Louisa Lim
Beijing Correspondent Louisa Lim is currently attending the University of Michigan as . She will return to her regular role in 2014.
Based in Beijing, NPR foreign correspondent Louisa Lim finds China a hugely diverse, vibrant, fascinating place. "Everywhere you look and everyone you talk to has a fascinating story," she notes, adding that she's "spoiled with choices" of stories to cover. In her reports, Lim takes "NPR listeners to places they never knew existed. I want to give them an idea of how China is changing and what that might mean for them."
Lim opened NPR's Shanghai bureau in February 2006, but she's reported for NPR from up Tibetan glaciers and down the shaft of a Shaanxi coalmine. She made a very rare , covered , and worked on the major multimedia series on religion in China "." Lim has been part of NPR teams who multiple awards, including the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, a Peabody and two Edward R. Murrow awards, for their coverage of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 and the Beijing Olympics. She's been honored in the Human Rights Press Awards, as well as winning prizes for her multimedia work.
In 1995, Lim moved to Hong Kong and worked at the Eastern Express newspaper until its demise six months later and then for TVB Pearl, the local television station. Eventually Lim joined the BBC, working first for five years at the World Service in London, and then as a correspondent at the BBC in Beijing for almost three years.
Lim found her path into journalism after graduating with a degree in Modern Chinese studies from Leeds University in England. She worked as an editor, polisher, and translator at a state-run publishing company in China, a job that helped her strengthen her Chinese. Simultaneously, she began writing for a magazine and soon realized her talents fit perfectly with journalism.
NPR London correspondent Rob Gifford, who previously spent six years reporting from China for NPR, thinks that Lim is uniquely suited for his former post. "Not only does Louisa have a sharp journalistic brain," Gifford says, "but she sees stories from more than one angle, and can often open up a whole new understanding of an issue through her reporting. By listening to Louisa's reports, NPR listeners will certainly get a feel for what 21st century China is like. It is no longer a country of black and white, and the complexity is important, a complexity that you always feel in Louisa's intelligent, nuanced reporting."
Out of all of her reporting, Lim says she most enjoys covering stories that are quirky or slightly offbeat. However, she gravitates towards reporting on arts stories with a deeper significance. For example, early in her tenure at NPR, Lim highlighted a musical on stage in Seoul, South Korea, based on a North Korean prison camp. The play, and Lim's piece, highlighted the ignorance of many South Koreans of the suffering of their northern neighbors.
Married with a son and a daughter, Lim recommends any NPR listeners travelling to Shanghai stop by a branch of her husband's Yunnan restaurant, , where they can snack on deep fried bumblebees, a specialty from that part of southwest China. In Beijing, her husband owns and runs what she calls "the first and best fish and chip shop in China", Fish Nation.
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Among Chinese citizens, there is a sense of frustration and fascination that Americans have the right to vote for their own leaders.
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The U.S. presidential election and China's once-a-decade political transition are taking place just days apart this month. A recent debate in Hong Kong looks at which system yields better leadership. -
China's foreign policy has appeared increasingly assertive recently. What isn't clear is whether this is part of a coherent plan or just an outgrowth of China's increasing stature in Asia and beyond. -
China spares no effort or expense to suppress individuals and groups that dare to raise grievances. From the government's perspective, this pervasive security system has maintained order. But is it undermining long-term stability? -
As China approaches a once-in-a-decade leadership transition, fissures in the country's political system are deepening. A scandal involving a top official has left the party reeling, and calls for reforms are mounting steadily. Critics say the communists of today have become what they once opposed. -
China's ruling Communist Party has announced that disgraced senior politician Bo Xilai has been expelled from the party and faces criminal charges. His fall began when a local police chief told authorities about the murder of a British businessman.
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The leaked photos came just before a visit by U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Last year, the Chinese tested a stealth plane while the previous defense secretary, Robert Gates, was visiting. The moves are seen as an attempt by the Chinese to show off their rapidly expanding military technology. -
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is in Beijing but the visit is being overshadowed by China's confrontation with Japan over disputed islands. During a meeting with Panetta, China's defense minister said it reserves the right to use force against Japan, though he hopes the dispute can be solved through negotiation.
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China's state-run media warns of trade retaliation against Japan, following a weekend of anti-Japanese protests across China over Japan's purchase of disputed islands in the East China Sea. As the economic cost of these protests begins to escalate, NPR correspondent Louisa Lim tries to find out exactly who's behind them. -
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets to denounce Japan's purchase of a disputed chain of uninhabited islands in the South China Sea. This rising tide of anti-Japanese nationalism is now escalating into violence, with some Japanese businesses reporting attacks.
