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 announced yesterday it would close the American consulate in Chengdu. The move was in retaliation to the U.S.'s decision to close the Chinese consulate in Houston.
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On Tuesday, the Trump administration ordered China's Houston consulate to close, amping up tensions in already fraught relations. Here are some of the key developments reshaping U.S.-China relations.
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Travelers were stuck without a way to get back to their pets amid coronavirus travel restrictions. Now expats in China are chartering a flight to bring dogs and cats over to their owners.
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President Trump held a news conference Tuesday about new sanctions over China's actions in Hong Kong — but incendiary comments on race overshadowed the event.
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China claims sovereignty over the vast majority of the economically important body of water, and in recent years, it has built artificial islands to bolster those claims.
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Border closures due to the pandemic have kept many people apart from their relatives for months. Others had to face separation from a different kind of family — their pets.
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The Trump administration's penalties are meant to punish China for its treatment of Uighurs and Muslim minorities in the region, and target a Politburo member for the first time.
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The U.S. is cutting back its special treatment of the territory, while the U.K. offers a pathway to British citizenship for Hong Kongers.
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The State Department's new listing of Chinese media escalates a tit-for-tat scrap over journalists that kicked off earlier in the year.
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Zoom has apologized for blocking accounts of U.S.-based Chinese activists as they were marking the Tiananmen Square anniversary. It shows the challenges U.S. tech companies face working with China.