Chinese- American professor slammed for criticizing new Chinese immigrants

A Chinese- American professor has been roundly criticized in China for his “superiority complex” over and prejudice against Chinese who have recently migrated to the US, after publishing an article calling them “fresh off the boat” and for claiming they “believe themselves to be better than other people of color.”

“I doubt whether Wu is still living in the 19th century based on his description of Chinese people,” Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Thursday.

“The most recent set of newcomers from Asia, in particular those arriving from China, do not share our commitments… Everywhere I encounter them… they complain. They are frustrated,” Frank H. Wu, a distinguished professor at the University of California at San Francisco’s Hastings College of the Law, wrote in an article published in The Huffington Post on March 18.

“They [ new immigrants] seem to be as angry with Asian Americans as they are about whites and blacks,” Wu said, repeating that a “fresh off the boat” stereotype of these new immigrants is “too much bling, not enough lining up in an orderly manner; nose- picking, spitting, bad driving, passive- aggressive conduct, and, let us hope, at least no dog- eating.”

“Coming from a different culture, new immigrants will undergo a tough time integrating into the American society, and, therefore, should be tolerated and helped during the period,” Li noted.

Wu said that new Chinese migrants do not join “whatever protest you are organizing” – from “diversity in higher education to ‘ illegal’ immigration to LGBT rights to police brutality to corporal punishment to capital punishment.”

Liu Weidong, a research fellow at the Institute of American Studies of the China Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out that “new immigrants do not know how to exercise their rights in a society they just arrived in.”

“In addition, many new Chinese immigrants are rich, capable of living in the US with little changes to the lifestyle they used to enjoy in China, thus intensifying the clash between new and old immigrants,” Liu explained.

Of the 1.38 million foreign- born people who moved to the US in 2015, 143,200 came from China, just behind India with 179,800, according to the US Migration Policy Institute.