HESSLERMANIA IN CHINA

How best to write about China? In this piece for the New York Review of Books, I write about my former colleague, Peter Hessler. Slowly over the past 15 years, Hessler has become the most influential writer on China in the West, and the most popular western writer in China. I thought that combination made it interesting to look at how each side looks at each other, and what is most effective, especially given the ongoing debate in the West over self-censorship. Update: read it unpaywalled via ChinaFile.