Jing Li

Influx of Tech Capitals: Boon or Bane for China’s Tightly Controlled Media

Li Jing is a senior reporter with Hong Kong-based newspaper South China Morning Post. Over the past decade she has covered China’s politics and domestic policies extensively, with a focus on environment, energy and climate change.

Her daily work involves making sense of the opaque Chinese policy-making process to readers through accurate and independent reporting, explaining how public interest would be or have been impacted.

Her in-depth coverage series of China's severe pollution problems - from the misery faced by people in a cancer-stricken village to environmental governance failures - won her the title of Environmental Journalist of Year in 2013, as part of the annual Asian Environmental Journalism Awards.

Li Jing has also extensively covered international climate change talks since 2009, with a focus on China’s shifting role in the global climate diplomacy.

She has worked on both government-controlled and independent newspapers, and witnessed a dwindling editorial autonomy in many of Chinese news organisations. At Oxford, she wants to research what impact an influx of tech capitals brings to China’s tightly controlled media sector.

Li Jing holds a Masters of Art degree from King's College London. In her spare time, she is an avid scuba diver and “thalassophile” who loves everything about seas and oceans and wishes to witness the beauty before it is ruined by man-made climate change.