James Griffiths - China - The Globe and Mail

Foreign Correspondence

English - December 05, 2021 08:00 - 1 hour - 37 MB - ★★★★★ - 31 ratings
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Writing a book isn’t easy, but James Griffiths (@jgriffiths) of Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail sure makes it look that way. Griffiths talks about getting his start in journalism in Shanghai and Hong Kong just as the Chinese government was ratcheting up censorship of the internet. That became the subject of his first book, which he wrote while also covering years of protests in Hong Kong. He also discusses his new book on efforts to preserve minority languages, like Hawaiian and Welsh.

Countries featured: China, Wales, USA

Publications featured: CNN, South China Morning Post, The Shanghaiist, That’s Shanghai, The Globe and Mail

James discusses moving from the UK to China to get his start at the blog The Shanghaiist (9:48), moving to Hong Kong to join the South China Morning Post and covering the Umbrella Movement (14:56), joining CNN where he covered the larger 2019 Hong Kong protests (22:14), a traumatic moment when protestors turned on each other at the Hong Kong airport (30:13), joining the Globe and Mail (34:08), the difficult reporting environment in Mainland China (40:09), advice on not waiting for permission to go do reporting (45:36), how he wrote his two books and the impact on his life (48:23) and finally the lightning round (1:03:25).

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

Covering Climate Now awards featuring Jake’s work - https://bit.ly/3dn3glk

James’ first book The Great Firewall of China on Amazon - https://amzn.to/3DjRiTP

His second book Speak Not on Amazon - https://amzn.to/3pkKuAw

A review of Speak Not - https://tgam.ca/3EolTBe

The Global Times in English - https://bit.ly/3GinQ2H

Today in Tabs newsletter - https://bit.ly/32PU9Y8

Vittles newsletter - https://bit.ly/3In6NhN

The story of Henry the Vacuum Cleaner - https://bit.ly/3xSihoF

Ariel Sabar’s book Veritas - https://amzn.to/2ZVcfa5

Pam Colloff’s The Innocent Man in Texas Monthly - https://bit.ly/3dh0PAG

Kathy Gannon’s book I is for Infidel - https://amzn.to/3GcjdqK