Hu Shuli - Life and Career

Life and Career

Hu Shuli was born in Beijing, from a lineage of notable journalists: her grandfather, Hu Zhongchi, was a famous translator and editor at Shen Bao and his older brother Hu Yuzhi (1896–1986), "an early proponent of language reform, the use of Esperanto, and realism in literature," was involved in editing and publishing. Her mother, Hu Lingsheng, was a senior editor at Workers' Daily. Her father, Cao Qifeng, had a midlevel post in a trade union.

The Cultural Revolution brought criticism to her family (her mother was placed under house arrest); Hu became a Red Guard and traveled around the country, trying to educate herself as best she could. After two years she joined the People's Liberation Army, and when college classes resumed in 1978, she won entrance to the People's University of China, from which she graduated in journalism in 1982. Before Caijing, she was working as assistant editor, reporter and international editor at the Worker's Daily, China's second largest newspaper. She joined China Business Times in 1992 as international editor and became chief reporter in 1995.

She is author of several books, including New Financial Time, Reform Bears No Romance and The Scenes Behind American Newspapers. She has had the distinction of being ranked among BusinessWeek's "The Stars of Asia: 50 Leaders at the forefront of change." In 2006, Hu was called one of the most powerful commentators in China by the Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal cited her among the "Ten Women to Watch" in Asia.

She was Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford in 1994. She was awarded the 2003 International Editor of the Year by the World Press Review, and the 2007 Louis Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University.

The US magazine Foreign Policy named her as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world in May 2008, alongside such names as Noam Chomsky, Umberto Eco, and Salman Rushdie.

In November 2009, Hu Shuli resigned from Caijing along with 90 percent of Caijing's journalists, barely a few weeks after the resignation of Daphne Wu Chuanhui and nearly 70 employees from the business department. Observing the situation, Diane Vacca at Women's Voices for Change quoted Chinese blogger Hecaitou: "She’s got blood on her blade, and her clothing smells of gunpowder.”

The first issue of Century Weekly under the aegis of Caixin Media was published on January 4, 2010.