Posted on Wed, Feb. 22, 2006

Multicultural connections

MULTIMILLIONAIRE BUILDS TIES WITH OTHERS TO BROADEN THE REACH OF ASIAN-AMERICAN BEYOND HIGH-TECH WORLD

By Katherine Corcoran
Mercury News

Hsing Kung, one of Silicon Valley's most understated power brokers, works the American Leadership Forum lunch crowd with his usual politeness, shaking hands with a slight bow in the manner of his native China.

Suddenly, the 6-foot-1 Kung reels toward the booming voice of Sharon Chatman, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge. ``Come here, Hsing!'' bellows the African-American woman, seemingly half his height, as she grabs Kung in a full-on bear hug.

``I taught Hsing how to hug,'' Chatman says proudly, demonstrating the hands-off technique he once used. ``It's all in the body contact.''

It is just the kind of multicultural melding relished by Kung, a catalyst and role model for Asian-American leadership to move beyond high tech into Silicon Valley's social, political and civic realms.

More than 30 years ago, Kung came to the South Bay with a doctorate from the University of California-Berkeley intending only to become the best engineer he could. Today, three successful start-ups later, he is among the region's favorite go-to guys -- a man who hosts big-name political fundraisers but who is not above registering voters outside a supermarket; a bridge-building peacemaker who is unafraid to pick a fight with Arnold Schwarzenegger if he feels the governor has dismissed the Asian-American view.

``For Chinese engineers to integrate into Silicon Valley and contribute to Silicon Valley, that's the model,'' says Kung, 60, currently a partner in the Acorn Campus high-tech incubator. ``If Asian-Americans can integrate into the Silicon Valley community like the engineers, we will be a success.''

From his leadership perches in organizations such as Monte Jade, a society of Chinese-American, high-tech entrepreneurs, to the Cupertino Rotary or United Way, Kung seeks multicultural connections.

Modest manner

He gets Monte Jade members to contribute to United Way and Rotary members to set up community service projects in rural China. He supports Chatman's Building Peaceful Families foundation, where he received a ``Top Dad'' award last summer. As an adviser to the Asian Pacific American Leadership Institute at De Anza College, he proposed that the group reach out to Latinos.

``It doesn't matter that I'm a woman and he's a man, or that I'm African-American and he's Chinese,'' says Chatman, who serves on the American Leadership Forum board with Kung. ``It's the connection of real community involvement.''

In a world of flamboyant executives, Kung does it all with a magnanimous style and deflective manner that keeps him out of the limelight, where he prefers to be.

Never mind that he has hosted former President Bill Clinton and Sens. John Kerry and Dianne Feinstein in his Los Altos Hills home, he was not above building a voter database for former Cupertino Mayor Michael Chang the first time Chang ran for city council.

Michele Lew remembers attending a Cupertino festival last fall and doing a double take. The crossing guard, in shorts and a reflector vest, was Kung.

``It was such an out-of-context moment,'' said Lew, president of Asian Americans for Community Involvement in San Jose. ``It's a great testament to who he is as a person. This multimillionaire, extremely successful businessman . . . stepping up and doing the unglamorous job.''

When a recent Wall Street Journal article claiming white flight from Cupertino's competitive, majority-Asian high schools split the community along racial lines, Kung quickly took a role in quelling the controversy, reaching out to longtime school board member and friend Nancy Newton.

Asian-American parents objected to quotes attributed to Fremont Union High School District Superintendent Steve Rowley suggesting that their children's high performance made life difficult for white students. But when they publicly aired their grievances, some accused the parents of gunning for Rowley, who is white, to get an Asian superintendent.

Aims for peace

Newton says Kung was a voice of reason.

``He gave me a perspective on how people were seeing that and why people took the actions they did,'' she said. ``There were some very angry voices. But Hsing's is always very caring and thoughtful, and because of that, it's easier to listen to and understand.''

Hsing Kung (pronounced Shing Gong) was born in China but moved with his family to Taiwan before the 1949 Communist takeover of the mainland. When he came from Taiwan to the University of Texas in 1967 to earn a master's degree, he fell in love with democracy and the notion of an open exchange of ideas -- then distant concepts back home.

Kung also fell in love with Margaret Mok, a fellow Taiwanese graduate student earning a business degree. They married in 1971 and have a daughter, Angela, 24, an aide to state Assemblywoman Wilma Chan, D-Oakland.

Margaret shares his goal of bridge-building.

``It's the curiosity to understand what other people are doing. We always learn things,'' said the 60-year-old retired finance manager. ``We don't all need to be one race or one group. . . .. When you bring people together, people start talking and things happen.''

Political arena

After UC-Berkeley, the couple settled in Sunnyvale, where Kung was rooted in the South Bay's budding Chinese-American community, helping to organize annual athletic tournaments and teaching in Chinese school.

That changed in 1985, when Burma-born Tommy Shwe became the first Asian-American elected to the Cupertino Union School District Board.

``In the mid- to late 1980s, the Chinese-American community started to feel that we have to get involved in mainstream politics. That's the only way to make your voice heard,'' said Kung, who has amassed his civic résumé in between frequent business trips to Asia and who practices Chinese calligraphy to relax when he can't sleep.

Kung lost a 1994 run for the Fremont Union High School District Board, but was appointed two years later. About the same time, he started the Asian American Voter Education Project. A year earlier he joined the Cupertino Rotary as one of its first Chinese immigrant members and discovered the predominantly white club was also interested in reflecting Cupertino's rapidly changing demographics.

Steve Ting, a retired high-tech executive, says Kung is a role model who encouraged him to join the Rotary and the Cupertino Educational Endowment Foundation, and to take leadership roles. Ting is now the Rotary's youth services director.

When San Jose's Mike Honda was elected to Congress in 2000, Kung forged a partnership with him to raise the national profile of the Asian-American community.

``Traditionally, politicians saw Asian-Americans in general as a place to tap for money. But the issue for (local) groups and Hsing Kung is we don't want to be the people you just come to for money,'' Honda said. ``We have resources for policy. We understand technology and domestic and foreign affairs, and it's a community with a deep well of talent.''

Still, Kung's fundraising abilities have not been overlooked. His hosting Clinton in 2004, an event that raised $200,000 for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, still creates buzz. Margaret, a diminutive but animated woman, points out where the barbecue and podium were set next to the Kungs' personal vineyard and rose-filled gardens. The Secret Service agents who arrived a day earlier ``looked like yuppies,'' she said, still astonished. ``They were not bigger than anybody else.''

Working behind scenes

Honda says Kung's leadership in mobilizing Asian-Americans in Democratic causes helped Honda secure a seat as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Even those who disagree with Kung have a hard time mustering ill feelings.

``He would argue with me, and at the end of our argument he would smile,'' says Realtor and community activist Barry Chang, who has sparred with Kung over local politics and education. ``I can't really be mad when he's smiling.''

At the same time, Chang has seen Kung mad. Last fall, Kung and a group of Chinese-American leaders drove to Sacramento to urge Schwarzenegger to sign a bill which encouraged school districts to teach the history of World War II in Asia, a topic most American schools barely cover. They were relegated to a staffer and within days, the governor vetoed the bill. Kung called a press conference of Chinese-language media imploring Asian-Americans to vote down Schwarzenegger's propositions.

``He's not the one jumping up and down,'' Chang said, ``but he gave Arnold the message that the Asian community is not happy.''

But as Kung works the luncheon circuit, no one would ever guess he could be anything but beloved. In fact he is afforded the treatment of a rock star, albeit a subdued one.

`` 'Bye, handsome,'' Santa Clara County Supervisor Liz Kniss says as she passes him on the way to the door.

``I love him,'' coos Colleen Wilcox, county superintendent of schools, planting a big kiss on Kung's cheek.

Kung giggles like a shy teen.

``From experience I can say if you don't want credit, you get more credit than you deserve,'' he says. ``I often feel I get more credit than I deserve.''