Chinese-Americans see Obama's China trip in unique light

They have as many different feelings about their ancestral home hope, indifference, pride, pain - as there are characters in the Chinese language. Yet many share a conviction that is both logical and personal: The destinies of China and America are inseparable.

“Each one is dependent on the other to make their economy strong,” said David Zhang, a New York City physician who immigrated to America at age 25. “The U.S. cannot leave China, and China cannot leave the U.S. It's symbiotic, like an organism.”

The Great Recession has bound the two nations even tighter, and given China greater influence. America borrowed unprecedented sums to resuscitate itself. China, which needs American consumers to fuel its growth, supplied much of that cash and is America's largest foreign lender.

“It's like that little brother you always used to pick on, and now he's lending you money,” said Nanci Zhang (no relation to David), a 22-year-old Los Angeles resident. “But you can't quite conceive of one brother without the other.”

Nanci Zhang was born in Beijing and moved with her parents to the United States when she was 3. In her American schools, she remembers China's long history being celebrated while its present was ignored. Now she sees her homeland coming to America's economic rescue, and “it's kind of validating.”

About three million U.S. residents are of Chinese descent, according to a 2008 Census estimate. About a third were born here, a third are naturalized citizens, and a third have arrived in the past few years, said Cheng Li, a China scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

David Zhang came to America in 1985 looking for freedom and opportunity. “What I dream of here I couldn't even dream of in China: cars, a house, a good, decent job. I could dream that here, and I realized it. Now in China, all these things we accomplished, they have accomplished.”

Zhang, a pathologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and president of the Association of Chinese American Physicians, leads regular delegations of American doctors to his homeland. He collaborates with China on cancer research and clinical trials and is urging his hospital to enter the Chinese health care market.

“As Chinese physicians, we meet with the (Mount Sinai) board of trustees regularly. Ten years ago you don't even dare speak to them,” he said.

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