China Emboldened? – Virtual Program

This is a virtual program, instructions on how to join this meeting will be sent the day before the event.

Risking new protests and a new flash point with the United States, China has moved to tighten its hold on Hong Kong, most recently imposing new national security laws and bypassing the territory’s own legislative process. In the context of a series of other aggressive actions in the region, is China abandoning soft power to secure geopolitical gains and diplomatic advantage while the world is mired in pandemic response? Steven Lee Myers, the Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, was expelled from China in March and will join the World Affairs Council to discuss what to expect if Hong Kong is just the start.

About the Speaker
Steven Lee Myers is the Beijing Bureau Chief of The New York Times, currently based in Seoul, South Korea, following the expulsion of more than a dozen American journalists from China. He has previously covered foreign policy and national security issues around the world, reporting from more than 70 countries and territories. He is the author of a biography of Vladimir Putin, The New Tsar, published by Alfred A. Knopf Books in 2015 and in paperback by Vintage Books in 2016.

Mr. Myers began his career at The Times in 1989 and worked in New York City until moving to Washington in 1996. There he covered first the State Department and then the Pentagon through the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001. He has reported on conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq and Ukraine.

In 2003, he was “embedded” with the United States Army’s Third Infantry Division during the invasion of Iraq and reported extensively on the division’s experience there and back home that year. He returned to Iraq as a correspondent and later bureau chief from 2009 to 2011.

In Washington, he has also covered the White House during the presidency of George W. Bush from 2007 to 2008 and the State Department during the tenures of five Secretaries of State, from Warren Christopher to John Kerry.

From 2002 to 2007 and again from 2013 to 2015, he was a correspondent and bureau chief in Moscow, covering Russia and the former republics of the Soviet Union. He began working at a correspondent in China in 2017, based in Beijing. He became bureau chief last December and was expelled in March.

Born in Los Angeles in 1965, Mr. Myers received a bachelor’s degree in rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley, graduating with honors in 1987. As a Rotary International scholar, he received a master’s degree, with distinction, in literature and art history from the University of Reading, Reading, England in 1989.