Thursday, June 4th, 2020 – 1:15 PM PST

The World Affairs Council of Orange County Presents:

 

From the Tiananmen Protests of 1989 to the Hong Kong Crisis of 2019–And Beyond

A Free Webinar with Professor Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Dr. Yangyang Cheng

Moderated by William Edwards

June 4 marks the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre in Beijing and elsewhere in China. The anniversary is marked by large gatherings each year is Hong Kong, where a June 4th vigil attended by well over 100,000 people in 2019 launched a series of protests that captured the attention of the world. Both our panelists have written extensively on this subject, which is the focus of a new book by one of them. This webinar will reflect on the meaning of the current state of political life in different parts of the PRC. It will begin with a dialog moderated by William Edwards, who have 38 years of living and working experience with China. Then we will segue into a broader conversation involving the audience.

Professor Jeffrey Wasserstrom’s Biography

Jeffrey Wasserstrom grew up in Santa Monica and holds degrees from UC
Santa Cruz (B.A.), Harvard (M.A.) and Berkeley (PhD). He started his
teaching career at the University of Kentucky and Indiana University
before returning to Southern California to join the faculty at UC
Irvine. He is now Chancellor’s Professor of History at UCI, where he
also holds courtesy appointment in Law and Literary Journalism. He is
the author of Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink (Columbia Global Reports,
2020), as well as five previous books, including the 2018 third
edition of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know
(co-authored by Maura Elizabeth Cunningham). He has been traveling to
East Asia regularly since 1986, is an adviser to the Hong Kong
International Literary Festival, is a former member of the Board of
Directors of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and is a
frequent contributor to newspapers (such as the Wall Street Journal
and Los Angeles Times) and magazines (such as the Atlantic online and
TIME).

 

Latest book–Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink can be bought at this LINK (published in Feb by
Columbia Global Reports)
Tweets as: @jwassers
Job: Chancellor’s Prof. of History, University of California, Irvine
Snail Mail: History Dept., 200 Krieger Hall, UCI, Irvine, CA 92697-3275

Dr. Yangyang Cheng Biography

Yangyang Cheng is a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell University, and a
member of the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Born and raised in China,
Cheng received her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago in 2015, and her
Bachelor’s in Science from the University of Science and Technology of China’s School
for the Gifted Young. She writes the monthly Science and China column for SupChina.
Her writings have also appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, MIT
Technology Review, ChinaFile, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and other publications.

Here’s a piece she wrote a year ago about how she learned about
Tiananmen:  LINK HERE
Here’s a link to a recent op ed she did for the New York Times: LINK HERE

William Edward’s Biography

An executive with 46 years of broad international business experience, Mr. Edwards has lived in China, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Turkey and worked on projects in 70 countries. Mr. Edwards founded Edwards Global Services, Inc. (EGS) in 2001 to take U.S. franchise brands global using cost effective engineering type processes and tools. EGS has taken U.S. F&B, retail and service franchisors into 35 countries. In 2011 and again 2015, EGS received the U.S. Presidential award for export excellence. The U.S. Secretary of Commerce appointed Mr. Edwards to the District Export Council (DEC) of Southern California in 2016. On the DEC Mr. Edwards is involved in shaping U.S. foreign trade and export policy.


All Members Welcomed!

 

Zoom PMI: 989 9268 2136

Zoom Link: Press Here