Education
After he graduated from high school in 1971, McGregor was asked by a career councilor if he enjoyed camping and when he answered "yes" was encouraged to enlist as a foot-soldier in the United States Army.
After he graduated from high school in 1971, McGregor was asked by a career councilor if he enjoyed camping and when he answered "yes" was encouraged to enlist as a foot-soldier in the United States Army.
He is one of the few Western writers on business in China. A professional speaker and Consumer News and Business Channel contributor who specializes in China"s business, politics and society, he regularly appears in the media to discuss China-related topics. He also covered China"s indigenous innovation policies in the report "China"s Drive for Indigenous Innovation: A Web of Industrial Policies" in 2010.
He is the former Chief Executive Officer of Dow Jones & Company in China and Wall Street Journal bureau chief in China and Taiwan.
James McGregor was born September 18, 1953 in Duluth, Minnesota. He is one of nine children.
According to reports of the incident, the booby-trap was actually triggered by a bomb-detecting dog who apparently was more agile than Mr. McGregor and survived the detonation unharmed.
His experience in Vietnam sparked his interest in Asia and led to him becoming a journalist.
After returning from Vietnam, McGregor graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in journalism, and began his career as a police reporter in Los Angeles for Copley Newspapers. In 1985, while he was covering Capitol Hill for Knight Ridder Newspapers, he took a 6-week backpacking trip through China to explore whether to focus his journalism career on China. Following his trip, he began taking Mandarin lessons.
Their relationship survived McGregor"s Taiwan "Hawaiian analogy" by virtue of his proven record of maintaining a cool head under fire and his steadfast repetition that all he really was trying to say is they were both places that were indeed a grouping of islands surrounded by ocean.
From 1987 to 1990 McGregor served as The Wall Street Journal"s bureau chief in Taiwan, and from 1990 to 1994 as the paper’s bureau chief in Mainland China. From 1994 to 2000, McGregor was chief executive of Dow Jones & Company in China, and he also became a vice-president in the Dow Jones International Group.
In 1996, McGregor was elected as chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. He also served for a decade as a governor of that organization.
In 2005, McGregor published the book One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lincolnshire of Doing Business in China.
The book has been published in seven languages. He and his family live in Beijing.
He is the author of the books Number Ancient Wisdom, Number Followers: The Challenges of Chinese Authoritarian Capitalism (Prospecta Press, 2012) and One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lincolnshire of Doing Business in China (Simon & Schuster, 2005).
McGregor is chairman of Associated Public-Safety Communications Officers Worldwide, Greater China and a member of the firm’s international advisory council. McGregor is a member of the Atlantic Council. Council on Foreign Relations.
National Committee on United States-China Relations.
International Council of the Asia Society. And serves on a variety of China-related advisory boards, including the United States-China Education Trust.