My “open arm welcome” endorsement for a rival candidate has met with a polite and reasoned resistance from a prominent Chinese community leader.

Steven Young, former president of NZ Chinese Association commented in his Facebook on November 3, 2011 that:

“Raymond Huo’s opened armed welcome to his new Parliamentary colleague across the house comes dangerously close to identifying the Chinese here as sojourners in residence with Confucian characteristics.”

Other commentators on Facebook went further, in reply to Mr Young’s statement, one commentator said (SIC):

“If I’d known at the time that the second marker for my Honours dissertation was pro-death penalty and anti-gay marriage, I might not have put in that image of that statue of Liberty/goddess of Democracy dominatrix licking her giant ice cream cone.”

Another commentator echoed Mr Young’s view by saying (SIC):

“These overseas chinese migrants who are getting into NZ govt seats, have no bloody idea of nzchinesefullstop, its all themselves and they have there own agenda!”

The confession from me I guess was that I did say something very positive about National candidate and now MP-elect Dr Jian Yang, who – like me – is from the mainland China.

Those relatively new Chinese migrants (who arrived in the early 2000s) made up 71% of the NZ Chinese community which are different in many ways from New Zealand’s 5th or 6th generation of Chinese settlers like Mr Young and the other two commentators.

The early Chinese settlers came to NZ under harsh conditions (consider the racially discriminatory Poll Tax legislation). But they proved to be role models in the long process of accommodation, acculturation and assimilation and eventually became successful Kiwi-Chinese.

They paved the way, in many aspects, for future arrivals including Dr Yang and myself. Sadly and inevitably, it appears to be a gap between those modern ‘sojourners’ (who “have no bloody idea of nzchinesefullstop”) and the “local Chinese” (like Mr Young and the two commentators). How to bring the two together is a question and a mission.

National’s selection of Dr Yang was a careful and reasoned one. Not only has he got the required calibre (to be fair to his Chinese competitors within National Party I won’t comment further), he also positioned himself well in serving the wider community as a conduit between Chinese and the wider community.

His sympathetic position to capital punishment and his anti-gay marriage stance (according to article by Derek Cheng in the NZ Herald, November 2, 2011) largely reflects his background and view of those newly migrated Kiwi-Chinese he represents.

It is worth pursuing whether they became National supporters because they share the same values of the party or are just following a trend but that is beyond the scope of this article. Their collective characteristics, culture and mentality are however something new, if not unknown, to this country.

We as candidates from different political spectrums disagree on many policies but do share a sense of obligation in helping Kiwi Chinese integrate.

My personal view is that it is wrong for a Chinese migrant to come to NZ but end up only sticking to “Chinatown”, literally or in a cultural sense, and only eat Chinese and read/speak Chinese and mingle with Chinese people. Why bother to come to New Zealand if it is the case?

In that sense their being a “sojourner” is not welcome here.

Regarding immigration, I agree to what DPF said on Kiwiblog (22 Nov 2011) that it “should be colour-blind. Individuals should be assessed against criteria such as education, skills, wealth and ability to settle and assimilate in New Zealand.” Ability to settle is one of the determinant factors for such assessment.

Rome was of course not built overnight. It takes time to adapt, appreciate and integrate. Therefore Dr Yang and I being ethnic MPs (should I make it this time) are working towards the same goals. They will not become sojourners if they regard themselves as part of New Zealand, share the responsibility and contributing towards a brighter future.

It is equally important for ethnic candidates to lead by example that campaigning is about debating the policy, not about personality. For ethnic communities it is more important to have a clean and positive campaign (I will blog on this separately). That way we will encourage ethnic community members – with many of whom coming from a non-democratic regime – to participate in our democracy and our nation building process.