Committee of 100 Newsletter

Looking Back: Twenty Years of Committee of 100 Annual Conferences

The Committee of 100 is grateful for the speakers, honorees, and participants who have graced us with their presence over the last 20 years.

 

Highlights, 1990-2010:

 

1990: First Annual Conference: New York, NY

• Executive Director of the San Francisco YMCA Alan Wong gave a talk on “Chinese Americans- Past, Present, and Future” and Richard Holbrooke spoke on “Sino-American Relations in the Age of Gorbachev”

 

1991: Second Annual Conference: San Francisco, CA

• Morning session focused on China and America with a speech by Chinese Ambassador Zhu Qizhen. U.S. Ambassador James R. Lilley spoke on the current U.S. foreign policy in China. Other speakers included Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, former Delaware Lieutenant Governor S.B. Woo, Author Bette Bao Lord, and Justice Harry W. Low.

Memories from the Committee’s Beginnings in 1989: Henry S. Tang, Interviewed March 12, 2009

March 2009 | By Jane Leung Larson

When C-100 Governor Henry Tang tells the story of the Committee of 100, he starts with a pile of about 300 phone messages that landed on architect I.M. Pei’s desk in June 1989. The calls came from journalists, television people, elected officials, and others who sought interviews or Pei’s presence at hearings, prompted by his New York Times June 22, 1989 op-ed, “China Won’t Ever Be the Same.” Pei’s perspective as a Chinese American on the June bloodshed in Tiananmen Square had called forth an intense response, and Pei didn’t know how to deal with it.