








ed by a major United States telecom-lunications company to make a bid for a able television channel license in China s ichuan province. Unable to offer any sweet eals, he didn t get the contract. Most of the mainland contracts go to overseas Chinese ompanies from Hong Kong and Taiwan, Ithough the Japanese and the Germans ave been quick to catch on to the realities  f doing business in China. The only reason lie Japanese don t get more business deals in Ihina is that many Chinese still hate them m account of the Japanese occupation of  hina more than fifty years ago.
There may be advantages for ethnic Chi-tese, but businesspeople don t have to be Chinese to be successful in China. Westerners an succeed if they understand the bribery ystem there and are willing to cultivate per-onal trust with officials.  It s really no big leal for most businesses,  the ex-Maoist hemical executive says.  You are only asked o do double accounting. If the cost of a product is $1,000, your invoice should say >M00. Once the bill is paid, you and the ifhcial split the $100. It s no skin off your  ack. The poor Chinese people are paying ?nywaT  After a pause, he adds,  I vish that capitalism would eliminate this  orrupt feudal Chinese system though I tunny saying this. 
Western observers have noted, with a dose of derision, Hong Kong s obsession with the cellular telephone. But the standard pnone greeting in Hong Kong these days ows that there is more going on than just nes C ijter' Instead of the traditional Chie  ve you eaten?  comes the rather  What s y ur game these the latlhat constanL obsessive search for fectly	opportunity fits per-
glohai the ever-shifting nature of Sat m USUleSS  Global^ation has meant produc^T-  ^en tban not' g ods are not Places a sin8le factories but in several comput7<?Und tbe w rld. For example, a various T ' maY be constructed in ShenzheatleS Asia, assembled in ton ana0, tested and packaged near Bos-sold in Pans.
^markab^'^0113'  fnrn'ly based system is within th We^ sulted f r fast movement taking a subcontracting setups, constantly antage of shifting labor costs, while
in a typical Western corporation the hierarchi-caLcham of command makes major changes difficult. For the Americans, every contract is scrutinized by hundreds of lawyers and bickered over by various departments,  says the Hong Kong real estate executive. By the time the cumbersome decision-making machinery reacts, the opportunities in the flexible new markets have already been detected by smaller, more agile firms, and are long gone.
In the 1970s and 1980s, for example, while the West focused its attention on competition from Japan, other parts of Asia presented a host of new business opportunities. Though many Southeast Asian national economies were enjoying an even faster rate of growth than Japan s, Western firms were reluctant to venture into what they considered to be risky markets. Overseas Chinese businesses were already there, however: They detected the new opportunities and took full advantage of them.
The global marketplace has also seen these ethnic Chinese family businesses begin to modify the age-old structures based on family, clan, and home village, in favor of the same rational business organizations that businesspeople of any other ethnic group would establish. Deals such as the one in which Li Ka-shing bought Canadabased Husky Oil in 1987 and the one in which Thailand's Chinese-owned Charoen Pokphand teamed up for a time with the United States giant Wal-Mart to open discount stores throughout China are examples of how business for the diaspora has evolved.
As China has tried to become a modern, industrialized country, the various reformers and revolutionaries have lobbied the overseas Chinese communities for material support. Attributing their mistreatment in foreign lands at least partly to China s backwardness and degraded international status, the overseas Chinese wanted to help transform China, and a few of them became very nationalistic and patriotic The father of Chinese nationalism and the founder of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen was himself a scion of an overseas Chmese family In the 1940s the overseas Chinese became heavily embroiled in the civil war, as
cause; among them we^Q00 Chinese Indo-miserable fate becau	  s and capi-
ern backgrounds Branded razors, a talists because of their  ngscated during their family property ^as  "re impris-the Cultural Revolution nd they w oned. Some tried to escape, ai
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6. ASIAN AMERICANS
Those who survived joked bitterly about their predicament by calling themselves the  dead huaqiao  [the dead overseas Chinese] in contrast to the  living huaqiao,  their compatriots who had remained abroad and prospered.
Ever since the mainland Chinese government began to allow capitalism to flower in the 1980s in an effort to modernize, it has tried to enlist the help of the overseas Chinese. In doing so it has even been willing to admit that some excesses were made during the Cultural Revolution, and as a gesture of goodwill it has returned confiscated property to expatriate families and praised them copiously for their patriotism and their contributions to the betterment of China.
Although they may be enjoying some of the benefits, the overseas Chinese have learned to keep their distance from the mainland. Their loyalties do not lie with the Chinese nationstate but rather with the profits that can be made there, through special economic zones where their investments are protected and they are free to move their capital. At the same time, ethnic Chinese around the world are watching how China deals with Taiwan and Hong Kong. For many of them who might have been sold on the  We are all Chinese  pitch, the saber rattling of recent months has been sobering. Many Hong Kong and Taiwan residents hold foreign passports, obtained either through investment in Canada, the United States, or Australia or through their children s foreign citizenship abroad. Although overseas Chinese claim that all they need is freedom to make money, they like to send their children to Western universities and establish a foothold in an English-speaking country. They regard their assets in countries such as the United States as an insurance policy against potential instability in Southeast Asia or on mainland China.
 In the United States there really is a respect for law,  says Andrew Kwan, a United States citizen who owns an insecticide factory near Beijing.  That s very attractive for us. My family is here; we have a house. A lot of us would not be willing to give up our foreign passport to go back to China. 
Overseas Chinese businesspeople whose professional and private interests are truly global are called astronauts by their less fortunate compatriots because, for example, they live in California and do business in Asia. They will invest in China if that is where the money is to be made, but if the labor costs there increase and productivity levels off, they are just as likely to turn to Vietnam to set up fertilizer plants, to India to set up joint ventures in electronics, or to Bangladesh, Fiji, Mauritius, or Guatemala to set up garment factories. Increasingly, they are joining the transnational world of capitalism developed under European domination, where national borders lose meaning and national identity is neither a hindrance nor an asset. It is increasingly a world in which  Chineseness  also means very little. As len Ang, a Chinese scholar born in Indonesia to Chinese parents and raised in Holland, says:  I am inescapably Chinese by descent. I am only sometimes Chinese by consent. When and how is a matter of politics. 
It is ultimately political questions such as whether China attacks Taiwan or crushes the spirit and laws of Hong Kong that will determine if overseas Chinese continue to invest in China and profit from its seemingly boundless opportunities. Even Singapore s Lee Kuan Yew, a great champion of the cultural pull of Confucianism, admits that ethnicity will take a backseat to the pressures of realpolitik.  We are ethnic Chinese,  Lee has said,  but we must be honest with ourselves and recognize that at the end of the day, our fundamental loyalties are to our home, not to our ancestral country. To think otherwise is not realistic. It will only lead to grief when our interests fail to coincide. 
Peter Kwong, the director of Asian American Studies at Hunter College in New York City, is the author of The New Chinatown. Dusanka Miscevic, a writer and historian, also contributed to this article.
Article 36
Asian-Indian Americans
-SUMMARY	- -  ------------------  
The Asian-Indian population of the U.S. is affluen and growing. Asian Indians often work as professionals and entrepreneurs. Marketers divide the group into three seg merits, but all Indians are keenly interested in financia security, good value, and shopping around. Although Asian Indians assimilate easily into U.S. culture, the best way reach them is to support their communities and tradition
1980. Furthermore, the population fluctuates as temporary residents arrive and leave as students, management trainees, and visiting technology specialists. As of 1990, however, the Asian-Indian popu-
larcia Mogeloit'^y
Mogelon g is <r co n t rilmt i ng 'tor of American Demographics.
Imagine a rapidly growing ethnic group of almost 1 million people who are generally well-educated and wealthy. Best of all, they speak English. Some may call this Peter s dream. It also happens to 'sthe general profile of Asian-Indian Orleans, a segment of the population 'W  1 a closer look.
Renumber of Asian Indians immi- ^gto the United States increased
ReorintArl with normission
rapidly after 1965, when amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act made it possible for them to enter the country in greater numbers than ever before. Although the first sizable group of Asian Indians arrived in this country between 1907 and 1914, the population today is still primarily first-generation im-
migrants.
Although immigration data have been available for decades, the U.S. decennial census did not enumerate the Asian-Indian population separately from a miscellaneous category of  other Asians  until from American Demographics, August 1995, pp. 32-39.   1995 by American Demographics, Inc.
Asian Indians are an especially strong presence in Middlesex* Somerset-Hunterdon, New Jersey.
lation in the United States numbered 815,000, up 111 percent from 387,000 in 1980. While the increase may look small when measured against the 819 percent increase for Cambodians or the 1,631 percent increase in the Hmong population, it is impressive when compared with the 4 percent increase in non-Hispanic whites or 13 percent increase among blacks. Pakistani and Bangladeshi populations in the United States are much smaller, but have been growing even faster. The Pakistani population increased fivefold in the 1980s, from 16,000 to 81,000. Almost 12,000 people identified themselves as Bangladeshi in the 1990 census, up from a
  miniscule 1,300 in 1980.
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6. ASIAN AMERICANS
Asian-Indian Country
More than three-quarters of Asian-Indian Americans fee in ten states.
(top-tee state* wtUi largest Asian-Mian poptilatioos to1990, poMtatfoe to 1990 wd 1980, Md percent change 1980-90}
1990		1990 pepdatiee	1980 percent chaege	
nek	state		popriatlM	1980-90
1	Califonria...............	189,973	59,774	167.6%
2	Now Yorii     *      *	140,985	67,636	108.4
3	Now Jofsojf	79,440	30,684	158.9
4	RM	 	64300	37,438	71.5
5	Texas	58,795	23395	138.5
6	Florite		31,457	11,039	185.0
7	POMMEViVSHiS		28,396	17,230	64.8
8	Marytand................	28,330	13,788	105.5
9	McHsm		23,845	15363	583
10		20,848	13,602	53.3
	TOTAL U.S				815,447	387323	110.6
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
Asians Indians traditionally have flocked to the Northeast, and primarily the urban portions of New York and New Jersey. But California led the states in 1990, with 
