Edward Wong brings to life China’s history, politics, and people as a seasoned journalist and family insider. A diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times, Wong spent 13 years as a foreign correspondent in China and Iraq. He served as the paper’s Beijing bureau chief during a period of seismic change and oversaw the country’s breakneck economic rise to the tightening grip of Xi Jinping’s rule.
Wong’s acclaimed book, At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China, blends a sweeping history of 20th-century China with the remarkable true story of his father, Yook Kearn Wong, a Hong Kong–born soldier in Mao’s People’s Liberation Army whose journey spanned the Japanese occupation, the Communist revolution, and years of service in remote Xinjiang. Through their parallel stories, Edward Wong explores how war, ideology, and exile shaped China’s path and the personal lives caught within it.
Wong’s work has taken him from the battlefields of the Iraq War to the frontlines of ethnic unrest in Xinjiang and Tibet, and from Hong Kong’s democracy protests to high-stakes diplomacy between Washington and Beijing. His reporting has earned the Livingston Prize for International Reporting, a Pulitzer Prize finalist nod, and fellowships at Harvard, Princeton, UC Berkeley, and the Wilson Center.
He contributes to conversations that explore:
- – The historical forces that continue to shape China’s domestic and foreign policy
- – The roots of Beijing’s strategies in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet
- – The realities of US–China rivalry in a shifting global order
- – The human impact of authoritarianism, nationalism, and geopolitical ambition
Whether unpacking the lessons of his father’s life on China’s frontiers or dissecting the forces driving Beijing’s policies today, Edward Wong offers rare insight into a nation at the heart of the world’s most critical questions.
