Dubbed as the week that "changed the course of history," former President Richard Nixon's visit to China in February 1972 opened the door to the establishment of relations between the People's Republic and the United States.
The historic visit is chronicled in Assignment: China – The Week That Changed the World, a documentary produced by the U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California. Former CNN senior Asia correspondent and Beijing bureau chief Mike Chinoy — who reported and narrated the film and currently is a U.S.-China Institute senior fellow — will speak about the film at a screening at 5 p.m. Jan. 19 in the Cable Center Theater on the DU campus.
Suisheng (Sam) Zhao, executive director of the Center for China-U.S. Cooperation at DU's Josef Korbel School of International Studies, says the Chinoy visit is a unique opportunity to hear from someone with firsthand experience of the historic Nixon visit.
"Nixon's visit marked the beginning of the opening of the People's Republic of China to the rest of the world," Zhao says. "Since then, while the U.S.-China relationship continues to experience ups and downs, China now is rising as an economic, political and military power, and its relationship with the U.S. has become the most important bilateral relationship in the 21st century."
The event is part of the Korbel School's new Public Diplomacy Series. Retired Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey (MA '80) kicked off the series during fall quarter.
