Editor: Jane Leung Larson
From November 16 to 19, Yo-Yo Ma joined an unusual delegation of American artists, including Meryl Streep, Alice Waters and Joel Coen, at the Asia Society's U.S.-China Forum on the Arts and Culture in Beijing. “As the Chinese-American cellist Yo-Yo Ma performed an eclectic, quirky concert showcasing American culture, one of China’s rising political stars gave her blessing, standing up to wave to the crowd between pieces. . . . The program was widely covered and praised in the official Chinese media and on informal social networking sites. It was embraced by the senior official, Liu Yandong, a member of the Communist Party’s powerful Politburo and the country’s highest-ranking female politician,” wrote Ian Johnson of the New York Times.
April 19-21
The Langham Huntington Hotel and Spa
Pasadena, California
The Committee of 100 convenes its 21st Annual Conference this April at The Langham Huntington in Pasadena, California. The Awards Gala on April 19 is followed by a full-day conference on April 20, which features four Roundtables on the current state of U.S.-China relations:
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Hong Kong Commissioner Donald Tong is in the front, far right. Hong Kong Deputy Commissioner Bassanio So is in the top row, second from right.
Hong Kong Commissioner for Economic and Trade Affairs Donald Tong hosted Committee members at his home in Washington, D.C., on November 30, prior to the December C-100 Greater China Conference in Hong Kong. Tong is the highest ranking official representing the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in the United States. Washington members Bob Gee, Michelle Kwan, Cheng Li, Michael Lin, Ben Wu, and Jeremy Wu attended the dinner.
In a December 22 statement calling for a thorough investigation of the suicide of Army Private Danny Chen in Afghanistan on October 3, the Committee of 100 commended “the U.S. Army for its decision to charge eight American soldiers in relation to Pvt. Chen's apparent suicide and for publicly acknowledging that Pvt. Chen was subject to bullying and hazing.” C-100 also stressed that “the Army's investigation should probe further to determine any pattern of racially-motivated violence against Asian-American servicemen and women, as evidenced by the suicides of Pvt. Danny Chen and of Lance Corporal Harry Lew in April this year.”
Both Chen and Lew were subjected to prolonged and harsh hazing and ethnic slurs in their units, the New York Times reported in late October. On December 21, the Army charged eight soldiers with manslaughter and negligent homicide in connection with Chen’s death. Three Marines associated with Lew’s death have been court-martialed.
The Committee’s statement was cited in “Top U.S. Officer Decries Hazing After Troop Suicides” (AFP , December 22): “A Chinese-American group, the Committee of 100, expressed ‘grave concern’ over the incidents, and welcomed the military's vow to prosecute possible abuse.”
Danny Chen’s life and death are the subject of a January 6 feature by Jennifer Gonnerman in New York Magazine, which includes this graphic description:
Since Danny Chen’s death, details of his story have slowly emerged, relayed by Army officials to his family. A group of his superiors allegedly tormented Chen on an almost daily basis over the course of about six weeks in Afghanistan last fall. They singled him out, their only Chinese-American soldier, and spit racial slurs at him: “gook,” “chink,” “dragon lady.” They forced him to do sprints while carrying a sandbag. They ordered him to crawl along gravel-covered ground while they flung rocks at him. And one day, when his unit was assembling a tent, he was forced to wear a green hard-hat and shout out instructions to his fellow soldiers in Chinese.
