One striking aspect of the high-tech industry in Silicon Valley is the large and prominent role played by Asians at many levels. Their success ref lects the sort of determination displayed by immigrants which has kept them optimistic even in the face of the present downturn. Pacific News Service editor Rene Ciria-Cruz is also a longtime editor of Filipinas Magazine.

SAN JOSE, CA -- Silicon Valley's Asian professionals and entrepreneurs were as shaken by the stock market's recent manic fits as most people in the high-tech industry. But they are not given to despair or defensive optimism about the New Economy.

It's not because they're in denial. Rather, it reflects the fact that

most Asian players in Silicon Valley are immigrants.

"We tend to work really hard and are not easily stopped by hardship or failure," says Trung Dung, chief strategist of OnDisplay, an up-and-coming provider of Internet software for e-business.

Dung should know. He came to this country at age 18, after having fled by boat from Vietnam to Indonesia, shortly after the end of the Vietnam War.

According to Dung, "The crash is just part of our learning curve."

Raman Dakshinamurthy could not agree more. "Our advantages and

disadvantages in the industry have less to do with being Asians than

with being immigrants," he says.

"Immigrants have to prove themselves several times, so we are used to adversity," explains Dakshinamurthy, who is president of the Silicon Valley Indian Professional Association (SIPA) and system engineer at Tripath Technology, which is about to go public. "We've survived tough times before, we'll survive (these) fluctuations."

Record stock-market plunges have certainly had a sobering impact. The instant deflation of the values of their stock options distressed Asian professionals like everyone else employed in high-tech firms.

Asian-led publicly held firms took big hits. For example, top performer Broadvision, an Asian American tech icon, took a 25-percent tumble, its stock now "hovering between $30 and $40 a share," says Wyatt Leung, product manager in the company's eCommerce Group and president of the Chinese Software Professionals Association (CSPA).

"Like everyone else our network members are surprised by the recent plunge of the Nasdaq," says Leung, "and they're asking a lot of good questions, but no one really knows the answers." He is thinking of inviting a high-tech stock analyst to his group's next meeting to speak about the Nasdaq's outlook.

Dakshinamurthy says the market roller coaster has made his compatriots very cautious: "Everyone's taking a look at the basics of what they're doing. When the rubber hits the road you really must have a viable concept. Venture capitalists are going to have tighter strings."

Both Dung and Leung worry that the feds will raise interest rates. They believe this will have an indirect but psychologically powerful impact on the high-tech industry, with unnerved investors pulling back.

The storms buffeting the New Economy have come at a time when Asians are fast becoming a part of the high-tech mainstream. They have a staggering presence in the heartland of America's high-tech revolution.

A Public Policy Institute of California study by Anna Lee Saxenian showed that 774 Silicon Valley firms were led by Indian CEOs and 2,001 were led by Chinese in 1998. Together they employed 58,282 people and accounted for 17 percent of sales ($16 billion) and 24 percent of the Valley's high-tech firms.

"It used to be in the Valley that ICs meant 'integrated circuits,' but now it means 'Indians and Chinese'," jokes George Koo, former president of the Asian American Manufacturers Association and a director at Deloitte & Touche.

Immigrants made up 32 percent of the region's scientific and engineering workforce. Two-thirds of them were from Asia -- 55 percent were Chinese and 23 percent were Indian.

English-proficient Indians predominate in software development and

business services. Chinese immigrants lean towards computer and

electronic hardware manufacturing and trade, where English skills aren't as crucial.

Saxenian wrote that the immigrants have woven "social structures that enable even the smallest producers to locate and maintain" sources of capital and markets. "These ties have immeasurable economic benefits," her study noted.

Asians' meteoric rise in the high-tech industry owes as much to their technical prowess as to these "ethnic networks" -- mutual-aid support groups like the CSPA and SIPA that ease access to business ideas, jobs, startup opportunities and venture capital.

Being Asian is a "value-added" in the industry, says Koo. "Indians and Chinese act as bridges to sources of talent and capital from Asia." Most of the immigrants are the cream of their home countries' science and engineering professions, and many came as graduate students in American universities.

Large high-tech companies are still dominated by white males, but "successful Asian entrepreneurship has enabled more Asians to be in top management, especially in smaller niche players," according to Leung.

"But if there's a permanent shift in the market, of people getting their money out of Nasdaq and then just sitting on the fence, then that will really hurt," says Leung, "just like voters who sit out elections make certain candidates lose."

Dung happily predicts, however, that despite the recent shock more Asian startups are on the way. "We really need to venture out more," he chuckles. "Asians need more success stories to give us confidence."