Taiwan strikes more gold in Kaohsiung
　

GOLDEN KNOCKOUT: Huang Hao-yun picked up a gold medal in men’s karate kumite, despite his Russian opponent knocking him out cold during the bout

By Richard Hazeldine
STAFF REPORTER, KAOHSIUNG
Sunday, Jul 26, 2009, Page 1
　

Taiwan got back on the medal trail yesterday in dramatic fashion on the penultimate day of action with three gold medals at the World Games in Kaohsiung.

The golds came in karate (one) and powerlifting (two), while Taiwanese athletes also picked up one bronze each in Karate and women’s nine ball pool.

Huang Hao-yun (黃昊昀) picked up a gold medal in the men’s karate kumite under 80kg final, although he probably knew little about it as he was taken to hospital after being knocked out by Russia’s Islamutdin Eldaruchev in his gold medal bout.

Huang had earlier fought his way back to 6-6 from 5-2 down in a violent bout that saw both men flattened on a number of occasions. However, his Russian opponent then knocked Huang out with a punch to the face that saw Huang stretchered off. Huang was handed an 8-0 win and the gold medal.

Minister of Sport Tai Hsia-ling (戴遐齡) stood in for Huang at the medal ceremony, collecting the medal in front of an empty podium.

Meanwhile, Chang Ting(張婷) also won a bronze in the women’s under-60kg division.

Earlier in the day, Chen Wei-ling (陳葦綾) and Hsieh Tsung-ting (謝宗庭) were the stars as they grabbed gold in the powerlifting women’s and men’s lightweight divisions respectively while in the women’s pool Lin Yuan-chun took bronze after beating compatriot Chang Shu-han in the third-fourth place playoff.

The medals take Taiwan up to sixth spot in the overall medal table with eight gold, six silver and six bronze medals.

Olympic bronze medalist Chen set new world records in the deadlift and the squat at the National Sun Yat-sen University Hall which helped to make up for her bench press score, the poorest of her three disciplines.

Chen finished with a score of 668.27, well ahead of second-placed Yukaku Fukushima of Japan who scored 630.65.

Chen said later that she was happy to win gold at the World Games, especially as they were in Taiwan.

“I felt I had a good chance to win, so I didn’t feel that much pressure,” she said.

Indonesia’s Sri Hartani finished with bronze after scoring 628.9 while Taiwan’s Chou Yi-ju finished fourth with 609.27 points.

Meanwhile, Hsieh took gold after his three lifts earned him a combined total of 615.92 points, while Arkadiy Shalokha of Ukraine took silver with 584.37.

Speaking after the medal ceremony, Hsieh thanked his namesake former Kaohsiung mayor Frank Hsieh for all the support and encouragement he had given him.

Later, Taiwan’s Chou Chien-yu just missed out on a medal finishing just 2.9 points short of third place in the women’s middleweight division.

Men’s middleweight powerlifters Huang Lung-hsin and Kuan Yi-hsin also missed out on a medal, while the men’s heavyweight final featuring Chen Ching-chung was ongoing as of press time.

In the women’s pool, Lin and Chang were forced to face off in the bronze medal match after Chang had lost her semi-final in the early session 9-2 to Jasmin Ouschan of Austria while Lin Yuan-chun was beaten 9-5 by Alison Fisher of the UK.

Men’s hope Yang Ching-shun stayed on track for gold after narrowly beating Germany’s Thorsten Hohmann 11-10 in the round of four to make the final where he will meet Ralf Souquet of Germany.

Also yesterday, Taiwan’s Tchoukball teams continued their awesome form on day two of qualifying at the Kaoshiung Normal University Gymnasium yesterday.

The men’s team scored a big win against Macau in their first game of the day, winning 64-28, while the ladies ran out 75-22 winners over Singapore.

In the evening games the men beat the UK 73-42 and the ladies beat Canada 57-22. The wins saw them finish top of their respective tables and qualify for the final. The women’s and men’s gold medal matches will take place at 12.45pm and 2pm today.

Ma praises Beijing for its ‘goodwill’ in mending ties
　

By Ko Shu-ling
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Jul 26, 2009, Page 1

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday praised Beijing for the “goodwill” it has shown in improving cross-strait relations, citing the World Games in Kaohsiung as an example.

Ma said the fact that International World Games Association (IWGA) president Ron Froehlich twice referred to him as president of the Republic of China (ROC) during the opening ceremony was a clear indication that Taiwan has received more respect in international events.

“It mainly results from the support of our friends in the international community and ameliorated cross-strait relations,” he said. “The mainland has indeed extended goodwill to us and it is a fact that we cannot deny.”

Ma made the remarks while campaigning for his Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairmanship election bid in Taitung County yesterday.

In his speech, Ma did not mention that the Chinese team refused to attend the opening ceremony. Local media speculated that the Chinese delegation boycotted the opening ceremony to avoid giving the impression that Beijing recognizes Ma’s status as president or Taiwan’s status as a sovereign state.

Meanwhile, in a weekly video address made available yesterday — a remake, after its original July 25 version was found by an Internet user last week to have been pre-recorded — Ma said that opening the World Games in his capacity as president was a “breakthrough.”

Ma said it showed his administration has moved closer to his proposed goal of “mutual non-denial” between Taipei and Beijing, he said.

He also explained why he did not refer to himself as the president at the opening ceremony.

On the night of the opening ceremony, Ma, following Froehlich’s introduction as president of the ROC, took the podium and said: “Ladies and gentlemen, I now declare open the eighth edition of the World Games in Kaohsiung 2009.”

Ma said in the video that since Froehlich referred to him twice as president of the ROC while the master of ceremony did once, if he were to say it again, it would have sounded “intentional.”

“I think it is best and more meaningful for others to introduce me as president of the Republic of China, especially the IWGA president,” he said.

Whether Ma would attend the event as the nation’s leader was contentious from the beginning. The IWGA initially rejected the Kaohsiung City Government’s request that Ma preside over the opening ceremony.

Following further negotiations, the IWGA agreed to Ma’s attendance in his capacity as ROC president.

Ma said in the video that he was very moved when singing the ROC’s National Banner Song (國旗歌) in front of 40,000 people and 105 athletes from around the world.

The president thanked Democratic Progressive Party Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊), her predecessor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and government sports heads for their efforts to make the event possible.

Christian ‘executed’ in North Korea
　

NEW CRACKDOWN:: The woman allegedly killed was a mother of three and had been distributing Bibles. Her husband and children are said to be in a prison

AP, SEOUL
Sunday, Jul 26, 2009, Page 4

A Christian woman accused of distributing the Bible, a book banned in communist North Korea, was publicly executed last month for the crime, South Korean activists said on Friday.

The 33-year-old mother of three, Ri Hyon-ok, was also accused of spying for South Korea and the US and of organizing dissidents, a rights group said in Seoul, citing documents from the North.

The Investigative Commission on Crime Against Humanity report included a copy of Ri’s photo ID and said her husband, children and parents were sent to a political prison the day after her June 16 execution.

The claim could not be independently verified on Friday, and there has been no mention by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency of her case.

The alleged execution would mark a harsh turn in the crackdown on religion in North Korea, a country where Christianity once flourished and where the capital, Pyongyang, was known as the “Jerusalem of the East” for the predominance of the Christian faith.

According to its Constitution, North Korea guarantees freedom of religion. But in reality, the regime severely restricts religious observance, with the cult of personality created by national founder Kim Il-sung and enjoyed by his son, current leader Kim Jong-il, serving as a state religion. Those who violate religious restrictions are often accused of crimes such as spying or anti-government activities.

There are four state-authorized churches: one Catholic, two Protestant and one Russian Orthodox. However, they cater to foreigners only, and ordinary North Koreans cannot attend services.

Still, more than 30,000 North Koreans are believed to practice Christianity in hiding — at great personal risk, defectors and activists say.

The US State Department said in a report last year that “genuine religious freedom does not exist” in North Korea.

“What religious practice or venues exist ... [are] tightly controlled and used to advance the government’s political or diplomatic agenda,” the US Commission on International Religious Freedom said in a May report. “Other public and private religious activity is prohibited and anyone discovered engaging in clandestine religious practice faces official discrimination, arrest, imprisonment, and possibly execution.”

The report cited indications that the North Korean government had taken “new steps” to stop the clandestine spread of Christianity, particularly in areas near the border with China, including infiltrating underground churches and setting up fake prayer meetings as a trap for Christian converts.

Ri was reportedly executed in the northwestern city of Ryongchon — near the border with China.

“North Korea appears to have judged that Christian forces could pose a threat to its regime,” Do Hee-youn, a leading activist, told reporters in Seoul on Friday.

The South Korean rights report also said North Korean security agents arrested and tortured another Christian, Seo Kum-ok, 30, near Ryongchon. She was accused of trying to spy on a nuclear site and hand the information over to South Korea and the US.

It was unclear if she was still alive, the report said. Her husband was also arrested and their two children have disappeared, it said.

The US government commission report cited defectors as saying an estimated 6,000 Christians are jailed in “Prison No. 15” in the north of the country, with religious prisoners facing worse treatment than other inmates.

A necessary climate for US action
　

By Wu Changhua 吳昌華
Sunday, Jul 26, 2009, Page 8

Without active collaboration between the US and China, not only will the odds for successful negotiations in Copenhagen this December to secure a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol be diminished, but it will be unlikely that any meaningful remedy will be found in time to arrest rising global temperatures. Yet talks between the US and China on climate change currently present two contrasting scenarios: one hopeful, the other discouraging.

In the first scenario, the two countries’ senior delegations remain deadlocked, with their polarized stances frozen in place. Moreover, the failure of developed countries — particularly the US — to take responsibility for their historical emissions of greenhouse gases continues, representing a major sticking point because these emissions far surpass those of the developing world.

In the second scenario, billions of dollars in “green” stimulus packages trigger a global race that leads to new energy technologies and their deployment. The US becomes focused on leading in six key clean-tech areas: building efficiency, battery technology, solar, carbon capture and storage (CCS), smart grids and electric vehicles (EV).

These efforts are mirrored by Chinese initiatives in such fields as new low-energy vehicles; light-emitting diode (LED) lighting; building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV); innovative energy efficiency technologies; and various alternative energy sources such as solar, wind, bio-gas and synthetic fuels. Both countries express a determination to find collaborative ways to restructure their energy mixes with new, low-carbon energy technologies.

Given the stakes, it is perhaps understandable why the US and China are holding their climate-change cards close to their chests. Each side is emerging from a period in which it used the other as an excuse for inaction, but they have now actively started to explore which scenario to follow.

The nature of these two countries’ bilateral engagement will dictate how the low-carbon economic “pie” will get carved up, and thus how fast the global economy as a whole can be transformed. Responsibility for this transformation lies irrevocably with China and the US, not only because they are the world’s biggest emitters, but also because only they have the capacity to invest enough in clean-tech research and development, provide a large enough labor force and support a large enough change in global policy. So the future of the world’s climate rests not just on their shoulders individually, but on their ability to work together.

Both sides agree that their roles are critical. Indeed, climate change is now included in all major bilateral discussions, alongside trade, exchange rates, human rights and energy security. And recent exchanges and visits seem to give some cause for optimism.

But climate change represents China’s toughest challenge in international relations since the end of the Cold War. Not only has China recently become the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, but the pace of its future emissions is expected to far exceed forecasts.

At the same time, China remains a vast developing country, ardently seeking more rapid economic growth to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty and to provide better living standards for hundreds of millions more. Balancing its need for growth with climate protection makes China’s role precarious.

The global financial crisis complicates matters further. Even though parts of both the developed and the developing world increasingly look to China for leadership, the country’s leaders view such a global role as beyond their current capabilities. Yet China has come a long way from the days of the Kyoto Protocol.

Like many developing countries, China was dragged along in that process. It did sign the Kyoto agreement, albeit as an “Annex I state,” meaning that it did not commit to defined limits on carbon emissions.

But China’s views have evolved. The biggest milestone came in December 2007, when it, along with other developing countries, signed the Bali Roadmap, agreeing to work together on a new global deal by the end of this year in Copenhagen. Today, China actively and constructively participates in the global talks, discussing, for example, what it has been doing to cut emissions per unit of GDP. (It has made an ambitious commitment in its 11th Five-Year Plan to a 20 percent reduction in energy intensity and a 10 percent increase in renewable energy by next year.) Reaction to these changes from the international community has been largely positive.

Indeed, last March, US climate envoy Todd Stern began to speak positively about China’s domestic efforts to address climate change. But this does not mean that agreement is in the offing.

According to the Kyoto Protocol, what China, as a “developing” country, and the US, as a “developed” country, are required to do is completely different. Unlike China, the US must commit to absolute limits on emissions. So China would like to see the US lead in making such a commitment — without using China as an excuse for inaction. As a developing country that has in its history emitted only one-fifth of the carbon dioxide emitted by the US, China insists that it has the moral right to resist calls to take the lead.

With just months remaining before the Copenhagen talks, China is expected to deliver its commitment to the Bali Action Plan. It will, of course, be a far lower commitment than that hoped for by the EU and the US. If the US is serious about reaching a constructive outcome in Copenhagen, it must set radical and practical targets, take responsibility for its history of carbon emissions and commit itself to support developing countries’ efforts by means of capacity building, technology transfer and finance. Only then will the developing world view the US as truly willing to assume its role as a global leader.

Wu Changhua is Greater China director of The Climate Group and is based in Beijing.
　

Kenichi Ohmae, the false prophet

Sunday, Jul 26, 2009, Page 8

Since coming to power, the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has used “opening up” and “deregulation” as excuses to lean heavily toward China.

It has also invited renowned intellectuals to Taiwan in the hope that they will endorse this approach.

To the government, Japanese global strategist Kenichi Ohmae, who recently visited Taiwan, fit the bill. The government must have been pleased to hear him propose some sensational ideas on the cross-strait relationship. Pro-unification media outlets promoted Ohmae’s ideas in an attempt to push a Taiwan blinded by China fever further toward the edge.

Ohmae likes to talk about the cross-strait relationship, often making astonishing and contradictory comments.

The talk he gave on this visit was no exception; as a result, no one knows if he came to endorse the government’s economic and trade policy or to criticize its pro-China tendencies.

Ohmae used to work at the renowned consultancy McKinsey & Co. He is a prolific writer, and this has given him stature as an analyst of international financial and economic trends.

He is also a frequent visitor to Taiwan and has written much about cross-strait economic and trade issues.

His stance has mostly been pro-unification, suggesting that the two sides speed up economic and trade integration. This gives the impression that he is uncritically pro-China, but this is not the case.

Even so, his analyses have frequently been proven wrong by events.

His most contentious idea was a bold prediction in his 2002 book The Emergence of the United States of Chunghwa that China and Taiwan would unite in 2005. In 2009, however, Taiwan and China are still independent countries.

In 2001, before coming up with his Chunghwa theory, he predicted that China would collapse — an idea well received by then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝). Two years later, however, Ohmae changed his mind, publishing The Emergence of the United States of Chunghwa. In a short period of time, his views did an about-face: Instead of predicting China’s collapse, he began to praise it.

His recent visit was also filled with contradictions, generalizations and grand predictions based on fragmentary evidence. This time he said Taiwan has less than a year to use its experience and other advantages to move into the Chinese market because the “window of opportunity has almost closed,” while also blaming the previous government for letting an opportunity slip through its fingers.

An enthusiastic Ma welcomed this analysis and bragged that he had initiated a series of measures to improve cross-strait relations aimed at rapidly completing everything the previous government neglected to do.

But has Ma really found a soul mate in Ohmae? No.

Ohmae may have scared Taiwan by saying it only has a year left to make use of its advantages, but later, when he met with Taiwanese reporters, he said it was inappropriate for Taiwan to lean toward China. He said that although cross-strait relations and direct links have brought many business opportunities, the Chinese economy, while large, still only makes up one-quarter of the global economy at most.

He also warned that as Taiwan looks to the future, it must consider cooperating with the five biggest economic entities and that government and business must avoid leaning too closely toward China. He also warned that Taiwan must not remove all restrictions on Chinese investment lest China buy up Taiwanese businesses at will.

Ohmae’s ideas may be contradictory, but a careful look at his analysis of the Chinese economy allows us to conclude that he is one of its cheerleaders. Even so, despite praising China in this way, Ohmae knows that caution is necessary.

The Ma administration, on the other hand, has thrown all caution to the wind with policies that pay no attention to looming dangers.

Ohmae once jokingly said: “I’ll give you Aso if you give me Ma Ying-jeou,” implying that he would rather have Ma as Japan’s leader than Prime Minister Taro Aso — an indication of how much he likes him. The irony is that this jesting may have provided a solution to Taiwan’s problems: If Ma steps down, Taiwan may have a chance to ride out the crisis and move toward a more secure future.
　

Cross-strait rules that may harm the public
　

By Huang Di-ying 黃帝穎
Sunday, Jul 26, 2009, Page 8

After a consensus in the third meeting between Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), the Ministry of Economic Affairs announced on June 30 that Chinese investment would be allowed in Taiwan.

This violates both the Constitution and the Act Governing Relations between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) and could damage national security and infringe on the rights of Taiwanese.

First, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government enacted rules based on the Chiang-Chen agreement, but according to Constitutional Interpretation No. 329, an international agreement concluded between Taiwan and foreign countries or international organizations that involves “important issues of the Nation or rights and duties of the people” should be sent to the legislature for deliberation no matter what the agreement is called.

Calling the result of the cross-strait meeting a consensus, the government signed this agreement without divulging the implications for the rights and duties of the public. Taiwan’s government not only failed to ensure that the rules are transparent but also avoided legislative deliberation and implemented them by describing them as an administrative order. This is also a violation of the Constitution and the principles of democracy, legal reservation and the separation of powers enshrined within.

Second, according to Article 13 of the rules, representatives of Chinese companies who have Chinese nationality and who have been approved by the Taiwanese authorities may take up positions as directors or supervisors of Taiwanese companies.

However, according to Article 72 of the Act Governing Relations between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area, “Unless permitted by the competent authorities, no individual, juristic person, organization, or other institution of the Mainland Area may become a member of or hold a position in any juristic person, organization, or other institution of the Taiwan Area.”

Since permission is granted only on a case-by-case basis, the rules violate the intent of the parent law.

Third, Article 4 of the rules states that a Chinese company does not need to apply for government permission if its share stake in a Taiwanese company is less than 10 percent. In other words, if a Chinese firm wants to take control of a Taiwanese firm, the former only needs to purchase the latter’s shares through six subsidiaries, each with 9 percent of the shares. Then, without application or review, it can quietly gain control of the Taiwanese company. If this is the case, how will the government protect local companies and investors?

Fourth, the government has opened more than 190 areas to Chinese investment, including telecommunications, computer peripherals, medicine and medical equipment, ports, airports and other controversial sectors. These categories relate to privacy, health and even national security. The flow of Chinese capital into Taiwanese markets may also lead to technology outflow, stock market manipulation and hikes in housing prices. But does the government have any contingency plans?

I urge the government to act in accordance with the law, and hope that the legislature will be able to better monitor and respond to this situation for the sake of the rights and benefits of everyone.

Huang Di-ying is president of Taiwan Youth Intellectuals.
　

Chinese-American kids sent to kin abroad face tough return
　

Known as ‘satellite-babies,’ the offspring of Chinese immigrants to the US who are shuttled back and forth to China sometimes suffer psychological damage because of dislocation, experts say

By Nina Bernstein
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK
Sunday, Jul 26, 2009, Page 13

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Gordon, 3, would not look his parents in the eyes, and refused to call them Mom and Dad. He erupted in tantrums and sometimes cried nonstop for half an hour.

“We did not know why,” said his mother, Winnie Liu, recalling the desperation that sent them to a neurologist to check Gordon for autism, and to a hospital that referred them to Butterflies, a mental health program for very young children on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Finally they learned the reason for their child’s distress — and the reason social service agencies that help families from China are facing a sharp rise in such developmental problems.

Like thousands of other Chinese immigrants responding to financial and cultural pressures, Liu and her husband, Tim Fang, had sent Gordon to live with his grandparents, thousands of kilometers away in Fujian Province, a few months after his birth in New York. Working long hours in the restaurant business, they had not brought him back to the US until he was old enough to attend all-day public preschool.

And now he saw them as strangers who had stolen him away to a strange land.

“The children that have that experience come back with tremendous needs,” said Nina Piros, director of early childhood programs at University Settlement, a nonprofit agency that estimates that 400 of the 1,000 children served by its Butterflies program are returnees from China. “They come here and they’re totally traumatized.”

Some act out in frightening and confusing ways, she said, banging their heads on walls, refusing to speak, or wandering aimlessly in the classroom. These signs of extreme trauma have often been misunderstood as symptoms of autism. But they are the marks of the emotional dislocations these young children have endured.

Less severely affected youngsters are helped through supportive workshops for their teachers and parents. But about two dozen in the Butterflies program need the kind of intensive therapy that eventually helped Gordon and his parents bond, said Andrea Bennett, director of Butterflies, which was started three years ago with money from the New York City Council.

The phenomenon of US-born children who spend their infancy in China has been known for years to social workers, who say it is widespread and worrying. About 8,000 Chinese-born women gave birth in New York last year, so the number of children at risk is substantial, according to the Chinese-American Planning Council, a social service agency that hopes to get a grant to educate parents about the pitfalls of the practice and help them find alternatives.

But no one tracks the numbers, and the issue has only recently seized the attention of early-childhood researchers like Yvonne Bohr, a clinical psychologist at York University in Toronto, who calls such children “satellite babies.”

Their repeatedly disrupted attachments to family members “could potentially add up to a mental health crisis for some immigrant communities,” Bohr wrote in an article in May in The Infant Mental Health Journal. She cited classic research like the work of Anna Freud, who found that young children evacuated during the London blitz were so damaged by separation from their parents that they would have been better off at home, in danger of falling bombs.

Bohr, who is undertaking a longitudinal study of families with satellite babies, cautions that the older research was shaped by Western values and expectations. Chinese parents, including university-educated professionals she has studied, are often influenced by cultural traditions: an emphasis on self-sacrifice for the good of the family, a belief that grandparents are the best caretakers, and a desire to ground children in their heritage.

Sending babies back to grandparents is also done in some South Asian communities, she said.

But Amanda Peck, a spokeswoman for University Settlement, which has been serving newcomers to the Lower East Side since 1886, said that while family separations are a feature of migration in many ethnic groups, the satellite-baby phenomenon seems rare outside the Chinese community.

Some children are better able to adapt, whether because of natural resilience, more supportive parenting or the age at which disruptions occurred. Even in severe cases like Gordon’s, the Butterflies program has had success in overcoming the worst consequences of separation with therapeutic play and support for parent and child, said Victoria Chiu, its bilingual therapist.

But for many children, new separations are in store even after they return to the US. In one typical case, parents migrated to work in a Chinese restaurant in South Carolina, taking a school-age child along, but leaving a baby in China and a three-year-old with grandparents in New York.

“The three-year-old, he wouldn’t even smile,” Chiu said. “When he sat in circle time, his whole little body was just slumped.”

Gordon, now 7, keeps up with his second-grade classmates and has learned to control his temper, said his parents, who own Wild Ginger, a restaurant on Broome Street. In imperfect but fluent English, his mother recounted the hard climb to that happy resolution, and revisited the scene of major turning points: a tiny playroom under the eaves of the old settlement house, where a dollhouse and a big plush dog played a role in healing her son.

Dressed as a superhero, Gordon would often rescue the dog from a pretend fire in the dollhouse, saving him from “the bad guys,” as Chiu and his mother played along.

“I was the bad lady,” Gordon’s mother, 31, recalled ruefully. “Then the play changed, and he tried to save Mom from the bad guy.”

The therapist explained: “He was trying to find mastery over things he had no control over. We started introducing scenarios to help him develop trust in his parents’ authority over his life.”

Liu, who was 17 when she immigrated to New York on a green card sponsored by her father, pressed a hand to her heart. “This wonderful therapist, this program, help us read the child’s mind,” she said. “Now he hug me, and he say ‘Mommy’ sometimes.”

Still, Gordon remains more withdrawn than typical seven-year-olds. Liu said she struggles with guilt and regret.

“I advise all Chinese families, do not send your kids away, no matter how hard, because that loss cannot be made up,” she said. “Money is not so important. Nothing can make up for the sensation of love between parents and children.”

The shuttling of babies first caught public attention in New York a decade ago, when women workers from Fujian province, deep in debt to the “snakeheads” who had smuggled them into the country, had little choice but to send their infants back to their extended families.

Typically, such children returned at school age. Their tough adjustment to the change in language, customs and parental discipline was generally likened to the problems of other immigrant children, who must often cope with long-delayed reunions after being left behind for years.

Now, however, because of the expansion of free full-day preschool in recent years, satellite babies return and start classes as young as 2 years, 9 months.

Their parents, including many lawful permanent residents and citizens like Gordon’s mother, assume that the children will adjust more easily because they are so young. But early childhood is the crucial time for learning to form attachments and feel empathy, and serious disruptions carry lifelong consequences, psychologists say, including higher rates of depression and dysfunction.

Many families are unaware of the potential psychological damage, said Hong Shing Lee, chief operating officer of the Asian-American Federation of New York.

That was the case for the family of Alisa Chen, now 4. Alisa was 6 months old when her mother, Qiao Yuni Chen, a waitress unable to afford day care, took her to her grandmother in China. When Chen returned more than a year later to visit — and to leave Alisa’s baby sister, Angie — she was heartbroken by Alisa’s rejection. Only in the last two weeks of a three-month stay was Alisa willing to sleep at her mother’s side.

Alisa started preschool at University Settlement in August last year, only a week after arriving in New York; two months later, teachers referred her to Butterflies.

“She seemed kind of lost, not picking up English, withdrawing from her peers,” Chiu recalled. “She seemed anxious that her mom wouldn’t pick her up.” Another problem was the mother’s expectations: The only toy in their home was a letter board more appropriate for a six-year-old than for a child turning 4.

Chen, whose husband is now in the US Army in South Carolina, threw herself into becoming a more supportive parent, Chiu said. Though she spoke little English, she phonetically memorized songs like Itsy Bitsy Spider. At a US$0.99 store, the therapist helped her pick playthings that would allow her daughter to express herself.

The payoff was obvious when the preschooler returned from a class trip to the Bronx Zoo one recent afternoon. Pigtails bouncing, her smile electric with joy, Alisa threw herself into her mother’s arms. Chiu beamed.

Next month, Alisa’s little sister arrives from China to begin Head Start.