On Tuesday, December 21st, Steven Xu Tan, President of China Telecom (Americas) Corporation (CTA) received the 2021 U.S.-China Business Leadership Award at the 26th U.S.-China Policy Foundation (USCPF) Annual Gala. The award honors U.S. or Chinese companies and business leaders who have not only seen success globally, but also value and support efforts to increase U.S.-China engagement, people-to-people exchanges, and mutual understanding. It was presented to Mr. Tan by Dr. Chi Wang, Co-Chair and President of USCPF.
Held virtually this year, the gala hosted a panel of experts—including scholars, diplomats, government officials, business leaders, and journalists—to examine the importance of improving U.S.-China mutual understanding and engagement through discussion of various topics related to “U.S.-China Relations: Reflecting on the Past Year and Looking Forward to the Future.”
In accepting the award, Mr. Tan remarked, “A circuit between New York and Shanghai means more than wires and signals. It connects brands with consumers, manufactures with supply chains, content creators with audiences, patients with doctors, and children with their faraway parents. Along with commerce, communication, and connections, came prosperity, partnership and percipience between China, the US and rest of the world.”
Mr. Tan also spoke about the important role that governments have in creating and defending policies that promote global collaboration and innovation: “In the digital age, when governments build walls, people wither; wherever information flows, people flourish. Not a single country or company has the resource and know-how to connect itself to the world. We must work together.”
Click here to view full acceptance speech.
In addition to special messages from USCPF President Dr. Chi Wang and USCPF board member Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy, who served as U.S. Ambassador to China from 1991–1995, speakers of the evening also included Ambassador Qin Gang, the 11th Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the People’s Republic of China to the United States.; Rick Waters, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs; Dr. David M. Lampton, Senior Fellow at the SAIS Foreign Policy Institute; Dr. Robert Sutter, Professor of Practice of International Affairs at the Elliott School of George Washington University; Dr. Douglas Paal, nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Ambassador Craig Allen, President of the U.S.-China Business Council; Congressman Rick Larsen (D-WA), Co-Chair of the U.S.-China Working Group; and Shannon Tiezzi, Editor-in-Chief of the Diplomat.
Founded in 1995, the U.S.-China Policy Foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit, non-advocacy organization that promotes a greater understanding between American and Chinese policymakers, researchers, and government officials.
China Telecom (Americas) Corporation (CTA) is a wholly owned American subsidiary of China Telecom Corp. Ltd, one of the world’s largest providers of integrated telecommunication services, with offices in over 40 countries and regions, more than 180 Points of Presence, 41 international submarine cables, and over 50TB of global network capacity. CTA provides customized communication and network solutions to enterprise and wholesale customers in a wide array of industries. Its services include direct Internet access, Internet transit, data services, broadband, unified communications, Internet data center, cloud computing, and ICT services. Headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, CTA has offices in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Panama City, San Jose, Sao Paulo and Toronto. Organizations throughout the Americas trust CTA’s global expertise and localized solutions to meet the challenges of today’s complex business environment. Discover more at www.ctamericas.com
