Nicholas Platt: China Then and Now
VIEW EVENT DETAILSNicholas Platt, long-time China specialist, three-time U.S. Ambassador (Pakistan, Zambia and the Philippines), Asia Society President Emeritus, and author of the recently published memoir, China Boys, will share his experiences and insights gained from a long and distinguished career.
As a young diplomatic officer in the early 1960s, when Communist China was firmly closed to the west, Platt took the unusual step of studying Mandarin. This put him in a key position when U.S. relations to China suddenly opened. Platt was one of the State Department officials chosen to accompany President Nixon on his historic visit to China in 1973. The following year he and his family were stationed in Beijing with the opening of a U.S. Liaison Office, the forerunner of the U.S. Embassy in the PRC. Showing some of his 'home movie' footage of the Nixon trip, and film of family and diplomatic events, and reading from his memoir, Platt will talk about life in China in 1973. As a former president of the Asia Society board, which oversees numerous contacts and exchanges with China, and a frequent visitor and lecturer in the PRC, Platt is in a unique position to compare those early days of diplomatic contact to relations with the West today, as China now emerges as a major player on the world stage and an economic power house.
This event is co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Center for Chinese Studies (CCS) and the UC Berkeley Institute of East Asian Studies. For questions about this event, please contact [email protected] or (510) 643-6321.