Chinese-Americans are becoming politically active

THE 2016 election marked a coming-out party for conservative Chinese-Americans, who offered Donald Trump some of his most passionate support among non-whites. Now some are feeling the first twinges of a hangover, as their hero threatens a trade war with China and hints that he might upgrade ties with Taiwan, the island that Chinese leaders call no more than a breakaway province.

“My members worshipped Trump religiously for a whole year,” says David Tian Wang, a 33-year-old businessman originally from Beijing, who founded “Chinese Americans for Trump”, a group which paid for Trump billboards in more than a dozen states and flew aerial banners over 32 cities. Perhaps most importantly, Mr Wang’s members rallied supporters on Chinese-language internet forums and messaging apps including WeChat, attracting outsized attention from media outlets and elected officials in places where Asian voters can swing elections, such as southern California. Interviewed in Diamond Bar, an affluent, majority-Asian city east of Los Angeles, Mr Wang remains a true believer. But perhaps half of his members are anxiously “waiting for Trump’s next move”.

There are about 4m Chinese-Americans. Typically, most combined a mild preference for Democrats with a general wariness of party politics. Early immigrants from southern China, Hong Kong and Taiwan lacked education, clustered in inner cities and “worked in bad jobs”, making them prey for Democratic politicians offering welfare, sniffs Mr Wang. Recent immigrants from mainland China often attended good universities, work in the professions and “want to mingle with white people”, he says. A big political moment came in 2014, when Chinese-Americans mobilised against SCA5, a proposed amendment to California’s constitution that would have opened the door to race-based affirmative action. Many Chinese-Americans charge that race-conscious school admissions hurt high-achieving Asian youngsters and favour black and Hispanic candidates.

Asian votes helped Phillip Chen, a young Republican of Taiwanese descent, win a seat in the California state Assembly in November, representing Diamond Bar and a swathe of nearby suburbs. For years Asian-Americans, who make up about a third of his district’s registered voters, shunned politics, though they longed to assimilate and fit in in other ways. At the recent election his own mother’s friends wondered aloud why her son, “a nice young man” with a graduate degree, was running for office. His Chinese-American constituents admire Mr Trump’s business acumen and worry about taxes, regulation and law and order, including a clampdown on illegal immigration. But they also want peace between Taiwan and China, Mr Chen says, and so will be watching the new president with a wary eye.

At an Asian shopping centre in Rowland Heights the most worried are those, such as Mike Lee, a sales director from Taiwan, who backed Hillary Clinton. He fears that Mr Trump will use the island as a “bargaining chip” with China. In contrast John Lin, a businessman from southern China, does not regret his Trump vote, cast because he thinks that “generally speaking a man has more control than a woman”. He scoffs at talk of a trade war: “Walmart can’t survive without Chinese products.” As for rows over Taiwan, Mr Trump just needs time to become “more familiar with the world”. Mr Lin has strong nerves, a helpful asset for Trump fans everywhere.