A commemorative meeting was held at the 110th anniversary of the birth of American journalist Edgar Snow at Yuanpei College of Peking University on Monday.

Co-hosted by the People's Friendship Society and the China Center for Edgar Snow Studies at Peking University, the meeting boasted dozens of specialists on Edgar Snow studies from both China and the US, who sat together to recollect the life and achievements of Snow.

Born in 1905 in Kansas City, Missouri, Snow, who came to China in 1928, originally treated China a stop over on his world tour, but ended up spending 13 years in the country as a journalist. In 1936, he visited the Communist headquarters in northern Shaanxi Province and spent four months there going around and interviewing top leaders of the Party including Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai.

The next year, he published Red Star Over China in London and became the first foreign journalist to impartially introduce China's Communist Party and Red Army to the world.

After the Japanese army invaded China in 1937, Snow also recorded crimes committed by the Japanese in Nanjing and actively supported Chinese college students' anti-Japanese movement for national salvation.

"This book [Red Star Over China] has played an important role in acquainting American with Red China, especially enabling American leaders to understand the Communist Party of China.… on the occasion of the 110th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Snow, we will follow the path of Mr Snow to diligently promote mutual understanding between the Chinese people and the world," Li Qiang, vice chairmen of PKU Council said at the meeting.

The 17th Snow Symposium, an ongoing event that has been alternating between Beijing and Kansas City since 1983, will be back in Beijing next October.

Global Times