Background
Hu Shuli was born in 1953 in Beijing into a family of journalists. Her mother worked at the Worker’s Daily and her grandfather worked as a news editor for an international publi- cation. Her great uncle was also a famous editor.
舒立 胡
Hu Shuli was born in 1953 in Beijing into a family of journalists. Her mother worked at the Worker’s Daily and her grandfather worked as a news editor for an international publi- cation. Her great uncle was also a famous editor.
In 1978 Hu was assigned to study journalism at the Chinese People’s University, although she was also admitted to Peking University to study Chinese literature. As the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) had crushed any independent journalism in China, the People’s University journalism school had been shut down. Hu was sent with the first group of students to restart the program.
Teachers there encouraged students to change the style of Chinese journalism, which up to that point in the People’s Republic had always had very close ties to the government. Hu’s hope was to travel abroad and become a famous international correspondent who would leave readers with a strong impression that would make them remember her name. She earned a poor grade on her thesis about the New York Time’s coverage of Ronald Reagan’s shooting because she failed to tie this to Marxist theory.
After graduation in 1982, Hu first worked at the Worker’s Daily, opening the newspaper’s first branch in Xiamen, home to one of China’s first four special economic zones. Inspired by former Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping’s visions of economic reform, Hu participated in some of the first campaigns to crack down on economic crimes. She persuaded the managers of the paper to expand beyond four pages, observing that even papers published in American prisons were larger than that. In 1987, she won a World Press Institute fellowship to study journalism in the United States. Returning to China in the 1990s, she was transferred to the China Business Times where she served as international desk chief. In 1995 she became their chief reporter.
Caijing, which means finance and economy, was founded in 1998 and funded by the Stock Exchange Executive Council (SEEC), a state-owned enterprise listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Caijing began as a monthly supplement to the Securities Market Weekly. Wang Boming helped secure funding from the SEEC Media Group. Because of the semi-official status of these investors, this funding has freed Caijing from the editorial constraints of both official publications and purely free-market advertising revenue funded magazines. On joining Caijing’s editorial team, Hu conceded that she had given up her idea of becoming a famous journalist and instead began focusing on creating a quality product. She found finance and business reporting to be more exciting than political reporting. She happened to be writing at a time of great economic transformation in China.
Many attribute Caijing’s success to Hu Shuli’s ability to find the line in a story but not cross it. For example, Caijing has never written about the religious sect Falun Gong, which is banned in China. Instead, she has stuck to mostly financial and economic news. Hu sees herself as being someone who demystifies the Chinese market and helps China complete its goal of market reforms. She also sensed an opportunity to report on both human and business elements of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) crisis in early 2003. Caijing published four special editions on SARS and played a historic role in promoting media independence and government transparency. The first special edition on SARS coincided with the sacking of two Beijing officials for covering up the extent of the epidemic. Caijing has also published groundbreaking work on stock market manipu- lation, flooding, bank corruption, and falsified profit reports (over which it was later sued, and lost because the courts ruled that some minute details of the story were incor- rect and therefore the story was ‘false’). Hu plays a personal role in the management and editorial direction of Caijing, offering her commentary in ‘Shuli’s Observations.’ In 1998, the Caijing Fellowship was introduced with the aim of funding ten students per year at Peking University for financial, economic, and journalistic training.
Hu has authored several books, including New Financial Time, The Scenes Behind American Newspapers, and Reform Bears no Romance. In 2001, BusinessWeek named her a ‘Star of Asia’ and the World Press Review named her 2003 International Editor of the Year.