SoJ Web Report | Jan. 17, 2011
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| Courtesy photo |
| Washington Post correspondent John Pomfret will visit Feb. 3. |
Pomfret’s talk, “China’s Troubled Rise: Bumps on the road to becoming a superpower,” will be at 5 p.m. Feb. 3 in the Ernie Pyle Hall auditorium. All are welcome to attend.
As a journalist, Pomfret relies on his professional experience to address China’s trajectory as a global power and the potential pitfalls that may interfere with that rise. But he also has other ties to China. He speaks, reads and writes Mandarin, having spent two years at Nanjing University in the early 1980s as part of one of the first groups of American students to study in China.
He wrote about that experience in his book, Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China, which won the Shorenstein Prize for Coverage of Asia in 2007 and was a finalist for the 2007 Kiriyama Prize for an Outstanding Book about the Pacific Rim.
He left China in 1982 but returned for the Tiananmen Square protests and the crackdown of June 4, 1989. Expelled by the Chinese government, he came back in 1998-2005 as The Post’s bureau chief in Beijing. In 2003, Pomfret was awarded the Osborne Elliot Award for the best coverage of Asia by the Asia Society.
Between his stays in China, he covered conflict and war in in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Congo, Sri Lanka, Iraq, southwestern Turkey and northeastern Iran.
Pomfret’s visit is co-sponsored by IU Research Center for Chinese Politics and Business. He’ll visit the IUPUI campus the following day to talk to students and journalists.
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