This event was recorded on March 24, 2023
Assignment China: An Oral History
About the event
Reporting on China is one of the most difficult jobs in journalism and one of the most important. American media coverage of China has profoundly influenced US government policy and shaped public opinion in the US and around the world. Mike Chinoy, a former CNN Beijing bureau chief, will talk about his new book, Assignment China, an oral history of American journalists who reported on China from the Communist revolution of 1949 through the COVID-19 pandemic.
About the speaker
Mike Chinoy
Mike Chinoy is a non-resident senior fellow at the U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California and the creator of the Assignment China documentary film series on the history of American correspondents in China. He spent twenty-four years as a foreign correspondent for CNN, serving as the network’s first Beijing bureau chief and senior Asia correspondent. He began his career working for CBS News and NBC News in Hong Kong in the 1970s. He has reported on the most important events in Asia since the mid-1970s, including the death of Mao Zedong, the “People Power “ revolt in the Philippines, the Tiananmen Square crisis, the rise of China, the Hong Kong handover, the fall of Indonesian President Suharto, the Soviet and US wars in Afghanistan, the Southeast Asian tsunami, elections and political crises in Taiwan, and developments in North Korea. Before joining CNN, Chinoy worked for CBS News and NBC News. He won Emmy, Dupont, and Peabody awards for his coverage of China.
About the moderator
Katherine Wilhelm
Katherine Wilhelm is executive director of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute, an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law, and editor of the institute’s online essay series, USALI Perspectives. She is an expert on China’s legal system, public interest law organizations, and civil society. She joined USALI in August 2019 after returning from nearly three decades of residence in Asia, where she split her career between law and journalism. Most recently she was the legal program officer at the Ford Foundation’s China office, where she funded Chinese legal advocacy NGOs and university-based legal research and education programs. Ms. Wilhelm also practiced corporate law in the Beijing office of a leading US law firm. Before beginning her career in law, she was a journalist. She reported for The Associated Press from Beijing, Hong Kong, and Hanoi, and for the Far Eastern Economic Review from Hong Kong and Shanghai. Her work has been published in leading newspapers around the world. She was a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University in 1996-97. She holds a J.D. from Columbia Law School, a master’s degree in East Asian studies from Harvard University, a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s degree in history from Niagara University. Email Katherine.