[RESCHEDULED] Club Online Zoom Event: Book Talk – ‘The Gate to China: A New History of the People’s Republic & Hong Kong’

ONLINE ZOOM EVENT Book Talk – ‘The Gate to China: A New History of the People’s Republic & Hong Kong’

SPEAKER MICHAEL SHERIDAN Author Thursday, October 28, 2021 8pm HKT on Zoom

Tracing an arc of history from the earliest days of trade in Hong Kong through the Opium Wars, the handover from Britain to China and the eventual descent from protests to authoritarian-style rule, Michael Sheridan’s The Gate to China (available at Eslite bookstores) offers a definitive look at Hong Kong and its relationship with the mainland. Drawing on documents including the private papers of Margaret Thatcher, Sheridan offers new insight into the handover and Britain’s anguish over it, and reveals China’s negotiating tactics at the time. The Gate to China suggests that Hong Kong was a bridge between the West and China as the latter sought to reform its economy. But China’s new order in Hong Kong – and the world – has now emerged as a challenge to the West, offering a dramatically different model that raises fundamental questions about freedom, identity and progress. Moderated by Correspondent Member Shibani Mahtani.

Michael Sheridan read history at Jesus College, Cambridge, and became a foreign correspondent in Asia, the Middle East and Europe. He first reported from Hong Kong and China in June 1989 and later served as Far East correspondent for The Sunday Times (London) for twenty years, covering the rise of China, the handover of Hong Kong in 1997 and the city’s fight for democracy. Earlier he worked for Reuters, ITN and The Independent, reporting on war in the Middle East, global diplomacy and European politics, with postings in Rome, Beirut and Jerusalem. His work has also appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, The Spectator, The Tablet, Vanity Fair, The Australian and the Hong Kong Economic Journal. He is author of a 1994 book Romans: Their Lives and Times.