Thread by @jeffreychngo

1. There are two fundamentally divergent ways to interpret the triumph of Asians and Asian-Americans at the #Oscars in 2023, not in terms of racial relations in this country, on which I’m sure many people will comment, but in terms of #HongKong’s fight for democracy and autonomy.

2. On one hand, you have a vision promoted by the likes of @janetyang1. Educated at elite institutions here — Phillips Exeter Academy, followed by Brown and Columbia Universities — she climbed every step of Hollywood’s ladder by profiting from authoritarianism abroad.

https://twitter.com/janetyang1/status/646414706677256192

3. In addition to repeatedly praising Chairman Xi Jinping, she leverages her skin color as a minority in the U.S. to dismiss genocidal policies in China, where her ethnicity — Han — empowers her. She exploits this gap across borders to play both sides against the middle.

https://twitter.com/janetyang1/status/1304217642811576321

4. Her defense of shooting in Xinjiang, irrespective of the millions of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims locked in concentration camps, is most dishonest. She knew criticisms of Mulan came predominately from Asians in Asia, yet she alluded to American diversity instead.

https://twitter.com/janetyang1/status/1304217644388679680

5. Little surprise, then, that while she twice scorned @ZelenskyyUa’s entreaty to deliver a virtual address, she insisted on putting @DonnieYenCT — a political advisor to the Chinese Communist Party — on stage, right after Navalny won Best Documentary Feature nevertheless.

https://twitter.com/variety/status/1633833768342396928

6. Yen is a Hong Konger. He doesn’t speak for Hong Kong, however, as the more than 100,000 of us who signed an online petition make clear. He slanders peaceful protesters, endorses police brutality, and dances around with a blackface, all of which I previously documented.

https://twitter.com/badiucao/status/1632752705855979522

7. If you look only at Yang and Yen, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that to succeed at the highest level as Asians and Asian-Americans in the U.S., it’s at least a necessity to be complicit in, if not an obligation to promote, Beijing’s ambitions. But that isn’t true.

8. Because, on the other hand, the life stories of Quan Kế Huy and Michelle Yeoh epitomize something very different: the unlimited possibilities Hong Kong once offered to Southeast Asians destined for far greater things.

9. Born in Saigon, Quan fled his country with his family when he was a kid after the communist unification. He was admitted as a refugee in 1978 by Hong Kong and resettled in 1979 to California. My Ph.D. dissertation project follows the trajectories of people just like him.

https://twitter.com/ap/status/1635079492447379457

10. Similarly, Yeoh hailed from Ipoh, Malaya, and chose Hong Kong to launch an acting career with her 1984 debut movie, The Owl vs. Bombo. The year China took over the territory and gradually compromised its creative economy, in 1997, she broke out to embrace a global audience.

11. She was perhaps the first person in the U.S. to demolish Jackie Chan’s image as an affable guy when she called him a “male chauvinistic pig” on David Letterman’s program. She’s also a leading proponent of the inclusive phrase “Lunar New Year,” not “Chinese New Year.”

https://twitter.com/cecefromdastars/status/1621893121540751362

12. Hong Kong’s contributions to the rise of Asian America since the early colonial period mustn’t be overlooked. Virtually all Qing subjects who moved across the Pacific during the California Gold Rush in the late 1840s went through the colony, continuing until 1882.

13. The same was true beyond Bruce Lee throughout the 20th century. After President Lyndon Johnson abolished the National Origins Formula as part of his Great Society programs, Hong Kong again played a unique role in facilitating immigration from China and Southeast Asia.

14. Daniel Kwan, the co-director and co-writer of Everything Everywhere All at Once, which won Best Picture tonight, is the son of a Hong Kong father and a Taiwanese mother.

https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1635148512798167040

15. Thanks in large part to him and his team, this film also features a substantial amount of Cantonese dialogue, at a time when even those produced in Hong Kong itself must increasingly feature Mandarin.

https://twitter.com/NiaoCollective/status/1635129804063379458

16. Alas, the Hong Kong I describe doesn’t exist anymore because of the very regime — a regime that threatens ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity — Yang and Yen support. The sweeping National Security Law on June 30, 2020, spelt its ultimate demise.

17. Make no mistake: Hong Kong was never fully democratic, fully autonomous, albeit freer in the past. That’s why our decades-long struggle isn’t about choosing one colonial master over another, but about exercising our universal right of self-determination as a people.

18. The recent rise of anti-A.A.P.I. hate is real. As a U.S.-based Hong Konger, I’ve felt it personally. I understand why some folks on the left in search of their identity cling onto an idealized, strong China. But confusing racial and national categories does no one any good.

19. Tibetan-Americans are Asian-Americans; Uyghur-Americans are Asian-Americans; and Mongolian-Americans are Asian-Americans, too. But Asian-Americans aren’t seen equally. Too often, those who conform to a sense of “Greater Chinese unity” enjoy having their voices amplified.

20. That’s what gave someone so mediocre as @AndrewYang any legitimacy to, when he ran for president, start every answer to questions about China with “I have family in Hong Kong and Taiwan,” only to then dismiss protests in Hong Kong or the yearning for independence in Taiwan.

21. Who can forget that time @politico declared Yang the “most prominent Asian-American political figure in the country” just because he fits the American imagination of “being Asian” so much — MATH! — when @KamalaHarris is literally the sitting vice president?

https://twitter.com/Mel_Ankoly/status/1379236803991859201

22. Yeoh’s speech means so much. She wasn’t referring to any Asian or Asian-American per se; she was championing the kind of genuine solidarity that transcended nationalism. And, of course, she’d never forget to give a shout-out to her beloved Hong Kong that made her a superstar.

https://twitter.com/variety/status/1635122069502590976