Florence Fang – BAC China Initiative Committee Co-Chair
Born in China, educated in Taiwan and adopted by the United States, Ms. Fang is also the chairwoman of the Florence Fang Family Foundation.
She was a co-founder of the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations (Bush-China Foundation), and now is on the Foundation’s Board of Directors and as chairwoman of the U.S.-China Coronavirus Action Network.
She currently serves as an Honorary Trustee of Peking University and an honorary professor at Wuhan University. She also serves as the Honorary Chairwoman of the Flying Tiger Historical Organization.
Ms. Fang was the publisher of the San Francisco Examiner, the first mainstream U.S. newspaper company owned by an Asian immigrant family, as well as the chairwoman of the Independent Newspaper Group. She was also at the helm of Asian Week and served as president of the Chinese version of The Young China Daily.
She had twice been honored as “Woman of the Year” by the California State Legislature.
She was big supporter of the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library and East Asian Library. Peking University also honored Ms. Fang by naming a building the Florence Lee Fang building to promote understanding between the United States and China.
In 2013, under leadership of Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Mrs. Fang with the Ford Foundation together put the seed funding to establish the 100K Strong Foundation as an answer to former U.S. President Obama’s call to send 100,000 American Students to study in China and promote mutual understanding between American & Chinese’s next generation. In July 2014, the 100,000 Strong Foundation reached its goal. Therefore, on September 25, 2015, during China President Xi Jinping’s state visit to USA, both President Xi & President Obama at White House’s rose garden together announced 100,000 Strong Foundation to spearhead the 1 Million Strong campaign.
In 2014, Ms. Fang also helped arranged & accompanied First Lady Michelle Obama & accompanied her to the University to deliver a speech and to have a dialogue with young students there.
In 2014, U.S. House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi broke ground for the Florence Fang Asian Community Garden in the San Francisco Bayview Point neighborhood, the only community garden in San Francisco named after an Asian community leader. It now serves as the grassroots community’s gathering place as well as a regular San Francisco-Marin Food Bank distribution site.
On April 2, 2014, the U.S. Congress honored Ms. Fang for her lifetime efforts in promoting and advancing the bilateral relationship between the United States and China. This was recorded in the Congressional Record of the 113th Congress, second session (Congressional Record volume 160, number 53, page E497).
Ms. Fang founded the first overseas China World War II Pacific War Memorial Hall in San Francisco’s Chinatown, which includes displays of Flying Tigers artifacts. The Memorial Hall opened its doors to the public in 2015.
In 2016 Ms. Fang invited & joined the delegation of former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s delegation to the 6th Strategic & Economic Dialogue in Beijing.
She also donated an original C-47 airplane that once flew over “The Hump” airlift route through the Himalayas. And in November 2016, this plane flew across 6 countries from Australia, across the Himalayas, to Guilin for the last time. It is now permanently displayed at the Flying Tiger Heritage Park in Guilin, China as a symbol of the long-standing US-China relationship. This work was supported and encouraged by former US Ambassador to China Max Baucus.
On February 13, 2019, Ms. Fang was honored as the first recipient of the “Global Leadership Award” by the Bay Area Council in San Francisco for her leadership in promoting the bilateral relationship between the United States and China.
And on June 12, 2020, the Bush-China Foundation awarded her with their second George H. W. Bush Award for Lifetime Achievement in U.S.-China Relations, after former President Jimmy Carter received the first one.