Hong Kong and Bangkok have followed very different trajectories in the last ten years, and in some ways, they have even reversed positions: from 2015 to 2025, each city has witnessed dramatic protests in which youths played important roles, and some of those youths then got elected to office, and each city has witnessed harsh crackdowns on dissent. Another thread of connection has been Beijing's influence over the actions of Hong Kong's government and Thailand's power holders. This is obvious in Hong Kong's case, but it is also present in Bangkok's decisions (in 2015 and again in 2025) to send Uyghurs seeking refuge in Thailand back to China.
The two guest participants in this Young China Watchers event have both had a long-term interest in Hong Kong, which was the subject of Wasserstrom's 2020 book Vigil, and the first place Tharoor was posted as a journalist. Each have also been tracking Beijing's influence over neighboring countries and writing at times about Thailand, Tharoor in his Washington Post column and Worldview newsletter, and Wasserstrom in his new Columbia Global Reports book The Milk Tea Alliance: Inside Asia's Struggle Against Autocracy and Beijing, which publishes June 10.
Join Young China Watchers DC on Wednesday, June 11, from 6:00 - 7:30 PM for a wide-ranging discussion on China, Hong Kong, and the influence of Beijing in Asia. Following the presentation, individuals are welcome to stay for a casual happy hour and socializing. The event will be held at Dacha Loft (the private event space above the Dacha Beer Garden, Shaw Location). Please consider buying a drink to keep these events free!
Speakers:
Jeffery Wasserstrom
Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor’s Professor of History at UC Irvine, where he also holds courtesy affiliations in Law and Literary Journalism. Holder of a B.A. from UC Santa Cruz, a master’s from Harvard, and a doctorate from Berkeley, he has written, coauthored, edited or coedited more than ten books. His most recent books are: Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink (2020) and China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, updated third edition coauthored with Maura Elizabeth Cunningham (Oxford, 2018). In addition to writing for academic journals, Wasserstrom has contributed to many general interest venues, e.g., the New York Times, the TLS, and the Wall Street Journal. He is the co-editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books China Section. He served as a consultant for two prize-winning Long Bow Film Group documentary, was interviewed on camera for the film “Joshua; Teenager vs. Superpower,” and is a former member of the Board of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.
Ishaan Tharoor
Ishaan Tharoor is a foreign affairs columnist in the newsroom of the Washington Post where he anchors Today’s WorldView, the Post’s daily column and newsletter on global politics. Through frequent use of comparative frames, his columns make both the rest of the world intelligible to an American audience and America understandable for the rest of the world. They are anchored in the dominant themes and ideas of the moment — charting the twists and turns of the evolving geopolitical order, the travails of liberal democracies and the increasingly global debates over multiculturalism and identity. Today’s WorldView, which launched in early 2017, attracts a huge daily audience of readers from around the world. Prior to joining the Post in 2014, Ishaan was a senior editor and writer at Time magazine for eight years split between Hong Kong and New York. His work for the magazine’s international edition took him from the jungle redoubts of Nepal’s Maoists to the hurly-burly of election season in the Philippines and many places in between. He also launched Time’s first foray into foreign affairs blogging and eventually presided over the entirety of its international digital coverage. He and his twin brother Kanishk — also a writer and journalist — were born in Singapore to Indian parents, raised initially in Geneva but mostly in New York, and graduated from Yale University. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife, Bhumika Davé Tharoor, a managing editor at The Atlantic. He teaches a seminar at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service on global affairs in the digital age.
