"Welcome to China, where nothing is allowed but everything is possible." Independent publisher Graham Earnshaw helped launch the careers of a generation of China journalists by giving them jobs at Reuters, Xinhua Finance or his own magazine China Economic Review. Working for Graham, host Jake Spring remembers a man surrounded in a mythology of old China adventures from earlier in his career. Now, Graham lays out on-the-record some of his wildest stories as one of the first Western journalists allowed into China as it opened up in 1979.


Countries featured: UK, Australia, China, Japan


Publications featured: Reuters, China Economic Review, Xinhua Finance, The Daily Telegraph


Graham discusses his upbringing in Australia as the son of a newspaperman (7:06), moving to China with Reuters in 1979 and immediately getting a big scoop on the Democracy Wall (10:31), China's attempts to surveil and control  foreign journalists in the 1980s and how little it has changed since then (18:20), giving his minders the slip to witness a Tibetan sky burial (27:19), reporting from Tiananmen square in 1989 (37:46), getting out of journalism to run businesses like Xinhua Finance and China Economic Review (41:50), his hiring Jake and many other journalists to work at CER (53:42), his walk across China (59:50), the early days of live music and nightlife in China (1:06:03) and finally the lightning round (1:13:53).


 


Here are links to some of the things we talked about:


Jonathan Kos-Read's novel The Eunuch - https://amzn.to/3q85YAE


Graham's account of a Tibetan sky burial - https://bit.ly/3xBeECe


His account of covering Tiananmen in 1989 - https://bit.ly/3cQfLWw


His book The Great Walk of China - https://amzn.to/3xzorZj


His music on Soundcloud - https://bit.ly/3cSRY8z


Jamil Anderlini's "Western companies succumb to Stockholm Syndrome" - https://on.ft.com/2SgtBum


Nick Macfie's novel Hadley - https://amzn.to/35ArTqC


George Morrison wiki bio - https://bit.ly/3wLyhY3


 

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Music: LoveChances (makaihbeats.net) by Makaih Beats


From: freemusicarchive.org


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