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#176 4/17 Roundtable; Red Scare/McCarthyism; Texas; ISSCO Videos/Photos; Non-Random Surveys

In This Issue #176

  • 2023/04/17 Roundtable on a National Alert Network

  • Fight Back the Return of the Red Scare and McCarthyism

  • Chinese Americans Fight for Their Place in Texas

  • Online Videos and Photos of the ISSCO 30th Anniversary Conference

  • "Inference Using Non-Random Samples? Stop Right There!"


2023/04/17 Roundtable on a National Alert Network 


WHEN:  Monday, April 17, 2023, 7:00 pm ET/4:00 pm PT

WHAT:  Online Roundtable

DESCRIPTION: Inaugural roundtable to establish the purpose and functions of a national media alert network and strike teams to assertively address immediate xenophobic challenges to our freedoms and longer-term proactive actions to ensure fairness and justice for all, including the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) and immigrant communities.

REGISTRATION: This is an event by invitation only to guests and official representative(s) of AAPI organizations.  Members at the Roundtable will be sent a panelist link.  Others please register at http://bit.ly/3KvlMI8 



Fight Back the Return of the Red Scare and McCarthyism


According to a report by the Los Angeles Times on April 9, 2023, the far-rightring site Daily Caller, co-founded by Fox News showman Tucker Carlson, published a hit piece devoid of damning facts, heavy on innuendo and liberally sprinkled with the words "alleged" and "allegedly," that painted former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Walter Wang as dangerous stooges of the Chinese Communist Party.  Walter Wang, a Taiwanese immigrant, is chief executive of Los Angeles-based pipe manufacturer JM Eagle and a longtime American citizen.Wang's friends and close business associates know better than to believe the story, "but the people who are not close to me and don't know me well are going to think of me now in a negative light.  It could really hurt my reputation." The Garcetti piece also lit into Dominic Ng, Chief Executive of Pasadena-based East West Bank.  And previous Daily Caller stories have taken aim at Frank Wu, the president of Queen's College, City University of New York, and Asian Americans involved with the mainstream news outlet the China Project.

As tensions rise between the governments of the United States and China, the Daily Caller has leaned into narratives with a similar theme: Chinese and Taiwanese Americans with any connections to China are probably up to some unAmerican activities."If every Chinese American in a photo with any Chinese official is suspect, you're talking about every successful Chinese person," said Frank Wu, "this is about whether or not you have an Asian face."Wu himself became a target of accusations by the Daily Caller last December.  That story went after an English language news site called the China Project.  No solid facts underpin the innuendo.  The article named Wu and other ethnic Asians who sit on the China Project's advisory board.  They "appear to belong," the Daily Caller said, to a group called the Committee of 100.

Wu says he is in fact a proud members of the committee, which was founded by architect I.M. Pei and cellist Yo-Yo Ma and comprises prominent Chinese Americans who work together to address political, cultural and economic issues between the U.S. and China.Wu, Ng, and Wang see the articles as part of a poisonous campaign to smear political opponents, an approach that pairs McCarthy-era Red Scare tactics with anti-Asian racism.At the same time, all three say they enjoy powerful positions that protect them to some extent from the worst forms of racism.Asian Americans in general have been known to keep a low profile in politics, but it is time to speak up. "We can't just be talking among ourselves in the Asian community, the outreach has to be broader.  I'm worrying about being the silent majority," Ng said."We have to fight this," said Wang, who is contemplating a lawsuit.  "If we don't fight it, who will?" 

Read the Los Angeles Times report: http://bit.ly/3GqwM8I



Chinese Americans Fight for Their Place in Texas


According to a report by the Texas Tribune on April 3, 2023, a mid-January Twitter post by Governor Greg Abbott alerted Chinese Americans across Texas that their rights might be trampled as state lawmakers rushed to burnish their geopolitical credentials.On January 15, the Republican governor told his 1 million followers he was ready to sign into law Texas Senate Bill 147 that would ban “citizens, governments & entities” of China, Iran, North Korea and Russia from purchasing land in the state, in effect blocking some immigrants from becoming homeowners.The bill restricting land ownership was followed by kindred proposals to ban international college students from those same countries and to cut off Texans’ access to TikTok and another social media platform that’s become crucial for the Chinese diaspora living in the state to communicate with family in China.As the Legislature’s work has ramped up, the political headwinds have drafted Chinese Americans into defending their foothold in a state where many have lived for decades, and where Asian Americans have reliably made up the fastest-growing segment of population for years. They’ve grown fearful of a legislative culture that could feed challenges to the rights of Asian Texans, as well as Texans from the other targeted countries.

“You can target foreign governments, you can target [the] foreign Chinese Communist Party, but you have to separate that from the individuals that are already in this country and protected by the Constitution,” said Hugh Li, president of the Austin Chinese-American Network and a naturalized citizen of 18 years. “This is our land too. This is our home too. So for the Texas Legislature to want to pass these kinds of bills targeting us and strip away our rights, it’s just not right.”More recently, House Bill 2206 was introduced to ban social media platforms “developed or provided” by entities in the four countries.  The social media bill echoes federal efforts to scrutinize popular platforms like TikTok and WeChat over security concerns related to China’s access to Americans' data.The proposals have left it to Chinese Americans to delineate for lawmakers that their lives in Texas exist far apart from geopolitical considerations.

At a House hearing in March, a contingent of Chinese Americans waited more than six hours to testify against the legislation that would ban social media platforms, detailing how they rely on WeChat to stay in touch with family. They held up screenshots of video chats between grandparents and grandchildren. One Texan grew emotional as they described how the bill would sever the “bridge for emotional connection” for many Chinese Americans.WeChat is used by 1.3 billion people every month. In China, the platform is reportedly heavily censored and serves as an instrument for mass government surveillance. In households across the state, however, Chinese Americans primarily rely on the messaging and calling tools available through WeChat to connect with family members and friends back in China, where the use of the app is ubiquitous and where other social media or messaging platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp are banned.In 58 pages of testimony submitted in writing to the committee, Texans described WeChat as an “indispensable lifeline connecting us to our families, friends, and culture.”

Some described how the use of WeChat in the U.S. has grown into an important tool for businesses connecting with supplies overseas. It was crucial for Chinese restaurants fighting to stay afloat at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s used by day cares to send notifications to parents and by community groups to distribute news, notifications and even weather warnings that otherwise would not be translated from English. The app even serves as a platform for Bible studies among Chinese-speaking churches.Others raised claims of unconstitutionality and questioned why Chinese Americans would be targeted in what they described as an affront to their First Amendment and equal protection rights. Federal courts blocked the Trump administration’s 2020 efforts to block TikTok and WeChat in the United States through executive orders, though the effort has more recently gained bipartisan support in Congress, where national security concerns have reverberated among lawmakers from both parties.

Some described how the use of WeChat in the U.S. has grown into an important tool for businesses connecting with supplies overseas. It was crucial for Chinese restaurants fighting to stay afloat at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s used by day cares to send notifications to parents and by community groups to distribute news, notifications and even weather warnings that otherwise would not be translated from English. The app even serves as a platform for Bible studies among Chinese-speaking churches.Others raised claims of unconstitutionality and questioned why Chinese Americans would be targeted in what they described as an affront to their First Amendment and equal protection rights. Federal courts blocked the Trump administration’s 2020 efforts to block TikTok and WeChat in the United States through executive orders, though the effort has more recently gained bipartisan support in Congress, where national security concerns have reverberated among lawmakers from both parties.

“It’s just a reminder that the place of immigrants in this country and this state is so tenuous, and it can all be taken away so easily,” she said.Read the Texas Tribune report: http://bit.ly/40RvbRi


Online Videos and Photos of the ISSCO 30th Anniversary Conference

ISSCO, the International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas, was established in 1992.  On November 11-12, 2022, ISSCO convened its 30th Anniversary Conference in San Francisco.Five videos from the plenary sessions of the conference are online:




  • ISSCO Founders Roundtable (54:24).  Moderator: Madeline HSU; Slideshow by: Wei LI; Speakers: Ling-chi WANG, Karen HARRIS, Emmanuel MA MUNG, and Teresita ANG SEE

An album of photos from the conference is available here: https://bit.ly/3mj3py2. If you would like to use the photos for any purpose, please contact the photographer Joyce Xi at joyceyxi11@gmail.com. Joyce can also provide higher-resolution files.


"Inference Using Non-Random Samples?  Stop Right There!"



Surveys are commonly used to measure the current state of affairs or the opinions of a group of people. One of the most significant scientific innovations at the end of the nineteenth century is the introduction of probability-based or random sampling. According to the Significance Magazine in October 2021,"statistical inference is a powerful concept.  Among other things, it allows us to infer information about a population based on a sample of data from that population.  To make appropriate inferences from sample to population, certain pre-conditions need to be met.  One of these pre-conditions is that data come from a random sample." Incredibly, a small random sample of say 1,000 individuals would allow statistical inference to be made about the Chinese American population of about 5.5 million within some margin of measurable sampling error.However, random surveys can be costly, laborious, and difficult to conduct.  Non-random surveys are also conducted, but the scope of inference is limited to the survey respondents.

The temptation to go beyond this boundary is strong.  The Significance article observes that inferential statistics should not be used in non-random studies.  "However, in many cases, they are.  A lack of awareness of the need for random sampling among researchers leads them to go through the motions...  Even when researchers themselves do know this, they can find themselves compelled to perform inference by ignorant referees.""in short, if we do not start with a random sample, turning what we have into one is challenging or even impossible.  In such cases, we should accept the hard truth that statistical inference is not possible.  We must simply report what the data show - and refuse to push them statistically further," the Significance article concludes.In a separate article by Nature in December 2021 which examined the estimates of first-dose COVID-19 vaccine uptake in US adults from 9 January to 19 May 2021, it was shown "how a survey of 250,000 respondents can produce an estimate of the population mean that is no more accurate than an estimate from a simple random sample of size 10. Our central message is that data quality matters more than data quantity, and that compensating the former with the latter is a mathematically provable losing proposition."

Next time you see the release of a survey and its results, you may want to look deeper into how the inferences are made on the respondents only or an entire population.


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April 10, 2023

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