Q&A: Foreign correspondence in

China and Asia

Tracy Dahlby, former Tokyo bureau chief, National Geographic contributor and author of the
new memoir Into the Field: A Foreign Correspondents Notebook, looks back on a life of
reporting on Asia

You got your start as a reporter for a financial newswire in Japan during the 70s,
back when it was still big on heavy industry, but had begun shifting toward a
consumer economy. China stories often echo that narrative these days, but was
Tokyo ever so polluted?

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Id say not as but it could be pretty grim. I remember being profoundly disappointed
when, in 1976, I climbed Mount Fuji for the first time only to stumble upon slopes strewn
with trash. I wondered how the Japanese, who had a reputation, in poetry and prose, as
world-champion lovers of nature could let their iconic mountain go to hell like that. So Fuji
was my reigning metaphor. And its true that Tokyo often choked under a blanket of
industrial smog. I dont think it ever reached what China is coping with today. But it pays to
remember that Japan got its pollution problems under control and, with the right policies,
China has a shot at doing so too. How China does that while maintaining economic growth
and meeting rising popular expectations is, of course, the compelling mystery.

Much is still made of the apparent economic similarities between China now and
Japan during the boom years. You write in your book about covering both during
your career -- what comparisons hold up, and which strike you as misguided?

During my brief time at the financial news wire in Tokyo, I took the stock market closings
in my shaky Japanese and wasnt always sure Id got the decimal point in the right place.
Frankly, Im still a little amazed that the global economy survived. In writing about those
times today, however, I very much feel China looking over my shoulder because there are
the obvious similarities between Japan then and China nowthe active, pointed pioneering
of overseas markets and the gobbling up of vast sources of raw materials, the frenetic
building of roads, dams, bridges and airports and, above all, the psychological
transformation that comes to a country with rapidly rising consumer expectations. The big
difference, of course, is a matter of scale and scope. What China has undertaken dwarfs
other models and thats what makes it such a wonderful, wrenching, gripping story to
behold.

When and why did you first come to China as a journalist?

I made my first trip to China in January of 1978, about 14 months after the death of Mao
Zedong. Beijing was a city of bicycles, Mao suits and, for foreigners, a Friendship Store that
was not exactly consumer-friendly. It wasnt easy for an American to get a visa back then.
But a friend of a friend in Hong Kong, a wonderful local businesswoman, insisted that I
apply and that I turn over my passport to her. It turns out she had been at school with a
man who worked the other side of the fence for China travel and presided over the tourist
visa stamp. So I found myself headed over the border by train to Guangzhou and then
Beijing with a group of Japanese, American and Australian tourists. I somehow managed to
report a story for The New York Times travel section on that jaunt at a time when China
had become an alluring ticket for American travelers. So I guess you could say I started my
China watching as half tourist, half hustling hack, and thats pretty much the way I
proceeded in my career, as a friend recently put it, letting myself wander and wonder.

There were earlier motivations, too. I was a typically restless undergrad in Seattle,
Washington, living at home and eager to trade a ho-hum life for the excitement and
adventure of the wider world. Id heard reports of the Cultural Revolution on a radio in my
bedroom that was ridiculously largethe size of a shoebox. Today, we can dial up tons of
information about China on our smart phones or e-tablets. In those days, China was a black
box, information was scarce, and what there was required strenuous decoding. That of
course meant that China was a tremendous mystery that fired your imagination. You really
wanted to get out to Asia and take a crack at trying to figure it out.

It's rare to go a week lately without a dust-up between China and any of the countries
that ring the South China Sea. Did the region always seem destined for conflict, or did
most seem to buy into China's "peaceful rise" sales pitch?

Its remarkable to me how little has changed in the fundamental terms of that dispute over
the last two decades, despite todays frenetic foreign press coverage of Chinas new harder
line. I open Into the Field by recounting a nearly three-month reporting swing I took
through the South China Sea immediately after Handover in Hong Kong in 1997. With the
help of friends in Manila, I managed to talk my way out to the Spratlys with a transport
plane full of rifle-toting Filipino military men. It was starkly beautiful out there but
blessedly little was going on, at least on the surface. Then as now, the billion- or maybe
trillion-dollar question was the extent of resources that might rest on the sea floor. Such
visions, part analysis, part ambitious national dreaming, will, Id wager, continue to ratchet
up tensions as China continues to rise, peacefully or not.

China is the clear center of attention for the financial press in Asia, but reporting
long-term can create something like tunnel vision. Where in the region, if anywhere,
do you see untapped economic potential on the level of a China or Japan?

Thats a good, tough question and journalists have a lousy track record when it comes to
accurate prognostication, at least this one. Id venture to say, however, that once
investment and infrastructure gain even more traction in a place like India, Chinas
neighborhood becomes an even more competitive place. Add to that improvements in
intra-regional trade and marketing ties between and among the countries of Southeast Asia
and, barring the unfortunate and unforeseen, you have a recipe for sustained growth that
will include China, perhaps be dominated by China, but will by no means rely on China
alone.

In the mid-80's you were brought in from Tokyo to eventually serve as managing
editor for Newsweek International. How did the view of Asia from NYC differ from
your own when you returned?

It reminds you just how much times have changed. Back then America was focused on what
was generally perceived as a Japanese economic juggernaut and the challenges posed by
Japans ballooning trade advantages vis--vis the United States. Japans economic advance
had energized a group of formidable Japan-bashers in business, government and the
media that made the Japanese seem ten feet tall. The economic challenge was real enough
but there was something else at work, too. By the end of the decade, the Soviet Union was
into its final fizzle, and imploding, and America needed a new focus for its ambitions and
anxieties, and Japan was it.

As time went on, of course, Japan proved a disappointing bogeyman. Its economy had
bottomed out by the early 90s and lapsed into a marathon, years-long recession. China
began to emerge as a new focus of concern. The 9/11 attacks and the aftermath shifted
Americas central preoccupation to the war on terror, which may have deflected an even
more intense focus on China as Americas new rival for superpower status. Today, of
course, bilateral relations with China have today become an intensely observed gauge of
how and to what extent America will be able to maintain its pride of place in world
leadership.

What we tried to do at Newsweek, back in the day, was to help provide readers with the
context they could use to develop a clearer understanding of complications of U.S.-Japan
relationsthe historical, political and, I dare say, some of the psychological factors that not
infrequently contributed to one of the two sides not really hearing what the other side was
trying to say. Fast-forward 30 years, and the U.S. media faces a similar challenge in
preparing Americans for Chinas rise and how it will affect the way we live our lives and do
business in this country.

Freelance, especially in China, is the name of the game for many aspiring foreign
correspondents these days. How did you make the jump from part-time to full-time
reporting, and to what extent is the path you took still open to would-be journalists
here?

My advice on that score never varies. As I say in my book, Pick a part of the world you can
fall in love with and plant yourself there for at least two years. Try your hand at freelancing.
Teach English, tend bar, or give body modification classeswhatever it takes to ward off
starvation. Meanwhile suck the place into your bones. Absorb its language and politics, its
loves, hates, and idiosyncrasies, the alarming as well as the charming. The place doesnt
have to love you back, at least not right away. But if doing journalism is your goal, make
sure its somewhere the rest of the world wants to know about too.

I think China admirably fills that bill. Its both a place of endless fascination, big and small,
and somewhere people who arent in China want and need to know about. In my case, in
Japan, I used my freelance assignments to try to hone basic skills (and I had precisely none
to start with), while I worked at the art of becoming pleasantly annoying until sources
would agree to talk to me and somebody finally gave me a regular job.

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