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Chinese technology groups such as ByteDance and Alibaba are boosting their presence in Singapore as they vie with US rivals for dominance in south-east Asia.
Artificial intelligence start-up SenseTime, online travel platform Ctrip, social network site YY and telecoms provider China Telecom are also among those that have either increased their office footprint or plan to raise their headcount, according to multiple people involved in the discussions.
The trend comes against a backdrop of souring US-China relations and as companies from the world’s two biggest economies compete for regional influence in cutting-edge technologies.
“South-east Asia has been a big focus in the past 18 to 24 months for Chinese companies and now Singapore has become a battleground between Chinese tech and US tech who both see it as a springboard for the region,” said Ashley Swan, a Singapore-based executive director at property group Savills.
ByteDance, the owner of popular video streaming app TikTok, will expand from a shared office to much larger premises at One Raffles Quay in Singapore’s central business district this year. In November, Huawei opened a cloud and AI innovation lab in the city.
In perhaps the most eye-catching deal, Alibaba in May bought half of a $1.2bn skyscraper in Singapore’s central business district. It marked the tech group’s first international property purchase and the building will eventually become its headquarters outside of mainland China.
But they are still playing catch-up with the likes of Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon, which have been in the region for much longer and are still growing.
South-east Asia is one of the few places where US and Chinese companies openly compete for influence in areas such as cloud computing. The region of 650m people is rapidly moving online and provides a potentially huge customer base with markets such as Indonesia, Mr Swan added.
Facebook is building a $1bn data centre, its first in Asia, after moving to a new regional headquarters in Singapore in 2018. Twitter this year said it would set up its first Asia-Pacific engineering centre in the city.
US-China tensions may have “played a part” in Chinese technology companies raising their headcount but, more importantly, being in Singapore will help them expand their products and services into the region “in a big way” in the next few years, said Benjamin Cheong, a partner at law firm Rajah & Tann.
They also have a lot of confidence in Singapore in terms of its political stability and strong legal framework despite the higher costs of rental and salaries, he said.
The region has been a big focus for Alibaba, founded by billionaire Jack Ma, with the acquisitions of ecommerce businesses Lazada and Redmart. It has also invested in Tokopedia, a highly valued Indonesian online shopping unicorn.
Mainland Chinese venture capital companies are among those that have been most active in the city as they increase their investments in south-east Asian start-ups.
Along with Silicon Valley, Singapore is home to the largest number of Chinese technology companies outside of mainland China, according to property company JLL.
Chinese technology groups have steadily increased their presence since arriving in the city-state about five years ago, said Regina Lim, head of capital markets research for JLL’s Asia-Pacific business.
“They feel like it is China 15 years ago and if they made so much money as Chinese internet penetration and ecommerce grew, so too can it happen in places like Indonesia and Thailand,” said Ms Lim.
A personal essay about experiencing and overcoming internalized racism.
Mario Hernandez helps Christopher Lazaro adjust his tie before his sister's wedding. Courtesy of Christopher Lazaro.
I’ve never felt as carefree as I did when I was a kid.
I loved getting the latest video games, watching Saturday morning cartoons with my sister, collecting Pokemon cards and even just finishing my homework so I’d have time to play.
It was a simpler time.
I never worried or thought much about my race.
Then, high school came around. Those years were up and down. Mostly down, if I’m truthful.
As a Filipino American, it was tough being proud of my heritage then because around that time, about 12 years ago, the internet was booming and sites like Myspace, Tumblr and Facebook were on the rise. As if stereotypes and racism on TV wasn’t enough, now there was social media to perpetuate them.
I’ll never forget the day I was exploring Tumblr and I stumbled upon a page created by an Asian woman. The post was about why she wouldn’t date an Asian man.
And, boy, were her explanations pretty bad. She started saying that the reason why she wouldn’t date an Asian guy was because they have small penises, they are all ugly, they all look alike, or they all look like her brother.
I was shocked and hurt.
As I nervously kept going through her page, I thought, “This has to be a troll page.”
But the more I read, the more I suspected she was serious about what she said.
For instance, she put up a post on why Asian women should only date white guys and others of herself saying things like, “I want a white guy in me.”
When I turned off the computer and tried to sleep, I couldn’t get my mind off the awful things said about Asian men. Questions raced in my head: “What compelled her to say these things?” “What is her personal life like?” “Am I really that ugly?”
The thoughts got darker. “I hate being Asian.” “I wished I was born white or another ethnicity”.
It’s no surprise I didn’t date anyone in high school, even a girl who I later suspected liked me.
Her name is Kristine. We had a lot in common such as enjoying anime, video games and metal music. We would often talk on Myspace. I wanted to ask her out but after reading the Tumblr posts, my insecurities got the best of me and I never asked her out.
“The ugly truth is, some of our friends and family see having white friends as some sort of social advancement. Oh, you have white friends in college? You’re so cultured. You’re dating a white man? Wow [Average Joe] is so handsome, you’re so lucky, I want one too,” writes Sarah Y. Kim in a commentary for the Johns Hopkins News-Letter. “To acknowledge that somewhere deep down, you may have internalized these stereotypes and that rejecting men because of their ethnicity, because they’re Asian, is racism.”
My early days in community college were no better. I was a pretty terrible person not only to myself, but to other people, including my relatives. My insecurities flared up even worse and I would post comments like “women just want white guys” or “women just want to date bastards.” I would be ripped apart, not only from my friends but even my family.
Over the years, my fears were confirmed by YouTube and other social media posts, including a video of an Asian woman saying she would only date an Asian man if he had a lot of money.
Sadly, I believed what I saw and read then and it made my insecurities worse.
As a last-ditch effort, I tried getting into online dating, which was a train wreck. I remember swiping right on Tinder and getting no matches at all and the only matches I would get were bots. I gave up. I felt like a loser: hopeless and ugly.
I’m not alone. A 26-year-old Chinese Canadian man told the news site, The Conversation, about his experience using dating apps: “It makes me angry cause it sort of feels like you’re getting rejected when sometimes … you’re messaging people and then, they unmatch you … or sometimes they don’t respond, or you just keep getting no responses … It feels like a small rejection.”
Asian American men apparently lose their virginity later than other groups, according to an article in the sociology magazine, Contexts.
“By age 17, 33% of Asian American males, compared to 53% of White males, 82% of Black males, and 69% of Hispanic males had lost their virginity,” according to the magazine. “Girls are typically more likely than boys to date, but the sex gap in romantic involvement is especially pronounced among Asians.”
When I had come across the Asian woman on Tumblr who was obsessed with hating on Asian men, I honestly didn’t think I would ever meet someone like that in real life.
Well, I was wrong. During my last year in community college, I met a Filipino woman through a mutual friend. At first, she was a pretty cool person and I enjoyed hanging out with her.
One day, I texted her to see if she wanted to have lunch.
We went to a Korean BBQ restaurant. We talked about life after community college and other things. When the conversation turned to our dating preferences, she said, “I prefer dating white guys.”
“You don’t like dating Asian guys?” I asked.
“Eeeewwww, no!” she said.
“Why?” I asked, dreading her answer.
“Because the Asian guys I dated all had small penises,” she said.
I tried not to show it, but I was angry and hurt.
“What is wrong with her?” I thought. “Is that the first thing she thinks about when meeting a man for the first time?”
It’s one thing not to date an Asian guy because you just don’t find them attractive but it’s another thing to avoid Asian guys because of stereotypes on social media, TV and movies.
It just sounds racist at that point.
I talked recently about this with a close friend of mine, Perla Beltran, who also knew her.
“She always made fun of Asian men because when we would talk, she would say how they have small penises — even though she is Asian herself,” Beltran said. “I remember we had a conversation on why I like Asian men and she said, ‘Why? They are never good looking.’ It was getting annoying after a while.”
Fast forward to today. Things are a lot different. Although I’m still insecure about myself, I accept and appreciate my heritage thanks to the people and groups I’m part of at Cal State LA. For instance, I learned a lot about my culture through friends who are part of the university’s Filipino American club and for the University Times, I covered an event honoring an amazing civil rights leader, Larry Itliong, who helped organize Filipino farmworkers.
I had a couple of relationships along the way, too, so I’m starting to feel some self-worth.
I know I have a lot to work on, but I’m trying to take it day-by-day and focusing on my career goals. I’m looking for anyone to date right now. I plan to let life help me find that special woman who is just right for me.
Community News reporters are enrolled in JOUR 3910 – University Times. They produce stories about under-covered neighborhoods and small cities on the Eastside and South Los Angeles. Please email feedback, corrections and story tips to [email protected]
Stocks in Asia Pacific were mixed in Monday morning trade as a Chinese data release over the weekend showed the country's factory activity expanding in May.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 added 0.56% as shares of index heavyweight and conglomerate Softbank Group jumped 2.07%. The Topix index also traded 0.3% higher.
South Korea's Kospi rose 0.77%. Reuters reported Monday that the country's exports in May fell 23.7% year-on-year. That was worse than expectations in a Reuters poll of a median drop of 22.1% year-on-year.
Meanwhile, shares in Australia declined, with the S&P/ASX 200 down 0.76%.
Overall, the MSCI Asia ex-Japan index traded 0.17% higher.
Investor focus on Monday will likely be on Chinese economic data for a better gauge of the state of the country's economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
Data released over the weekend by China's National Bureau of Statistics showed factory activity in the country expanding in May, with the official manufacturing Purchasing Manager's Index (PMI) coming in at 50.6. That was a decline from the 50.8 print in April and below the 51.0 level expected by analysts, according to Reuters. Still, the figure for May was above the 50 level, which separates expansion from contraction in PMI readings.
Looking ahead to Monday, a private survey of China's manufacturing activity is expected to be released at 9:45 a.m. HK/SIN, when the Caixin/Markit manufacturing PMI is set to be out.
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 98.214 after declining from levels above 99.6 last week.
The Japanese yen traded at 107.77 per dollar after seeing turbulent moves last week as it swung from levels above 107.7 to about 107.1. The Australian dollar changed hands at $0.6673 following its rise from levels below $0.655 in the previous trading week.
Oil prices were lower in the morning of Asian trading hours, with international benchmark Brent crude futures 0.95% lower at $37.48 per barrel. U.S. crude futures also declined 1.18% to $35.07 per barrel.
What's on tap for Monday:
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Gov. DeWine activates National Guard in Cleveland as protests turn violent, curfew now in effect WJW FOX 8 News Cleveland[unable to retrieve full-text content]
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The curfew requires everyone within the city of Los Angeles to stay indoors starting at 8 p.m. Saturday until 5:30 a.m. on Sunday morning.
An Emergency Alert was sent around 7 p.m. declaring the curfew. According to the alert, "traveling to and from work, seeking or giving emergency care, and emergency responders are exempt." More information could be found here.
The mayor earlier announced a curfew for the downtown area between the 110 Freeway on the west, Alameda on the east, and the 10 Freeway on the south, and 101 Freeway on the north, the mayor said on Twitter.
We will always protect free speech and Angelenos’ right to live without fear of violence or vandalism. To increase safety for demonstrators, law enforcement and all citizens of Los Angeles, we are putting a curfew in place from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m.
— MayorOfLA (@MayorOfLA) May 30, 2020
https://t.co/vy3XM760qb
Currently, the curfew will apply to downtown Los Angeles between the 110 fwy on the west, Alameda on the east, and 10 fwy on the south, and 101 fwy on the north between 8 p.m. and 5:30 a.m.
— MayorOfLA (@MayorOfLA) May 30, 2020
Following the mayor's announcement, the cities of West Hollywood and Beverly Hills also enacted a curfew for 8 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. due to the protests.
The Los Angeles Police Department has mobilized its entire department due to the ongoing protests in Downtown Los Angeles and the Fairfax District.
Mayor Garcetti also announced all coronavirus testing centers are closed in Los Angeles due to safety concerns amid Saturday's protests.
According to the Los Angeles Police Department, at least 500 people were taken into custody on suspicion of unlawful assembly, six for looting and four for miscellaneous crimes.
Mayor Garcetti's announcement came as thousands of protesters marched through the streets of the Fairfax District Saturday afternoon, expressing outrage over the death of Floyd, and prompting a massive response from LAPD.
The demonstration originated as an organized event at Pan Pacific Park, which attracted a large crowd that eventually spilled out onto nearby streets. The marchers made their way west on Third Street before gathering at the Fairfax Avenue intersection.
Copyright © 2020 KABC-TV. All Rights Reserved.
In an effort to curb the violence that has erupted from social justice protests in recent days, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock has put a curfew in place for the city and county of Denver.
The curfew is effective from 8 p.m. through 5 a.m. each night, through Monday morning.
“Once 8 p.m. hits, our message is very simple: Go home,” Hancock said in an address from the City and County Building during a peaceful demonstration Saturday afternoon.
“In short, we have seen enough. We are not going to wait for these incidents to escalate any further … before we take action.”
Hancock said Gov. Polis had granted a request to deploy the Colorado National Guard to aid in the response to the protests and enforcement of the curfew. Denver’s Emergency Operations Center had also been activated.
Exemptions for the curfew include travel for essential activities needed for health and safety and employees traveling to and from work. A fine of up to $999 and/or one year in jail are the possible penalties if caught violating the curfew, the mayor said.
The measures come in the wake of two nights of violent protests through the streets of downtown Denver. On both Thursday and Friday, protests began peacefully in the afternoon and early evening hours, only to devolve into chaos and destruction as night fell.
The protestors are demanding justice for the death of George Floyd, who was killed in Minneapolis police custody earlier this week.
Hancock, who has been vocal about peoples’ right to protest in the days since Floyd’s death but urged demonstrators to do so peacefully, didn’t mince words in addressing the “agitators with selfish motives and reckless intentions” he and Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen said are responsible for the violence.
He asked: “What does this mindless destruction achieve? What justice is served by breaking windows at the library, or city hall … or other buildings just beginning to come back to life?”
“Whose life are you honoring when you loot businesses in our city?”
Police have used tear gas, pepper balls and other non-lethal weapons as means of crowd control as protests escalated. Pazen has defended those actions, saying they fall within the department’s use-of-force policy.
"What we'd like to convey is we need calm, we need restraint, we need agitators who do not represent what the city of Denver is all about – what the people of Colorado are all about – to stay away from this area and stop causing harm to our community,” he said on Denver7’s broadcast Friday night.
Early Saturday, before Hancock announced the city- and county-wide curfew, Denver police said that as many as 10,000 demonstrators were expected at another rally Saturday night.
Thousands took part in the peaceful protest and march outside the state capitol Saturday afternoon.
City officials in Boston are concerned that many Asian American residents may not be getting tested for the new coronavirus.
Boston’s Chinatown zip code, where half the residents are of Asian descent, is one of city neighborhoods with the lowest percentage of positive coronavirus cases, Marty Martinez, the city’s chief of Health and Human Services told the Boston Globe. Only 13% of those tested were positive, compared to the citywide cumulative percentage of 26%.
Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders make up just less than 10% of Boston’s population but account for only 4% of confirmed COVID-19 cases and 6% of deaths, according the newspaper. At the same time, black residents, who comprise 25% of the city’s population, account for 38% of COVID-19 infections and 35% of deaths, in cases where the race and ethnicity is known. Latinos make up nearly 20% of the Boston population and account for 25% of cases and 11% of deaths.
Paul Watanabe, a political science professor and director of the Institute for Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston who is on the mayor’s COVID-19 Health Inequities Task Force, thinks the numbers, though incomplete, show a low level of testing among Boston’s Asian American population. The percentage of deaths may indicate that those Asian Americans with COVID-19 are getting tested late.
“It suggests people might be contracting the illness, unknown that they got it, and going straight to death... without having their situation diagnosed through a positive test or being dealt with, more importantly,” Watanabe said.
On Saturday, activists who say Republican Gov. Charlie Baker is moving too slowly to restart the state economy held a rally in front of the Statehouse.
The group calling itself Super Happy Fun America said Baker should open up the state completely, even as Massachusetts continues to record hundreds of new coronavirus cases daily. Super Happy Fun America was the group that organized a “straight pride” parade in Boston last year.
Baker is taking a phased-in approach to reopening the economy and is set to outline more details of the second phase of reopening on Monday.
On Saturday, the state reported that the number of individuals diagnosed with confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 96,300 as the state reported more than 789 new cases. The overall number of confirmed COVID-19-related deaths since the start of the coronavirus pandemic climbed to 6,768 as another 50 deaths were reported.
Guests included actors George Takei and Tzi Ma, Assemblyman David Chiu and journalist Dion Lim from our Bay Area sister station KGO-TV.
A man in a car approached Ma "real slowly and rolled down his window," Ma recalled, "and looked at me straight in the eye and said, ''You should be quarantined,' and then took off.
The town hall was sponsored by the Asian American Journalists Association - Los Angeles.
Copyright © 2020 KABC-TV. All Rights Reserved.
Renee Tajima-Peña can pretty much identify the moment her racial identity was activated: While giving an oral report to her sixth grade class about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, her teacher called her a liar.
Calling into question Tajima-Pena’s account of her mother and grandmother’s experience at Heart Mountain, a concentration camp in Wyoming, the teacher said, “Well, they fabricated the whole thing. This could never happen in America.”
“I was so mad. I just knew at that point that this history really matters because my teacher’s trying to shut me up about it,” Tajima-Peña remembered. “And I knew that, you know, we have to tell our own truth.”
She said the exchange fueled a personal turn toward activism as a young adult and eventually motivated her to become a documentary filmmaker.
Earlier in May, PBS debuted Asian Americans, an ambitious five-part docuseries — with Tajima-Peña at the helm as lead producer. Starting in the 1850s, the series chronicles the history of the nation’s fastest growing demographic, a multiethnic grouping that gathers together cultures, languages and immigration histories.
“You have to go out of your way to find out about Asian American history,” she said. “It’s shocking what people don’t know. We have younger, non-Asian staff on the series, and we’d ask them, ‘Do you know about the Japanese American incarceration camps? Do you know about Vincent Chin?’ They’d say ‘No, never heard of it.’ It’s like, oh OK, I guess we better tell this story.”
Tajima-Peña herself played a key role in amplifying the story of Vincent Chin, the Chinese-American man from Detroit who was beaten to death in 1982 by two white auto workers who mistook him for being Japanese. At the time, Asian Americans became scapegoats as many blamed the decline of the U.S. auto manufacturing industry on Japanese car manufacturers. Tajima-Peña’s Academy award-nominated documentary, Who Killed Vincent Chin?, tells the story of how the justice system’s treatment of Chin’s murder case catalyzed the movement for Asian American civil rights.
Though she’s spent most of her life in Los Angeles, Tajima-Peña was born in Chicago and spent her early childhood in Lakeview and suburban Mount Prospect. WBEZ spoke with her about Asian Americans in the context of the pandemic, how her family ended up in Chicago, and how the making of the series unearthed a long-lost Chicago video archive.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
“Asian Americans” is streaming for free on PBS until June 8.
What do you hope people will take away from the series?
Renee Tajima-Peña: It’s not about how Asians became American, but how Asians have helped shape America. I think that people just don’t realize that, you know, not only that we’ve been here but that we’ve been part of moving forward.
In the late 19th century, a Chinese American restaurant worker named Wong Kim Ark was denied reentry to the U.S. He took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court and won the precedent for birthright citizenship. That's why my parents were born as U.S. citizens. Fast forward to the 21st century. Tereza Lee, a Korean immigrant to Chicago, became the first "Dreamer" whose story inspired Senator Dick Durbin to sponsor the DREAM Act, to create a pathway to legal status for immigrants who came here as young children.
Part 2 of the series highlights the impact of the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin, which you documented in your film, Who Killed Vincent Chin? How did that event change the Asian American political consciousness?
The Vincent Chin case really confirmed this idea of a pan-ethnic Asian America as a political force. But then, at the same time, our identity was being called into question because there were just so many new Asian Americans arriving, and they had a completely different historical memory.
Because of 1965 immigration reforms, and also because of people leaving as refugees and immigrants after the Vietnam War, you just had this huge influx of immigrants in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. So the Asian American population just really blossomed, not only in terms of numbers, but it just became so much more diverse.
And so I think the Vincent Chin case kind of culminated one era, but then at the same time a new era was being born.
Many are comparing the scapegoating of Asian Americans for the coronavirus pandemic to the racism towards Asian Americans during the time of Vincent Chin’s murder. How do you view the series’ release in today’s context?
Asian Americans realize that we can’t invoke Vincent Chin’s murder in the 1980s when Ahmaud Arberys [the unarmed African American man in Georgia who was fatally shot by armed white residents while jogging] are happening constantly in the African American community and in the Latinx community. And that’s the roots of the racism that are producing all this anti-Asian hate around the coronavirus, the roots of racism that are producing the anti-black violence, that are producing the fact that black, brown and indigenous people in this country are just getting slammed by the health disparities. I mean, the deaths and the COVID-19 cases are completely disproportionate to the population.
When we were doing the series, one thing that really struck us about that early period — you know, late 1800s to early 1900s — is that Jim Crow and anti-Asian exclusion were parallel. They happen at the same time. That was really a part of America defining who is an American, who can enjoy full rights and citizenship in this country. And that was really defined in large part by race. So, the roots have those fault lines.
It’s a real question for Asian Americans: where do we stand in terms of inter-ethnic tensions? Does justice mean “just us?” in terms of the relations between Asian Americans and other people of color.
We’re in such deep sh*t right now in not only public health, but the economy and the hate and the polarization. History helps us understand it so we don’t make the same mistakes over and over again. The Japanese American experience in World War II is something that is so present today because of the family detention and family separations along the border. The Vincent Chin case and the scapegoating of Muslims and South Asians after 9/11 are so present today because of the scapegoating of Asian Americans over the coronavirus. So that history matters — the history is really urgent.
How did your family end up in Chicago?
[In 1942,] when President Roosevelt enacted Executive Order 9066, all the Japanese Americans on the west coast had to evacuate, and most people ended up in incarceration camps. That’s what happened to most of my family. But my dad chose to self evacuate — he did not want to go to the camps. He figured, “Why should I go to basically a prison camp?” And he got on a train and went to Chicago.
He was 18 years old. He was just a kid. There was a labor shortage; a lot of the young men had gone off to war. They said they needed workers, so he was able to find a job in the Palmer House hotel. He’d go to jazz clubs, and he just fell in love with the city. When he got old enough, he was drafted into the service and deployed to Europe. Afterward, he came back to Los Angeles, where he met my mom and they got married. But in the late ’40s, they moved to Chicago.
A lot of Japanese Americans moved to Chicago because they didn’t feel welcome on the West Coast. Different pockets of my family on both sides had resettled [from the camps] to Chicago already, so my parents moved to Clark and Roscoe, just right around the corner from Wrigley Field. The Cubs were really kind of a center of life for the family. In the seventh inning, they used to let kids in for free, so my siblings would always go to the Cubs games.
In the early 1960s, when I was a toddler, we moved to Mount Prospect. But every weekend we were back on the North Side. My mother had a friend who taught Nisei [second generation Japanese American] women how to make those really beautiful Japanese dolls. So she would go and have a lesson every week and do shopping in [Lakeview] to get Japanese food and groceries.
You moved from Chicago to Los Angeles when you were around 8 years old. How did LA shape your Asian American identity?
[In Los Angeles], I grew up among so many Asian Americans. And people were becoming politicized and really identifying as Asian Americans.
In the late ’60s, I had older siblings who were a part of the fight for ethnic studies. And our generation of Japanese Americans and Asian Americans were just really being awakened. I mean, I was on the young end, but I was in the community. And so even as a child, I heard all that, and it filtered down to the playground and into the classroom. So by the time I was in high school, we were all doing these mini courses where we would teach each other about Asian American Studies after school, and we would have marches for ethnic studies.
When I went to college in the 1970s, I stated on my application that I wanted to major in Asian American Studies. This was Harvard. And Harvard still doesn’t have ethnic studies after all these years. But you know, I was naive.
The series features an excerpt from a 1981 video archive from Chicago, in which members of the Japanese American community testify about their incarceration experiences during World War II. The videos of these testimonies, which were instrumental in the eventual passing of the Civil Liberties Act in 1988, were thought to be lost. How did your team come across them?
We were looking for the Chicago hearing [tapes], because we wanted Kay Uno’s testimony. Kay Uno was one of the siblings of a family that’s one of the main stories in Episode 2 of the series.
So in 2019, Chicago historian Ryan Yokota called one of our researchers and said, “You know, [Northeastern Illinois University] found over 60 videotapes of the [Japanese American] redress and reparation hearings in Chicago.’ We were floored because that’s so valuable.
It’s the power of film. It’s, you know, hearing their voices. It’s seeing them — there’s nothing like it. It just can’t be replicated in print. It just can’t be.
Renee Tajiima-Peña is the series producer of Asian Americans. She's also a Professor of Asian American Studies and Director of the Center for EthnoCommunications at UCLA.
Katherine Nagasawa is WBEZ’s audience engagement producer. Follow her @Kat_Nagasawa.
NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with filmmaker Renee Tajima-Peña about the new PBS documentary series, Asian Americans.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Blame China - that is what the Trump administration has done as the coronavirus has spread across the U.S. And while China has been receiving the criticism, so too have Chinese Americans and, it seems, anybody who looks like them.
Asian Americans are reporting a surge in racist harassment and violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. And that brings new urgency to a five-hour documentary series now airing on PBS stations. The series is called simply "Asian Americans," and it traces the discrimination these communities have faced in the U.S. over the past century and a half. Renee Tajima-Pena is the series producer of "Asian Americans," and she joins us now. Welcome.
RENEE TAJIMA-PENA: Thanks so much for having me on.
CHANG: You know, I really appreciated your series because, as an Asian American kid growing up in the Bay Area, I became way, way more familiar with the story of the civil rights struggle for African Americans than I ever was for Asian Americans, and I feel like that's still the case for lots of young Asian Americans today. And I'm curious, why do you think that is? Why do you think the Asian American story has always been more obscure in this country?
TAJIMA-PENA: Well, where would you learn it?
CHANG: Yeah.
TAJIMA-PENA: You know, we're still pretty much invisible in the popular culture. I think more and more you see movies come out, these great episodic television shows, sitcoms. It's changing, but still, it's so embedded in the American psyche and imagination that we are a model minority. So as a model minority - you know, compliant, turn the other cheek, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and do not engage in protests and movements for equality.
So that idea is just so much a part of the way people see Asian Americans that the story of Asian Americans, which is - you know, the biggest labor strike in the United States was mounted by Chinese immigrant railroad workers.
CHANG: Yeah.
TAJIMA-PENA: I mean, it goes back since we started arriving here. But people don't know it.
CHANG: So for this particular series - I mean, it's five hours long. You had to make so many decisions to fit - what? - a century and a half's worth of Asian American history into five hours. Can you just describe for me the themes, the threads behind what you ultimately selected to tell?
TAJIMA-PENA: We were looking at the real story of Asian Americans, not the model minority. It's a story of race, xenophobia, immigration, as well as real resilience. My family, for example - I'm Japanese American - my grandparents came in the early 1900s, smack in the middle of the anti-Asian exclusion era. They lived through the Great Depression. Then the depression was over; it was World War II. They were incarcerated behind barbed wire in American concentration camps.
And yet they thrived, yet they had families. They are part of building communities, and that's really been the Asian American story. It's really a story of resilience.
CHANG: And one of the hard truths that you take on is this idea that - you know, discrimination against Asian Americans in this country, there's something about it that keeps repeating. Like, in times of crisis, for example, Asians get blamed, whether it be Japanese Americans during World War II or South Asians and people from the Middle East after 9/11 and now Chinese Americans during this pandemic. Does it feel cyclical to you, this scapegoating?
TAJIMA-PENA: I'm not sure that's cyclical; I think it's just embedded in American society, and that's where the fight is. So for Asian Americans, it's - we're not exceptional. You know, all people of color in this country face racism and have since the beginning of the republic. When we look back in that history, there's no coincidence that Jim Crow and anti-Asian Exclusion happened at the same time. I mean, it was the same, you know, roots of racism in the country.
But I think in terms of the scapegoating, you know, one thing we wanted to do with the series is look at these fault lines of race and xenophobia, and during times of crisis, those fault lines erupt.
CHANG: I mean, one of the threads I found most interesting in this series is how the Asian American struggle bumps up against the African American struggle in this country. The communities have, at times, buttressed each other but also have been at odds.
And you drew, you know, a century and a half later, a very powerful connection between the murder of Vincent Chin - the Chinese American man who was beaten to death by two white men in Detroit in 1982 - you draw a connection between his death and the killing of Latasha Harlins, an African American girl who was shot by a Korean store owner in LA in 1991. What are the parallels that you saw there?
TAJIMA-PENA: You know, I think that the Vincent Chin case, for Asian Americans, really stands out as being a turning point, when a lot of people realized, yeah, we do face discrimination and racism. But also, Asian Americans of all different nationalities came together to fight for justice. But I think that's tricky because a Vincent Chin happens in the African American community, it happens to black and brown people almost every day, you know.
What we want to say as filmmakers is, you know, we're a country that's increasingly diverse, but at the same time more divided. So how do we move forward together? I mean, that's a real question of the series. How do we move forward together? And there's a lot in the Asian American story that helps us see how we can move forward together. I mean, that's what we really want the audience to take away.
CHANG: Renee Tajima-Pena is a professor of Asian American studies at UCLA and the series producer of "Asian Americans" from PBS. Thank you so much for talking with us today.
TAJIMA-PENA: Thank you.
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Demonstrators in Minneapolis are disregarding the city’s 8 p.m. curfew, setting the stage for confrontations with police for another night.
The mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul ordered city curfews starting at 8 p.m. until 6 a.m. Saturday, then restarting at 8 p.m. Saturday through 6 a.m. Sunday.
The hope was the cities could avoid a repeat of the past few days where peaceful protests over the killing of George Floyd dissolved into mayhem and looting after sunset. Gov. Tim Walz reinforced the city orders with one from his office.
As the sun set Friday, however, it appeared the order would not keep people off the streets, at least in Minneapolis.
A night after protesters overran and burned the 3rd Precinct police headquarters, protesters were massing around the 5th Precinct station on Nicollet Avenue, south of Lake Street.
Elsewhere, protesters were blocking Interstate 35W south of downtown.
At this point in the evening, city police and law enforcement did not appear to be enforcing the curfew.
Protests over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis continue Friday
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By contrast, there were no reports out of St. Paul of widespread protests after curfew.
Earlier in the day Friday, St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell said he’s asked for 400 members of the State Patrol and National Guard to help patrol St. Paul, which saw swaths, of destruction and looting Thursday, especially in the Midway neighborhood.
“Free speech does not extend to breaking windows,” St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter told reporters.
He said he understood the pain and anger many felt as video surfaced of Floyd pleading that he couldn’t breathe while a Minneapolis police officer pressed against his neck. That officer was charged earlier Friday with murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s killing.
Carter, though, implored protesters not to use their rage to “destroy our community institutions.”
City police said more than 170 business had been damaged or looted overnight but with no serious injuries. Officers made seven arrests and responded to hundreds of calls, including 89 “shots fired” calls.
Fire officials said their squads responded to nearly 300 calls in the city, including 50 structural fires.
During the curfew hours, people are prohibited from streets or public spaces. Police and other emergency responders are exempt. Those caught violating the orders face a misdemeanor penalty and a $1,000 fine.
Axtell admonished those who were “disgustingly looting” Thursday night, drawing a line between peaceful demonstrators and “the people who decide to take this as an opportunity to victimize our community.”
Multiple other cities and counties in the Twin Cities metro area have also announced similar curfews.
Roseville: Overnight curfews will be imposed from 8 p.m. through 6 a.m. for three days starting Friday night.
Bloomington: A nighttime curfew goes into effect Friday night from 9 p.m. through 6 a.m. Saturday and 8 p.m. Saturday through 6 a.m. Sunday.
Maple Grove: A curfew in all public places takes effect from 8 p.m. Friday through 6 a.m. Saturday and 8 p.m. Saturday until 6 a.m. Sunday.
Osseo: A citywide, overnight curfew from 9 p.m. through 6 p.m. starts Friday night and remain in effect for three days.
Richfield: A curfew will be in place from 9 p.m. Friday through 6 a.m. Saturday and 8 p.m. Saturday through 6 a.m. Sunday.
Brooklyn Park: An overnight curfew takes effect from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. starting Friday night through Monday morning.
Robbinsdale: 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. starting Friday night and until further notice
Brooklyn Center: 8 p.m. through 6 a.m. Friday and Saturday night. The curfew could be extended additional nights.
St. Louis Park: A citywide curfew is in place from 10 p.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Saturday and resumes at 8 p.m. through 6 a.m. from Saturday night until Monday morning.
Dakota County: Countywide curfews will be in place from 8 p.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Saturday and resume at 8 p.m. Saturday until 6 a.m. Sunday.
Anoka County: Overnight, countywide curfews are in place from 8 p.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Saturday, 8 p.m. Saturday to 6 a.m. Sunday, and 8 p.m. Sunday through 3 a.m. Monday.
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