5 Steps into the Asian Milennium 7/7 | Asiagate

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5 STEPS INTO THE ASIAN MILENNIUM
PAGE 7 OF 7

Violent episodes like the Koreatown Riots are anomalies in what has otherwise been a seamless transition from the dark ages of anti-Asian hysteria to the dawning age.
     A decade later, the long-delayed inevitable is well in place and Asians are the largest group of UC students -- and have been for the past seven years. It's a threatening development for some Californians. Take a look at the Los Angeles Times. In a 1997 article about UC enrollment, it contrived a table in which it presented Whites as one group but separated out Filipinos from Asian Americans so that the Asian percentage would be less than the White percentage. Definitely in the proud tradition of its long and vocal defense against the "Yellow Peril".
     Even at private universities where old money and alumni connections have a grossly distorting effect on the racial balance, Asians are 33% of the student body versus 48% for whites. But the big Mo is unmistakeable. Even on the East Coast where Asians are only about 4.5% of the general population, their enrollments remain disproportionately high at elite instititutions, ranging from 14% at Yale to 18% at Harvard and Columbia to 30% at MIT. There, too, the Big Mo is with Asians.
     What do we make of this? An epic socio-economic movement was set in motion in the 19th century when American gunships steamed into Tokyo Bay, the South China Sea, up the Yangtze River and the Han and impressed Asians with the superiority of western technology. That triggered history's greatest knowledge-rush, much greater than the one inspired by Gutenberg's printing press. For the next 150 years the Asian continent sent its brightest minds from its most privileged families to absorb western technology. Long before the most recent and biggest wave of Asian immigration wave began in 1969, the unspoken Holy Grail of Asian learning was to match and surpass the west in technology.
     The situation we see now in elite American universities is simply the product of that sustained intellectual migration. Hundreds of thousands of the best minds of the Asian continent made their way across the Pacific and absorbed western technology and methods at the best universities across the U.S.. Some returned to lay the groundwork for world-beating Japanese, Corean and Taiwanese corporations that now dominate hi-tech industries in which American companies no longer even compete. A larger number stayed to become the backbone of Silicon Valley, Orange County, Seattle and the Baltimore-Raleigh-Durham defense and biotech corridor.

Asian Drive Meets California Freedom
     In California the Asian dominance of the science and engineering departments of top universities has already translated into a strong Asian presence in the state's cutting-edge information-based industries, everything from chips to software to biotech, even entertainment. We are now in an era in which that presence grows geometrically as the students of ten to fifteen years ago become technocrats and middle managers -- or leave to create their own rocking startups. Projecting the trend ten more years, we can expect Asians to go from being a strong presence to being the driving force, especially when you factor in the fact that California's hi-tech companies do twice as much business with Asia as with the rest of the U.S. Having an Asian CEO or at least a COO or CIO to deal with partners, customers and suppliers from the other side of the Pacific could provide a big edge to a hi-tech company that wants to thrive in what by then will be hailed as the dawn of the Asian Milennium.
     Already signs of the Asianization of California are everywhere in the state's commercial life. Asians are only 12% of the state's population (versus 39% for Whites) but over 50% of the new homes sold in Orange, Los Angeles and Santa Clara Counties are bought by Asians. The average price of new Asian homes is $335,000, twice the national average $167,000. Asians drive away well over half of all Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs sold in California dealerships. Within 2 years 75% of Californians will either work for an Asian-controlled company or live or work in an Asian-owned structure.
     No doubt it all sounds a bit ominous and threatening when set down in cold hard numbers, but the human reality has been different. Violent episodes like the Koreatown Riots are anomalies in what has otherwise been a seamless transition from the dark ages of anti-Asian hysteria to the dawning age in which California will prosper and shine as the cultural and intellectual, if not technological, center of the Asian Milennium.
     Having succeeded in absorbing western technology, Asia now faces the equally big challenge of absorbing the spirit of liberty and individualism that continues to put the cutting edge just out of reach of even the most industrialized Asian societies. For the foreseeable future, the best place to absorb that spirit is in California. All the numbers say Asians understand this fact very well. [END]

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