Orville Schell

China expert Orville Schell explains to host Terry Gross how the gates of United States and China are connected, and how the protectionist policies of the past are no longer viable.

Journalist Orville Schell talks about his new book Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood (Metropolitan Books). For centuries now, the mountainous and remote nation of Tibet has been the object of Western fascination. Today, Tibet is the subject of movies and Hollywood celebrities have taken on Tibetan Freedom as their cause. Schell talks about Tibet, real and imagined, and takes us through the history of the West’s infatuation. Schell has covered China and Tibet for many years.

China scholar Orville Schell returns to update us on President Clinton's trip to China. Schell is a board member of the Yale-China Association and Human Rights Watch, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Schell is Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. He has written many books on China. His last was "Mandate of Heaven: A New Generation of Enterpreneurs, Dissidents, Bohemians, and Technocrats Lays Claim to China's Future." (Simon & Schuster, 1994). Schell was last on Fresh Air Wednesday, June 24, 1998.