British journalist tells China's story to the world

Andrew Moody has spent nearly 10 years getting to know China, and he is now one of the most prolific writers in interpreting its stories for the world. The award winning British journalist, who is China Daily’s senior correspondent, has written more than 150 cover stories for the paper's European Weekly and African Weekly, examining a wide range of issues including the Belt and Road Initiative.

The job has provided him with firsthand experience of how China is developing as well as the chance to record reactions from the outside world, especially in the West, toward the nation's growth and changes.

He was at the Great Hall of the People to hear General Secretary Xi Jinping deliver a report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in October, when the concept of a "new era" was first mentioned.

"The consensus of the various people I spoke to in the hours after the speech was that China's entering a new era could be a momentous turning point in world history," Moody said.

According to his interviews, he said, people believe that a more confident China is striding into a world that it also is helping to shape.

Moody has his own understanding of the new era. With 40 years of reform and opening-up, he said China has reached a point where it can move on in many ways, such as in foreign policy, global governance and domestic reforms. "China has reached a new junction and has to move forward."

The British journalist has written many stories that explain China to the rest of the world, and these have brought him many honors, including being named a State High-End Project Foreign Expert.

"I like reporting on China because it's perhaps the 21st century's most fascinating story," he said. "The real fun of reporting in China is the closeness to the actual story, the big fascinating story of China merging into the 21st century, the stories that maybe Western media don't really have the chance to interview."

Moody sees his task as communicating China to a global audience, and there are still a number of things that need to be done, he said.

"I go back to the UK quite a lot, and I still don't think that people are aware of the impact of a much bigger Chinese economy and China's being a more significant player in the world," he said. "All I can do is to report and do stories one by one."