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This series features brief discussions with leading China experts on a range of issues in the U.S.-China relationship, including domestic politics, foreign policy, economics, security, culture, the environment, and areas of global concern. For more interviews, videos, and links to events, visit our website: www.ncuscr.org.

The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations is the leading nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that encourages understanding of China and the United States among citizens of both countries.

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  2. Peter Hessler on China’s Evolving Education System

Peter Hessler on China’s Evolving Education System

Aug 28, 2024

In 1996, when Peter Hessler first went to China to teach, almost all of his students were first-generation college students. Most came from large rural families, and their parents, subsistence farmers, could offer little guidance as their children entered a new world. By 2019, when Mr. Hessler arrived at Sichuan University, he found a very different China, as well as a new kind of student – an only child whose schooling was the object of intense focus from a much more ambitious cohort of parents.  
 
China’s education system offers a means of examining the country’s past, present, and future.  At a time when anti-Chinese rhetoric in America has grown intense, Other Rivers is a work of empathy that shows us China from the inside out and the bottom up.  

In an interview conducted on August 6, 2024, Peter Hessler, in conversation with Lenora Chu, looks at Chinese education as a way to understand both China and the United States. 

About the speakers: https://www.ncuscr.org/video/peter-hessler-other-rivers/ 

Follow Peter Hessler on X: @peterhessler 

Follow Lenora Chu on X: @LenoraChu 

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