Spying Case Stuns Chinese American Leaders

Shock and apprehension.

The two words best describe the Southern California Chinese American community’s reaction Thursday to charges that a prominent Chinese American businesswoman was a double agent who obtained secret information for China from an FBI counterintelligence officer.

“I was totally shocked,” said Assemblywoman Judy Chu, D-Monterey Park, who knew Katrina Leung well. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Former South Pasadena Mayor Paul Zee said he fears that the “isolated” case could unleash widespread suspicion against Chinese Americans -- even before the case goes to trial.

“It’s all too easy to paint a Chinese American person as a spy for China,” said Chu, who worked closely with Leung on the Monterey Park-Quanzhou sister city relationship.

Chu, like numerous other Chinese American leaders, recalled the case of scientist Wen Ho Lee.

“He was charged with 59 counts of espionage, fired from his job, taken to jail, held in solitary confinement -- and then 58 of the charges were dropped,” Chu said. “This is why I would caution people from leaping to judgment until the outcome of the trial.”

Leung, who was Ivy League-educated, was well-connected socially and politically. Fluent in English, Mandarin and Cantonese, she frequently emceed banquets attended by Chinese dignitaries and hundreds of guests..

Stewart Kwoh, president of the Asian American Legal Center, said Leung deserves a fair hearing.

“We certainly are not in a position to know what really happened,” Kwoh said, “but a fair hearing is a prerequisite in our system.”

Whatever the outcome, he said, that shouldn’t be an excuse for widespread stereotyping and suspicions against Chinese Americans, in particular, and Asian Americans in general.

Throughout their history in this country, he said, Chinese Americans have been plagued by the stereotype of a “suspicious foreigner or a perpetual foreigner” whose loyalties are in question.

Political scientist Don T. Nakanishi, director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, said he was struck by the contrasting images he saw this week in the journey of Chinese Americans in this country.

“Within a day, you have a Chinese American being accused of being a double agent for the People’s Republic of China and, on the other hand, you have the image of a Chinese American soldier draping the American flag on the head of Saddam Hussein’s statue,” he said.

“And you also have a prosecutor [U.S. Atty. Debra W. Yang] who is Chinese American,” said Lily Chen Lee, former mayor of Monterey Park.

“There is no greater statement than that Chinese Americans are really Americans.”

Leung, who made campaign contributions to many politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, contributed $1,500 to Zee’s state senatorial campaign in 2000. And she gave $1,490 to Chu’s 1998 and 1994 campaigns.

Both Chu and Zee described Leung as a capable and energetic person who threw herself behind causes she supported.

“If she agrees to involve herself in anything, she will put in 120%,” Zee said.

Chu said Leung was proud of Chinese American elected officials, as she was of others of the same ancestry who she believed had succeeded in America.

Chu also said Leung wanted to contribute to the establishment of good relations between the United States and China through sister city groups.

Also on Wednesday, the day Leung and former FBI agent James J. Smith were arrested, the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, on whose board Leung served, issued a statement expressing its “shock.”

“We were surprised and shocked as anyone when the news broke this morning regarding Ms. Leung,” said J. Curtis Mack II, president of the council. Leung had been named to the board in January.

Many Asian American political leaders also said it pained them that the incident comes when Chinese Americans in the Los Angeles area have made gains in political participation.

“The Monterey Park City Council is now majority Chinese American,” said Chen. There are also numerous Chinese Americans serving on school boards, she said.

Yet when something like this happens, they fear a backlash, the Asian American leaders said.

“It seems that we take one step forward and two steps backward,” said David Lang, a well-connected Chinese American political consultant.

“Right now, the important thing is that she get a fair trial,” Chen said.

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Times staff writer David Pierson contributed to this report.