My Story
Raised in New York City and educated at Stanford and Nanjing universities, I’m an award-winning journalist and author who’s worked with the Washington Post for several decades. I’m currently a contributing writer to the Post’s Global Opinions section. I routinely consult with multi-nationals and financial institutions on geostrategic issues. I am available to speak, virtually and in person, on geopolitics, US-China relations and European security.
I served as a foreign correspondent for 20 years and spent eight years covering big wars and small in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Congo, Sri Lanka and Iraq. I’ve been based in Warsaw, Vienna and Sarajevo. I’ve spent decades covering China—in the late 1980s during the Tiananmen Square protests, in the 1990s as the bureau chief for the Washington Post in Beijing and then back in DC.
In 2003, I won the Osborne Elliot Award for the best coverage of Asia. In 2007, I was awarded the Shorenstein Award from Harvard and Stanford universities for his lifetime coverage of Asia. In 1996, I was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for my work in Congo.
I’m the author of the best-selling “Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China” (1996). My second book, “The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present” (2016) was awarded the 2017 Arthur Ross Award by the Council on Foreign Relations. My new book, “From Warsaw With Love: Polish Spies, the CIA and the Making of an Unlikely Alliance” is coming out in October 2021. I’ve also partnered with a leading Chinese business executive to write his memoirs, which are also coming out in 2021.
I speak, read and write Mandarin, having spent two years at Nanjing University in the early 1980s as part of one of the first groups of American students to study in China. I’m a Stanford grad with a BA and MA in East Asian Studies. I live in the Bay Area, with my wife, the entrepreneur and founder of WildChina, Zhang Mei, and our three children.