by Guy Page

China expert Gordon Chang and author/interviewer Eric Metaxas will be the featured speakers at a three-day event about the People’s Republic of China September 10-12 at Ignite Church on South Brownell Road in Williston. 

The two men most recently met May 18 on the nationally-syndicated Eric Metaxas Show to discuss the growing threat posed by PRC government policies, including the PRC government’s role in the spread of the global Covid-19 pandemic. According to the website, the episode “details horror stories of oppression behind the Chinese Government’s facade of respectability.” 

At present in the United States, Chang told Metaxas May 18, “we are not aware of how malevolent China is. It is malicious to a degree that most Americans cannot comprehend.”

Discussion topics of their three-day visit to Vermont are still in development, but are likely to include the PRC surveillance and oppression of its own citizens, government control of the media, the growing military threat to the U.S. and our ally, the Chinese island nation of Taiwan, and the spread of the global pandemic. 

The event is sponsored by newly formed citizens’ group, GrassrootsVT. Information and tickets for a Friday night banquet ($40) and an all-day, bag-lunch provided seminar ($10) will be available on a first-come, first-served basis soon on the GrassrootsVT website (to be published soon). One of the featured speakers will make remarks at the Sunday morning church service of Ignite Church. 

Tiny Vermont is not beneath the notice of the gargantuan PRC. A statement by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appears to show otherwise. In a February 2020 speech to the National Governors’ Association, Pompeo shared a list – reportedly from a Chinese ‘think-tank’ – identifies the relative friendliness of every US governor. Gov. Phil Scott is listed among the “friendly” governors. When asked about the list, a Scott administration official told Vermont Daily that “it could be no more than CCP propaganda to sow discord.”

Also, a PRC government report on the February, 2019 visit by Consul Huang Ping – a trade official – describes Vermont as a ‘picturesque, resource-rich state’ and thus a good candidate to join China’s 70-nation Belt and Road Initiative. The report also describes Vermonters as “enthusiastic and unsophisticated.” 

About the Speakers

Gordon G. Chang has appeared as an expert on the People’s Republic of China on CNN, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, CNBC, MSNBC, PBS, the BBC, and Bloomberg Television. His books include The Great U.S.-China Tech War, Losing South Korea, Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World, and The Coming Collapse of China.

The son of a Chinese national father and an American mother (the G. stands for her last name, Guthrie) who met in a church in New York, Chang lived and worked in China and Hong Kong for almost two decades, most recently in Shanghai, as Counsel to the American law firm Paul Weiss and earlier in Hong Kong as Partner in the international law firm Baker & McKenzie. 

His writings on China and North Korea have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The National Interest, The American Conservative, Commentary, National Review, Barron’s, and The Daily Beast. He is a columnist at Newsweek and writes regularly for The Hill.  

Eric Metaxas is the New York Times #1 bestselling author of Martin Luther, If You Can Keep It, Bonhoeffer, Miracles, Seven Women, Seven Men, and Amazing Grace. He has written more than thirty children’s books. The Eric Metaxas Radio Show is heard in more than 120 cities around the U.S..

He is the founder and host of Socrates in the City: Conversations on the Examined Life, an event series of “entertaining and thought-provoking discussions on ‘life, God, and other small topics’” featuring such guests as Malcolm Gladwell, Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel, Dr. Francis Collins, Sir John Polkinghorne, Baroness Caroline Cox, N.T. Wright, Os Guinness, Peter Kreeft, and Dick Cavett.

In a decidedly eclectic career, Eric Metaxas has written for VeggieTales, Chuck Colson, and the New York Times, three things not ordinarily found in the same sentence. He is a best-selling author whose biographies, children’s books, and works of popular apologetics have been translated into more than 20 languages — German, Albanian, Portuguese, Spanish, Korean, Turkish, Galician, French, Simple Chinese, Complex Chinese, Dutch, Danish, Italian, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Ukrainian, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Macedonian, Slovak, and Greek. The Hartford Courant has declared figuring him out “like trying to stick a pushpin in a cyclone.”

Metaxas was born in New York City in 1963, on his father’s 36th birthday. He grew up in Danbury, Connecticut, attending the public schools there, and graduated from Yale University. Metaxas has been featured as a cultural commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and the Fox News Channel; and has discussed his own books on The History Channel, C-SPAN’s Book TV, Glenn Beck, Huckabee, and RedEye. He has been featured on many radio programs, including NPR’s Morning Edition, and Talk of the Nation, as well as Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, Bill Bennett, and The Alan Colmes Show.

For more information on Metaxis, go to www.ericmetaxas.com. For more information on Chang, go to www.gordonchang.com.