Bio of Peh Shing Huei
Peh Shing Huei is a journalist for The Straits Times and the newspaper's deputy news editor. He was based in Beijing from 2008 to 2012, when he served as the China bureau chief of the Singapore daily. He is also the co-author of Struck By Lightning, a collection of essays on Singapore politics, published in 2006. The graduate of Columbia University in New York and the National University of Singapore won the Young Journalist of the Year award in 2004 before moving on to cover politics in Singapore.
Summary of When the Party Ends – China’s Leaps and Stumbles after the Beijing Olympics
HIS first assignment in China was the seismic equivalent to being thrown into the deep end of a pool – covering the massive Sichuan earthquake of May 2008. That was the devastating welcome Peh Shing Huei received as a China correspondent. He more than survived.
He has written a delightfully provocative book that captures his harrowing, humbling and sometimes hilarious experiences in this compelling communist country that favours free markets. His five years as China bureau chief for The Straits Times corresponds with an intriguing time. It is when China stunned the world with the memorable opening of the Beijing Olympics three months after the Sichuan quake, helped calm the economic fallout of Wall Street’s collapse and launched its astronauts into space.
When the Olympic party ends, he witnesses China on the ascendancy while the West falters. As he documents the rise of this steroid superpower, he also uncovers the simmering problems beneath. Peh visits the bustling factories of Guangdong which are facing labour woes; he strays into the line of fire during the bloody ethnic riots in Urumqi; he journeys to the forgotten museum of the Cultural Revolution high on the mountain tops.
From these travels, he chronicles vivid accounts of questionable processes against people with no voice. He gives voice to the voiceless as they wage battles with the Chinese Communist Party and errant companies. He shakes off officials so as to meet an environmentalist who was tortured for wanting to save a river from pollution. He speaks to a man who was jailed for simply an intemperate tweet. He interviews an ageing former Red Guard undertaker who still cries when he reflects on the atrocities.
These are counterposed against Peh’s riveting narrative of the “palace intrigues” of the powerful communist leaders in the lead up to the epochal leadership change in late 2012. It culminated in the dramatic downfall of princeling Bo Xilai – the latest of China’s complex political machinations. When the Party Ends is an elegant and remarkable work of journalism, offering a fascinating insight into a changing China, one where the status quo is no longer static.
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