Chinese Activism on the Rise : Politics: Although municipal elections are six months away, Chinese-Americans are assessing candidacies and becoming more active in how the city operates.

No one has announced for the next City Council race. After all, it isn’t until April. But already, Monterey Park’s Chinese-language newspapers are full of the latest election gossip.

In recent months, the widely read Shijie Ribao and Guoji Ribao have reported that a number of Chinese-Americans--including a former councilwoman, a former congressional aide, a couple of city commissioners and two lawyers--are considering running.

Such intense interest in local politics points to an emerging reality in Monterey Park, the only city in Los Angeles County where Asians constitute a majority: Asian-American activism is on the rise.

Several Asian community members say they want to move beyond the reactive stance of the past and have organized to demand bilingual services and more Chinese-speaking employees at City Hall.

They have staged protests, sometimes threatening to recall council members who hedged on a program to hire bilingual firefighters and 911 emergency dispatchers. That program was adopted last week.

Most of the activists are Chinese-Americans, and their leaders are focusing as well on an affirmative action plan still under council consideration. Some leaders argue that the plan is too weak and lacks the enforcement power needed to hire more minority employees.

And some are seeking potential candidates to run next year.

“We should have at least three council members, three Asians sitting on the City Council,” said Robert Lem, a member of the city’s Personnel Board. There now are two Chinese-Americans, Judy Chu and Sam Kiang, among the five council members. Kiang was elected in 1990; Chu is up for reelection next year.

Lem was the only one of three Personnel Board members who voted for the bilingual hiring program, an unusual method of recruiting Chinese- and Spanish-speaking employees.

Lem and others say they are setting the stage for long-term involvement of Asian-Americans in city affairs.

But at times, the activists’ confrontational approach has angered some city leaders, who say they are fueling racial tension in the ethnically diverse city. According to the 1990 Census, 57% of Monterey Park’s 60,738 residents are of Asian descent; 36% are Chinese, 10% are Japanese and 5% are Vietnamese.

Only 23.1% of registered voters are Chinese, and 12.6% are Japanese, according to a 1989 UCLA study by Prof. Don T. Nakanishi. The 1990 Census did not compile such data.

During a heated council debate on affirmative action, Lem said he did not think the city’s acting personnel director was qualified to handle an aggressive minority recruitment program. Councilwoman Marie T. Purvis said she took offense at Lem’s suggestion that a city department head wasn’t fit for the job.

In previous years, the Chinese-American community would merely react against such things as laws requiring English on business signs, a resolution to make English the city’s official language or anti-immigrant remarks by some council members.

At election time, many would readily support any Chinese-American candidate. Exit polls during the 1988 and 1990 council elections found about 90% of the Chinese vote went to candidates Chu and Kiang, said John Horton, a UCLA sociologist who conducted the polls as part of a study on Monterey Park. The two also needed, and received, large crossover support, Horton noted.

But such Chinese-American support is no longer automatic, said Francis Hong, a businessman who has been active in city politics. “Now we’re more critical. We ask questions. We want results.”

Hong said the recent rise in political activism stemmed from disappointment in Chu, whose critics have accused her of being insensitive to the Chinese community.

Chu first hedged her support for a proposed law enabling the council to override the Personnel Board and adopt the bilingual hiring program. Some took that to mean she rejected the hiring program entirely, when in fact she supported it.

Chu later voted for the override law, and wrote an open letter to the Chinese community clarifying her position. But by then, the political damage had been done.

“A lot of people are very unhappy, and don’t know whether Judy cares about the Chinese-American vote,” said David Ma, a businessman who, along with Hong, is organizing a political group. Ma said he supports Chu.

Chu claimed that her foes had intentionally distorted her position on the bilingual program and “polarized the community when they didn’t have to.”

Still, Horton of UCLA said the 911 controversy, with all its politicization and misunderstandings, “represents a maturation, and will increase the involvement and empowerment of Chinese in the community.”

“It also represented differences within the community on what bilingualism was and how it was to be implemented,” he said. “It just shows the increased complexity of politics in the region.”