ratio of Trump to Clinton supporters
on this list?” I asked? Her answer was grim: Of those engaging on politics
, she reckoned, it was at least three to one pro-Trump.
I’d gotten strong inklings of a shift in the months before. Puttering
around the house on weekend mornings, she liked to listen to a podcast
recorded by a Chinese immigrant in Southern California — an often quite
insightful guide, in Chinese, to adjusting to life in the U.S., from
immigration rules to the ABCs of American schooling to driving to filing
taxes. Every now and then, though, my ears would prick up at some deeply
racist remark he’d casually toss out about African-Americans or Latinos (or
, as this particular podcaster said, blacks and Mexicans): He used “black
neighborhood” and “Mexican neighborhood,” for instance, interchangeably
with “high-crime neighborhood” in a way that I imagine most Chinese wouldn
’t even notice. In an episode where he tackled the topic of affirmative
action in university admissions, his partisan leanings became clear; he
later talked about how he had gone from voting consistently Democratic to
supporting the GOP. We stopped listening some time ago, and we never did
learn whether he was actually supporting Trump, but it wouldn’t surprise me
at all if he were.
It wasn’t just the WeChat group for parents of school-age kids, either.
Chinese Trump supporters were sharing anti-Hillary memes in another hugely
popular regional WeChat group of which Fanfan is a part: A group ostensibly
for people interested in buying seafood from some guy who sells it out of
the back of his van in inconspicuous parking lots across the state. Then
they took over another local Chinese WeChat group, this one for placing
orders for group grocery runs to Flushing, Queens, where even the rarest of
Chinese foodstuffs can be found. The WeChat lists were filled with pro-Trump
and anti-Hillary memes, many of them familiar to me, just translated into
Chinese from English originals. Encouragingly, there are a good number who
initially pushed back; discouragingly, they were mostly browbeaten into
silence.
The appeal of Trump to so many first-generation Chinese immigrants quickly
became a topic I obsessed about. Fanfan and I had lunch the other day at the
home of a lovely, retired Chinese-American woman (she asked that I not use
her name) in Chapel Hill, and this disturbing development was almost all we
could talk about. A native Beijinger and member of the Class of 1977 — the
first crop of students to matriculate in universities after the Cultural
Revolution — she shared our horror at Trump’s popularity among recently
arrived immigrants, and confirmed that, as I had suspected, this rightward
tilt was an entirely new phenomenon and was certainly not the case either
four or eight years ago. The stridency among these Trump supporters, she
said, reminded her of nothing so much as the Red Guards during the Cultural
Revolution.
Beyond the first-generation immigrants, things look better, at least
anecdotally. Her son, a lawyer in Raleigh active in Chinese-American
politics, assured me that the second generation of Chinese Americans, as
well as Chinese immigrants who came over relatively young as his mother had,
was still overwhelmingly Democrat. But I worry that the views of the more
recently arrived Trump supporters will be passed down; the jury is still out
on the likelihood of political views of parents being adopted by their
children, and don’t hold your breath for studies that look just at Chinese
immigrants and their descendants.
Based on this conversation, and on dozens of others Fanfan or I have had
with Chinese and Chinese Americans since moving here, these are, to the best
of my knowledge, the chief reasons behind the popularity of Trump with
first-generation immigrants from the PRC:
Affirmative action: This is a topic so ubiquitous on these threads that it’
s just abbreviated as “AA” and, as it would alphabetically, has to top the
list. “We came here for one reason and one reason alone, and that is to
get our kids into good schools,” the reasoning goes. “Now they’re
unfairly raising the bar and imposing de facto quotas on Chinese and other
East Asian students, and giving the places our kids deserve to less-
qualified African-American and Latino kids. Our kids work hard, and we’ve
sacrificed so much. Underrepresentation of black and Hispanic students is
not our fault. Why should we suffer for it?” That opposition to “AA”
would be so loud on a WeChat group for parents of students perhaps isn’t
surprising, but this appears to be a top issue for many Chinese immigrants
supporting Trump. Resentment at preferential treatment allegedly given to
other underprivileged minorities easily elides into opposition to anything
labeled “politically correct,” and they come to admire Trump’s open
contempt for the whole liberal agenda of social justice.
Sexual conservatism: China may have come a long way since the days when
homosexuality was criminal; it’s no longer even regarded as a form of
mental illness in China, and attitudes among young people in China have
certainly changed. But among immigrants in the groups we’ve been
interacting with — mainly people aged 35 to 55, if I had to guess —
attitudes are still profoundly conservative. You could drive a truck through
the gap between this group’s mores and the cultural norms among American
elites and among younger Americans when it comes to LGBTQ issues. Here in
North Carolina, which passed the infamous HB2 “Bathroom Bill,” requiring
people to use the bathroom corresponding to their biological sex as listed
on their birth certificates, many Chinese see this as simple common sense.
Even some otherwise liberal Chinese I’ve spoken to in North Carolina think
that making an issue of this law and fighting for its repeal is going too
far.
Racism: Whatever its causes — and they are too numerous to get into here —
Chinese racism is well attested, and many Americans would be shocked were
they privy to conversations about race taking place in Chinese when
participants think no one else is listening. The conflation of blackness
with criminality among immigrant Chinese in America is appallingly
commonplace. Anyone who pushes back on those assumptions is seen as simply
denying the obvious, and is barraged by statistics on violent crime rates
showing, of course, disproportionately high criminality among African
Americans — devoid, of course, of any context. They are uninterested in
hearing historical arguments: Invoking centuries of chattel slavery, or Jim
Crow, or housing discrimination, or the grossly unequal sentencing standards
for powder and crack cocaine makes no difference at all. All too often,
there is this belief that it’s an American problem and that their only
interest is to ensure the short-term safety of their own families.
Adding fuel to this is the so-called “Asian Lives Matter” movement, which
focused initially on the manslaughter conviction of a Chinese-American NYPD
officer named Peter Liang in the shooting death of an unarmed black man;
similarly, an alleged surge in “Black-on-Asian” violence, in which African
Americans are said to be deliberately targeting Asians, seeing them as cash
rich and largely defenseless. A video by rapper YG for the track “Meet the
Flockers,” the lyrics of which advise robbing Asian houses, has not helped
the situation. It’s been a rallying cry for many Chinese Trump supporters,
as was the bust, in August, of a Southern California robbery ring by
Torrance, California police. The East Coast Crips-affiliated gang behind
those robberies, police said, specifically targeted Asian-owned homes —
discernible by the shoes left on the front porch — and was responsible for
a reported 5,000 burglaries.
Schadenfreude: It’s astonishing to me how many Trump supporters among the
first-generation immigrants acknowledge that a Trump presidency would
actually do significant damage to the American economy, to the image of the
U.S. abroad, or to democracy itself — and still either dismiss that damage
as “not my problem” or even take some pleasure in the prospect of America
being knocked down a peg or two. I would hope that these are the exception,
and that most Chinese immigrants come to the U.S. and place the interests of
their new country at least on par with the one they’ve left. Regrettably,
though, a distressingly high number understand that a Trump victory would
take the wind out of the America’s sanctimonious sails when it comes to
pushing liberal democracy and would cherish just such an outcome.
Hillary’s hawkishness: This is related, of course, to the schadenfreude
described above. The kind of blustering anti-trade talk coming out of Trump
sounds, to the Chinese ear, like what they’ve heard from every American
presidential candidate for the last 20 years or more. They’re accustomed to
a quadrennial bout of China bashing that ends in early November and is
followed, come late January, by business as usual. But among Chinese with
very few exceptions, it’s an article of faith that Hillary Clinton is not
only a liberal interventionist who is hawkish on China, but also someone
entirely likely to aggressively pursue the so-called Rebalancing (née “
Pivot”) — a policy that many if not indeed most Chinese see as a species
of containment.
Zhen xiaoren and wei junzi: Chinese speak of their preference for “the
genuine petty person” (真小人, zhēn xiaoren) over “the
hypocritical gentleman” (伪君子, weí jūnzi). Not only do they see these
two types reflected in the presidential candidates — Trump seeming to revel
in his pettiness and in the willful ignorance of so many of his supporters,
Clinton supposedly an unalloyed elite intoning sanctimonious homilies, as
their leaders back home do, and feigning disgust with Trump’s conspicuous
moral failings despite her own — but more than that, they feel free to give
rein to their own pettiness, and to own it. Several first-generation
immigrants supporting Trump on local WeChat groups have been totally up-
front about their self-interest, whether in voting for lower taxes, or to
abolish “AA,” or to reduce competition by curtailing immigration. Can’t
imagine where this zero-sum, hypercompetitive, amoral, and assertively
selfish attitude could have come from!
Taxation: This one is relatively straightforward. No one actually likes
paying higher taxes, but many pro-Trump Chinese immigrants don’t feel any
obligation to contribute, and feel no long-term stake in America — despite
their stated desire to give their children the benefit of an American
university education.
Legal vs. illegal immigration: While the irony that members of a non-white
immigrant community should be falling over one another to praise Donald “
Build-a-Wall, Ban-the-Muslims” Trump might not be lost on most folks, it’s
entirely so on many Trump-supporting first-generation Chinese immigrants.
“We waited in line and did everything legally. Why should they get to jump
the queue?” they ask, as yet more irony sails overhead.
Personality: Lastly, there’s the factor that Fanfan believes to be the real
underlying reason that anti-Trump or pro-Clinton people in these groups
haven’t been able to gain any share of voice: Personality. The pro-Trump
Chinese immigrant is a type familiar to her. They’re the same shrill,
obnoxious busybodies who would, were they back in China, be wearing the red
armbands of the Neighborhood Party Committee and acting the petty tyrant on
their own little plot of dirt.
There are other factors, too: Some predictably admire Trump’s supposed
business acumen; others like his stance on “radical Islam” and vows to
annihilate ISIS; perhaps others are even drawn, if only subconsciously, to
the strongman authoritarianism he exudes, reminding them of a more familiar
leader.
Fanfan has her theories as to why the Chinese Democrats, most of whom were
earlier immigrants, aren’t fighting back. They’re successful intellectuals
better understanding for how politics actually works in America. They aren’
t in that zone of insecurity, where so many immigrants exist. They know
America by experience, and not the movie version in the minds of so many
recent Chinese immigrants — the version in which any scene shot in a
convenience store means a stickup is about to go down, where a woman walking
alone in a parking garage is inevitably sexually assaulted, and where
people of color are usually the perps in those scenes. Their kids are
already done with school, and they aren’t personally affected by
affirmative action. They’re not accustomed to the rough-and tumble of Weibo
or WeChat, whereas the generally younger and newer immigrants are inured to
the nastiness, to the ubiquity of ad hominem attack. They’d rather put
their ideas down in essays, or talk things over in person. They won’t
condescend to explain what’s so ridiculous and shortsighted about Trump
support.
It’s hard to gauge how worrisome this all should be. How many of these
people, after all, are actually citizens and not Green Card holders? How
many will actually vote? How likely are they to have contributed
significantly to the Trump campaign? And is this support going to outlive
the results of the election? None of this is at all clear. But what is
certain is that a growing number of immigrants from China feel passionately
enough about Trump to take to the streets in support of him in New York and
attend rallies in Southern California.
Organizations that have long called for more participation in American
political life by Chinese Americans — groups like the 80-20 Initiative,
founded by former Delaware lieutenant governor S. B. Woo — have
traditionally assumed that such participation would strengthen the Democrats
, even if they’re nominally nonpartisan. Now, in the age of Trump, they
might want to be careful what they wish for.
See also: Chinese Americans Against Trump
By Kaiser Kuo Kaiser Kuo is co-founder of the Sinica Podcast and editor-at-
large of SupChina.
More from SupChina
OUR PODCAST SINICA
Sinica Podcast: Love and journalism in wartime China: An interview with Bill
Lascher
An interview with the author of "Eve of a Hundred Midnights."
Audio Player
00:0000:00
FEATURED
Why are so many first-generation Chinese immigrants supporting Donald Trump?
FEATURED
Sinica extra: Bombing Chongqing
HEALTHvia Reuters
First Chinese to get Zika virus is quarantined and recovering, and officials
say winter cold reduces the risk of any spread
The 34-year-old man had recently traveled to Venezuela and showed symptoms
that included a fever, headache and dizziness.
CRIMEvia WSJ
Potent and lightly regulated chemicals made in China fuel a vast global
trafficking network for fentanyl, a deadly drug
Limited regulation and enforcement in China allows for a thriving trade in
fentanyl, a drug that can be 50 times more potent than heroin, along with
similar drugs and the ingredients used to make them.
POLITICSvia The Guardian
Artist Anish Kapoor participates in a Chinese exhibition despite earlier
comments indicating a boycott in solidarity with Ai Weiwei's exclusion
Kapoor had said the censorship of Ai's work by organizers of the
Yinchuan Biennale was unacceptable, but his own pieces appeared in the show
when it opened on Friday.
MISSION|WORK WITH US|NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE|PRIVACY POLICY|TERMS OF USE
AGREEMENT
| S*******D
发帖数: 12188 | 4 分析很到位。好文章
表。
【在 W*****B 的大作中提到】
: 这个傻逼只字不提AA
: 黄亚生：为什么第一代大陆华人支持特朗普？
: 原创 2016-11-04 黄亚生 event全知道
: 本文作者为 麻省理工学院斯隆管理学院黄亚生教授，授权“event全知道”公众号发表。
: （注：本文是根据作者在2016年10月30日的一次讲话的录音整理稿。语言比较口语化。
: 因为时间仓促文章可能会有一定的表达和数据的误差。仅供参考。图表来源于网上。具
: 体出处没有一一注明。）
: 在中文的网上和微信上似乎支持特朗普的声音非常强大。我看到的很多的帖子都是支持
: 特朗普的。但从统计上来看，现在没有看到任何强烈的证据表明华人的第二代、第三代
: 移民整体而言，是支持特朗普的。下面这张图做的是亚裔美国人的调查，做得很细，把
| S*******D
发帖数: 12188 | 5 和你观点不一样就是华奸？
Trump?
【在 W*****B 的大作中提到】
: 这个是另外一个华奸写的，看起来很焦虑：怎么华人不再顺服听话了？怎么办啊！
: http://supchina.com/2016/11/03/many-first-generation-chinese-immigrants-supporting-donald-trump/
: SupChina
: Donald Trump rally in Anaheim, California on May 25, 2016 (AP Photo/Jae C.
: Hong)
: FEATURED
: Why are so many first-generation Chinese immigrants supporting Donald Trump?
: 3 hours agoBy Kaiser KuoKaiser Kuo
: This is the first of a series of monthly columns by Sinica Podcast host
: Kaiser Kuo in which he answers questions about all matters Chinese. Please
| t*****r
发帖数: 142 | 6 我也认为他是华奸，因为他有好几处都在质疑华人对美国的忠诚度，用心险恶。
【在 S*******D 的大作中提到】
: 和你观点不一样就是华奸？
:
: Trump?
| t*****r
发帖数: 142 | 7 我也认为他是华奸，因为他有好几处都在质疑华人对美国的忠诚度，用心险恶。
【在 S*******D 的大作中提到】
: 和你观点不一样就是华奸？
:
: Trump?
| M******k
发帖数: 27573 | 8 以及社会各方面对华裔的不公正待遇.
这主儿舔主子也太卖力了点儿.
【在 W*****B 的大作中提到】
: 这个傻逼只字不提AA
: 黄亚生：为什么第一代大陆华人支持特朗普？
: 原创 2016-11-04 黄亚生 event全知道
: 本文作者为 麻省理工学院斯隆管理学院黄亚生教授，授权“event全知道”公众号发表。
: （注：本文是根据作者在2016年10月30日的一次讲话的录音整理稿。语言比较口语化。
: 因为时间仓促文章可能会有一定的表达和数据的误差。仅供参考。图表来源于网上。具
: 体出处没有一一注明。）
: 在中文的网上和微信上似乎支持特朗普的声音非常强大。我看到的很多的帖子都是支持
: 特朗普的。但从统计上来看，现在没有看到任何强烈的证据表明华人的第二代、第三代
: 移民整体而言，是支持特朗普的。下面这张图做的是亚裔美国人的调查，做得很细，把
|
|
