Gabriel Wildau reviews Weijian Shan’s ‘Out of the Gobi‘ in the Weekend edition of The Financial Times:
‘Out of the Gobi’ recalls a harrowing time in China’s recent history
Weijian Shan joined BBC World Service in London to talk about his new memoir, Out of the Gobi.
Weijian Shan is one of China’s most prominent financiers, leading one of Asia’s largest private equity firms, but he had an extraordinary start to his life. 45 years ago he was a penniless youth driven to work in the country’s Northwestern desert by China’s Cultural Revolution. He has written a book about his life – Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America. He started the forced labour just after elementary school.
(Image: Cultural Revolution propaganda poster, Credit: Getty Images)
Weijian Shan discusses his new memoir, Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America, on BBC Radio 4’s flagship news and current affairs program, ‘Today.’ (The interview begins 2:47:07).
Minxin Pei reviews ‘Out of the Gobi‘ for Project Syndicate:
Anyone who reads Weijian Shan’s Out of Gobi will understand why the world’s largest one-party regime wants to keep historical truths buried and undisturbed. Now a successful Hong Kong-based investor, Shan spent his teenage years living as one of the “sent-down youth” in the Gobi Desert of Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). As such, he fell victim to one of that decade’s most heartbreaking tragedies.”
Amy Walter interviews Weijian Shan about his memoir, ‘Out of the Gobi.’
“Weijian Shan grew up during the Cultural Revolution and spent his childhood in a hard labor camp. Today, he is chairman and CEO of PAG, a private equity firm and author of, “Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America.” He reflects on the current tension between two schools of thought: One which seeks to move forward and abandon the system of party control over economic activity and the other that wants to hold onto the previous system of an active government presence in the economy.”
“I think it’s very difficult to keep them separate,” said Weijian Shan, a Hong Kong-based private equity investor and author of “Out of the Gobi,” a memoir that depicts China’s modern history. “To the extent that China feels that this is a major issue with America, they will bring it up.”
Weijian Shan discusses his new memoir, Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America, with Carol Massar on Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend. (The interview begins at 11:37.)
Tom Nagorski reviews Weijian Shan’s new memoir, Out of the Gobi, in The Wall Street Journal:
“Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America” is Weijian Shan’s deeply affecting memoir. It is also a story that mirrors China’s dizzying recent history: the Cultural Revolution, with all its madness; the opening to the United States, with all the promise it held; and Deng Xiaoping’s decision to unleash a market-based system, with all the changes it wrought. Mr. Shan has lived this history, suffered from its excesses and thrived thanks to the opening. Today he is one of the more respected and successful financiers in the “new China.”
Weijian Shan talks about the trade war between the U.S. and China, the growth of China’s economy, and his new book, ‘Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America,’ with David Westin and Alix Steel on Bloomberg TV’s flagship morning show, “Bloomberg Daybreak: Americas.”
This essay in Foreign Affairs is adapted from Weijian Shan’s new memoir, Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America (Wiley, 2019).
