Dr. Larry Hajime Shinagawa is the director of the Asian American Studies Program and an associate professor of American Studies.
On Sept. 27, 2008, Chinese Taikonaut Zhai Zhigang made the first-ever space walk for twenty minutes by a Chinese astronaut.
China had successfully completed its third manned space mission by launching the spaceship Long March Shenzhou 7 with a three-person crew, conducting the space walk, and returning the crew safely to Inner Mongolia, China, late Monday afternoon. The following day, on Sept. 29, 2008, its crew triumphantly walked the streets of the national capital, Beijing, evoking patriotic pride at every turn of their path.
On a black Monday, September 29, 2008, the United States Congress failed to pass a $700 billion bailout package designed to stabilize the financial equity markets and to prevent major problems of a pending credit crunch (the sudden reduction of the general availability of loans or the quick increase in the cost of receiving loans from banks).
The Dow fell 777.68 points, resulting in over $1.2 trillion dollars of losses on the stock market, equivalent to the entire annual gross domestic product of India. Spread across our U.S. population, over $2,500 was lost per individual residing in the United States.
At the moment that I am writing this, Congress will likely not pursue a bailout package until sometime next week, with disastrous results for every person on Main Street USA if something is not done to stabilize the U.S. financial sector.
We are indeed in a major financial crisis. In the meantime, in the past month or two, we have seen the meltdown of three investment houses, Congress debating whether to provide $25 billion in loans to stabilize Ford and GM, the federal takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and the forced restructuring of the remaining investment firms to merge with major banking institutions.
Interestingly, a good proportion of the $1.9 trillion Chinese and $1.4 trillion Japanese currency reserves invested in the U.S. economy continue to shore up the U.S. stock market so that it does not further crash.
In my view, it is ironic that China’s ascendancy as a world power is coinciding with the symbolic launching of the Long March Shenzhou 7 during the simultaneous decline in American financial clout and power symbolized by the stock market crash and the failed bailout.
It is further ironic that the Long March series of rockets that led to Shenzhou 7 were designed by a Chinese American scientist named Tsien Hsue-shen after he had applied for U.S. citizenship in 1950 and was charged with being a communist and having his security clearance revoked. Among those who felt that he was unduly persecuted by the racist hysteria of the time was Caltech President Lee DuBridge. In 1955, the U.S. government deported Mr. Tsien from the United States to communist China along with his wife and their two U.S.-born children and later he became the “father of the Chinese ballistic missile program.” His ongoing research led to the series of increasingly sophisticated rockets that came to be known as the Long March Shenzhou series.
As China ramped up its stake in space and proclaimed its ascendancy as a world power, another Chinese American scientist by the name of Shu Quansheng had been arrested in Northern Virginia on September 24, 2008 for allegedly exporting rocket cryogenic technology to China. This is the 20th case of alleged espionage and/or treason related to China in the United States since 2006.
Is the Long March Shenzhou 7 and the $700 billion dollar bailout fiasco linked? I’m not sure, but the rise of China and Asia on the world stage during a period of Western and United States financial decline is striking. Our Asian American lives appear to be inextricably linked to the past, present, and future of U.S.-Asia relations and competitions — witness Mr. Tsien and Mr. Shu.
Is there a link in the common destiny of Asian Americans that cannot be separated from our common ancestry?
Would we be forever seen as perpetual foreigners and potential threats to the national security of our country?
Would our allegiance increasingly become questioned with the ascendancy of China, India, and Asia in the twenty first century?
I hope not.
Although in some ways time will tell, our collective actions can more importantly shape our future and prevent negative situations, scapegoating, and stereotyping from occurring. Forgive my pun of words, given the times we are experiencing, but I’m “banking” on this.
