China's Most Radical Experiment with Mei Fong

The Los Angeles World Affairs Council hosts a discussion with journalist Mei Fong on her research of China's One Child Policy.

China's Most Radical Experiment

The Communist Party leadership, driven by fears that an aging and shrinking population could threaten China's economic rise, ended its decades-old - and highly controversial - one-child policy in October last year. All married couples, it was announced, would now be allowed to have two children. This is a dramatic step from when leaders first adopted the one-child policy in 1980 - when they hoped curbing birth-rates would help lift China's poorest provinces and increase the country's global stature. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mei Fong will talk at a Los Angeles World Affairs Council Global Café breakfast on Friday, April 8th about the impact of this change and the challenges China faces with a population that has grown too old and too male, with a vastly diminished supply of young workers. Fong will share stories of struggle from her interviews - with a factory worker pregnant with her second child, to an activist who campaigned against the one-child policy, to workers at an adoption agency that was suspected of taking second children and selling them to Westerners.

Mei Fong is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with over a decade of reporting in Asia, most recently as China correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. Covering Hong Kong and China, she won a shared Pulitzer for her stories on China's transformative process ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Fong's other accolades include Amnesty International's Human Rights Press Award, a Ford Foundation grant for investigative journalism, and a New America fellowship. When she was 16 years old, Malaysian-born Fong won an essay competition that garnered her an invitation to meet Queen Elizabeth II, whom she says she owes the start of her writing career.

Cancellations must be made 2 business days before the event - by Wednesday, April 6th - in order to secure a refund.

RSVP HERE by April 6th.

Breakfast/Discussion
$27 Members, $32 Guest of Members; $37 Non-members