WildChina Book Club:
The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present by John Pomfret (Event #97)

The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom

WildChina Book Club:
The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present by John Pomfret (Event #97)

The Beautiful Country and the Middle KingdomFor January, our first book club of 2022, we’re reading The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present in preparation for our chat with the author, John Pomfret.

A remarkable history of the two-centuries-old relationship between the United States and China, from the Revolutionary War to the present day

From the clipper ships that ventured to Canton hauling cargos of American ginseng to swap Chinese tea, to the US warships facing off against China’s growing navy in the South China Sea, from the Yankee missionaries who brought Christianity and education to China, to the Chinese who built the American West, the United States and China have always been dramatically intertwined.

For more than two centuries, American and Chinese statesmen, merchants, missionaries, and adventurers, men and women, have profoundly influenced the fate of these nations. While we tend to think of America’s ties with China as starting in 1972 with the visit of President Richard Nixon to China, the patterns—rapturous enchantment followed by angry disillusionment—were set in motion hundreds of years earlier.

Drawing on personal letters, diaries, memoirs, government documents, and contemporary news reports, John Pomfret reconstructs the surprising, tragic, and marvelous ways Americans and Chinese have engaged with one another through the centuries. A fascinating and thrilling account, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom is also an indispensable book for understanding the most important—and often the most perplexing—relationship between any two countries in the world.

Purchase the book here

 


Speaker for The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom

John PomfretJohn Pomfret
Author

John Pomfret is an award-winning writer and former foreign correspondent and editor at the Washington Post. His book — The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, America and China, 1776 to the Present — charts the tumultuous story of the United States and China since the founding of the United States by focusing on the stories of Americans and Chinese who forged those ties.

John‘s first book, Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China, was hailed by critics for the way it told the story of China’s epochal changes from the late 1950s until the modern day through the lives of John‘s classmates at Nanjing University. John was awarded the Osborn Elliott Prize for Journalism in Asia by the Asia Society in 2003 and the Shorenstein Award by Harvard and Stanford universities for his lifetime coverage of Asia. Pomfret is married to WildChina founder, Mei Zhang, and lives in California with his family.


Invited Host

Ken WilcoxKen Wilcox

Ken Wilcox currently serves as Emeritus Chairman of Silicon Valley Bank and was Vice Chairman of SPD Silicon Valley Bank. Mr. Wilcox was previously the CEO of SVB Financial Group. In that role, he successfully pursued a strategy of expansion and diversification, while remaining focused on the group’s core niches of technology, life sciences, venture capital and premium wineries. Mr. Wilcox is Chairman of the Board of the Asia Society of Northern California, Treasurer of the Asian Art Museum, and a member of the Advisory Board of the 21st Century China Center Advisory Board. Also, he is a member of the board of the Equilibrium Capital Group, and Chief Credit Officer of Columbia Lake Venture Debt Fund.

He is also an adjunct professor and member of International Advisory Board at Fudan University in Shanghai, and an advisor to a number of startups. Earlier in his career, Mr. Wilcox was a member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2006 to 2012. Mr. Wilcox earned a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School, as well as a PhD in German studies Ohio State University.

The event is finished.

Date

2022 Jan 28
Expired!

Time

China Time
9:00 am - 10:00 am

Local Time

  • Timezone: America/New_York
  • Date: 2022 Jan 27
  • Time: 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm

More Info

RSVP Today

Labels

WildChina Book Club
RSVP Today
We are using cookies to give you the best experience. You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in privacy settings.
AcceptPrivacy Settings

  • We use cookies to make your experience of our website better.

We use cookies to make your experience of our website better.

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyze web traffic or let you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyze data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. However, this may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

Detailed information about the use of cookies on this website is available by clicking on more information.