William j holstein biography of mahatma

My involvement in China started by accident. I was a young man on the foreign desk at United Press International in New York. I wanted so badly to become a foreign correspondent. I would have gone anywhere--South Africa or Paris or anywhere.

One day, the phone call came: "Bill, we need you in Hong Kong." President Jimmy Carter and China's Deng Xiaoping had normalized relations between the two countries and UPI needed to send senior correspondents into Beijing (then called Peking) and I was a backup in Hong Kong.

William j holstein biography of mahatma gandhi

Part of my job was covering southern China and the Canton Trade Fair.

The story of whether the Chinese could overcome their bitter ideological warfare and concentrate on getting rich was happening in the south, where Deng was allowing experimentation with four Special Economic Zones.

So I won an Overseas Press Club award for best foreign economic reporting because I had stumbled into southern China at the young and tender age of 27.

The experience shaped m