home | resume | books | reviews | speaking | articles | contact me
WRITING. Jasper 
Becker is now a full time writer and has contributed features to Vanity Fair, National Geographic, Marie Claire, Travel & Leisure: and political commentaries to the International
Herald Tribune, The Spectator, The New Republic, The Independent, The
New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Irish Times, The
Asian Wall Street Journal, The Australian Financial Review, The
Washington Post, Globe and Mail, Business Week, Prospect Magazine, and Sunday Business.
In May 2002, he gave evidence about North Korea at a hearing held by
the House of Representatives International Relations Committee.
Click here for more examples of reportage.
BROADCASTING. Jasper Becker is frequently interviewed on television and radio on matters relating to China, North Korea, Hong Kong, Tibet and Mongolia. He has appeared in several documentaries on Tiananmen for CBS's Sixty Minutes and Canadian television. In the United States he has appeared on ABC's Nightline discussing North Korea with Josh Gerstein (2002), Nightline with Ted Koppel (1998), Primetime Live with Diane Sawyer (1997) and on Worldnews Tonight with Peter Jennings. He has also frequently been interviewed on CNN programmes, news reports or documentaries by Associated Press Television, Voice of America, and Radio Free Asia. He is often quoted as an analyst in news stories by Reuters TV, BBC World TV's Asia Programme, BBC World Radio especially its programe East Asia Today, occasionally by Sky News and ITN. In addition to taking part in documentaries on China, he has written and presented 30 radio programmes on China, the Soviet Union and Central Asia for the BBC. Other international broadcasters including Deutschewelle, Germany's ARD, Radio France International, Australia's ABC, South Korea's KBS, Ireland's RTE, Swedish Radio use his analysis.
PUBLISHING. His first book was a travelogue cum political commentary on Mongolia The Lost Country (1992) . His second book Hungry Ghosts (1996) is an award-winning account of the famine kept secret by Mao from 1958 to 1962. The Chinese (2000) was hailed as the best single volume introduction to China and its people. Rogue Regime (2004) highlights the tragedy of North Korea and the struggle to deal with its dictator, Kim Jong Il.
His latest work is a National Geographic book on China Dragon Rising which is being published in October 2006. Penguin books (UK) are publishing A Farewell to Peking
in 2007 and looks at the assault on Chinese culture through the story
of the destruction of China’s capital and its reconstruction.
Click here for more information on books.
SPEAKING. Jasper
Becker has given talks to the US Council for International Relations,
and other venues. He is regularly invited to business conferences to
speak on economic and political issues. He is a frequent speaker and
lecturer on international affairs. He has adressed audiences at Chatham
House, the Pacific Council on International Relations, the World
Economic Forum, the House of Representatives Foreign Relations
Committtee, and business conferences organized by the Economist Group.
Click here for more information on work as a speaker.
AWARDS. Hungry Ghosts, the first account of China's famine during the period known as the Great Leap Forward (1958-62), won the 4th PIOOM Foundation Award for a work on major human rights abuses. Articles on North Korea won the Kilpatrick Award for Human Rights and Children. Coverage of the Falun Gong crackdown won the Hong Kong Human Rights Press Award. Rogue Regime was a Finalist for the 2006 The New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism and Winner of the ForeWord 2005 Book of the Year Award (Honorable Mention) for Political Science
CONTROVERSY. Until May 2002, he was Beijing Bureau Chief of Hong Kong's English-language South China Morning Post (SCMP). He joined the SCMP in 1995 when the resident reporting staff was down to one and helped raise it to nine including five reporters in Beijing. As a trusted commentator and reporter who won a wide following, his dismissal from the SCMP in 2003 was reported around the world as sign of growing censorship in Hong Kong. In the last two years the paper has seen sales fall by 40 per cent, a once profitable paper go into the red and the sacking of the publisher, editor, deputy editor, features editor, and others in an effort to recover public confidence. .
EARLY WORK. Jasper Becker started his career in Brussels and worked for the Associated Press in Geneva and Frankfurt. He joined The Guardian and reported from Beijing 1985 to 1989, notably covering the first pro-independence riots in Lhasa, the pro-democracy movement in South Korea, Taiwan's democracy movement and reporting from North Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia and Japan. After the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations for which the paper nominated him as Foreign Correspondent of the Year, he returned to London. Several years later he left The Guardian and joined the BBC World Service as the Asian Affairs Analyst.
EDUCATION. A
British citizen, born London 19 May 1956, married with three
children aged eight, six and one. After attending Mill Hill School, he
obtained a BA degree at Goldsmith's College in the University of
London. He also studied at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich
and later obtained a post-graduate diploma in modern Chinese from the
University of London. In addition to Chinese, he speaks French and
German.
writing broadcasting
publishing
speaking
awards
controversy
early work
education
home | resume | books | reviews | speaking | articles | contact me