"Every major city in the world has a foreign correspondents' club and Shanghai with its all history deserves to have one," said Martin Fackler, president of the SFCC.

With support from the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Hong Kong and approval from Shanghai authorities, the club will celebrate its reinstatement on April 26.

To kick off the new venture, the club will feature guest panel speakers who will review China's tumultuous 20th century history to its present-day transformation.

Roy Rowan of Time-Life, Israel Epstein, formerly of the Allied Labor News, and John Roderick of the Associated Press, who interviewed Mao Zedong in 1943, will be among speakers giving presentations about their pre-1949 China experiences.

The SFCC was founded by international correspondents in the wartime capital of southwestern China, Chongqing (Chungking), in 1943.

It followed the fortunes of the Chinese Nationalist government and moved to Shanghai in 1945, settling into the top floors of the famous Broadway Mansions before an unfavorable political climate forced it to move to Hong Kong in 1949.

The Shanghai Mansions has since become a hotel. The venue for the new club has yet to be finalized.

(China Daily February 15, 2003)