Recent polls show Americans increasingly approve of President Joe Biden’s handling of the invasion of Ukraine. Also, a growing share of Americans agree that paying more for gas because of sanctions against Moscow is worthwhile to defend another democracy. VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara reports.
Fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week reflecting a low number of layoffs across the economy.
Jobless claims fell by 18,000 to 215,000 for the week ending February 26, from 233,000 the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
The four-week average for claims, which compensates for weekly volatility, fell by 6,000 to 230,500.
In total, 1,476,000 Americans were collecting jobless aid the week that ended Feb. 12, a small uptick of 2,000 from the previous week’s revised number, which was its lowest level since March 14, 1970.
First-time applications for jobless aid generally track the pace of layoffs, which are back down to fairly healthy pre-pandemic levels.
The Labor Department releases its February jobs report on Friday. Analysts surveyed by the financial data firm FactSet forecast that the U.S. economy added 400,000 jobs last month.
In January, the U.S. economy added a whopping 467,000 jobs and revised December and November gains upward by a combined 709,000. The unemployment rate stands at 4%, a historically low figure.
The U.S. economy has rebounded strongly from 2020’s coronavirus-caused recession. Massive government spending and the vaccine rollout jumpstarted the economy as employers added a record 6.4 million jobs last year. The U.S. economy expanded 5.7% in 2021, growing last year at the fastest annual pace since a 7.2% surge in 1984, which also followed a recession.
Inflation is also at a 40-year high — 7.5% year-over-year — leading the Federal Reserve to ease its monetary support for the economy. The Fed has said it will begin a series of interest-rate hikes this month in an effort to tamp down surging prices.
Fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week reflecting a low number of layoffs across the economy.
Jobless claims fell by 18,000 to 215,000 for the week ending February 26, from 233,000 the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
The four-week average for claims, which compensates for weekly volatility, fell by 6,000 to 230,500.
In total, 1,476,000 Americans were collecting jobless aid the week that ended Feb. 12, a small uptick of 2,000 from the previous week’s revised number, which was its lowest level since March 14, 1970.
First-time applications for jobless aid generally track the pace of layoffs, which are back down to fairly healthy pre-pandemic levels.
The Labor Department releases its February jobs report on Friday. Analysts surveyed by the financial data firm FactSet forecast that the U.S. economy added 400,000 jobs last month.
In January, the U.S. economy added a whopping 467,000 jobs and revised December and November gains upward by a combined 709,000. The unemployment rate stands at 4%, a historically low figure.
The U.S. economy has rebounded strongly from 2020’s coronavirus-caused recession. Massive government spending and the vaccine rollout jumpstarted the economy as employers added a record 6.4 million jobs last year. The U.S. economy expanded 5.7% in 2021, growing last year at the fastest annual pace since a 7.2% surge in 1984, which also followed a recession.
Inflation is also at a 40-year high — 7.5% year-over-year — leading the Federal Reserve to ease its monetary support for the economy. The Fed has said it will begin a series of interest-rate hikes this month in an effort to tamp down surging prices.
“Yellowstone National Park is magical, spiritual and a place of inspiration,” said historian Bruce Gourley, who has lived near the park for decades and is the author of the recently published Historic Yellowstone National Park.
As the park marks its 150th anniversary, it’s looking back at the past but focusing mostly on its future as it brings greater recognition to the Indigenous people who had roamed the land for 10,000 years.
“This isn’t just about the last century and a half,” said Yellowstone Superintendent Cameron Sholly at a recent virtual event. “We also want to use this anniversary to do a better job of fully recognizing the many American Indian nations that lived in this area for thousands of years prior to Yellowstone becoming a park.”
In the coming months, Yellowstone will be highlighting multiple tribal nations, whose members will give presentations, display artwork and engage with visitors at the park’s Tribal Heritage Center.
On March 1,1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the bill that created Yellowstone for the “benefit and enjoyment of present and future generations.”
However, the Indigenous people who hunted and fished there were not included in the process.
“The presence of native people was not only downplayed, but they were literally pushed out of the park because their presence discomforted many white people,” Gourley said.
Yellowstone is located mostly in Wyoming, but it also extends into Montana and Idaho. Today, some 4 million visitors come to experience the 9-million-hectare landscape that sits atop an active supervolcano whose last major eruption occurred 640,000 years ago.
Appropriately known as Wonderland in the early days, the geothermal park is famous for its beautiful lakes and mountains, incredible array of wildlife, powerful waterfalls, rainbow-colored hot springs, and amazing geysers such as the well-known Old Faithful, which erupts roughly every 1½ hours.
For professional wildlife photographer Tom Murphy, there is no better place. He especially loves the remote wilderness.
“I get to see the natural behavior of bison, coyotes, elk, wolves and grizzly bears, how they live and relate to each other,” he told VOA. “The goal of my photographs is to capture their interesting lives and give people a sense of the beauty and intelligence of the wildlife.”
He thinks it was a mistake to eliminate the wolves in Yellowstone during the last century and applauds their reintroduction in the mid-1990s, which has created greater biodiversity.
Yellowstone’s bison herd is important to Scott Frazier of the Crow tribe. “The bison are sacred and represent freedom to the Indian tribes, who have a symbiotic relationship with them,” he explained.
Frazier, who is 72, has been visiting the park since he was a child.
“It was so quiet, not like today,” he said of going camping and fishing with his father. “There weren’t many cars, and sometimes you’d see a bear on the road, but that’s rare now.”
“Today, it’s so different,” he said.
“People who come from the cities may not have seen a squirrel, let alone a moose. Unfortunately, a lot of them spend time taking photos or videos instead of enjoying the moment that is right in front of them,” he said in an interview with VOA.
But Frazier is more concerned about the past 150 years, when Yellowstone barely acknowledged the tribes in the park.
It is “a dramatically important step” that Yellowstone, as well as other U.S. national parks, is reaching out to Native Americans, he said.
“I would like to see more recognition of the places the tribes consider to be sacred in Yellowstone,” said Frazier, who teaches environment classes in the park from the Indigenous point of view.
Other Native Americans also say it’s about time Yellowstone focuses more on Indigenous contributions.
“There’s very little mention about Native Americans, including the Shoshone,” said Robyn Rofkar, administrative assistant at the Eastern Shoshone Tribal Cultural Center on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming.
“It would be good to include Native American names at sites around the park. I also think Yellowstone should sell more traditional things made by the Indian tribes, like Shoshone beaded items.”
“Hopefully, we can educate the tourists so they know that Yellowstone was part of the Indians’ homeland,” she said.
Over 100-thousand people died in the U.S. from drug overdoses in the 12 months between June 2020 to May 2021, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That figure is more than COVID, and more than twice the number of those killed by guns and traffic accidents. Liliya Anisimova has details on this epidemic of drug use in this report narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by David Gogokhia.
Presidents Day, the third Monday of February, is popularly recognized as honoring the birth month of two of the country’s most prominent presidents — George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
Washington and Lincoln, who led America through some of the toughest times, have long been deeply admired by many people. Monday’s holiday is now a celebration of the birthdays and lives of all U.S. presidents.
Presidents Day is usually marked by public ceremonies in Washington, D.C., and throughout the country. While many government offices will be closed, many businesses offer special holiday sales.
History
The origin of Presidents Day lies in the 1880s, when the birthday of Washington — the first president of the United States and commander of the Continental Army during the American Revolution — was first celebrated as a federal holiday.
At the time, Washington was venerated as the most important figure in American history. Many events such as the 1832 centennial of his birth and the start of construction of the Washington monument in 1848 were cause for national celebration.
In 1968 Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Bill, which moved several federal holidays to Mondays. The change was intended to schedule certain holidays so that employees would have long weekends throughout the year, but it has been opposed by those who believe that those holidays should be celebrated on the dates they commemorate.
During debate on the bill, it was suggested that the Washington’s Birthday holiday be renamed Presidents Day to honor the birthdays of both Washington (February 22) and Lincoln (February 12). Although Lincoln’s birthday was celebrated in many states, it was never an official federal holiday. Following much discussion, Congress rejected the name change.
After the bill went into effect in 1971, however, Presidents Day became the commonly acknowledged name, due in part to retailers’ use of that name to promote sales and the holiday’s proximity to Lincoln’s birthday.
After two years, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be taking a toll on Americans’ mental health, with a growing number of people suffering from a wide array of issues, from anxiety to depression. Lesia Bakalets has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
The White House ordered U.S. military trainers out of Ukraine in the same week it reduced embassy personnel there to “bare bones” (minimal). With at least 100-thousand Russian troops encircling Ukraine, Washington says an invasion could be “any day now.” VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has the story.
Another surge in hate crimes and incidents aimed at Asian Americans, ranging from verbal harassment to violent assaults, has that community searching for ways to stop it.
Among the victims, Michelle Go, 40, was pushed onto the tracks of the New York subway January 15 in an unprovoked deadly attack. A senior manager at a financial consultancy, Go was a Chinese American who had volunteered to help the homeless.
Authorities said her assailant, an African American homeless man, had a history of psychiatric illness. The lethal attack drew international attention.
While many assaults have been captured on video, others go unnoticed. A Chinese immigrant named Michelle, who asked that her full name not be used, was also the target of an unprovoked attack in an upscale neighborhood in Long Beach, California. The event was not recorded and received no news coverage, but it left an indelible mark on Michelle.
On May 2, 2021, “a beautiful morning,” Michelle recalls, she went for her daily walk. A small woman in her early 50s, she passed a Sunday farmers market, busy restaurants and yachts moored in the harbor. She doesn’t remember what happened next, but a bystander who helped her has a clear recollection.
Max Wilson, a student and athlete at San Diego State University, was walking near the water with his father.
“A small Asian woman was just minding her business, walking past a man,” Wilson, 20, recalls. “All of a sudden, we saw him turn around, and he starts punching the back of this poor Asian woman’s head and repeatedly bashing it.” Wilson says he and his father “couldn’t believe their eyes.”
On regaining consciousness, Michelle found herself, bleeding and in shock, on the ground, being helped by bystanders. She later learned she had suffered a concussion — along with injuries to her shoulder, teeth and mouth — and had bruises and cuts from head to ankle.
Wilson followed the man, who grabbed a heavy wooden board from a dumpster and swung it repeatedly, attacking the young man and smashing it against a car, but Wilson overpowered him.
Passers-by found ice for Michelle’s injuries and called an ambulance. Police arrived quickly. Wilson pointed to the man’s hiding place under a dock, and he was arrested.
“There was absolutely no reason for him to target this tiny woman,” Wilson recalls.
Michelle has mostly recovered but is “afraid of going out (and is) extremely vigilant,” she said. She suffers from nightmares, headaches and chronic shoulder pain.
Police and prosecutors have charged the man with assault.
“I have to think it was racially motivated,” Michelle says. She did not know her attacker, she had done nothing to offend him, and non-Asians on the scene were unmolested, she says. Robbery wasn’t a motive because he took none of her belongings.
Attacks such as Michelle’s are on the rise, according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics. In 2020, hate crimes against Asian Americans were up, with 279 recorded incidents versus 158 the previous year.
Not the full story
The FBI-compiled numbers don’t tell the whole story.
Manjusha Kulkarni of the organization Stop AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) Hate notes that “not all law enforcement entities collect the data. They don’t all report it to the FBI.”
Kulkarni says language barriers keep some immigrants from reporting crimes. Others, without legal status to stay in the country, fear immigration authorities.
Kulkarni, whose organization tracks self-reported hate incidents, says that “90% of what is reported to us are not crimes.” Instead, they are “comments made in the workplace, at school. It can be bullying. It can be harassment,” she says, “and it can be discrimination in retail.”
From March 2020 through September 2021, her organization tracked more than 10,000 self-reported incidents and collaborated on a survey that found 1 in 5 Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders had experienced hate incidents in the past year. Whatever their background, “from Vietnamese, Filipinos, even South Asians and Pacific Islanders,” they are often targets of anti-Chinese bias, Kulkarni said.
That happened to Thai American Tanny Jiraprapasuke, who was verbally attacked aboard a Los Angeles metro train in February 2020. The young woman was subjected to a tirade against Chinese immigrants by a man who berated China as the source of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
It was “almost like a performance,” she recalls, with “big gestures. He was standing up, he was yelling.” It soon became clear the rant was directed at her. After 15 minutes, the man eventually disembarked, but the episode has left her shaken.
Prosecution of hate crimes
Authorities can sometimes stiffen penalties by charging perpetrators with hate crimes under federal or state laws. This happened to six men in San Jose, California, in December. Prosecutors said the men had worked together in more than 170 incidents in the San Francisco region, targeting Asians for robbery, burglary or theft.
Yet even when police file assault charges in violent attacks, as in the Long Beach case, prosecutors are reluctant to file hate crime enhancements because the bar is so high, says May Lee, host of the The May Lee Show podcast and an adjunct professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.
Federal authorities define a hate crime as a crime against a person or property motivated by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender or gender identity. Yet hate itself is not a crime, notes the FBI website, which says free speech needs to be protected.
Successful hate crime prosecution requires both a crime and a provable motive, and “a lot of DAs (district attorneys) don’t want to even try … because they don’t want to lose,” Lee said.
Culture plays a role in obscuring the extent of the problem, say Asian American analysts. Victims often don’t want to make waves, so they keep quiet. Yet videos of hate incidents keep surfacing “almost every single day,” Lee said.
One of the brutal attacks captured on video showed an 84-year-old Chinese American man being pushed to the ground in San Francisco; the victim suffered serious injuries. Another showed two older women stabbed at a bus stop, and a third depicted the fatal attack in San Francisco of an elderly Thai immigrant.
Some people say Asian Americans are viewed as easy targets. Others look elsewhere for motivation, blaming fear of COVID-19. Some accuse former U.S. President Donald Trump of inflaming hatred through his remarks that China was responsible for the coronavirus, which he called the “China virus,” “Wuhan virus” or “Kung Flu.”
Historical roots
Analyst Jessica Lee of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington think tank, sees historical precedents for the hate, saying “anti-Asian violence has really ebbed and flowed.”
At least 17 Chinese immigrants were killed in a racial massacre in Los Angeles’ Chinatown in 1871. Eight men from the mob of 500 white and Hispanic men were convicted of manslaughter, but the convictions were overturned.
Arsonists burned San Jose’s Chinatown to the ground in 1887, and city officials formally apologized only last year.
Asians have also been singled out for restrictive legislation. Chinese were barred from immigration to the United States under the Chinese Exclusion Act, initially to limit competition for laboring and mining jobs. The measure passed in 1882 and was extended and in force until 1943.
Beginning the previous year, following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, more than 100,000 Japanese Americans, many of them U.S. citizens, were held in internment camps during World War II.
Later, “during the Cold War,” says Jessica Lee, “the FBI targeted Chinese and Chinese American scientists and students and questioned their loyalty to the United States” amid talk of a “yellow peril.”
Kulkarni of Stop AAPI Hate says that’s happening today with the China Initiative, a Department of Justice program aimed at curbing economic espionage by China. The Trump administration launched it in November 2018, and it is still in place.
The DOJ says the initiative is aimed not at Americans but at China, which it says is connected to 60% of trade secret theft cases.
Jessica Lee of the Quincy Institute says the Biden administration’s continuing tensions with China are inadvertently fostering ethnic divisions.
While others dispute a connection between geopolitics and hate crimes, Jessica Lee says racially tinged rhetoric triggers deep-seated prejudices. She said Asian Americans, regarded as “perpetual foreigners,” are vulnerable.
“No matter how many generations of Asian American family you trace back to,” she says, “you will always be seen as a foreigner because you’re not white.”
Kulkarni adds, “Not only are our communities viewed as bringing disease, but they’re also thought of as sly and cunning.”
Heightening racial tensions
Stop AAPI Hate says most perpetrators of self-reported hate incidents against Asian Americans are white, but African Americans and Hispanics are the perpetrators in a number of violent attacks recorded on video. Analysts say this adds to intergroup tensions, even though Blacks and Hispanics are themselves the targets of hate crimes.
“Sadly, even those who don’t subscribe directly to white supremacy still can fall victim to it in terms of their own thinking,” Kulkarni says.
Michelle, the Long Beach attack victim, says her attacker was African American and so was the young man who saved her.
Wilson, the student athlete, is mixed race, with a white father and Black mother. He has lived in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Beijing, and he and his family speak Mandarin, thanks to his father’s service as a U.S. diplomat in China.
The Wilsons “saved my life,” Michelle says.
The United States is a nation of immigrants, and its 22 million Asian Americans are a diverse group, note researchers at the Pew Research Center.
But one-third of them fear threats and physical attacks, and 80% say violence against Asian Americans is rising.
Searching for solutions
Hate incidents have Asian Americans searching for solutions, individually and through organizations.
Michelle believes Chinese Americans are scapegoats for frustration with the coronavirus and the economic problems it has brought. The hatred is misdirected, she notes, adding, “I’ve been living here for over 20 years. I’m as American as any other American.”
She is encouraged by those who came to her aid and says Americans must “create a positive culture that unites people.”
Tanny Jiraprapasuke says discussion about China and the coronavirus pandemic sparked the insults directed at her and shows “how words really matter.”
The Quincy Institute’s Jessica Lee says politicians must tamp down rhetoric that may unintentionally inflame racial tensions.
May Lee, of USC, credits social media with exposing a wide-ranging problem and creating incentive for change. She believes schools can do a better job of highlighting Asian American contributions to the American story, and notes that Illinois and New Jersey have mandated Asian American history classes in their public schools. It is a history unknown to many Americans, she adds.
Kulkarni says a national commission to discourage hatred could be modeled on local initiatives. In Los Angeles, the Human Relations Commission works to defuse racial tensions, and New York City’s Commission on Human Rights enforces human rights laws. And there are similar programs in other cities.
All say that recognizing the problem of hatred against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders is the first step in addressing it.
VOA’s Elizabeth Lee contributed to this report.
The Biden administration is urging Americans in Ukraine to leave within 24 to 48 hours, saying Russians could invade within days. U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said a Russian invasion would likely include an assault on Kyiv. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
Americans are getting ready for the Super Bowl on Sunday. It’s the final matchup of the National Football League season and a national celebration. Mike O’Sullivan reports from Los Angeles, where the Los Angeles Rams will face the Cincinnati Bengals.
Ukrainian communities in some large California cities are taking to the streets in peaceful demonstrations to express support for their homeland as Russia seems to be preparing to invade Ukraine. Khrystyna Shevchenko has this report from California.
Churches and other houses of worship have historically played critical social and political functions in American society. But fewer people are attending religious services, and the decline of churches and other houses of worship threatens to leave a void that could potentially be filled by coffee shops.
“For so much of American history, the church has really been — or their congregations have really been — essential, providing an unheralded role in providing cohesion and connectedness in communities … encouraging civic engagement and political participation,” says Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
“It was not happenstance or luck that the civil rights movement emerged out of the church,” Cox says. “And you see that cross-culturally … whether it’s in predominantly white rural communities, in the suburbs, wherever, churches have historically been really, really important.”
Churches and other houses of worship have also played a role in helping immigrants assimilate once they arrive in America, Cox says.
In 1999, 70% of Americans said they belonged to a church, mosque or synagogue. By 2020, that number had dropped to 47%. A 2019 survey found that only about three in 10 Americans say they attend weekly religious services.
Third places
Lack of involvement and affiliation with churches, mosques and synagogues means people might be missing out on what urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg dubbed as “third places” — public gathering spots that offer something that home, the “first place,” and work, the “second place,” might not.
Oldenburg argued that third places are critical to a community’s social vitality. An October 2021 survey conducted by the American Survey Center found that commercial spaces like coffee houses foster trust and connection in American communities and could help fill the void left by churches.
“If you’re a regular at a cafe, the barista may know what you usually order, and they can make it for you, and that feels good,” says clinical psychologist Dr. Maria Espinola, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.
“It feels good to be recognized, to know that people are expecting you, to know that people care about you, to know that you belong, because the need for belonging and human connection is a fundamental need that we all have, and it’s important to have that fulfilled in different ways,” Espinola says. “So, places like third places can allow us to do that.”
In the past, churches and other houses of worship have been a third place for many Americans. In 2019, 67% of people surveyed said they have a third place — a coffee shop, bar, restaurant, park or other place in their community that they visit regularly. That number dropped to 56% in 2021 — a number that could have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“What we found was that people who had a third place were much more connected to their community,” says Cox. “They’re much more likely to engage in other activities there. They are much more trusting of their neighbors. There’s a whole great array of positive social outcomes that were connected to having a third place … and for a lot of Americans, it’s a coffee shop or a cafe.”
What coffee shops have in their favor is that they can be found almost everywhere, all over the country, and anyone who wants to can stop by regularly. And many are open most days of the week.
Cox says even brief coffee shop encounters can increase a sense of belonging.
“I think there’s a lot of potential here, and a lot of it is unrealized potential,” Cox says. “But in terms of what they could do, there’s a lot there. I’ve been in places where the same group of folks come in there to play chess. Or they have their informal bunch of retirees. … They just got together, and they talked and chatted and caught up with each other. … I don’t know where else they would have gone — maybe a church, but maybe not — to share information, to encourage each other to maybe get involved in an activity. And I think that is what is so powerful about coffee shops.”
A group of pharmaceutical companies and distributors agreed to pay $590 million to settle lawsuits connected to opioid addiction among Native American tribes, according to a U.S. court filing released Tuesday.
The agreement is the latest amid a deluge of litigation spawned by the U.S. opioid crisis, which has claimed more than 500,000 lives over the past 20 years and ensnared some of the largest firms in American medicine.
The companies involved in the latest agreement include Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and McKesson, according to a filing in an Ohio federal court by a committee of plaintiffs in the case.
Native Americans have “suffered some of the worst consequences of the opioid epidemic of any population in the United States,” including the highest per-capita rate of opioid overdoses compared with other racial groups, according to the filing from the tribal leadership committee.
“The burden of paying these increased costs has diverted scarce funds from other needs and has imposed severe financial burdens on the tribal plaintiffs.”
J&J, McKesson and the other two companies in the accord – AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health – previously agreed to a $26 billion global settlement on opioid cases.
J&J said Tuesday the $150 million it agreed to pay in the Native American case has been deducted from what it owes in the global settlement.
“This settlement is not an admission of any liability or wrongdoing and the company will continue to defend against any litigation that the final agreement does not resolve,” the company said.
It was unclear if the other companies would take their portion under the latest agreement from the global settlement.
‘Measure of justice’
Robins Kaplan, a law firm negotiating on the behalf of the plaintiffs, said the agreement still must be approved by the Native American tribes.
“This initial settlement for tribes in the national opioid litigation is a crucial first step in delivering some measure of justice to the tribes and reservation communities across the United States that have been ground zero for the opioid epidemic,” Tara Sutton, an attorney at the firm, said in a statement.
Douglas Yankton, chairman of the North Dakota-based Spirit Lake Nation, said the money from the settlement would “help fund crucial, on-reservation, culturally appropriate opioid treatment services.”
Steven Skikos, an attorney representing the tribes, told AFP they are pursuing claims against other drugmakers.
“This is hopefully the first two of many other settlements,” he said.
All tribes recognized by the U.S. government, 574 in all, will be able to participate in the agreement, even if they have not filed lawsuits.
The settlement is separate from a prior agreement that resulted in $75 million in payments to the Cherokee Nation from three distribution companies, including McKesson.
Many of the lawsuits regarding the opioid crisis have centered on Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, a highly addictive prescription painkiller blamed for causing a spike in addiction.
A judge in December overturned the company’s bankruptcy plan because it provided some immunity for the owners of the company in exchange for a $4.5 billion payout to victims of the opioid crisis.
The litigation wave also has swamped pharmacies owned by Walmart, Walgreens and CVS, which a jury found in November bear responsibility for the opioid crisis in two counties in Ohio.
Anthony Shiu was born in San Francisco. His father’s parents are from China. Several generations may separate him from China, but the 60-year-old transit mechanic spends his free time as an activist against anti-Asian hate crimes and helping to run a lion dance troupe. Lion dances are a facet of traditional Chinese culture.
In that spirit, he backs Beijing as the 2022 Winter Olympics host city despite a litany of Sino-U.S. political issues that culminated last month in Washington’s decision to boycott the Games diplomatically. He plans to watch the world sporting event on TV if time allows.
“To me, Beijing is just a hosting country, and the committee said, ‘We’re going to hold it here,’ so where they hold it is not important to me,” Shiu told VOA during an interview in Portsmouth Square park at the core of San Francisco’s historic Chinatown.
Shiu’s ideas about the Beijing Winter Olympics reflect those of many fellow Chinese Americans: China has the right to hold the Olympics despite Western condemnations of the country over human rights problems. Still, there’s a faction that would prefer Beijing not host the Games.
“It’s a sport,” said 38-year-old Vincent Fung, a Chinese American operator of the Buddha Exquisite Corp. paper goods store in Chinatown. “People should respect (that), it doesn’t matter what race. That’s what the Olympics stands for. So, if you’re boycotting things, that defeats the purpose of having the game. That’s my view on it.”
Chinese American Sherwin Won, 69, a retired university clinical lab scientist from San Francisco, skis and plans to watch the Olympics. He even hopes to visit Beijing someday, post-COVID-19. “The team members have nothing to do with China,” Won said of participating foreign athletes. “It’s their sports.”
Tension over Taiwan, Hong Kong, Uyghurs
Supporters of diplomatic boycotts in multiple Western countries have called out Beijing over perceived strong-arm tactics toward Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Critics, including politicians in the U.S., EU and human rights organizations, also find fault with China for its treatment of the largely Muslim Uyghur population in the Chinese Xinjiang region, including sending more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Turkic ethnic minorities to internment camps.
China has denied these accusations, saying the camps are vocational training centers to help alleviate poverty and fight extremism.
In the United States, White House press secretary Jen Psaki last month said the administration would avoid sending officials to the Games — the diplomatic boycott — due to “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.”
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said, “The United States should stop politicizing sports, and stop disrupting and undermining the Beijing Winter Olympics, lest it should affect bilateral dialogue and cooperation in important areas and international and regional issues,” according to Chinese state media Xinhua.
Hot and cold Sino-U.S. history
Sino-U.S. ties blossomed in the 1970s after then-U.S. President Richard Nixon’s historic meeting with Communist leader Mao Zedong. The same decade saw a wave of immigration from southern China to American cities such as San Francisco, mostly to earn money and join relatives who were already in the country.
About 5 million Chinese Americans live in the United States today, census data show.
Relations have slipped since 2017 over trade friction, consular spats and technology transfer issues. The two superpowers have jousted too over the autonomy of Taiwan, with Beijing calling it a Chinese territory and Washington offering to defend it, and crackdowns against antigovernment protesters in Chinese-ruled Hong Kong.
Some Chinese Americans often feel distant from human rights causes, and as ethnic Han people — China’s vast racial majority — are not “sympathetic to the Uyghurs,” said Yun Sun, co-director of the East Asia program at the Stimson Center in Washington.
“Second, the boycott apparently makes bilateral relations more difficult, and it is even harder for Chinese Americans to travel back to China,” Sun added.
Sporting concerns
Justine Chen, 38, a Nashville, Tennessee-based communications director of Taiwanese American ancestry, says Beijing qualifies more as a showroom for the government than as an elite venue for athletes.
“I don’t think they should have won the bid in the first place. Not just because of their human rights record but because I don’t think they provide the best experience for athletes nor spectators,” she said. “It’s all a big show so the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) can pretend it has its affairs together when it really doesn’t.”
Chen attended the Beijing Summer Games of 2008 and the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Sydney offered better venues, she said.
“I think as a minority in America that has seen a huge amount of hate and violence over the past two years against people who look like me, I wish I could have more pride in an Asian country hosting such a large event that’s supposed to unify people of all kinds, including those participating in the Paralympics,” Chen said.
Human rights concerns
Many people of Asian ancestry in Southern California oppose China’s acts in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, said Ken Wu, Taiwanese American vice president of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs Los Angeles chapter. His Washington, D.C.-based group lobbies Congress for pro-Taiwan legislation.
They support diplomatic boycotts but also a guarantee that athletes can attend the Beijing Olympics as a reward for their practice, he said.
“Right now, I think the whole advocacy community and the whole human rights community are kind of agreeing on that’s the direction we should go,” Wu said. “We should continue to pressure the states to exercise the diplomatic boycott and also hopefully we can get the businesses not to sponsor, but let’s put our support behind our athletes.”
While Chinese Americans differ on their views of China as the host city of the Winter Olympics, they all stand behind the athletes who have worked to qualify for a spot in what has become a contentious world competition.