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K-State Today

October 4, 2018

Confucius Institute to host annual China Town Hall

Submitted by Max Lu

K-State will join more than 100 venues across the United States and Greater China for the annual China Town Hall, a national conversation about China. The event will be Tuesday, Oct. 9, in 1088 College of Business Building. 

The K-State program will open with a talk by acclaimed author and journalist Mei Fong on the past and future of China's birth control policy. Fong covered Hong Kong and China for The Wall Street Journal, winning a shared Pulitzer Prize for her stories on China's transformative process ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She has spent years documenting and analyzing the impact of China's birth control policy. In her 2016 book, "One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment," Fong writes about the origins of the policy and some of its unintended consequences including the creation of "little emperors" (spoiled children), a huge gender imbalance, and a rapidly aging population. After leaving China, she joined the faculty at the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communications. She is currently a fellow at New America, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

The second part of the program, at 5 p.m., will be a conversation on China featuring former U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, via live stream. Rice is currently the Denning professor in global business and the economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Thomas and Barbara Stephenson senior fellow on public policy at the Hoover Institution, and professor of political science at Stanford University. The conversation will be moderated by Stephen A. Orlins, president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Participants will be able to submit questions via social media.

The event is free and open to the public and is organized by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. K-State's Confucius Institute is the local host. The event is an opportunity to learn about China and discuss issues in the U.S.-China relationship.