The Chinese are everywhere! But relative to Australia, the Chinese population in Chicago is actually small (even though that’s not the opinion of Chicago citizens).

Hardworking, industrious, and certainly with its own experiences of past racial discriminations and anti-Chinese laws, Chinese Americans in Chicago today are an extremely proud race and an important Chicago community.

The May 2009 Budget proves to be the most challenging in two decades as the Federal Government juggles the conflicting aims of economic stimulus and preventing the deficit blowing out of control. Last May, the big problems for Wayne Swan and the Australian economy were a shortage of labour and growing inflation. This time, it’s rising unemployment and a global recession. Already Canberra has floated several balloons to test the weather for cuts to “middle class” social welfare, while also contemplating what further fiscal stimulus it might be able to apply.

When I came to Chicago, it was primarily to learn about how one of the world’s tallest and iconic building was conceived, approved, and being built. Chicago after all is where skyscrapers and lifts were first invented!

Thanks so much to Donna Yuen from Chicago’s Mayor office of international relations and protocol, as well as Gene Lee, Mayor Daley’s Deputy Chief of Staff and another Chinese leader of Chicago, it was an absolute privilege to meet the famous Chicago Mayor Richard M Daley and some of his 50 Aldermen. And it was an honour to be publicly recognised on Wednesday, 18 March 2009, with a standing ovation no less!

The US State of Illinois is probably wrongly assumed to be a Democrat State. The Democratic Party is akin to Australia’s Labor Party. Yet it should be remembered that Illinois is the very state that produced Abraham Lincoln, the father of the Republican Party.

So how does the Republican Party compete in a currently largely Democratic State? I met with Chicago Republican Party’s Chairman Eloise Gerson.