This episode is a special one. The podcast has a conversation with Fox Butterfield, the first correspondent for the New York Times after 1949. Mr. Butterfield set up the Beijing Bureau for the New York Times in 1979 and was the bureau chief from 1979 to 1981. 

Mr. Butterfield started studying Chinese in 1958, and was a student of John Fairbank. 

In this episode, I got the privilege of interviewing Mr. Butterfield at his home. We talked about his experience with John Fairbank, his friendship with Senators John McCain and Joe Biden, his work on the Pentagon Papers and many other topics. We also talked about his book, China: Alive in the Bitter Sea, an excellent work of reportage on China at this crucial transition.

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AI Generated Transcript

 My name is Lee Moore and this is the Chinese Literature podcast. Today, on the podcast, I’m gonna be hosting a special guest. His name is Fox Butterfield. He is the man who in 1979, opened up the New York Times, first Beijing Bureau in the period after the communist took over. From 1949 to 1979, the New York Times did not have a bureau in China.

Fox Butterfield is the one who actually. Opened it up, so I did an interview with him. We’re gonna have that interview on this podcast, and because of the format of the interview, be a slightly different formatted podcast. Before I get started with everything and talking with this fascinating figure, Mr.

Butterfield, I just want to do a quick plug for my book, China’s backstory, the history that Beijing does not want you to read. We’re planning on having it come out September 30th that day. May change. My editors are still kindly beavering their way through the book, trying to make the book stronger. If y’all are interested in keeping up with the progress through the publication process of this book, go to my website, lee harris moore.com.

Click on the link up at the top, China’s backstory, and that should take you to the page where you can. Quote unquote pre-order the book, which is just to say you’re signing up for emails to be sent your way as my book comes out, and if you’re interested in getting an advanced. Reader a copy of the book, send me an email, Chinese literature podcast@gmail.com.

My editors have asked me to find smart folks who are willing to read an early, mostly edited copy of the book, and once they read it, post it about it on social media, X tiktoks book talk wherever you post stuff about books. In an effort to, of course, gen up some buzz before publication. If you’re interested, send me an email.

Chinese Literature podcast@gmail.com. Okay. Now that I’ve gotten the necessary self-promotion out of the way, let’s talk about who this podcast is really about. Fox Butterfield for the podcast. I’m planning on doing some interviews, not focused on literature per se, but on talking with experts who had unique and incredible platforms on which to observe Chinese culture.

China’s. Politics and how those things changed. The first of these interviews that I conducted is with Fox Butterfield. Mr. Butterfield was the first New York Times correspondent allowed into Beijing. After the revolution, Mr. Butterfield got to China in 1979. He reopened the New York Times Bureau in Beijing, which had been closed since 1949.

Then he wrote a book about his experience. The book is called China Alive in the Bitter Sea, derived from a Chung Yu Hai. The book is a fantastic on the ground sort of look at China in a period where it’s pivoting from maoism to deism. Now, as y’all can probably guess by the fact that there is a Chung Yu in this book title Fox Butterfield is not just any journalist.

He’s not just some journalist parachuting in to China to report on it. No. He has a deep, deep knowledge of China. When we were setting up. The meeting for this interview, he told me he still actually dreams in Chinese sometimes. Fox Butterfield started studying Chinese in 1958. He was inspired by a speech he heard from John Fairbank.

That is the John Fairbank, the Dean of China Studies in America. The man who the Fairbank Center at Harvard is named after Butterfield. Heard the speech by Fairbank and was intrigued by China, a place that he hadn’t really engaged with before to go and spend the rest of his academic career studying China.

Something he’ll talk about on the podcast. Of course, at the time China was closed off to Americans. Pretty much all Americans, not completely, but. All but a handful of Americans, there were almost no journalists in China during the 1960s. Most of the Americans or Westerners in China during the 1960s were communists there who had wound up in China for a variety of reasons.

Mr. Butterfield was working in Taiwan studying Chinese history at the time He entered journalism. He largely leaves behind his graduate studies in the China studies field. He lets that. Expertise that he has developed life fallow for a bit. That’s not to say that he was unproductive during this period.

He goes on to be a journalist first. He’s brought on as a copy boy at the New York Times, and then he’s elevated to a reporter and as a still fairly young reporter, Mr. Butterfield was brought into a New York hotel room filled with file cabinet upon file cabinet of documents that had been collected by Daniel.

Ellsberg, those documents and the reporting that Mr. Butterfield and others in that group did eventually became known as the Pentagon Papers, and they changed history. Mr. Butterfield received a Pulitzer for his work on the Pentagon Papers. Our understanding of Vietnam was completely revolutionized by the things that Mr.

Butterfield and other reporters like. Neil Shehan did, and of course, the impact was felt beyond just the Pentagon Papers. When the Pentagon Papers came out, the administration of President Richard Nixon tried to sue the New York Times, the Supreme Court case that resulted in that has been an affirmation of the protections of the press and their ability to.

Report on scoops, even if the government in the United States does not like it. He was sent to Hong Kong and that’s where all China Watchers were at the time. He was there reporting on China. But of course, as y’all know, if you listen to the Chinese literature podcast enough, several earthquakes occurred in China around that time.

Some literal, some metaphorical. At 3:42 AM on July 28th, 1976, Han CBE was rocked by an earthquake. 7.6 on the Richter Scale. Probably 300,000 people died in Chinese tradition. Natural disasters usually presage political disasters. In January, Joe and Lai had already died on September 9th, 1976, just a few months after the Han Earthquake.

Mao Zong, the man who remade China several times, died. Shortly thereafter, the US would come to establish diplomatic relations with Beijing, abandoning Taipei and moving its embassy to Beijing. Shortly thereafter, the US established diplomatic relations with Beijing abandoning Taipei and who. Was it, who was the first New York Times correspondent to go to China to report on China?

It’s none other than Fox Butterfield. Before Mr. Butterfield arrived, there had been no American correspondents in mainland China. Uh, there had been a handful of, uh, reporters who had passed through a lot of them. Uh, connected somehow with the Communist Party, but there had not been any regular American reporters at mainstream newspaper outlets before Mr.

Butterfield and, uh, his, his. Colleagues from the AP and the Washington Post arrived. Of course, having done graduate work in Chinese history, Mr. Butterfield was the perfect reporter to work in China as the New York Times is opening up. Its Beijing Bureau, Fox Butterfield reported on China for that period from 1979 to 1981.

I’ve talked on a bunch about Mr. Butterfield. Now let me explain a little bit about how this interview was carried out. ’cause it’s a little different from normal podcasts that I’ve done. Mr. Butterfield lives in Portland, just a two hour drive away from where I live here in Rainy Eugene, Oregon. For about the past year, he and I had been talking about doing an interview.

I contacted him first in the summer of 2024, but I was actually still working on China’s backstory. The book got turned in a few months ago. And in March, Fox and I reconnected and we spoke more seriously about doing an interview this Memorial Day weekend in 2025. I just happened to be up in Portland with.

My family, Mr. Butterfield was able to make some time for me. I went to his house. He has this beautiful place up with a fantastic view of much of the city of Portland. We weren’t recording in my podcasting studio where I have my. Fancy $60 microphone equipment. I just use my phone as a microphone. It’s my first time doing that.

Okay. That’s enough of me talking. I’m gonna give over the rest of this podcast to letting Fox Butterfield speak this podcast ’cause it’s such a fascinating interview. Occasionally, I’m gonna step in. And guide the liste