Asian Money

The media's rush to judgment in the Riady case

by Bill Wong

There was a veritable avalanche of bad news last week for certain Asian American Democrats who were linked to questionable, and possibly illegal, overseas fundraising activities.

The bad news then spilled over into the presidential campaign, with Republican Bob Dole using the news to illustrate what he believes are ethical lapses of President Clinton.

The Democrats aren't turning the other cheek. Rather, they are raising questions about overseas influences on Dole, the Republican Party, and past Republican presidents.

The principal bearers of the bad news were the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Their targets were James Riady, member of a billionaire Indonesian family who once lived in the United States and a longtime friend of President Clinton; John Huang, a former Riady employee who has been a star fundraiser for the Democratic Party; and Melinda Yee, a former Democratic Party and Commerce Department official who is now an Asian-trade liaison for San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.

For details of allegations against Riady, Huang, and Yee, see "Washington Journal" in this issue.

The essence of the reports is that the ethnic Chinese Riady family, based in Indonesia, influenced Clinton on international trade deals and internal Indonesia politics.

According to the reports, Huang and Yee raised money from the Riady family for the party. What the Riady family got in return, the reports implied, was help from the Clinton Commerce Department (where both Huang and Yee once worked) in brokering deals in China for Riady family business interests.

It was further implied that the Riadys bought kid-glove treatment from the Clinton White House on alleged human-rights abuses by Indonesia in East Timor. The Times said the Clinton administration "has maintained tariff preferences for Indonesia despite complaints by human rights groups. At the Asian-Pacific economic summit talks that were held in Jakarta in 1994, however, human rights and East Timor were not high on the agenda."

So what does this all mean? If I had to draw some big-picture conclusions based in part on the Journal and Times reports, a general knowledge of how American politics works, and the limited role Asian Americans have played in American politics, I would say this: What the Riadys have allegedly done with the help of Huang and Yee (if true) is very much in the time-honored tradition of trying to win political influence.

If there is any corruption in this-and we really don't know for sure yet if that is the case-it is the fact that money is at the center of the American political culture. Special interests of a dizzying variety (tobacco, oil, pharmaceuticals, armaments, insurance, etc.) shell out millions upon millions of dollars to try to influence politicians and parties. So have ethnic groups.

It hasn't been all that long since Asian Americans have become politically active on a national scale. Our population numbers have been rather insignificant. Our voting numbers are even more pathetic.

But, in recent years, the word has spread among a growing, if still relatively small, cadre of politically active Asian Americans that one way to get an invitation to sit at the big national political table is to give money to candidates and parties. That's the system, like or leave it.

Most Asian American political contributors aren't in the same league as James Riady. I don't know the motivation of each of those writing political-contribution checks, but I believe many, if not most, do so not to sway major foreign policy. Rather, they do so to help the nascent Asian American community cause, so Asian Americans will be noticed as having both a legitimate political role to play and a legitimate claim to political solutions brought about by the attention that money and votes yield.

This is no excuse for breaking the law, if that is what happened in the Riady case. But we shouldn't be too quick to judge the actions of John Huang and Melinda Yee until we know a lot more than we now know.

Bill Wong is an independent journalist, a commentator on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and a regular contributor to AsianWeek.

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