This is a common experience with immigrants from communist countries. Many Republican-voting immigrants are refugees of communism. In the Democratic Party's economic program they hear echoes of the communist countries which they fled. They therefore turn to the Republican Party. Which brings us to the biggest Communist country of them all: the People's Republic of China.
There are a lot of Chinese-Americans in the United States. Many of them constitute immigrants who suffered tremendously under communism, through the Great Leap Forward and then the Cultural Revolution. Yet Chinese-Americans are also a highly, highly Democratic constituency. One exit poll put 73% of Chinese-Americans as voting Democratic. Why does the Schwarzenegger experience not resonate with Chinese immigrants? One reason might be that most Chinese immigrants are not communist refugees. Many anti-communist immigrants were persecuted as a specific class or individually by communist governments.
They then fled to the United States. On the other hand, a lot of Chinese immigrants came to the United States as students, workers, or via family connections. Many of them represent people who benefited from the system in China. This is especially true for those who came as students or workers.
There is also the fact that China's Communist Party is by far the most successful of all the communist parties out there. This dilutes the potential opposition against it. For instance, the Chinese community would probably not support an American embargo on China aimed at toppling the communist government there.
This is quite different from the Cuban emigrant community. Yet there is still an element of strangeness about the Chinese community's utter lack of anti-Communist sentiment. Does not the Democratic Party's mantra of helping the working class recall the Maoist slogan of a proletariat paradise? Does not its support of abortion bring to mind China's controversial one-child policy? Apparently not, judging from the way the Chinese community votes.
Read more: http://www.redracinghorses.com/diary/733/why-dont-chineseamericans-vote-republican
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