From Deng Xiaoping's groundbreaking visit to America in 1979 to China's complex and confusing policies toward Russia and Ukraine in 2022, Jim Laurie has been tracking events in China for nearly 45 years. In his talk, “A Five-Decade Perspective,” he takes a look at China today and the remarkable changes the country has undergone over the years in its relationships with the world.
Laurie raises the question of whether the United States is involved in a new Cold War with China, as a policy of “strategic engagement” is increasingly being replaced by one of pure superpower competition.
He is asking whether the fears expressed by hundreds of US politicians that China is an existential threat to the US and that the Chinese Communist Party is determined to undermine the American way of life are exaggerated or rooted in reality.
And he asks if a war over Taiwan could be inevitable.
As he explores these questions, Laurie will discuss his perception of Europe's position in this apparent power struggle and share his insights on China, gained from his work within the Chinese media bureaucracy until 2019.
Following the event, there will be a small reception with drinks and snacks.
Time:
Saturday, July 9, 2022, 7 PM
Location:
C-Space, Langhansstr. 86, 13086 Berlin
Login:
Participation is free. Limited spots. Register by sending a short email to Ms. Haifen Nan (haifen.nan@zhongde-media.net) until July 7, 2022.
About Jim Laurie:
Jim Laurie has been a journalist and documentary filmmaker with a global reach for over 50 years. For the American television network NBC News reported, among other things, on the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia. In 1981, he opened for ABC News the first American television news bureau in Beijing. He reported extensively on China and visited the country almost every year from 1978 to 2019. In 1979, he interviewed Deng Xiaoping in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
In Europe, he worked in Russia (during the transition from the USSR) and Ukraine in the 1990s, as it gained its independence. He interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin.
From 2005 to 2012, he taught media studies and modern Chinese history at the University of Hong Kong. From 2012 to 2019, he served as a media consultant for Chinese state television. CGTN in the development of global English activities in Beijing. London and Washington.
Jim Laurie is the author of “The Last Helicopter: Two Lives in Indochina” (2020), a memoir about war, love, and survival in Cambodia and Vietnam in the 1970s.
About the German-Chinese Media Network:
The German-Chinese Media Network e.V. was founded in 2011 by Zeitenspiegel author Markus Wanzeck together with other alumni of the journalism exchange program “Media Ambassadors China – Germany.”.
The association aims to permanently deepen the exchange between Chinese and German journalists. In this way, it wants to contribute to intercultural understanding and promote unbiased reporting.