China Seminar | 13 October 1994

Prospects of Post-Deng China

PENG Shujie

Please join us for an “insider’s” look at prospects of China after Deng by Peng Shujie, an articulate and prolific writer from Xinhua News Agency, Beijing. Mr. Peng is in Honolulu for the 1994-95 academic year on a University of Hawaii Freedom Forum Asia Fellowship, a program for American journalists which includes each year one joumalist from China and one from Japan to study Asian affairs and cultures at the University of Hawaii. (The program, now in its twentieth year is the first and only program of its kind in the United States.)

In Beijing Mr. Peng is responsible for the political and legal affairs desk for Home News for World Service, the department of Xinhua News Agency which disseminates news of China for foreign audiences. As one of the top students in the Journalism Department in the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, Peng received a Master of Law degree in 1989.

In the past five years Mr. Peng has covered most of the major political events in China, including the National People’s Congress, Tibetan affairs, the 14th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the national crackdown on crimes and the anti-corruption campaigns. He has written over 2,000 stories, including hard news, features, profiles, commentaries and investigative reports. He also translated into English Volume III of The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping. In July-August 1993, Peng accompanied Qiao Shi, chairman of the National People’s Congress, on his five-nation tour of the ASEAN countries. During the visit Peng wrote 46 stories in Chinese and 38 in English. He has won a series of awards for his stories, including the 1993 National First Prize for his profile of Qiao Shi, the 1992 National First Prize for his coverage of court affairs, the 1992 National Second Prize for his coverage of National Party Congress and legal affairs, and others.