John Ruwitch
John Ruwitch is a correspondent with NPR's international desk. He covers Chinese affairs.
Ruwitch joined NPR in early 2020, and has since chronicled the tectonic shift in America's relations with China, from hopeful engagement to suspicion-fueled competition. He's also reported on a range of other issues, including Beijing's pressure campaign on Taiwan, Hong Kong's National Security Law, Asian-Americans considering guns for self-defense in the face of rising violence and a herd of elephants roaming in the Chinese countryside in search of a home.
Ruwitch joined NPR after more than 19 years with Reuters in Asia, the last eight of which were in Shanghai. There, he first covered a broad beat that took him as far afield as the China-North Korea border and the edge of the South China Sea. Later, he led a team that covered business and financial markets in the world's second biggest economy. Ruwitch has also had postings in Hanoi, Hong Kong and Beijing, reporting on anti-corruption campaigns, elite Communist politics, labor disputes, human rights, currency devaluations, earthquakes, snowstorms, Olympic badminton and everything in between.
Ruwitch studied history at U.C. Santa Cruz and got a master's in Regional Studies East Asia from Harvard. He speaks Mandarin and Vietnamese.
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China's been the main source of precursor chemicals for the potent drug, and President Biden has made combating fentanyl a policy priority — in the face of tens of thousands of overdoses each year.
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Chinese Premier Li Qiang spoke this week at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, saying the Chinese economy was doing just fine. Signals out of Beijing have been conveying a different message.
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Taiwan's vice president and candidate of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, Lai Ching-te, will be the island's next leader. Tensions with Beijing seem poised to rise. -
Voters in Taiwan go to the polls Saturday to pick a new president and legislature. It's being watched closely because democratic Taiwan works closely with the U.S., but it is also claimed by China.
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Voters in Taiwan go to the polls on Saturday to pick a new president. The government in Beijing is watching very closely, but are people in China paying that much attention?
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A year ago, China lifted its draconian COVID restrictions. Many expected the country to bounce back quickly. That hasn't happened. -
China has installed a new defense minister hailing from the navy, months after his predecessor was removed with no explanation.
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Mao Zedong built China's Communist revolution on the back of the country's impoverished peasants, and now Chinese leader Xi Jinping wants a new economic revolution to take root in the countryside.
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The state news agency Xinhua said the quake had a magnitude of 6.2. It reportedly damaged water, electricity, transport, communications and other infrastructure in the mountainous region. -
Hong Kong's highest-profile national security trial got under way amid tight security on Monday. It's against Jimmy Lai, a media mogul and democracy campaigner. He is all but certain to be convicted.
