The corporation’s China editor on going beyond Beijing,how James Harding created a role for her, and the News channels futureBack in 2013 the BBC journalist and presenter Carrie Gracie was faced with a dilemma. For 30 years she had mostly lived and worked in China, or was a fluent Mandarin speaker. But she had recently returned to the screen as a London-based BBC News channel presenter after chemotherapy for breast cancer. And she was the main breadwinner supporting two teenage children by her Chinese ex-husband,a rock drummer.
James Harding, the BBC director of news and current affairs, and who had personal experience of her unique qualities after founding the Financial Times’s Shanghai bureau in the 1990s,asked her to return to Beijing. A fresh senior post was even to be created for her: China editor. “My decision to proceed back was a very difficult one,” she says. “I said no several times before I said yes. James made me proceed away and arrive back with a better answer.
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Source: theguardian.com