At Asia Society in New York, we were delighted to host Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, a journalistic team (and married couple) who constituted the New York Times bureau in Beijing from 1988 to 1993, where their work on the Tiananmen protests and crackdown won them a Pulitzer Prize. They have co-authored five books together, but also have illustrious careers separately. Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed columns appear regularly in The New York Times, where he has also been bureau chief in Hong Kong and Tokyo, and he won a second Pulitzer for his reporting from Darfur. Sheryl WuDunn is a business executive, entrepreneur and best-selling author in her own right, with expertise in Asia and global finance. They also run a vineyard and apple orchard in rural Oregon.
Kristof and WuDunn talked about their experience as journalists in Beijing, starting three decades ago, and the changes China has undergone since, on occasion of the publication of Kristof’s memoir Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life (Knopf, May 2024), which was excerpted in these pages. Moderating the conversion is Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society, and co-publisher of China Books Review. Also listen to our interview with Fox Butterfield, who set up the Beijing bureau of the Times in 1979. If you enjoy the talk, do sign up to our newsletter to see what’s coming up, and consider becoming a member of Asia Society. Here is the video:
Speakers
Nicholas Kristof is a columnist for The New York Times, a best-selling author, and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes. He lives on the family farm in Oregon and in his free time turns his grapes and apples into fine wine and hard cider. He is the author, most recently, of the memoir Chasing Hope (2024).
Sheryl WuDunn, the first Asian-American to win a Pulitzer Prize, is a business executive, entrepreneur, and best-selling author. She was China correspondent for The New York Times, and is co-author with her husband, Nicholas Kristof, of China Wakes (1995), Thunder from the East (1997) and Half the Sky (2009).
Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society, and co-publisher of the China Books Review. He is a former Professor and Dean at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of over ten books about China. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Foreign Affairs and other publications, and has traveled widely in China since the 1970s.
It’s notable that in some ways Xi Jinping and Donald Trump are a little bit parallel, in the sense that they are impetuous and quite cock-sure of themselves.
Nicholas Kristof
Under Xi Jinping the growth rate has slowed dramatically, and he has not been as good a steward of the economy as his predecessors were. … So the miracle is maybe on the wane.
Sheryl WuDunn
A video of this event was also published at Asia Society.