BIOGRAPHY
James Kynge is Global China Editor and Associate Editor at the Financial Times. He is a regular speaker on China’s rise as a technological power, the “Belt and Road Initiative” and other expressions of China’s proliferating interaction with the outside world.
He spent 18 of the past 28 years working in China, latterly as the Financial Times’ bureau chief in Beijing. In 2017, he won the prestigious Harold Wincott award for journalism for his coverage of China and its global relationships.
His prize-winning book “China Shakes the World: the rise of a hungry nation” (2009) was an international bestseller and translated into 19 languages.
James combines a granular knowledge of China’s overseas investments with insights into the diplomatic and security context of Beijing’s outward embrace.
In addition to a 30-year career as a journalist, he has also worked in business, heading up the Pearson Group of companies in China from 2005-08. This gives him an appreciation of the differences between doing business and merely writing about it.
Outside the office, he encourages young people in the UK to engage with China as a British Council “leading light” and as President of the Chinese Speakers Association, an NGO that assists young people who speak Chinese to find employment opportunities.
JAMES KYNGE: SPEAKER
The 21st century will see the western world order being increasingly challenged by a rising China.
This is a commonly accepted narrative. But, through decades of field research and rigorous data analysis, James brings a huge amount of substance, depth and subtlety to this theme. He brilliantly shows how and where economic and political power are shifting; how demographics, social trends and culture are having an impact, and where in fact China has its weaknesses as well as strengths.
He speaks in depth on many critical issues such as corporate and local government debt, internationalisation of the renminbi, the CCP and internal politics, foreign policy, and consumer and social trends.