A strong and collaborative relationship between the United States and China will be critical to global peace, security, and economic growth in the future. To meet the growing need for a deeper understanding of and public dialogue strengthening U.S.-China relations, Asia Society has established the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations with a generous gift by founder Arthur Ross.
The Center will conduct original research and educate the American and international public on U.S.-China issues, commenting on and distributing timely information on critical topics and current events. It will also engage key Chinese and American leaders in critical dialogue. The Center will be based in New York and work closely with Asia Society Centers and partner with other organizations around the world.
The Center’s new Director will be long-time China observer, author, journalist and professor, Orville Schell.
Preliminary areas of focus for the Center will include:
The policies of each government towards the other;
The impact of environmental problems in China and collaborative efforts to address them;
The role of the media as an arbiter of U.S.-China relations;
The role of civil society in China and in mediating U.S.-China relations; and,
Collaborative efforts in both countries for education reform.
About Orville Schell
The author of 14 books, 10 of them on China, Schell has been the Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley for the past decade and a frequent contributor to such publications as The New York Review of Books, Time, Foreign Affairs, Wired, The New Yorker and Harper’s Magazine.
Born in New York, Schell is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Harvard University in Far Eastern History, and was an exchange student at National Taiwan University, in the 1960s. He did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, in Chinese History, worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, and covered the war in Indochina as a journalist, writing for such magazines as The Atlantic Monthly and The New Republic.
Schell has been the recipient of several writing fellowships, from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University. He is also the winner of numerous awards, including the Harvard/Stanford Shorenstein Award for Asian Journalism, an Overseas Press Club of America Award, a Mencken Award for the Best Feature, and others.
About Asia Society
Asia Society is the leading global organization working to strengthen relationships and promote understanding among the people, leaders, and institutions of Asia and the United States. We seek to enhance dialogue, encourage creative expression, and generate new ideas across the fields of policy, business, education, arts, and culture.
Founded in 1956, Asia Society is a nonpartisan, nonprofit educational institution with offices in Hong Kong, Houston, Los Angeles, Manila, Melbourne, Mumbai, New York, San Francisco, Shanghai, and Washington, D.C.
The Center will conduct original research and educate the American and international public on U.S.-China issues, commenting on and distributing timely information on critical topics and current events. It will also engage key Chinese and American leaders in critical dialogue. The Center will be based in New York and work closely with Asia Society Centers and partner with other organizations around the world.