








d together n c^urc^ and a new mosque, to be built side by side psame property. They named their common access road fann ^errace," and they are now next-door neighbors. We
0 s  an example for the world," said one of the Muslim <ers.
i^aCr?SS America, there are new interreligious councils  lterJS Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Lincoln, Nebraska The pDni? Ous Council of Southern California supported the en*  f a Buddhist chaplain in the California tate eles backed the Sikhs in their petition to the Los An- hce Department to be allowed to wear the turban
first Eid celebration ever to take place there. She said, "This celebration is an American event. We are a nation of immigrants who have long drawn on our diverse religious traditions and faiths for the strength and courage that make America great."
The sacred Hindu thread ceremony, the  upanayana,  at Sri Venkateswara Temple, Bridgewater, New Jersey.
COLLEAGUE SAMUEL HUNTINGTON,
. row VFARS AGO, MY HARVARD-----	.
  SX  Me of    d7 "J'6 ', a ^tingmsne p	shape the av]hzations of
T^orid* In thf new postiCold War era, he predicted that the world. In t	have a	conung
"civilizational ld^ y intended that the Confucian, Is-Political reahg^	to reckon th
lamic, and Hindu foresees a "clash of civilizations, geopolitical arena	worlds	dvilizationS/ we
But where ^ y dus	Leicester, Durban, Toronto, and
might ask, with	pariS/ London, Chicago, and
Houston? With hug	of 1980s and 1990s has
Toledo? One of the	f peopies from one nation
to another, both as irnnugr demographic changes of these the globe is expt*	no longer somewhere
migrations. Today,	_________________________
___________________________7Th  clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs,
173
6. ASIAN AMERICANS
Today, the Islamic world is no longer somewhere else, in some other part of the world; instead Chicago, with its 50 mosques an nearly half a million Muslims, is part of the Islamic world.
else, in some other part of the world; instead Chicago, with its 50 mosques and nearly half a million Muslims, is part of the Islamic world. America today is part of the Islamic, the Hindu, the Confucian world. It is precisely the interpenetration of ancient civilizations and cultures that is the hallmark of the late twentieth century. This is our new georeligious reality. The map of the world in which we now live cannot be color-coded as to its Christian, Muslim, or Hindu identity, but each part of the world is marbled with the colors and textures of the whole.
The plurality of religious traditions and cultures challenges people in every part of the world today, including the United States, which is now the most religiously diverse country on earth. Diversity we have here in America and here at Harvard. It is not an ideology invented by the multicultural enthusiasts of the left. It is the new reality of our society. Diversity we have. But what is pluralism? First, pluralism is not diversity alone, but the energetic engagement with that diversity. Diversity can and has meant the creation of religious ghettoes with little traffic between or among them. In this new world of religious diversity, pluralism is not a given, but an achievement. In the world into which we now move, diversity without engagement, without a fabric of relationship, will be increasingly difficult and increasingly dangerous.
Second, pluralism will require not just tolerancf active seeking of understanding. Tolerance is a neces lie virtue, but it does not require Christians and Mus dus, Jews, and ardent secularists to know anything another. Tolerance is simply too thin a foundation ft of religious differences. It does nothing to remove rance of one another, and leaves in place the stere' half-truth, the fear that underlie old patterns of dix violence. In the world into which we now move, rance of one another will be increasingly costly.
And finally, pluralism is not simply relativism, paradigm of pluralism does not require us to leave tities and our commitments behind, for pluralism counter of commitments. It means holding ou differences, even our religious differences, not in iso in relationship to one another. The language of pl that of dialogue and encounter, give and take, crii self-criticism. In the world into which we now me language we will have to learn.
Whether in India or America, whether on New 1 Avenue or at Harvard University, the challenge fc today is how to shape societies, nations, neighborl universities that now replicate and potentially ma ure the differences that have long divided human
Article 35
fh e
CHINESE DIASPORA
ETER KWONG
  qr undreds of years before there was | any talk of an  Asian miracle,  I vast numbers of Chinese left their
. A homeland in search of fortune xoad. Most, from southern China, traveled :st to the area that is now Laos, Myanmar, id Vietnam, then farther afield, into what is to Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia. The alifornia gold rush lured some, while eco-amic growth in Larin America beckoned thers. Often they left China out of despera-on because of land shortages, wars, imines, or intrusive governments. Many left Dine with little except their dreams of  turning as wealthy men.
Now the wealth created by the ethnic Chi-ese consists of a great deal more than the hinatowns of major cities. The Chinese busi-ssmen who live across Southeast Asia have   the driving force behind the region s eco-omic explosion. In Thailand ethnic Chinese take up 10 percent of the population but con-ol 81 percent of the market value of listed ompanies. In Indonesia they compose 3.5 wcent of the population but control 73 per-ent of such capital. Most of Asia s estimated nehundred billionaires are ethnic Chinese.
 me of these tycoons have also trans-3rmed parts of North America. For example, y moneyed elite from Hong Kong own siz-
e portions of San Francisco s downtown and reside in large Mediterranean-style ^sions in the hills surrounding the city, 'an d ^'^SOs, they began investing in erm w^ere government has promised res dence to people who have a lolla fat 'east a half-million Canadian anttS are willing to invest signifi-9s/Utn??n the Canadian economy. From to 1994, a little over 9.7 percent of all
 dhv toot0 Canada were businesspeople, 94 more chan half of those usually
affluent tmnugrants came from either Taiwan or Hong Kong. By the end of 1994, according to one estimate, ethnic Chinese had added a net worth of $15 billion to Canada s economy. Toronto and Montreal both benefited from this movement of overseas Chinese capital, and Vancouver, partly because of its location and climate, has been particularly blessed by some of East Asia s wealthiest investors, who now control 25 percent of its most expensive and prestigious neighborhood, the West End.
When the totals are added up, overseas Chinese are said to control more than $2.5 trillion of wealth. For perspective, compare that with the 1995 gross domestic product in Japan of $5.1 trillion, or the figure for the United States of $7.2 trillion.
In a sense, many of these Chinese have fulfilled their ancestors  dreams of coming home rich. The entrepreneurs who fared so well in Asia and North America have been fueling mainland China s double-digit growth since free-market reforms opened its economy in 1979. By 1993, 69 percent of direct foreign investment in China, totaling $47.5 billion, came from ethnic Chinese in Hong Kong. Taiwan, according to China, had by 1993 put up $6.4 billion, or 9.3 percent of total foreign investment in the mainland economy. (The true figure is likely to be much higher.)
The recent success of Chinese expatriates has been so stunning that businesspeople everywhere are searching for explanations, much like when pundits speculated on the successes of Japan in the 1970s and 1980s. Was the secret ingredient teamwork? Company loyalty? A stronger work ethic? Now economic theorists are studying Chinese culture and history, and Confucius has become the patron saint of entrepreneurs and developing
>.	economies worldwide. The overseas Chinese,
Bw^*^ overseas Chinese are investing in China, to be sure. w not just out of love of ancient homeland. It s business.
ITS
^ue, New York. NY 10153
6. ASIAN AMERICANS
long the outcasts of Asia, are now the international business community s model citizens.
Ask Casey K. C. Foung why the majority of investors who fueled and have capitalized on the Asian boom are of Chinese descent, and he has a simple answer.  When Asian countries sought foreign investment to develop, Western capital was not there,  says Foung, a New York resident who is the founder of Arch Associates, a medium-size quilt-making firm with extensive operations in China.  When China decided to open, the only capital came from the overseas Chinese. China would have preferred infusion from high-tech American and European corporations, but the West was reluctant to venture in without legal guarantees: property rights, tax laws, price deregulation, international arbitration. Overseas Chinese capital took the risk. 
Members of the Chinese  diaspora  come from a 600-year tradition of enterprising fortune seekers who escaped China s strict government controls in order to ply their trades. Most of them came from two southeastern provinces, Guangdong and Fujian, on the cultural periphery of the Chinese empire. Operating in their new homelands without the protection of China s government, they readily adapted to different trading systems and governing styles and established importexport businesses through commercial networks, often made up of Chinese who spoke the same dialect.
For more than 300 years, ethnic Chinese around Asia controlled rice mills, light manufacturing, and money lending. They owned plantations, oil mills, timber industries, manufacturing concerns, and the bulk of small retail shops selling staples. They thereby made themselves indispensable to the various indigenous populations and later to the imperialists who ruled them.  The Chinese,  wrote T. M. Ward, a British physician stationed in Malacca in 1827,  are the most enterprising, the most opulent, the most industrious and the most determined in pursuit of wealth. 
British, Dutch, and French colonial rulers recognized this indispensability and capitalized on it, giving the ethnic Chinese throughout Asia special status as go-betweens, especially during the nineteenth century, colonialism s peak. Their businesses also provided the most reliable and readily available tax revenue for colonial governments, and because of that these governments barred the Chinese from all but their traditional trading occupations.
Understandably, the non-Chinese who lagged behind economically were often resentful, accusing their Chinese residents of dominating their economies by dubious means and unfair practices. After World War II, postcolonial nationalist governments in the
region generally became hostile to Chinese residents, and after the fall of the nationalists in 1949, suspected them of having ties to the communists. Almost without exception, the ethnic Chinese experienced severe persecution and restrictions. In Thailand and Indonesia, they were forced to assimilate by adopting local names. In Malaysia, the government set up impediments through occupational, educational, and other quotas favoring ethnic bumiputras, or  sons of the soil.  There have been periods of intense racial violence, such as in Malaysia in the 1960s and 1970s, and in Indonesia in 1965.
Because of the centuries of persecution, overseas Chinese have developed a deep-
FOLLOW THE MONEY
Foreign direct investment 1 in China, 1979-1994. I in billions of dollars |
Hong Kong	$67.3	!
Taiwan*	9.8	i
United States	6.1	|
Japan	5.3	|
Singapore	2.7	I
'Analysts estimate (hat (he ;
Chinese government may 1 underreport Taiwanese invest ; merit in China by as much .is 1 50 percent because a large i percentage of Taiwanese , money is invested in ( hin.i via Hong Kong companies. ,
Source: Statistical
