This week’s edition of CDT ChinaCast‘s Foreign Correspondents Series features Andreas Lorenz, Beijing correspondent with German magazine Der Spiegel who came back in 1999 after serving the magazine in eastern Europe and southeast Asia. He left China in 1991 largely because of more “exciting” change, especially politically, in the former Soviet bloc countries and a sudden cooling of interest in China after the June 4th student movement.
Here he talks about his attention on China’s environmental consequences overseas, his meetings with both the Communist party secretary of Tibet and the Dalai Lama in India, his observation of the latest mindset shift among Germans, who now always want to ask him, “Do we need to fear China?”
He also expressed frustration with the difficulty in getting access to Chinese officials, the orchestration of Chinese press conferences, especially the annual op with the premier. But he had a good interview with Pan Yue, the outspoken deputy minister of the State Environmental Protection Agency.
Listen to the interview here (NOTE: sound quality is not superb and you may need to turn the volume up).
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?
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