On August 20, 2019, Weijian Shan discussed his book, Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America, which is a powerful memoir and commentary with the potential to reshape how Americans view China, and how the Chinese view life in America.

Shan, a former hard laborer who is now one of Asia's best-known financiers, is thoughtful, observant, eloquent, and brutally honest, making him well positioned to tell the story of a life that is a microcosm of modern China, and of how, improbably, that life became intertwined with America. Out of the Gobi draws a vivid picture of raw human energy and the will to succeed against all odds.

About Weijian Shan

Weijian Shan is chairman and CEO of PAG, a private equity firm. Prior to PAG, he was a partner of TPG, a private equity firm based in San Francisco, and co-managing partner of TPG Asia (formerly known as Newbridge Capital). He led a number of landmark transactions including the acquisitions of Korea First Bank and China’s Shenzhen Development Bank, both of which made his investors billions of dollars in profits and were made into case studies of Harvard Business School. 

Previously, Shan was a managing director of JP Morgan, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a farm labor in China’s Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia. He holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.B.A. from the Univer­sity of San Francisco. He studied English at Beijing Institute of Foreign Trade (now Beijing University of International Business and Economics) where he also taught as a faculty member. 

Thank you to our host Sidley Austin. 

Thank you to our co-promoter University of San Francisco's School of Management China Business Studies Initiative.