EZRA VOGEL, one of the foremost U.S. scholars on China who committed a lifetime to building a bridge of peace and understanding between the two nations, died in Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the United States, on Dec. 20. He was 90. His son, Steven Vogel, said the cause of death was complications after surgery. For many who know him from personal experience, the fluent Mandarin-speaking scholar will be remembered for his warmth, humor and generosity as well as his wisdom and insight on China, Japan and East Asia. “My father loved China and the Chinese people. His hope was always that China would forge better relations with both Japan and the United States. We in the next generations in all three countries have a lot of work to do to realize that vision,” Steven, a professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, told Xinhua via email Monday. A passionate lifelong student of languages, Ezra mastered both Japanese and Chinese. He once lived in Guangdong Province for one year and had visited China every year since the late 1980s. “1980 was of course an incredible moment to witness China in transition... He was working on the research that eventually produced his book, ‘One Step Ahead in China,’ about the Guangzhou/Guangdong region,” said Steven, adding that he used to accompany his father on various field research trips to factories and communes in the region. Ezra was originally trained as a sociologist studying the family in the United States. He devoted two years to language study and field research in Japan in 1958-60, emerging as a specialist on Japanese society. He then embarked on Chinese-language study in the 1960s and became an accomplished scholar of Chinese society as well. Ezra, who took pride in his ability to conduct research and give public lectures in both Japanese and Chinese, always preferred to speak Mandarin during interviews with Xinhua correspondents in the United States in the past years. He was best known in China for his book “Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China,” which he spent 10 years to accomplish at the age of 81. Published in 2011, the over 900-page tome has provided a window for Westerners to gain a better understanding of modern China. In 2019, Ezra published “China and Japan: Facing History (2019),” which reviews the history of political and cultural ties between the two nations over 1,500 years. After World War II, Ezra was among the first American scholars to take up the study of modern China and Japan. His thirst for understanding the two countries lasted six decades and turned into dozens of articles, papers and books that brought East Asia closer to American audiences. One of the few American scholars who spoke fluent Mandarin and Japanese, Ezra was known for bringing a humanistic touch to his academic work. “He always wanted to understand people and countries on their own terms,” Steven said. “He had an irrepressible ability to see the good in every person and every nation, while recognizing nonetheless that many of us fall short of our ideals.” Son of Jewish immigrants, Ezra grew up in the small town of Delaware, Ohio, where his father ran a men’s clothing shop fittingly titled as “People’s Store.” The boy of boundless good cheer eventually managed to turn what began as boyish enthusiasm about the world into a ticket into the halls of Harvard University where he focused on studies related to Japan, China and wider East Asia. At Harvard, Ezra was known as Mr. China, with at least seven sprawling works that give nuanced examinations of this constantly evolving country, ranging from the definitive biography of reformist Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping to the thorough depiction of the country’s southern province of Guangdong. His relationship with China began in the 1960s. The holder of a Ph.D. in sociology, Ezra completed his postdoctoral fellowship on Chinese language and history at Harvard in 1964. In November 1968, Ezra, his mentor John K. Fairbank — founder of the modern China program at Harvard — and other scholars of East Asian studies at the university, signed a memorandum addressed to then president-elect Richard Nixon suggesting that Washington “balance” its relations with Beijing. That document played a vital role in facilitating Nixon’s historic visit to China in the spring of 1972. Ezra made his first China trip with the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1973 and since then a journey to China became his annual routine. In 1987, almost a decade into China’s reform and opening up, he spent seven months traveling across the three special economic zones of Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shantou, 14 cities and over 70 counties in the southern province of Guangdong Province. His exhaustive observation led to his second book on Guangdong, “One Step Ahead in China: Guangdong under Reform,” two decades after he finished “Canton under Communism.” With increasing China-U.S. rapprochement in the 1990s, Ezra continued to work to rev up bilateral ties. In 1997, he helped to arrange then Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s address to Harvard faculties during a state visit to the U.S. “He still remembered vividly how he helped facilitate that visit. He was quite proud of it,” recalled Wang Junsheng, an East Asian studies expert. He met Ezra in 2012 during a tour to inspect a post-tsunami Japan and felt his searing passion for China and East Asian affairs. At the age of 70, Ezra commenced a 10-year research voyage on Deng Xiaoping whom he thought could help Americans better understand how China’s system steered the country toward becoming an Asian powerhouse. “Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China” came out in 2011 following over 300 interviews. “No scholar is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China’s boldest strategist,” reads a book description on Amazon. The erudite academic remained active in attending seminars that sought to heal the much-blighted bilateral ties over the past few years. Amid unabated trade tensions, he urged both countries to give each other fair treatment and lift restrictions on foreign investment. “Rivals don’t have to fight,” he said. “It makes us better by being a rival, as we work harder and improve our skills.” In an online event in October, he suggested the United States have high-level talks, intellectual exchanges, and economic cooperation with China. Earlier this month at an Asia-Pacific security forum, he called on the U.S. to admit China’s contributions to the world and to treat it fairly. “We should give more recognition to Chinese constructive efforts around the world,” he said, citing China’s effort in combating climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic and its assistance in Africa’s infrastructure development. In many interviews with Xinhua, Ezra had made it clear that he believed both Chinese and U.S. officials should work together to pursue their common interests. Together with dozens of other experts and former senior U.S. officials, he released a joint statement in April to urge the United States to cooperate with China to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. In July 2019, he co-authored an open letter entitled “China is not an enemy” to the U.S. president and Congress, in which more than 100 American academics, foreign policy experts, and military and business leaders called on the Trump administration to re-examine its views on and approach to China. Ezra wrote a report on how to improve China-U.S. relations in the last days of his life that he was supposed to deliver to the Biden administration, according to Zhao Minghao, a senior fellow of U.S. politics at Fudan University. Zhao, who once secured Ezra’s autograph of “Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China” at a dinner they attended, felt Ezra’s death deeply. “Nowadays there are few China scholars in the U.S. that are as sympathetic as him,” he lamented. (Xinhua and CGTN) | 