A national correspondent for The Atlantic, James Fallows is one of America’s most respected journalists. Whether writing about politics, national security, the economy, or foreign policy, Fallows strives to do one thing: “Make the important interesting.” For his perceptive, sometimes prescient writing, he has won the National Book Award, the American Book Award, and the National Magazine Award. Based in China since 2006, he is now chronicling that country’s explosive growth and its staggering ramifications for America and the world. In addition to his latest book, Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China, Fallows is also the author of Breaking the News, about the crisis facing contemporary news media, and Blind into Baghdad, about the lead-up to the War in Iraq (now required reading in many military programs). He has also been a software designer for Microsoft, a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, and the Atlantic’s technology columnist.

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Minxin Pei is an expert on China, Taiwan, East Asia, and democracy. He earned his B.A. from Shanghai International Studies University and his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. Currently, he serves as an adjunct senior associate in the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as well as professor of government and director of the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at Claremont McKenna College. He is especially interested in democratization in developing countries, economic reform and governance in China, and U.S.-China relations. Pei is an influential scholar whose research has appeared in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Modern China, and Journal of Democracy. He frequently serves as an expert commentator on BBC World News, National Public Radio, and the Voice of America, and his op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times, Washington Post, and the International Herald Tribune.  His most recent book is China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Harvard University Press, 2006).

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