Salon.com > William Wong

East is not always east

Tue, 03 Aug 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Last week, a group of Silicon Valley's disparate Chinese-American power elite put aside their differences to attend a reception for San Jose Assemblyman Mike Honda. At one table sat Ling-chi Wang, chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California at Berkeley and a longtime liberal Democratic San Francisco activist. What was he doing at a gathering organized by Lester Lee, who heads up a Silicon Valley high-tech company and, as a University of California regent, supported Proposition 209, the anti-affirmative action initiative that Wang opposed?

Indeed, Wang was part of a mostly Democratic San Francisco Chinese-American political contingent that doesn't usually mingle with the more conservative Silicon Valley Chinese-American high-tech entrepreneurial crowd. There were Chinese-Americans who favor Taiwanese independence and others who lean toward the People's Republic of China, two groups that usually seethe with hostility toward one another.

Favorite Son

Tue, 27 Oct 1998 20:00:00 +0000

--> Just 10 days ago, California seemed on the verge of electing its first Chinese-American senator, Republican State Treasurer Matt Fong. But as one of the most-watched races in the country enters its final week, the momentum has swung back to incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer, at least for now.

After several polls gave Fong a slight lead over the incumbent, the most recent surveys indicate Boxer leads Fong by five points, in part because of hard-hitting TV ads charging that Fong would weaken abortion rights and block tough HMO reform -- ads that have gone largely unanswered by Fong. The Republican challenger has also been hurt by the revelation that he contributed $50,000 in leftover funds from his 1994 state treasurer campaign to Rev. Louis Sheldon's Traditional Values Coalition, a Christian-right lobbying group, which could threaten Fong's moderate image with voters. And the congressional impeachment mess, which was expected to help Republicans, might actually be hurting them with voters.