Crossing the Divide

John Holdridge, 1924 - 2001 John Holdridge was born in 1924 in Brooklyn. he graduated from West Point in 1945 but switched to the Foreign Service after that. Holdridge learned to speak Mandarin Chinese after two years of studying at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington and at Cornell and Harvard Universities.

Holdridge then went on to hold posts in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Singapore and Washington before accepting the position of Director of Asian Affairs in the Intelligence and Research Bureau of the State Department. When Nixon became president, Holdridge was assigned by Kissinger, Nixon's National Security Assistant, to be part of his National Security Council Staff. Through this he became the White House's in-house expert on China. He was there for the first meeting of the President and Premier Chou En-lai and helped Nixon towards improving relations between the two countries. From 1975 to 1978, Holdridge was ambassador to Singapore, and from 1979 til 1981, he was a national intelligence officer for East Asia for the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1981, Holdridge became the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, a position he held till 1983, when he left to become ambassador to Indonesia until 1986.

Holdridge retired in 1986 after 40 years in the Foreign Service, and wrote the book "Crossing the Divide :An Insider's Account of the Normalization of U. S. - China Relations." published in 1996 and cowrote "War and Peace with China," published in 1994. He also worked as a consultant, trying to improve relations with China and Indonesia.

John Holdridge died July 12, 2001 of pulmonary fibrosis at the age of 76.