In Chinese American Families, There’s a Generational Split on Mamdani - Many older Chinese immigrants are shifting to the political right, dividing from their children

New York times ^ | 2nd November 2025 | Li Yuan

[Cronos]

In 1976, Song Ying swam for eight hours from Shenzhen, then a small fishing village, to Hong Kong, joining millions of mainland Chinese who risked their lives to escape hunger, indoctrination and repression under Communist rule.

Today, at 72, she is a New Yorker who voted for President Trump three times and voted early for Andrew M. Cuomo in Tuesday’s mayoral election. She views socialism as a curse she barely survived when she fled China and fears that Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist and the Democratic mayoral nominee, is a threat to her adopted home.

Ms. Song cannot understand the broad enthusiasm young people have for Mr. Mamdani, who leads the race.

The political views of many older Chinese American immigrants are shifting to the right, a trend that is playing out in the mayor’s race.

Ms. Song and her husband arrived in the United States in 1978 with nothing. They borrowed $168 to pay their first month’s rent in Chinatown and hustled to build a life. She became a reporter for a Chinese-language newspaper while he started a small telecom business. One of their sons graduated from Cornell, the other from M.I.T. Both have professional careers — the kind of American success story that once symbolized immigrant hope.

Ms. Song’s political convictions are rooted in the country she fled. “Socialism has been a disaster,” she said. “Everything I’ve seen and experienced points to that. It breeds laziness and kills the motivation to strive.”

---

TOPICS: Culture/Society; US: New York
KEYWORDS:

[Cronos]

A New York Times analysis of the 2022 New York governor’s race found that voters in Asian neighborhoods across the city shifted 23 percentage points to the right, compared with 2018. Chinese enclaves in Sunset Park and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn even flipped Republican for the first time in at least a decade.

[Cronos]

Jessica Liew, a graduate student born and raised in Sunset Park, recalled arguing with her mother last fall. Her mother urged her to vote for Mr. Trump, saying he would lower living costs.

...

Lisa Lau, a data analyst at the World Bank, had a similar debate with her mother and father. Like Ms. Song, her parents fled mainland China to Hong Kong in the 1970s, then migrated to the United States in 1978. They worked in restaurants and real estate in Chinatown and Sunset Park, sending their two children to Harvard and Yale.

Her parents voted for both Democratic and Republican candidates until 2016, when they became steadfast supporters of Mr. Trump.

[frank ballenger]

I heard the report of the great longtime family run Chinese restaurant near me where the kids would cut fresh vegetables and the teenagers would work in the kitchen with their parents or aunts and uncles or drive the delivery truck, that the younger generation decided to sell out for cash because continuing to run the restaurant was “too much work.”

[MarlonRando]

I’m pretty sure we will never be in danger of the chinamen coming to the rescue regarding exactly anything. Didn’t they just murder millions of people all over the world with their bioengineered bat virus? Oh yeah, I almost forgot.

[Steely Tom]

I have first-hand knowledge of this phenomenon; I know a lot of Chinese families; most have children who went to elite universities.

The parents are essentially all conservatives and pro-Trump.

The children are all hard-core lefties, as far as I’m aware. I can’t think of any exceptions, among several dozen.

There was an incident last year that caused a lot of discussion in the Chinese-American community. A girl who was at Yale accused her own parents of being racists in a rant she put on social media. I believe her parents owned a restaurant somewhere on the East Coast, and it was very embarrassing for them.

A lot of the Chinese parents thought she had done an awful, extremely ungrateful and disrespectful thing. Apparently, she hasn’t been heard from since.

[ArcadeQuarters]

But...but...but... it just hasn’t been done right before! Just a few hundred million more murders and I’m sure we’ll get it right this time.

[Jonty30]

Liberals tend to think they will always have a second chance to correct themselves. That’s part of the attraction of socialism. They just cannot imagine voting in and not being able to vote out.

[shaggy eel]

Ms. Song cannot understand the broad enthusiasm young people have for Mr. Mamdani, who leads the race.

,,, you don't get to be old and wise without starting out young and stupid. Socialism spreads poverty evenly. Young people seem to vote on charisma and have so little regard for policies that they'll pay dearly for further down the track.

[ProgressingAmerica]

“.............most have children who went to elite universities...........”

I always find it heartbreaking when conservative families pay $60,000, 80, $100,000 or more dollars to throw their conservative children into the indoctrination mosh pit only to have their kids come back the following Thanksgiving and scream at their own parents about how much (the parents) are racists, misogynists, and homophobes.

In the back of my mind I suspect if the parents actually knew they were paying that much hard money to ruin their own child, they might not have made the same choice.

Unfortunately I believe that in many cases the parents are aware but succumb to arrogance. “my child will survive” “that won’t happen to my child” “nah, not me, not our family”

Until their daughter comes in the door with a bull hoop through their nose and blue hair. But by then its too late, the indoctrination is complete. You paid to ruin your own child. Yes, now your family too.

Congratulations!!!! You won! (at the Darwin awards)

There is a fundamental misunderstanding among all: The idea that this indoctrination is spotty or incomplete as if its only 1 decade old. The progressives have been indoctrinating in universities for 125 years. They have a fully-featured system, it is not incomplete. Your original child is not coming back. You lose. And you paid for it. That’s the insulting part. You paid for this faulty product.

I’m reminded of this fact: Progressives don’t have their own children, they abort them all. I’m also reminded: Progressives don’t need to have their own children. We surrender ours to them for them to indoctrinate. They have our children.

[fella]

When we are young we tend to be liberals because of pure ignorant idealism.
But as you approach middle age without having become conservative you have not gained any knowledge about human nature.

[WhiteHatBobby0701]

It’s what they teach you in schools. And too we have a generation that watches TikTok, YouTube, and other sites. Mum has this problem, she now favours China more often because she isn’t found of Will Lai. Nor am I, but I’ve studied enough listening to Rush in the past and Sean, along with reading conservative journals (including plenty of Fox).

The younger generation is extremely liberal, and it isn’t just the Sinicans. They have been influenced by the CCP’s influence in our everyday living. School textbooks no longer discuss the evils of Communism. Now they praise Communist values. Even Will Lai in Taiwan supports things such as RuPaul’s Womanface Cabaret.

These radical professors have created evil by having people praise the system that the parents escaped.

[yldstrk]

My kids, thanks to grandma, had a large college fund. Not a 529, cash money invested at Schwab. In their own names, started at birth and grown over 18 years in the market. They could spend it at whatever college they wanted.

My kids chose Wichita State aerospace engineering and Arkansas at Fayetteville communications. Both kids graduated, are conservative; the daughter with the communications degree hated advertising, hated news writing and hated marketing, so became a teacher at a classical school. Unless one chooses STEM or medicine, and elite school is not worth the money; even then it is not worth the money.

Both kids had money left at the end of college and no student loans.

[Red Badger]

“It breeds laziness and kills the motivation to strive.”

That is its sole purpose..............