THE 2016 election marked a coming-out party for conservative Chinese-Americans, who offered Donald Trump some of his most passionate support among non-whites. Now some are feeling the first twinges of a hangover, as their hero threatens a trade war with China and hints that he might upgrade ties with Taiwan, the island that Chinese leaders call no more than a breakaway province.
“My members worshipped Trump religiously for a whole year,” says David Tian Wang, a 33-year-old businessman originally from Beijing, who founded “Chinese Americans for Trump”, a group which paid for Trump billboards in more than a dozen states and flew aerial banners over 32 cities. Perhaps most importantly, Mr Wang’s members rallied supporters on Chinese-language internet forums and messaging apps including WeChat, attracting outsized attention from media outlets and elected officials in places where Asian voters can swing elections, such as southern California. Interviewed in Diamond Bar, an affluent, majority-Asian city east of Los Angeles, Mr Wang remains a true believer. But perhaps half of his members are anxiously “waiting for Trump’s next move”.
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Source: United States http://ift.tt/2iNZen9
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