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In the summer of 1973, a young Mike Chinoy finagled his way onto one of the earliest trips of civilian Americans to “Red China.” He would later become CNN’s China correspondent – moving to the PRC in 1987 – and became famous as he reported live on the infamous events that transpired in and around Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 4th, 1989. Chinoy is in Taiwan for an extended stay, working on a documentary project. In this week’s interview episode, hear Chinoy tell Formosa Files about his first trip to Taiwan in 1974, his feelings on the CCP crackdown in Hong Kong, and his pride at watching Taiwan blossom into “the freest nation in Asia.”
Cover image shows Mike Chinoy reporting for CNN in China in the late 1980s.
"Assignment China (2023)... is based on interviews with well over 100 people who give a behind-the-scenes look as to what it was like to cover China ... what it was like to be the Life magazine correspondent in Shanghai when the Red Army rolled in, or to be a China watcher in Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution, or to fly on Nixon's press plane in 1972, or to be the photographer who took the famous photo of the man in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square." - Mike Chinoy to Formosa Files, March 4, 2024 (edited). Get the book HERE.
Below: The famous Simpsons commentary on the Tiananmen Square "Incident," which pretty much sums up how the CCP presents the history of June 1989.
(Images below courtesy of Mike Chinoy)
1/2. The story that put CNN "on the map," Mike Chinoy reporting for CNN from Tiananmen Square in early June, 1989.
3. Chinoy with CNN crew, Lhasa, 1988.
4. Mike Chinoy on his first visit to the PRC – Cultural Revolution-era "Red China"– in 1973.
5. With CNN camerawoman Cynde Strand and soundman Mitch Farkas, Hong Kong, 1990.
OTHER BOOKS BY MIKE CHINOY:
Are You With Me?: Kevin Boyle and the Human Rights Movement (2021)
Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis
China Live: People Power and the Television Revolution
In the interview, Mike Chinoy recommended Ian Johnson’s Sparks: China's Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future (2023).
Check our very first episode, the story of a very white man who showed up in London in 1703... and claimed to be from Formosa. Or try a foodie episode from Season 3. Or, for those who want some harder-core history, hear the tale of the Lockheed U-2 pilot Wang Hsi-chueh 王錫爵, who became was famous for defecting to the PRC by hijacking China Airlines Flight 334 on May 3, 1986.
