As China grows stronger, can a divided America find the leader it badly needs?

When I first came to America in 1949, I had the opportunity to build a life here. From an emigrant Chinese student to head of the Chinese and Korean section of the Library of Congress, a consultant to White House and National Security Council officials, I have been witness to the changing American political landscape.

I have spent most of my life in America, but these days I feel as though I am a foreigner in my own home. As a Chinese American, I am saddened by the divided social and political landscape in America. Although the rest of the world trusted America after the second world war, it has slowly been losing faith in the US as American citizens lose faith in themselves and their own leaders. Social and political divisions have become polarising, and nasty rhetoric and criticism is evident in media across the country, including social media. If America doesn’t trust itself, how can anyone else? Perhaps if we understand why America is so divided, we can reunite and become stronger on the world stage once again.

It is no secret that race relations has been a major talking point in American politics. People of any race, colour and ethnicity should talk about this. The civil rights movement alone has not solved problems of division, which means that laws are not enough to make substantive change. It must come from individuals. I feel that Asian Americans, in particular, are often treated as being less “American” than others.

The truth is, younger generations in America today are more racially diverse than any other. This is due in part to the influx of immigrants, like myself, finding homes and opportunity in the US. Between 1990 and 2014, the number of foreign-born citizens in the US rose from 7.9 per cent to 13.9 per cent.

According to Pew Research, the last time it was this high was in the 1920s. As a result, the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants allowed into the country per year.

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