Through the Looking Glass at the Beijing International Society – This Thursday

Posted: October 19th, 2010 | No Comments »

I’m talking at the Beijing International Society this Thursday on the history of foreign journalists in China and my book Through the Looking Glass. It’s a rather posh do I think at the Norwegian Embassy (so hopefully some decent smoked salmon will be on offer!). Details below:

Reporting China to the World – 1820-1949

Paul French, author of Through the Looking Glass – China’s Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao

October 21, 2010, 7:30 pm

Embassy of Norway

Nuowei Dashiguan 1 Sanlitun Dong Yi Jie

BIS events are open to foreign passport holders only.
All BIS events are off-the-record. Photography, filming and recording are not permitted.

Membership desk open 7:00 pm for 7:30 pm lecture,

No reservations necessary.

For inquiries on the day of the event, from 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm, please call 137 1767 2167.

A debate rages today as to whether or not foreign journalists and the international media accurately report on China. Do they have hidden agendas and display bias or do they tread too softly and fail to criticise enough? It was ever thus. Based on his most recent book, Through the Looking Glass – China’s Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao, Paul French traces the history of the foreign press corps in China from its beginnings through its 120-year tumultuous history until 1949 and considers whether today we are better served when it comes to interpreting China than we were a century ago.

Paul French is a writer and analyst based in Shanghai. His previous books include North Korea – the Paranoid Peninsula and Carl Crow: A Tough Old China Hand. He is currently working on a book detailing the horrific and previously unsolved murder of a young English woman in Peking in 1937 to be published by Penguin in 2011 as A Peking Murder.

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