Jasper Becker is the publisher of Asia Weekly which was launched in April 2007. The Hong Kong-based weekly news magazine is circulated in 15 countries and has a staff of 30. It is the first Asian English-language news magazine launched in 30 years. He has been a foreign correspondent for 25 years including 17 years based in Beijing and written three books on China, one on North Korea and another on Mongolia. They have been translated into seven languages. His latest, City of Heavenly Tranquility, is a history of Beijing which Penguin (UK) is launching in June 2008. Oxford University Press (USA) is releasing it in July. He is also the managing director of Legend Strategic Consultancy, a corporate consultancy on China.
He started his career working in Brussels, Geneva and Frankfurt for The Associated Press. From 1985-1992, he worked for The Guardian newspaper and reported from Beijing from 1985 to 1989. The paper nominated him as foreign correspondent of the year for his coverage of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations. At the BBC World Service, he was the Asian Affairs Analyst based in London and traveled throughout Central Asia and the former Soviet Union. His first book about the fate of the Mongols, The Lost Country, is being reissued in 2008 as Mongolia: Travels in an Untamed Land. .
From 1995-2002, he was Beijing Bureau Chief of Hong Kong's English-language South China Morning Post (SCMP). From 2002-2005, he was the China correspondent for The Independent. He contributed features to Vanity Fair, National Geographic, Marie Claire and other magazines and op-ed commentaries to the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Spectator, The New Republic, The Christian Science Monitor, The Irish Times, The Asian Wall Street Journal, The Australian Financial Review, the London Review of Books, the TLS and others.
Every month Jasper Becker speaks at two or three conferences and executive briefings. He has often been interviewed by the BBC World Service, CNBC, NBC, ABC AP-TV, Reuters TV, 60 Minutes, Nightline, Radio France International, Sky News, ITN, ARD TV, Deutsche Welle, South Korea's KBS. He has appeared in documentaries for CBS's Sixty Minutes, Canadian television, ABC's Nightline Josh Gerstein (2002), Ted Koppel (1998), Primetime Live with Diane Sawyer (1997) and World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. 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. In May 2002, he gave evidence about North Korea at a hearing held by the House of Representatives International Relations Committee, and has given talks to the US Council for International Relations, and other venues
His book Hungry Ghosts, the first account of China's Great Leap Forward famine (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 and coverage of the Falun Gong crackdown the Hong Kong Human Rights Press Award.
A British citizen, born London 19.5.56 and married with three children aged 9, 7 and 2, he speaks French, German and Chinese. Educated at Mill Hill School, London University, Goldsmith's College, Munich University, he also has a diploma in Modern Chinese from London University.
