CMC professor Minxin Pei, a specialist on China and U.S.-China relations, was featured on the Tuesday, July 7 edition of PBS' Online NewsHour, for which he commented on the deadly rioting in Western China, between the region's Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese.
For a complete transcript of the broadcast, also featuring guest Alim Seytoff, spokesperson for the World Uyghur Congress and vice president of the Uyghur American Association, visit: China Struggles to Quell Ethnic Violence.
An Op-Ed by Pei on this subject also appears in the Thursday, July 9 issue of the Financial Times: Uighur riots show need for rethink by Beijing
In the article, Pei says Sunday's violence in the capital of China's Xinjiang province "is a wake-up call for Beijing. The violent incident, in which 156 were killed and more than 800 wounded," writes Pei, "should prompt the Chinese government to change its policies and address the ethnic tensions in China's restive border regions, particularly Xinjiang and Tibet."
Pei, who begins teaching at CMC this fall, joined the College as the Tom and Margot Pritzker '72 Professor of Government and Roberts Fellow, and the director of the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at Claremont McKenna College. He has spent the last 10 years as the senior associate in the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Recognized as a leading expert in issues relating to China, his research focuses on democratization in developing countries, economic reform and governance in China, and U.S.-China relations.
He has been published in many edited books and journals, including: Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Modern China, and China Quarterly. In addition to the NewsHour, he is a frequent commentator on BBC World News and National Public Radio. His commentary also has appeared in such major newspapers as the Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek International, and International Herald Tribune.
Pei is the author of From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union (1994) and China's Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (2006).