Three foreign correspondents look back at their experiences covering China and Greater China spanning the decades from the beginning of China’s economic reforms to the 2020s, reflecting how Middlebury and Chinese language study prepared them for roles as observers of one of the greatest transformations the world has seen. Rick Gladstone landed in China in 1983, with the Beijing Bureau of the Associated Press, returning to New York with the AP in 1985, and moving to the international desk of the New York Times in 1997, where he has been since. Jeremy Mark covered Japan, Taiwan and Singapore for the Asian Wall Street Journal in the 1980s and 1990s, and considers Taiwan “his second home.” Andrew Quinn spent 20 years with Reuters, like Jeremy covering Taiwan, before moving to China for four years covering the political crackdown following the Tiananmen protests, the beginnings of China’s economic boom and the Sino-British negotiations that determined the future of Hong Kong. All three have wide experience with other parts of the world. Andrew and Jeremy have pursued careers outside journalism – Jeremy with the International Monetary Fund and Atlantic Council, and Andrew with the Aspen Institute, where he leads the New Voices Fellowship. Journalism is sometimes described as a front-row seat on history. Our panelists have been witnesses to China’s trajectory under the “socialist market economy.” Deng Xiaoping’s “To Get Rich is Glorious” that propelled unprecedented economic growth is replaced by today’s new slogan of “Common Prosperity” as China enters an era of slower growth and tighter economic and social controls under President Xi Jinping. Rick, Jeremy and Andrew will share their perceptions of the political and economic drivers behind China’s extraordinary changes over the last 40 years, and the pressures faced by journalists in delivering this globally important story.
Senior Staff Editor at The New York Times
Rick Gladstone is a Senior Staff Editor at The New York Times, where he has been an editor and reporter on the International Desk for nearly two decades, covering breaking news on a range of topics that include China and its neighbors. He also is an accredited correspondent for the Times at the United Nations.
Rick began working for the Times as an editor in the business section in 1997, just as the seeds of a global financial crisis took root in Asia. He moved to the International Desk when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. Before joining the Times, he was a reporter and editor at The Associated Press for 17 years, moving to the AP Foreign Desk in 1981 and to the AP’s Beijing bureau in 1983. He returned to New York in 1985 to join the AP’s Business Desk.
His time in China coincided with Deng Xiaoping’s effort to open the country, a period when Western journalists could more easily test the boundaries of China’s authoritarian structure. Based in Beijing, he was able to travel many times, including trips to Tibet and Qinghai. He and his wife, Peggy Chan, a fellow Middlebury Chinese School alum whose family is originally from Taishan in Guangdong Province, also traveled there. His articles ranged from the opening of Chairman Mao’s mausoleum, to the China-UK negotiations over the 1997 Hong Kong handover, to the first-ever Western rock concert in China (Wham! in 1985). After the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdowns, he collaborated with AP correspondents John Roderick and Jim Abramson the book: “China: From the Long March to Tiananmen Square (Henry Holt & Co.)
A native of Ann Arbor, Mich., Rick first studied Chinese while attending the University of Michigan. He then attended the University of California-Berkeley’s Graduate School in Journalism. But it was Middlebury Chinese School that shaped not only his professional but personal life. He attended for two summers (1976 and 1978), met his wife there and considers Helen Lin his favorite instructor.
Former Reuters foreign correspondent and the founding director of the New Voices initiative at the Aspen Institute
Andrew Quinn is a former Reuters foreign correspondent and the founding director of the New Voices initiative at the Aspen Institute, a groundbreaking program aimed at amplifying expert voices from Africa, Asia and Latin America in the global development discussion.
Andrew spent more than 20 years with Reuters, starting as a junior reporter in Taiwan just after the end of martial law and then moving to Beijing, where he served for four years covering the political crackdown that followed the Tiananmen Square protests, fraught Sino-UK negotiations over Hong Kong’s future and the beginnings of China’s long economic boom.
Other postings included stints in Pakistan and Vietnam, coverage of both Gulf wars, and longer assignments in Washington and California. He served as Southern Africa bureau chief during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and spent more than three years traveling the world with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as Reuters’ State Department correspondent.
A “faculty brat” at Wellesley College, Andrew began his Chinese studies young thanks to Mrs. Lin and patient student teachers at Wellesley’s Chinese Department. He went on to major in East Asian Studies at Columbia University, and obtained a degree in journalism from the University of California-Berkeley. He was a 2008 Nieman Global Health Fellow at Harvard University.
At Aspen, Andrew is leading the New Voices Fellowship which identifies, trains and supports a new cadre of experts from developing countries who seek to play a larger role in championing solutions and setting priorities for global development work.
Senior Fellow at the GeoEconomics Center of the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C
As a Senior Fellow at the GeoEconomics center, Jeremy writes on a range of economic and diplomatic topics, including U.S.-China trade, technology supply chains, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on developing countries, and other issues that keep him up at night. He worked for the International Monetary Fund as a communications specialist for more than two decades, but has always been a journalist at heart. During the 1980s and 1990s he was a reporter and editor for The Asian Wall Street Journal, based in New York, Tokyo, Taipei, and Singapore, where he finished his journalism career running the newsroom at CNBC Asia during the Asian financial crisis. He received an Overseas Press Club Award in 1996 for coverage of the collapse of Barings Bank in Singapore. He and his family moved to Washington in 1998, and he made the awkward transition to international bureaucrat. He retired from the IMF in 2019 and began writing for the Atlantic Council just as the world went into pandemic lockdown.
Jeremy spent the summer of 1973 studying first-year Chinese at Middlebury, where his introduction to the language was a dazzling performance by Helen Lin, who—in the space of an hour—assigned every first-year student a Chinese name rich in meaning and subtlety. It is a story he has repeated hundreds of times over the years. He studied in Taiwan in 1974, but nearly 20 years passed before he was able to use his Chinese professionally as a reporter in Taipei—and then only after a detour into Japanese, which he is unable to speak with any comfort. He has never lived in China and considers Taiwan to be his second home.
He holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Vassar College, an M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London and another in journalism from Columbia University.
