Best known as one of the country's most well informed and thoughtful observers on China, Orville Schell discusses the country's changing destiny at 7 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 24 at the Cooperage on the Sonoma State University campus.
The lecture is free to the public.
Schell is the newly appointed Director of the Asia Society's Center on US-China Relations in New York City which will lead new programs on the environment, the media and foreign policy in an effort to promote more constructive dialogue between key Chinese and American leaders. Until recently, Schell served as
Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley and remains as UC Berkeley faculty.
Schell says that China is a nation of infinite promise, but also great uncertainty. In a state on non-stop transition, this most dynamic of nations has evolved away from its old revolutionary Maoism, but as yet has no clear destination. This means that it confronts decisions and contradictions at every turn.
Schell's lecture will address such issues as:
What are its sources of dynamism, strength and weakness? How have Americans viewed China historically, and how are they likely to view it in the future? What are the long-term prospects for China's "peaceful rise" and a constructive relationship with the US?
Schell has also been a war correspondent in Indochina, a journalist for magazines such as The New York Times Magazine, Harpers, The New Yorker,
Time, Wired, and Foreign Affairs. He has been a contributor on China for PBS, NBC and CBC. He has also served as a correspondent for several PBS/Frontline documentaries on China and Tibet and covered the war in Iraq for The New York Review of Books.
His written work includes some fifteen books, ten of them about China. He is currently working on issues of continuing political and economic reform in China and is writing a book on Chinese history.
The lecture is sponsored by the North Bay International Studies Project, Napa Valley Unified School District, Phi Beta Delta, SSU Global & International Education Committee and the SSU School of Extended Education.
For further information, contact Jean Wasp, Media Relations Coordinator, (707) 664-2057.
