Edward Wong is Beijing Bureau Chief for The New York Times. Since 2008, he has covered Chinese politics, economics, the military, foreign policy, the environment, culture, and a range of other issues. He has been a writer on three in-depth series, which explored China’s growing global reach, cultural production and censorship, and the 2012 leadership transition. Since being posted to China, he has also reported from countries across Asia, including Afghanistan, North Korea, and Myanmar.
Wong has worked for The Times for more than thirteen years. His first foreign assignment for the newspaper was in the Baghdad bureau, where he covered the Iraq War from 2003 to 2007. Between his Iraq and China assignments, he studied Mandarin at Middlebury College and at Taiwan University. He first went to China in 1996, when he studied Mandarin at Beijing Language and Culture University. Wong’s parents are from Hong Kong and Guangdong Province, and he is conversant in Cantonese. He has also written often on travels in the Himalayas. Wong has a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from the University of Virginia and dual Master’s degrees in International Studies and Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.