At Dixie Forum, Dr. Frederick Crook discusses the Chinese dream

At the final Dixie Forum of the semester, Frederick Crook, the former China director of LDS Charities in Shanghai and Beijing, will talk about the Chinese dream.

Dr. Crook will present “China Dream: An Interpretation of Contemporary Wall Posters” from noon to 12:50 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 8, at the Dunford Auditorium in the Browning Resource Center on the DSU campus. The presentation is free and open to the public.

During his Dixie Forum presentation, Crook will talk about the efforts of Xi Jinping, president of the People’s Republic of China, to propagate the Chinese dream starting in 2013. While living in China and cooperating with the China Charity Federation of the Ministry of Civil Affairs to implement charity projects, Crook began to observe many wall posters appearing in public spaces. He photographed 272 of these posters and began to notice some interesting connections between the posters and Chinese media outlets’ reports on the Chinese dream. Crook will share about 20 posters that highlight the variety of messages he saw and the different art styles used by the government to transmit these ideas.

Crook was born in the United States and lived in Taiwan and China for a decade. As the China director for LDS Charities, Crook worked on drinking water systems for rural communities, sanitation facilities for schools, wheelchairs for disabled people, and medical equipment for hospitals. He also has served as the president of The China Group, a company that provides assessments of China’s rural economy, and as an agricultural economist in the Market and Trade Economics Division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He has published nine books and 185 articles on topics including China’s agriculture trade and economics.

Dixie Forum is a weekly lecture series designed to introduce the St. George community and DSU students, faculty, and staff to diverse ideas and personalities while widening their worldviews via a 50-minute presentation. Dixie Forum will take a break during the university’s winter break but will resume in January after the spring semester is underway.

For more information on Dixie State University’s Dixie Forum series, please contact DSU forum coordinator John Burns at (435) 879-4712 or burns@dixie.edu or visit dixie.edu/humanities/dixie_forum.php. Stay up to date on the forums by liking the Dixie Forum Facebook page at or following @dixieforum on Twitter.