March 28, 2024

Archive Event Highlight

Calling All China Hands

The Overseas Press Club, Foreign Correspondents Club of China and the Asia Society’s ChinaFile invites you to join a reunion of China Hands. Come attend workshops and swap stories over food and cocktails with those who understand the unique challenges of life as a China correspondent. Join us on Friday, Sept. 12 for an afternoon of events starting at 12:30 p.m.

NEW: The luncheon program will include a panel discussion on China’s economy with a lineup of star experts on the topic. The price for lunch is $20, and is separate from the China Hands event fee.  

Program: 

12:30
p.m. Luncheon/Economic Panel at Club Quarters

Covering China’s
Economy 
— Most Americans know that China’s economy is likely to exceed
America’s in size in coming years, but what does that mean? Does China’s
emergence pose a direct threat or are its internal challenges so serious that
it won’t be able to make the leap to advanced industrialized status? How good a
job is the American media doing in addressing these issues?

Coordinator:

William J. Holstein,
who was based in Hong Kong and Beijing from 1979 to 1982 for United Press
International, is currently a business journalist and author. He is past
president of the OPC and a member of its board.

Panelists:

Orville Schell,
director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, who has
covered China since 1964 for the New Yorker, Atlantic, New York Review of
Books
, and other top publications. His latest book on China, “Wealth and Power: China’s Long March To The
Twenty-First Century
,” was published this summer

Pete Engardio,
who covered China’s economic and business scene as a Hong Kong-based
correspondent for BusinessWeek from 1990 through 1996 and then as a New
York-based writer and editor until 2009. He received multiple OPC awards for
his work. He was co-author of “Asia’s
Boom, Bust, and Beyond
,” published in 2000. Engardio now is a senior writer
at The Boston Consulting Group.

John Bussey,
assistant managing editor and executive business editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of a weekly column on global
business trends.

All afternoon panels will be held in the Priestly Room on
the second floor of Club Quarters.

2:00
– 3:15 p.m. Covering The
Contradictions of Today’s China
 — Human rights, protests and an
authoritarian government are all hot-button U.S. media issues. But how do we
address the life of China’s middle class; very real gains in open society and
the media environment; and the emergence of a civil society in the environment
and the arts?

Coordinators: 

Dorinda Elliott was based in China for BusinessWeek and Newsweek,
and became editor of AsiaWeek in Hong Kong. She is currently an editor at large
for ChinaFile.

Marcus Brauchli was based in Hong Kong and Shanghai for the Wall
Street Journal and rose to become managing editor of that paper before being
named managing editor of The Washington Post. 

Panelists: 

Barbara Demick, outgoing Beijing bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times,
who is starting a fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Evan Osnos, former Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker
and author of “Age of Ambition:
Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China.”

Gady Epstein, Beijing bureau chief for The Economist.
Epstein was hired by The Economist to
help launch its China section after having served as the Beijing bureau chief
for Forbes (its first) and the Baltimore Sun (its last). He has lived
10.5 years in Beijing and been writing about China and Asia since 2002.

3:15
– 4:30 p.m. Chinese Government
Crackdown on Western Media
 — The FCCC will release its latest
findings on how the government is trying to squeeze the Western press.

Coordinator:

Jocelyn Ford, representing the Foreign
Correspondents Club of China, is the coordinator.

Panelists: 

Joseph Kahn, foreign editor of The New York Times.

Kathleen
McLaughlin
, a Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT,
China/Asia contributor to The Economist and Guardian, and former China correspondent for Global Post/PBS
NewsHour and Bloomberg BNA. 

Minky Worden, Director of Global Initiatives, Human Rights Watch.

4:30 – 5:30 p.m. How Social Media and the Internet Have Transformed China
Coverage
— Journalists inside and outside of China are monitoring
websites and social media and engaging in whack-a-mole journalism against
Chinese censors.

Coordinator:

Susan Jakes, editor of the Asia Society’s
ChinaFile who reported from Asia for Time and was its Beijing Correspondent.

Panelists:

David Wertime, editor of Tea Leaf Nation and Foreign Policy.

Rose Tang, a social media activist and writer who survived the
Tiananmen massacre.

Emily Parker, author of “Now I Know Who My Comrades Are:
Voices From the Internet Underground.”

5:30 p.m. Open Bar, Club Quarters. Storytelling from Roy Rowan,
Seymour
and Audrey Topping
, Sarah Lubman, Bill Holstein and Pete Engardio.

6:30
p.m. Chinese dinner with beer and wine, sponsored by the Taipei
Economic and Cultural Office (TECO-NY), at 1 East 42nd Street. 

Fee: $50 per person to cover room and beverage costs, plus $20 for the luncheon at 12:30. 

To RSVP email patricia@opcofamerica.org, click on our Paypal link below, or call the Overseas Press Club office at 212-626-9220. 


Number of Tickets




 

Attendance is limited to journalists who cover or have covered Greater China and one guest. When you RSVP, please let us know when and where you covered the region, and the name of the organization for whom you worked. The proceedings will be videotaped for possible use in a documentary or book.

Organizing Committee: Marcus
Brauchli; Dinda Elliott and Adi Ignatius; Pete Engardio; Jocelyn Ford; Peter
Goodman; William J. Holstein; Norman Pearlstine; Roy Rowan; Robert Thomson;
Seymour and Audrey Topping; and Minky Worden and Gordon Crovitz.