Shannon Brandao
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"Farah Stockman, NYT [excerpt]: A lunch meeting about #China this summer at the Upper East Side headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations felt more like an Irish wake.
A crowd that included gray-haired China hands and not-so-gray-haired #tech executives shared memories of their years in the Middle Kingdom as #diplomats, #entrepreneurs and English #teachers in the countryside. One attendee recalled how the car of Warren Christopher, then deputy secretary of state, was attacked by a mob in Taipei, #Taiwan, after U.S. officials announced that Washington would re-establish diplomatic relations with Beijing. Another told stories about living for years in Beijing as a translator, brand strategist and freelance music critic on a “dodgy visa” that the Chinese government would never give out today. They were all keenly aware that they had lived through an extraordinary period of warm relations that is now gone, perhaps forever.
'We were privileged to live in China during a remarkably free and open period of time, to learn the language, make friends, find spouses, and some for a while could even own property,' Ian Johnson, a journalist who has contributed to The New York Times and who lived in China for two decades, told me later. 'It’s very different now, especially for grad students and journalists, but also for tourists. China has closed itself off.'
The nostalgia was poignant but the gathering was also notable for what it represented. The Council on Foreign Relations, of which I am a member, is a sort of brain trust for the country’s foreign policy establishment — a repository for the wisdom accrued by Americans who have lived and worked around the globe. That lunch meeting underlined the fact that China was turning into something they hadn’t expected — and slipping out of their reach. At the very time when understanding China has become more important than ever, they were losing visibility, access and insight, thanks to increasing repression in China[...] There was nothing to be done. It was out of their hands. A melancholy camaraderie filled the room. It felt like the end of an era.
#news #geopolitics