When Chinese President Hu Jintao arrives at Boeing Field on Monday, a busload of ardent supporters — mostly business and community leaders from the Chinatown International District — will welcome him to one of the nation's oldest and largest Asian communities.

On the other end of the political spectrum, hundreds of protesters also will be at the airport — critics of China's human-rights record and advocates of independence for Taiwan or Tibet.

Elsewhere in the Puget Sound area, though, Jintao's visit is unlikely to stir such passions within the local Chinese-American community, whose members come from so broad a mix of backgrounds and ages that they lack a common political thread.

It may be difficult for those outside this particular community to grasp the political and generational diversity within it, said Alaric Bien, executive director of the Chinese Information and Service Center, a social-service agency in the International District.

"We are all Chinese. But some of us are American-born. Some were born in mainland China. Some came 50 years ago, some two years ago," said Bien. "Then you have other ethnic Chinese people coming from Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, and especially from Taiwan and Hong Kong.

"That is why you get so many different reactions."

Hu's visit here is the first by a Chinese president in more than a decade. Over two days he will meet with Boeing executives and with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, and listen to trade pitches from local dignitaries before delivering a much-anticipated address on U.S.-China business relations Tuesday at the Westin Hotel. He then leaves for Washington, D.C., to meet with President Bush.

Sonny Wong, 51, an International District restaurateur, hopes to shake Hu's hand. The communist regime is "moving toward a capitalistic and open society," Wong said. "It's a point of pride for the Seattle Chinese community that the president chose this city as his first stop."

Protest organizer Zhi-ping Kolouch, 49, of Seattle, will rally at Westlake Park on Monday evening and again at the Westin on Tuesday afternoon. She expects to be joined at both by hundreds of demonstrators, some from as far as Vancouver, B.C., and Los Angeles.

"We think communism is an evil party," said Kolouch, a practitioner of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that has been banned by the government in China, which considers it a brain-washing cult. "They have a poor human-rights record."

Those who see only economic benefits of Hu's visit "are closing their eyes to human-rights abuse," said Stanley Hsiao, 59, of Bellevue, president of the Taiwanese Association of Greater Seattle. "It's not a democracy."

The expected protests are, in some ways, similar to what greeted Vietnam's Prime Minister Phan Van Khai when he visited here in June.

A key difference, though, is that bitter feelings about the Vietnam War remain fresh for many local Vietnamese Americans, who opposed the prime minister's visit in large numbers. Here, with the Chinese community politically more divided, many from the mainland hold Hu in honor, while Taiwanese typically hate him, and among the younger generation some don't even know his name.

The Chinese community in Seattle has undergone significant changes and is much more diverse than it was even 15 years ago, said David Bachman, a professor at the University of Washington's Jackson School of International Studies.

"Overall, the community has grown as the Seattle high-tech community has grown. Given that China is producing so many first-rate scientists and engineers that settle here, the Chinese-American community here is no longer uniform," Bachman said. "It probably never was."

Arrived 150 years ago

Washington state has the seventh-largest concentration of Chinese and Chinese Americans in the country, with most spread out across the Puget Sound area and increasingly making their homes in suburban areas on the Eastside.

In Seattle, the Chinese-American community is one of the oldest in the nation.

It was during the 1850s that the earliest settlers began arriving here from the famine-stricken Guangdong province to search for gold or to lay railroad tracks. By 1876, about one in six people in Seattle was Chinese.

In the 1900s, immigrants also arrived from Hong Kong and Taiwan to pursue their own Horatio Alger, rags-to-riches dreams. Mostly due to racial covenants that prevented them from owning property in many parts of the region, many clustered in Chinatown and nearby areas such as Beacon Hill. By the 1980s, large numbers had moved out into the suburbs.

Today, more than 35,000 — or about two-thirds of the members of the state's Chinese and Taiwanese populations — live in Seattle and in Bellevue and other Eastside cities.

Economic opportunity

Among Hu's most vocal supporters here are leaders from the Chinatown ID, who see his visit as a major economic opportunity both for Seattle and its Chinese-American business community. Dozens have received security clearance to greet the president when he arrives.

"In the International District, there's excitement. People believe Seattle is lucky to have the head of the country visit," said Assunta Ng, publisher of the Northwest Asian Weekly newspaper.

"He's a relatively new guy on the political scene and most of what they've heard about him is good. He's a younger guy, and a lot of Chinese Americans are hoping that a younger guy will bring a different perspective. They believe he can push China economically."

The local Chinese community should not focus on what the communist regime did decades ago, especially since the country is more open now, said Philip Chan, 54, owner of the Sea Garden restaurants in Seattle and Bellevue. "China plays a big part in the world political and economic stage. They are here to stay, so we might as well deal with them," he said.

"We want justice"

Others, though, are seething at what they consider an inappropriate "hero's welcome" for Hu.

"He does not deserve this," said Clara Chen, 69, of Seattle, who is of Taiwanese descent. Her parents fled the mainland and continued their campaign for democracy in Taiwan after China's civil war ended in 1949.

Like local Tibetans who will protest for independence, hundreds of Taiwanese will rally to emphasize that Taiwan should be accepted into the United Nations. Taiwan considers itself a sovereign country while China considers it a renegade province.

But perhaps the largest protests will be by followers of Falun Gong, who believe their system of meditation and exercise brings greater mental health and inner peace, with some also believing it to be mystical.

The Chinese government considers Falun Gong a dangerous cult and banned it in 1999. Some human-rights groups have accused the government of torturing or incarcerating thousands of Falun Gong members.

"We want to stop the persecutions," said Kolouch, 49, of Seattle, who has practiced Falun Gong for nine years. "We want justice and human rights."

Both Hu's supporters and his opponents are perplexed that many younger Chinese Americans seeming indifferent to the visit.

Bettie Luke, a local Chinese historian and project manager for the Greater Seattle Chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans, sees the apathy as largely generational.

"The issues surrounding China are too far removed for those who are third generation," said Luke.

"I am second generation, and I know that our feelings are divided on China. We still have some memories ... ," she said.

But "my children's generation wouldn't have any connection or identity or loyalty at all. Part of it is assimilation. But part of it, too, is so little is taught in the schools. The generation of my children are more technology savvy; they see China in big-business and technology terms."

Derek Xu, 21, president of the Chinese Student Association at the University of Washington, said second- and third-generation Chinese Americans didn't grow up in a communist regime or go through the violent Cultural Revolution.

"The China they know is a country that is booming," he said, "a country that everyone is trying to invest in, a country [whose] resources they want to tap into."

Bachman, of the UW's Jackson School, said that while many Chinese students studying in the U.S. protested against China after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the incident also allowed a large number of them to remain in the U.S. In the years since, they have become less political.

"Lots of people were angry 15 years ago with the government," Bachman said. "They're less angry now."

Tan Vinh: 206-515-5656 or tvinh@seattletimes.com

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420

or lturnbull@seattletimes.com

Seattle Times staff reporters

Lisa Chiu and Janet I. Tu

contributed to this report.