In this edition of CDT ChinaCast‘s Foreign Correspondent Series, we talk with Jehangir Pocha, the Beijing correspondent for the Boston Globe. Pocha also writes frequently for the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications. He talks to ChinaCast about the harshness of nature for Chinese farmers compared with his home country, India; the “colonization” of Xinjiang; the strong bond among China-based correspondents under the watch of a common “enemy;” and life as part of a journalist couple with his partner Mary Kay Magistad, Public Radio International’s Beijing correspondent. “I am not the one who thinks China will collapse tomorrow,” Pocha says. But he does believe that China needs more political change, which he suggests will possibly happen after the next Party congress when Hu Jintao names his successor. And he has seen progress in regard to more voices from the “eight democratic parties” in the past year or two.
Listen to the interview here.
Read some of Jehangir Pocha’s reports, such as “China’s Growing Desert,” “China’s Other Great Wall,” and his web site
CDT ChinaCast is a podcast series of short and informal conversations with journalists, business people, artists and others doing interesting work in China. For the initial series, China Digital Times bloggers will interview foreign correspondents about their lives and work. The interviews do not aspire to find solutions to the many contradictions and challenges facing China in the 21st century – rather, we hope to offer a personal look at day-to-day life in one of the most complex and dynamic countries on earth. How do foreign reporters go about the business of covering China? What are some of the most unusual stories that have come out of the country in recent years? And what do expat journalists living in Beijing or Shanghai do for fun?
– To subscribe to our podcasts, see our Podcast page.
