To celebrate Asian Pacific
American Heritage Month, China Insight is pleased to be
collaborating with the Chinese Heritage Foundation to
present A Passage to China at the Center Court of
Southdale Mall in Edina, MN. Complete details on the
event are listed on the back page of the paper and we
cordially invite you to attend this free event that will
include over 30 local Chinese organizations, listed on
page 2, that will provide you with an interactive
journey through China—and you won’t even have to pack a
suitcase or get on an airplane.
Since this may be the first
time some of you may be reading China Insight, we would
like to provide some background on the newspaper.
China Insight was started in
2001 and is an independent, locally-owned company that
is headquartered in Minnesota. It is the only
English-language American newspaper to focus exclusively
on building a bridge between the United States and the
People’s Republic of China. Our goal is to develop a
mutual understanding of each other’s culture and
business environment by fostering U.S.-China cultural
and business harmony.
In each monthly issue, we may
include articles on such diverse topics as business,
culture, government, travel, education, finance,
language, lifestyle, science and technology, sports and
local Chinese events. These articles may be written by
our own staff writers or reprinted from other sources to
ensure that we provide a variety of views and
perspectives as to what is happening in these areas.
Although we depend on advertising to support our
efforts, none of this would be possible without the
dedication of our staff which is comprised of
volunteers.
In addition to publishing the
newspaper, China Insight promotes or sponsors events
that foster U.S.-China cultural and business harmony. As
part of its commitment to be civic-minded and proactive
in the community, China Insight has supported/sponsored
events held by the China Center, CAAM Dance Theater,
Asia Media Access, Dragon Festival and now with the
Chinese Heritage Foundation.
As mentioned earlier, China
Insight focuses on two facets of coverage: business and
culture. On the business side, the newspaper
concentrates on businesses and business leaders with
connections to China. On the culture side, we focus on
all readers regardless of heritage, with an interest in
understanding some aspect of China. The individual on
whom we focus is English-speaking Chinese who wants to
develop a better understanding of the U.S. and also
Americans with an interest in China. Our goal is to
satisfy the needs of these two diverse groups that form
a large, well-educated audience.
We estimate that such an
audience is in excess of 30,000. Since China now is
easily Minnesota’s third largest trading partner, over
9,000 plus have a direct business involvement, another
6,000 plus are interested in China’s arts and culture,
student interest exceeds 5,000 with an ever-increasing
Chinese language education program along with the ethnic
Chinese community that numbers over 18,000. Also, since
the state of Minnesota has greater per capita
international adoption from China than any other state,
we estimate that adoptive family interest is 3,000 plus.
To expand our reach to this
audience, we are constantly improving our Web site at
www.chinainsight.info to provide more timeliness to
our content and features such as streaming video so
please feel free to visit us on the internet.
Included in this month’s issue
is something we haven’t done before and that is to
feature an interview with someone running for a
political office. Since there is a a strong movement by
voters in this country demanding changes, we were able
to find a candidate that is campaigning on making
changes, without any political experience and definitely
not a career politician. We decided to interview Al
Franken exactly for these reasons and this does not
intended as any kind of endorsement by China Insight.
Gregory J. Hugh
