The room was filled with tension and I could barely sit still. I was surrounded by songwriters, music-industry executives and congressional leaders, all gathered to discuss how to combat music piracy in China. At first I wasn’t sure why I was even in the room, since I was just an eye doctor and not a music professional. But as I listened to the arguments being presented, something began to stir inside of me. I couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
I have lived in the United States since 1982, so my entire adult life has been shaped and formed here in America. I am immensely grateful to America for all the opportunities it has given me. From the moment I landed in Washington, D.C., I have fallen in love with America, and I have been blessed to be able to live the American dream.
My childhood was filled with the traditions of the East. I grew up with loving parents and grandparents who taught me the family value, to work hard and believe in myself. But America has taught me how to look to the future, dream big, and lead. My success in medicine and my ability to impact lives has been uniquely fashioned at the intersection of my Eastern roots and Western education. The combination of these experiences has given me the insight and ability to lead in my medical profession, and to help resolve issues of conflict in our society. I have always been interested in political dialogue and cultural exchange between the East and West. From my experience as a child meeting President Nixon during his visit to China, to my social activism during the Tiananmen Square tragedy, to meeting with President Reagan and Vice President Bush at the White House, I have interacted with some of the great political leaders of our time. I have learned a great deal from those experiences, which has fostered my interest in engaging in societal and political issues, and giving back to America.
The hearing about music piracy in China took place in a large auditorium inside the BMI building on Music Row. The primary topic of discussion was how to protect American songwriters from the piracy of songs running rampant in China.
One of the congressmen proposed enacting sanctions against China. “Tell the Chinese we won’t take this anymore! We will enforce our laws using any measure necessary, including economic sanctions.”
I winced as I listened to him speak. Strong-arming China on this issue was not a good idea and wouldn’t be effective in supporting American songwriters. This was my moment to give back and to contribute. I stood up and offered a different approach.
“Consider the state of music and movie piracy in Hong Kong thirty years ago,” I said. “Back then, fifty percent of music sold there was pirated. But now that number is down to less than a few percent, which is the Western standard. That’s what we would like to see happen in mainland China. Do you know why the change has occurred in Hong Kong over the last thirty years? It wasn’t because the U.S. threatened economic sanctions. It was because Hong Kong’s own artists—international stars like Jackie Chan—realized it was in their own best interest to stand up and protect artists’ intellectual property. So in my opinion the key here is to work together and communicate with the artists and the government in China in order to help them realize that reducing music piracy benefits not only America, but China itself as well.”
There was a silence in the room after I spoke. I sensed that the audience was reflecting on and considering what I had just said. Then the executive director of the Nashville Songwriters Association, Bart Herbison, said, “I completely agree with Dr. Wang. We should strive to follow his suggestion.”
A wave of excitement rushed through me. I realized I was making an impact on protecting the intellectual property of American songwriters while maintaining sensitivity and respect for different cultures and people. I knew in that moment that I wanted to help even more, so I joined the Nashville Songwriters Association as an advisory board member and became active in helping with the dialogue and interactions between musicians in China and the United States.
Beyond bolstering Nashville’s music and creative community, I felt increasingly drawn to improve cultural understanding between my American compatriots and the Chinese, especially by helping local Tennessee companies to sell their products overseas. I was troubled by the fact that America buys so much from China, so I wanted to encourage trade traffic in the opposite direction—exports from Tennessee to China—while also encouraging Chinese manufacturing firms to relocate to Tennessee to create jobs here.
In 2007, I founded the Tennessee Chinese Chamber of Commerce (TCCC) to help Tennessee businesses sell products to China. Later on I also became the honorary president of Tennessee-American Chamber of Commerce (TACCC). As an American business owner who was born in China, I know both the cultural perspective of the East and the business mindset in the West. I believe a vital part of selling a product—for any business—is understanding the customer. Hence, learning about other cultures such as that of China is no longer just the right thing to do as a citizen of the world today; it’s actually now an economic necessity, since if we want to increase our exports to China, we need to learn about our customers. Through educational forums, TCCC and TACCC tought Tennessee businesses owners about our potential customers—the Chinese—including the history, people, and culture of China.
At a recent chamber meeting, I was asked by some local business owners what their next step should be in finding a way to work with Chinese businesses.
“What’s your unique value proposition?” I asked. “If you want to collaborate with Chinese businesses to produce and sell goods in China domestically, what are you bringing to the table that your Chinese business partner does not have and most needs?”
“I can offer capital,” responded one of the local entrepreneurs.
“America actually owes China $2 trillion, and our annual trade deficit with China stands at $318 billion,” I said. “China doesn’t need our capital.”
“Okay, if not money, how about technology?”
“Well, China adopts technologies rapidly,” I said. “They have extremely smart engineers.”
“Then how about management skills?”
“U.S. business management is good, indeed, but China has reasonably efficient managers of its own, and they learn these skills very quickly.”
At that point, the meeting attendees seemed to be at a loss for any other ideas, so I repeated and emphasized my initial questions.
“What do the Chinese need from us? What is our unique value proposition? We have to have answers to those questions in any business collaboration. Although China doesn’t need our capital, technology or management, they do need something that they consider very important … something that can only be provided by us.”
The room fell silent as everyone waited for my punch line.
“What they need is our American brand,” I concluded. “The Chinese have historically regarded American products as being of a much higher quality than goods made in China. If a product in China has an American label, it might fetch three times the price in China’s market than a product made domestically in China. The next five to ten years will be a golden opportunity to do business with China and capitalize on the reputation of the American brand.”
“Our unique value proposition is simply this … we are American!”
As president of TCCC, I was invited to join a 2009 trade mission to China, led by former Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen. Beginning in late October of that year, our group of business and government leaders spent ten days visiting Beijing, Xian, Hangzhou, and Hong Kong, meeting with Chinese leaders in business, technology, and healthcare. The goal of the delegation was to do a follow-up visit to the 2007 founding of the Tennessee-China Development Center in Beijing. This economic development office was established to foster business exchange between the two countries with the hope of encouraging Chinese firms to relocate to Tennessee, which would create new jobs here. My involvement in the delegation was yet another step in my own personal vision to give back to America.
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There remains a lot of room for improvement in our understanding of diverse cultures, not just overseas but also with respect to the immigrant groups living right here in America. To this end, I partnered with Galen Spencer Hull, PhD, an educator who has had a long-standing interest in uniting immigrant and minority businesses. We co-founded the Tennessee Immigrant and Minority Business Group (TIMBG), whose first meeting was held on September 16, 2013. The mission of TIMBG is to facilitate communication between immigrant and minority businesses, and to identify and discuss issues of common interest. One in four businesses in middle Tennessee is immigrant- or minority-owned, representing the fastest-growing sector of our business community.
In recent years, I also began to sense a longing to reconnect with China. When I left China in 1982, I was twenty-one years old and had already endured more hardship and suffering than some people experience in a lifetime, and I wanted nothing more to do with communist dictators. I came to America for freedom, and I have loved and embraced its language, culture, and Christian faith. As I got older, however, I began to appreciate more of the values of my ethnic origin, such as the importance of family, education, and respect for elders. So I wanted to give back to China as well. On August 22, 2005, I performed China’s first bladeless, all-laser LASIK procedure, the first surgery of its kind in a country of 1.4 billion people! In 2006, I became the international president of the Shanghai Aier Eye Hospital, the flagship hospital of the Aier Eye Hospital Group, the largest private eye hospital system in China. Among the eight textbooks in ophthalmology that I have published, five have been translated into Chinese. Chinese eye doctors are also regular visitors and many fellows have been trained at Wang Vision Institute in Nashville. I have done these things throughout the past decades to help the country of my birth using knowledges that I have learned here in the West.
Beyond medicine, I have also been interested in helping China spiritually. America gave me not only a world-class education, but also a life-changing belief and trust in God. As my Christian faith continued to grow, I wanted to do something worthwhile to help spread faith and belief in God to China. As material wealth has increased in China, corruption has risen significantly as well. This needs to change, but I do not believe the law alone is enough to solve this major problem. China as a society today needs more emphasis on individual accountability and ethics, attributes which are the cornerstone of the Christian faith.
When I first arrived in America, I often heard people say, “You’re not supposed to do that.” As simple as the phrase sounds, it’s not one that is used in China very often because it is embedded with a moral compass, an intrinsic sense of right and wrong, which characteristically is heavily influenced by America’s historical roots in Christianity. China, on the other hand, is a country that is predominantly atheistic. At least half of American citizens profess to be Christians, and those who are living a truly Christian life are guided by their belief in God, and consider themselves accountable to His higher standards of personal conduct. Without faith and accountability to a higher power, a person may not hesitate to act corruptly as long as no one will find out. Though one can strengthen laws and legal system, but without faith, we could never hire enough police. I believe what China needs the most is for its people to believe in God.
In 2008, I founded the Wang Foundation for Christian Outreach to China, which funds the China Bible Pen Pal Project. Our goal is to deliver ten thousand Bibles to China and to obtain email addresses from the Chinese people who receive the Bibles. We then disperse these email addresses to their Christian brothers and sisters in America, so they can become pen pals with these budding Chinese Christians in order to fellowship with them and nurture their faith. One person at a time, I want to give to the people of China the Christian faith that was given to me, a faith that has blessed my life richly. I am excited about the immense opportunity the China Bible Pen Pal Project has of recruiting a quarter of the human race for God’s kingdom!
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My unusual transformation from atheist to Christian has also inspired many others because I have been able to share the lessons I have learned about the compatibility of faith and science. In recent years, I have travelled around the country giving lectures in the hope of bridging the gap between the two. I truly believe faith and science are friends, not foes. As my experience with the amniotic membrane contact lens shows, faith and science can indeed work together. It is in the uniting of the two, not splitting, can we find new, often unexpected and more powerful solutions to the problems in our lives.
In the fall of 2012, Rice Broocks, pastor of Bethel World Outreach Church in Brentwood, Tennessee, approached me about including my story in his book, God’s Not Dead, which presents evidence for the existence of God. I was delighted to be a part of it. Following its publication, the book inspired a movie with the same title that illustrates the story of a freshman college student who challenges his philosophy professor’s atheist beliefs. One of the characters in the movie, a Chinese student who is considering Christianity, was inspired by my life story. At the time of the first print of this book, the film had grossed nearly $100 million worldwide, and more than 25 million Americans had seen it. Now the sequel to the original movie, God’s Not Dead 2, has also come out in which my Chinese student character decided to return to China to spread the Gospel, a story line modeled after our current China Bible Pen Pal Project. I believe the movie’s success is due in large part to the hunger many of us have for a connection with the divine, a longing that we were created with that runs through all mankind, and to every part of the globe from East to West.
No matter where we have come from and where we are going, we all desire the same things—love, peace, and security—and we all appreciate the beauty of God’s creations. So we don’t have to be at odds with one another because, like faith and science, people with seemingly polarized perspectives can indeed still work together in creative, mutually beneficial ways. As a proud American with Asian roots, I hold a hand out to both the East and the West, in the hopes of bringing them a little closer together.
President John F. Kennedy put it best when he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
I have taken these words to heart, and I believe the idea of giving back is an ongoing mission of paying it forward to the next generation. This is a way of life for me, a lens, if you will, through which I see the world. I am not perfect and do not believe I have all the answers, but of this I am sure: the harder I work and the more my own actions inspire others—even those I have just met for the first time—to have a heart of gratitude for the freedom this great country has blessed us with, the greater chance we have to begin to lay a mighty foundation for change, and to appreciate much, much more the freedom we enjoy as Americans! With gratitude, our hearts will be primed and motivated to find ways in our own local, civic, religious, and family communities to help and to give back. This will undoubtedly build strength in our families, in our workplaces, and in our places of worship. This heart of giving back will effect positive change in our own spheres of influence and beyond, and it will lead to more fruitful and fulfilled lives.
This sense of appreciation and the desire to give back has been the bedrock of my drive to build the Wang Foundation for Sight Restoration, the Wang Foundation for Christian Outreach to China, the Tennessee Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and Tennessee Immigrant and Minority Business Group, as well as the inspiration for all my social and community work over the years. I am honored and humbled to receive many awards over the years for my charity and community work, including NPR’s Philanthropist of the Year Award, the Outstanding Nashvillian of the Year Award from Kiwanis Club and an honorary doctorate degree from Trevecca Nazarene University. I want to do everything that I can to assist each person seeking to come out of darkness and go into the light, both physically and spiritually.