PRC Ambassador to the United States Qin Gang address the guests in his first visit to the U.S. West Coast
Last evening, more than 300 leaders of the Southern California Chinese-American community gathered to recreate the dinner hosted in honor of President and Mrs. Nixon by Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai 50 years ago in the Great Hall of the People.
A video message from Dr. Henry Kissinger began the evening’s program.
In-person remarks were delivered by current and former American and Chinese government officials and diplomats including The Honorable Elaine Chao, 24th U.S. Secretary of Labor and 18th U.S. Secretary of Transportation and the first Chinese American to be appointed to a President’s cabinet in American history, former U.S. Ambassador to the PRC Stapleton Roy, and PRC Ambassador to the United States Qin Gang in his first visit to the U.S. West Coast.
Throughout the year, the Nixon Foundation will serve as a convening authority for open, honest, and candid conversations to understand how and why President Nixon’s trip to the PRC was central to his visionary foreign policy, to drive a wedge between China and the Soviet Union and win the Cold War.
The years’ worth of programming was very generously underwritten by Ming and Eva Hsieh and Charlie and Ling Zhang.
Thursday’s gala’s Presenting Sponsor was The Starr Foundation, and X. Rick Niu, president of Starr Strategic Holdings, read a message at the dinner from Maurice Greenberg, Chairman of The Starr Foundation. Other major supporters of the evening were: Donna Feng, The Icebreakers at the Richard Nixon Foundation, Schramsberg Vineyards, Song and Simon Guo, South Coast Plaza, Chris Zhao and CC Wang, the Bowers Museum, Chinese Culture Development Center, Edward Cai, Jing Guo Committee, Irvine Bank, Pacific Chorale, University of California, Irvine, U.S. China Peace & Friendship Promotion Committee, Shanghai Tan and Yasith Weerasuriya.
More than ten Institutional Partners from across the country joined the celebration as well. They were: Asia Society of Southern California, Association of California Cities-Orange County, California State University, Fullerton Center for Leadership, Committee of 100, Concordia University Irvine, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, OC Music and Dance, Orange County Business Council, Pacific Symphony and the U.S.-China Business Council.
For more information on this year’s programs, click here.
View the Remarks from the Event Here:
50th Anniversary Coverage:
From The LA Times: Nixon library marks 50 years of U.S.-China relations amid low point for diplomacy
From The Wall Street Journal: Fifty Years After Nixon’s Visit, China Tilts Back Toward Russia
From CNN: How Nixon’s ‘adventurous diplomacy’ opened US relations with China
From NPR: Nixon’s trip to China laid the groundwork for normalizing U.S. – China relations
From Politico: From NPR’s Here and Now Podcast: The Great Wager, Ep. 1: Richard Nixon’s ‘crazy’ idea
From Financial Times: Nixon in China: are these lessons for today’s leaders?
From History.com: How Nixon’s 1972 Visit to China Changed the Balance of Cold War Power
From Newsweek: ‘The Week That Changed The World’: 50 Years Since Richard Nixon Visited Mao in China
From Bloomberg: China Should Remember Lessons of Nixon Visit
From Politico: 50 years after Nixon met Mao, questions remain whether the U.S. ‘got played’
From Washington Post: Retropolis piece: China was a brutal communist menace. In 1972, Richard Nixon visited anyways.
From Washington Post Video Footage: 1972: Nixon visits the Great Wall of China
From ForeignPolicy.com: What Biden Can Learn from Nixon on China
From The Wire China: Nixon’s Visit, In Living Color
From CNN: Historical footage shows Nixon’s visit to China 50 years ago