Shai Oster is an award-winning Hong Kong-based Reporter-at-Large for Bloomberg News. Over nearly two decades as a journalist in China, Europe, and the U.S., he has covered a broad range of economic, business, and social issues. In 2013, he won his second Asia Society Osborn Elliott Journalism Prize and George Polk Award for his role in Bloomberg’s groundbreaking coverage that for the first time documented the fortunes amassed by China’s leaders. The “Revolution to Riches” series revealed the wealth accumulated by the family of President Xi Jinping and traced how business dynasties created by the heirs of Mao’s comrades-in-arms contribute to China’s rising inequality.
Before joining Bloomberg, Oster was a Beijing and Hong Kong-based correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, covering energy and the environment. In 2008, he was the recipient of both the George Polk Award for environmental reporting and Asia Society's Osborn Elliott Award for a series of stories exposing environmental problems linked to China’s Three Gorges Dam project. He was also part of a team of Wall Street Journal reporters that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for International Reporting on China for reports on the adverse impact of China’s growth.
Previously, he covered OPEC for Dow Jones Newswires in London and served as Beijing Bureau Chief for Asiaweek magazine. His first job in China was as a Copy Editor at China Daily, the official English-language newspaper in Beijing.
A graduate of the Columbia University Journalism School, Oster was born in Jerusalem and speaks Hebrew, French, and Chinese.
