John Kamm is an American businessman and human rights campaigner active in China since
1972. He is the founder and chairman of The Dui Hua Foundation. Kamm was awarded the
Department of Commerce’s Best Global Practices Award by President Bill Clinton in 1997 and
the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights by President George W. Bush in 2001. In
September 2004, Kamm received a MacArthur Fellowship for “designing
and implementing an
original approach to freeing prisoners of conscience in China.” Kamm is the first businessman
to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
Since his first intervention on behalf of a Chinese prisoner in May 1990, Kamm has made more
than 100 trips to China to engage the government in a dialogue on human rights, focusing on
the treatment of prisoners and conditions in prisons. He has made 10 visits to Chinese prisons
and has submitted requests for information on more than 1,000 prisoners. In the words of The
New York Times, “No other person or organization in the world, including the State
Department, has helped more Chinese prisoners.”
Kamm received a BA from Princeton University (1972) and an MA from Harvard University
(1975). He was the Hong Kong correspondent and representative of the National Council for
US-China Trade (1975-1979) and President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong
Kong (1990). He also managed Occidental Chemical Corporation’s business in China and the
Far East (1986-1991).