Speaker: Edward Wong, Diplomatic Correspondent, The New York Times 
Moderator: Mark C. Elliott, Vice Provost of International Affairs, Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History, Harvard University

From the the earliest days of its rule, the Communist Party poured resources into reconstituting the Qing Empire. Edward Wong talks about his father’s role in the military occupation of Xinjiang in the 1950s, the subject of his new book, At the Edge of Empire, and his own reporting as a New York Times journalist on how China maintains control over its frontier regions. And what does the party’s focus on holding on to the territory of the Qing mean for the intentions of China’s leaders toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and other areas outside of interior China?

Edward Wong is a diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times and author of At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China. He has reported for the Times for 25 years, working for 13 of those as a correspondent and bureau chief from China and Iraq. Wong was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and has been a visiting professor at Princeton University and U.C. Berkeley. He was a recent fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington and at the Belfer Center at Harvard Kennedy School. Wong was awarded the Livingston Prize for his reporting on the Iraq War and was on a team that was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the war. He graduated from the University of Virginia with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. He has joint master’s degrees in journalism and international studies from U.C. Berkeley. He received an honorary doctorate this year from Middlebury Language Schools.