China on My Mind

The United States and China are at a crossroads today. Will the two nations be enemies, or will they continue to engage with each other? Mary Brown Bullock, who first visited China nearly 50 years ago, explores this question in her latest book, China on My Mind.  Her memoir describes being a missionary child in Asia, studying China from afar, leading the first exchanges of students, being a college president, and establishing an American university in China. Dr. Bullock, an optimist and long-term participant, concludes with today’s uncertainty as many institutions including Duke University, Ford Foundation, China Medical Board, United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, and others face a new era of relations with China.

In an interview conducted on December 21, 2023, Mary Brown Bullock discusses the past, present, future of U.S-China relations through the lenses of a trained historian, an academic administrator, and a frequent visitor.

Mary Brown Bullock

Mary Brown Bullock is an educator and scholar of U.S.-China relations. From 2012 to 2015, she served as the inaugural executive vice chancellor of Duke Kunshan University in Kunshan, China. Earlier she served as distinguished visiting professor of Chinese studies at Emory University, director of the Asia program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and director of The Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People’s Republic of China at the National Academy of Sciences. From 1995 to 2006, she was president of Agnes Scott College.

A former director of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, Dr. Bullock serves as a director of The Henry Luce Foundation. She is a member of the Schwarzman Academic Advisory Committee and the Council on Foreign Relations.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Agnes Scott, she earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Chinese history from Stanford University.