Howard French, Columbia University
April 28, 2017
For many years after its reform and opening in 1978, China maintained an attitude of false modesty about its ambitions. That role has been set aside. China has asserted its place among the global heavyweights, revealing its plans for pan-Asian dominance by building its navy, increasing territorial claims to areas like the South China Sea, and diplomatically bullying smaller players. Underlying this attitude is a strain of thinking that casts China’s present-day actions in decidedly historical terms, as the path to restoring the dynastic glory of the past. If we understand how that historical identity relates to current actions, in ways ideological, philosophical, and even legal, we can learn to anticipate just what kind of global power China stands to become–and to interact wisely with a future peer.
Howard French is a legendary reporter who is currently writing books and teaching journalism at Columbia University School of Journalism. His career in journalism began as a freelance reporter for The Washington Post and many other publications in West Africa. He was hired by The New York Times in 1986, and worked as a metropolitan reporter for three years, and from 1990 to 2008 reported for The Times as bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China in Shanghai. During this time, his work was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; he was twice the recipient of an Overseas Press Club Award, and he has also won the Grantham Environmental Award, among other awards. From 2005 to 2008 alongside his work for The Times, Mr. French was a weekly columnist on global affairs for the International Herald Tribune.
He is the author of “A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa” (2004), “China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants are Building a New Empire in Africa,” (2014). His latest book is “Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power” (2017).
Supported by New Mexico Humanities Council, Sandia National Labs
& Los Alamos National Bank
