By: Mario Mancini
“It would be horrible if Bill de Blasio is elected to Congress,” Yan Xiong told The New York Post on Sunday. De Blasio and Xiong have both recently announce plans to run for Congress representing the 10th Congressional District. The primary is scheduled for August 23rd.
Nearly 20% of the population in the newly drawn 10th Congressional District is Asian American, taking in Chinatown in Lower Manhattan, as well as the large Chinese immigrant community in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, according to The New York Post.
“De Blasio ignored Chinatown and Asian American community,” Xiong said. “The Chinese community will not be ignored if I’m elected to Congress. Bill de Blasio doesn’t care about our Asian communities. He doesn’t care about our safety, and openly discriminated against our high-performing students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds. I cannot think of a person more undeserving of the Chinese community’s support and our efforts than Bill de Blasio. Over the last eight years, he single-handedly destroyed Chinatown’s local economy, left us vulnerable to crime and ruined our children’s education. His policies don’t encourage students to study hard. He doesn’t understand why Asian-American parents care so much about their children’s education. This is good for our nation long-term.”
Xiong claims de Blasio’s educational policies opposing merit and achievement — by attempting to scrap the admission test to get into the specialized high schools and change the gifted and talented programs — is bad for America. De Blasio sought to change the policies because only a small number of black and Latino students were admitted, according to The New York Post.
Carl Campanile of The New York Post writes, “the 10th Congressional District was created after maps drawn by Democrats were struck down by the courts for partisan gerrymandering — which Republican critics dubbed the “Hochulmander” because Gov. Kathy Hochul approved them. A court-supervised special master redrew the maps”.
Xiong led pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square in China as a young college student — drawing the wrath of the communist government. Following the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, he fled to the US as a political refugee and joined the Army, serving as a chaplain in Iraq.
“In China, I was a freedom fighter. I joined the Army when I came to America because I wanted to be a freedom defender,” he told The New York Post.
According to his Wikipedia bio, Xiong is a Chinese-American human rights activist, military officer, and Protestant chaplain. He was a dissident involved in 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Xiong studied at Peking University Law School from 1986–1989. He came to the United States of America as a political refugee in 1992, and later became a chaplain in U.S. Army, serving in Iraq. Xiong is the author of three books, and has earned six degrees. He is running for Congress in New York’s 10th congressional district, and his campaign has reportedly been attacked by agents of Communist China’s Ministry of State Security.
