The Hong Kong Chinese Community :: essays research papers

The Hong Kong Chinese Community     The Hong Kong Chinese community is an affluent, educated, and swellingpopulation in the Greater Toronto Area. The enigma is why they have solo mademarginal inroads into the political arena.Olivia Chow, a Metro councilor representing the Downtown ward says "thiscommunity has potential to be very powerful...its nowhere near its potential."Chow is the highest-profile Hong Kong dislodge to win elected office in theGTA. Others include Tam Goosen, Soo Wong, Carrie Cheng, and Peter Lam.Many are convinced that the reason is because Hong Kong "is a colonialplace where they had no say in government whatsoever." "In Hong Kong, theresnever been any democratic procedure until a few years ago." "Chinese culturethrough thousands of years has never had an elected-representative type ofWestern democracy system. So its not a surprise...(Hong Kong) is not a placewhere people exercise their democratic rights." T here is a very common beliefthat you should not offend or challenge authority.People have lost a lot of confidence in politicians because of pitifulexamples provided by ongoing tensions between Communist China and nationalistTaiwan. "We have to educate them and tell them politics in North America andCanada is very divers(prenominal) from what they saw of politics in Hong Kong and China."Dr. Joseph Wong, whose community activism has earned him the Order ofCanada, thinks that despite changes in Chinese attitudes, fear is still anobstacle towards political evolution. People are not afraid to demand for equalrights but the so-called mainstream politics and elected office is stillbaffling to the Chinese. The Chinese communitys history in Canada similarly plays amajor role in its reluctance to venture into politics. Following the completionof the Canadian Pacific Railway, the federal government imposed a healthy head taxon new Chinese immigrants. Only from the late 1960s and e arly 1970s, theTrudeau government liberalization of immigration that Chinese people came toCanada from Hong Kong. In 1979 , he organized a demonstration to urge thefederal government to admit more "boat people" - community members were appalled."Dont rock the boat" was simply what they said. They said that Canada hadgiven them a shelter and they should not demand any rights.Later that year, W5 - a CTV public affairs program - aired a fractioncalled Campus Giveaway, which was about Chinese students taking over Canadianuniversities and leaving Canadian students out in the cold. Within 2 to 3months, there were 16 anti-W5 committees. The differ eventually forced W5 tooffer an unqualified apology. Those 16 groups went on to form the Chinese