Britain China Trade Association Limited

Presents: Jasper Becker

Subject of talk: The Impact of Continuing Urbanisation

Synopsis: China is embarked on the largest and fastest urbanisation programme in history with over 350 million people destined to move to the cities over the next 25 years.

Jasper Becker whose new book, ‘City of Heavenly Tranquillity - A history of Beijing’ discusses what is happening to Chinese cities, how China is financing the urbanisation process, what it means for the Chinese economy, the implications of such rapid urbanisation for the environment, the impact it will have on the world economy, all of which offers opportunities  for business and trade.

Venue: Arts Club 40 Dover Street London W1S 4NP

Date: 30^th September 2009

Bookings: http://bcta0909.eventbrite.com

Web : www.britain-china.org

Format:

19:00     Registration

19:30     Presentation

20:15     Q & A

21:10     Networking, drinking & eating

23:00     Carriages

Jasper Becker Profile

WRITING: Jasper 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, the London Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement. In May 2002, he gave evidence about North Korea at a hearing held by the House of Representatives International Relations Committee.

BROADCASTING: Jasper 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 Service, 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.

SPEAKING: Jasper 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 addressed audiences at Chatham House, the Pacific Council on International Relations, the World Economic Forum, the House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee, and business conferences organized by the Economist Group.

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 (Honourable Mention) for Political Science

EARLY WORK: Jasper 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. 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.

Venue: Arts Club 40 Dover Street London W1S 4NP

Date: 30^th September 2009

Bookings: http://bcta0909.eventbrite.com

Web : www.britain-china.org