in hong kong in 2019, a lot of young people would say to me, oh, yes, you can use my name in the paper. and even then i would say to them, you know, it s not my business to get you into trouble. it s my business to report what s going on. i would strongly suggest not using your name. so this is something which i haven t experienced before in hong kong. but certainly people who are familiar with covering the mainland would do this all the time. amy, i wanted to invite you to tell us briefly why you re in taiwan now, because you left beijing last year and you d been reporting from china, as in mainland china, for how long at that point? i d been reporting basically for about seven years, - eight years in china - before we were expelled. and how did you find out? how did you find out that you were having to leave?
but i think underlying all of this is also a structural issue with a lot of media companies that we should actually double down on having more people reporting on china in more depth, with more expertise, also language expertise. we ll explore that in a bit more detail a little later on because you raise some very interesting points. amy, you re the new york times china correspondent, based in taiwan. and we ll come to the reasons for that in a moment. but how then do you follow what is happening on the ground in china when you re not in china? a great question, and it s something that we have been trying |to work through in the year that| we ve been expelled from china. in taiwan, luckily, i had been- in china personally for about eight years before we were kicked out. and so over that time, i was able to build up. a network of sources.
very toxic, jittery environment i think. amy, i mean, that takes me back to you and simply to ask, how hard was it to leave when you ve been there for so long, when you ve got an established set of work and life patterns in the place that you live and colleagues? how difficult was the upheaval? it is extremely difficult. you know, i had been- there for quite a long time, some of my colleagues for even longer. - yeah, i mean, - i think, you know, just being under the constant threat of being kicked out. it makes one wonder if in the future we do get let back in, is it just a matter of time? you know, how much longer they could kick you out? - and then it makes life| planning very difficult. and, of course, as well, - you know, china do something of a place that i ve studied. i have a lot of personal connection to as well. i and sojust leaving it - on those terms is very sad. and stephen, you probably felt the same to a degree? yes.
and so, yeah, it s- been very unfortunate. was it something the us embassy potentially got involved with at the time in order to help you and others? i can t speak to those direct| conversations, as i certainly wasn t a part of them, - but i can definitely imagine that they were interested j and involved in it as well, people will remember the fact that the last two australian journalists in china ended up spending their final days in the country living inside the australian embassy before they left. right. yeah. i mean, you know what happened with john sudworth with the bbci and the uk journalists i with australians and also now the us as well. like i said, the us government has, at least in our case, the chinese - government has stressed that this is part of a broader us china politics. this isn t punishment- for our coverage in particular, but it is definitely a very i difficult time for all foreign media operating in china. meera from the reuters institute. tit for tat was mention
i mentioned steve vines, he is one of them, former china correspondent for the observer, now back in the uk. sha hua is a correspondent for the wall streetjournal based in hong kong. cedric alviani is head of the east asia bureau for reporters without borders and isjoining us from taiwan. amy qin is china correspondent for the new york times, based in beijing, now works in taiwan, she is on the line from california. anna meera selva, deputy director of the reuters institute at and meera selva, deputy director of the reuters institute at oxford university. welcome to all of you, thank you for being a part of the programme, especially those who are joining us at anti social hours wherever you are in the world. steve, i mentioned your story, it makes sense to start with you. working in hong kong since the 19805 through a pretty amazing passage of history. i mentioned the observer, but you have worked for other outlets as well. how widespread has your work been read and consumed?