Growing up around Washington, D.C., Edward Wong didn’t know about his father’s past in the People’s Liberation Army. As an adult, he probed those secrets over decades, including during his nine years as a New York Times correspondent and bureau chief in China, when he reported widely across the country, including in the frontier regions where his father had served. He talks about researching his father’s role in the air force and the army of the 1950s, the initial military occupation of Xinjiang, and the reconstitution of the Qing Empire under Communist rule from Mao to Xi.

Speaker:

Edward Wong is a diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times and author of “At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China,” a new book of memoir and reportage on modern China and the Chinese diaspora. He has reported for the Times for 25 years, working for 13 of those as a correspondent and bureau chief from China and Iraq. Wong was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and has been a visiting professor at Princeton University and UC Berkeley. He was a recent fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington and at the Belfer Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He was awarded the Livingston Prize for his war correspondence from Iraq, and he was on a team that was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the war.

Moderator:

Susan Shirk is a research professor at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) and director emerita of its 21st Century China Center. She is one of the most influential experts working on U.S.-China relations and Chinese politics. She is also director emeritus of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC).

Shirk first visited China in 1971 and has been teaching, researching and engaging with China diplomatically ever since. From 1997 to 2000, Shirk served as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs, with responsibility for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia.

Her latest book is “Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise.” Her other books include “China: Fragile Superpower.” which helped frame the policy debate on China in the U.S. and other countries. Her publications include “The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China”; “How China Opened its Door”; “Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies in China”; and her edited book, “Changing Media, Changing China.”

Her articles have appeared in leading academic publications in the fields of political science, international relations and China studies, and her views are highly sought on a range of issues relating to modern Chinese politics.

Shirk co-chairs a task force of China experts that issued its second report, “Course Correction: Toward an Effective and Sustainable China Policy,” in February 2019. She is also co-chair of the UC San Diego Forum on U.S.-China Relations, the first ongoing high-level forum focused entirely on the U.S.-China relationship.

She was awarded the 2015 Roger Revelle Medal.

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This public lecture is organized by the 21st Century China Center (21CCC) at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy. For more information about this and other 21CCC events, please visit china.ucsd.edu.