Interview by Jenya Green and Zijia He, Arthur R. Adams International Affairs Fellows
Interview transcript by Zijia He

David Barboza has been a correspondent for The New York Times based in Shanghai, China, since November 2004. In 2013, Mr. Barboza was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting “for his striking exposure of corruption at high levels of the Chinese government, including billions in secret wealth owned by relatives of the prime minister, well documented work published in the face of heavy pressure from the Chinese officials.” He was also part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. Mr. Barboza was a freelance writer and a research assistant for The New York Times before being hired in 1997 as a staff writer. For five years, he was the Midwest business correspondent based in Chicago. Since 2008, he has served as the paper’s Shanghai bureau chief. Mr. Barboza won two awards in The Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) 2007 Best in Business Journalism Contest: one for a New York Times article, “A Chinese Reformer Betrays His Cause, and Pays.” He was also part of the team that won the 2008 Grantham Prize for environmental reporting for the series “Choking on Growth: China’s Environmental Crisis.” In 2002, he was part of a team that was named a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Enron scandal. In 2008, Mr. Barboza won The Times’s internal business award, the Nathaniel Nash Award. He has twice won the Gerald Loeb Award for business reporting. Mr. Barboza graduated from Boston University with a bachelor’s degree in history and attended Yale University Graduate School. (Excerpted from The New York Times website)

Since your 2012 series on corruption and nepotism in China, a new president, Xi Jinping, has taken office. As you wrote with Sharon LaFraniere in your article on Chinese Princelings, the Chinese Communist party has recognized the need to decrease corruption but has found it difficult to do so due to pressure from family and friends who benefit from it. Since assuming office, Xi has promised to institute anti-corruption measures in China. Has he been able to implement any such measures, and have they been at all successful? Which challenges does he face?

Since he came into office, President Xi’s big campaign has been anticorruption. That is probably the first thing anyone would tell you about President Xi. His opening speech actually talked about rooting out corruption. He did announce it. He and Wang Qishan, who is the person in charge of anti-corruption, have waged a serious war on corruption in China. Many analysts and journalists are surprised at how strong the campaign has been, including the convictions of senior leaders like Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang. The Zhou Yongkang case marks the first time since 1949 that someone who served as a member of the Politburo Standing Committee has been prosecuted and convicted of corruption. Previously, other Politburo members have been ousted or even died in office, but they have never been arrested for corruption. Zhou Yongkang, Bo Xilai, Ling Jihua, and other high-ranking officials are called the “tigers”, while the lower-ranking officials are the “flies.” There have been a lot of “flies” arrested, so there has been a lot of news. There has been a major anti-corruption campaign. It is pretty hard to say though whether it has been successful because corruption is so deeply rooted in the system now. What is your definition of success? Some people might say that getting these three “tigers” is very successful, even if there are a hundred other “tigers”. But I do not think I can answer whether it has been successful, but it has sure been big.

Do you think there has been any change to the systemic issue beyond just removing the “tigers” but actually changing how things work?

They have not only gone after big and small people for corruption, but they have also tried to implement different measures to reduce corruption. They have cracked down on officials holding lavish banquets and using state money to do all sorts of personal things, including huge weddings. There have been a lot of smaller measures that do not get as much news. Even the number of people buying luxury bags has gone down in China, probably because giving those gifts is now under suspicion. I would say it has been pretty widespread and lots of people in China are nervous about the corruption campaign because of fears that anyone can be targeted. In China, the system is not really a rule-of-law system; there are lots of shadow parts of the economy. Even people who may be reluctant to do something that might be considered corrupt feel pressure to give gifts and to do corrupted things. So changing that is really hard. It is not just about people you might consider to be really bad. I know lots of people who are, I think, really good people, and they are also doing some of these things because they feel they have to do them. So to change the structure of the economy and to change the idea that you have to pay favors to your boss will take decades to change. Previous to Xi, President Hu Jintao and President Jiang Zemin had also announced anti-corruption campaigns. But no one has been able to really root out corruption. And many people say that anticorruption campaigns are usually just campaigns against their enemies. I think President Xi really does want to root out corruption, but even if he does want to and has a lot of power, it will take a long time and bring all sorts of changes to the system.

President Xi Jinping recently met Rupert Murdoch, and assured him that China will remain open to the world’s media despite the Beijing regime still withholding residence visas for foreign reporters. How would you interpret What Xi said? Is it a positive signal, or just a political formula?

I think it is very good any time President Xi tells someone from the U.S. or in the foreign media that China will be more open to foreign media. When I read that, I thought, “That’s a good sign; it’s better than saying nothing.” Also, The New York Times has recently gotten journalism visas. We have gotten our first two new visas in three years. That’s breaking news! It just so happens we got a new visa recently. This does not mean the situation is good. The New York Times is still blocked in China, and we are still being followed and threatened, but it is better than last month. It is better than last year, so hopefully this is a turn in a good direction.

How does journalism visa work?

The journalism visas work like this: you have a visa to live in China and to do journalism. You can leave whenever you want and come back whenever you want. The issue is that The New York Times reporters who had a visa could renew it every year, but The New York Times reporters who wanted to get their first China visa could not get one. Anyone who we hired and sent to Beijing would be blocked by Beijing. Beijing would just deny us a visa for anyone applying to be based in China. But for our reporters already based in China, we have been able to get our visas renewed every year. What has changed is this: for the first time in three years, we have received new visas, so two new people can report for our paper from China. And once they arrive, I will leave China.

What kind of challenges were you facing? Were people open to talk to you? How was the work received by the Chinese population?

We published articles in both Chinese and English. I can tell you a lot of people read the Chinese version; even government officials read the Chinese. They emailed it around. I am amazed at how many people read the article despite it being blocked. All over China, wherever I have gone, people have told me that they read or at least heard of the article, so it was widely circulated in China. On a story like this, if you want to do investigative journalism, and if you know it is dangerous and sensitive, you have to come up with a strategy of how to go about it. You have to have a strategy and you have to be very careful about who you tell, in case that they leak it out on the web. I knew it because I had done the stories before. In my case I revealed it to very few outside my newspaper. I do not think that I told more than a handful of people about the story until just before it was published. But it does not mean that I did not talk to people. So what I did is, when I interviewed people, I might interview them in general about corruption in China, but not tell them that I actually have evidence of a particular case. Also as an ethical journalist, I always want to think about not misleading or tricking the interviewee. So there is a very fine line between being honest with them and hiding something because of the situation. Although I did interview lots of people, I did not always tell them what I was doing. But when it came time to publication, anyone who was interviewed, I wanted them to know the type of story that would appear and to get their permission to be quoted in the story. I called them back and asked, “Do you want to be quoted in this story?” Some people said, “Please take me out. I am very nervous about it.” So I removed their comments. Finally on this point, I should say at least on that series I did not rely on people. I was very lucky. If you come to my lecture tonight, you will see that the documents I used were mostly government documents. The story didn’t depend on sources but on documents.

How did it take you to formulate the piece?

We came up with the idea in 2010. I started researching this around August 2011. We published the articles in October, November and December 2012. So I spent almost a year and a half on the whole project. Based on the work that I did, I really felt like I had done the equivalent of three years of work in a year and a half. That is how hard I worked. I worked nights and weekends. I did not take many days off. I should also say I had help from a couple of terrific researchers. It was so much information and it would be very scary and dangerous for me if I got it wrong. So it took a long time and a lot of effort, and we tried to be very careful and conservative about what we used.

Do you feel that you are under a lot of pressure from the Chinese government when you wrote the piece?

If you want to do investigative reporting, you are going to be always under some threat. The biggest threat for me is not Chinese government but that I make a mistake and I am wrong. So I was worried about the Chinese government, but I was much more worried about making a mistake that could hurt the paper and endanger my career. So no matter how good you might think you are as a reporter, if you damage the credibility of The New York Times by failing to check things out properly and judiciously, your career will be in jeopardy. There could be lawsuits. That would have been the worst possible outcome for me – not the Chinese government kicking me out of China or even threats on my life. It would be me destroying my own career with a bad story. So the first priority is how I make sure that the information is right. Then, I am worried about threats from the Chinese government. And I did get threatened a lot as well as from other people who were associated with the story. My number one concern is always: is it right? Is it fair? Is it ethical? Can I back it up? Is there any doubt? I looked at every possibility that may lead to a problem. It was right that the Chinese government put a lot of pressure on The New York Times and a lot of pressure on me, but I think that was secondary.

As The New York Times website said, “In 2013, Mr. Barboza was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting ‘for his striking exposure of corruption at high levels of the Chinese government, including billions in secret wealth owned by relatives of the prime minister, well documented work published in the face of heavy pressure from the Chinese officials.’” What do you think of the accusation of international community about the corruption of Chinese leaders, even though in the articles you never directly accuse any high officials being corrupted? Do you think that many of their relatives are using their connections to their advantage, without the consciousness of the leaders?

That is a very good question but difficult for me to answer. When we were writing it, we were conservative and cautious about the words we used. So how do you define corruption, and are we proving corruption? We decided that we should not try to overreach or throw our opinions too much into the story. Instead, we should be very cautious about that language. We decided that we were going to say that this was a story exposing the secret wealth of the elite families, and I think Chinese law would accuse them of corruption. What Bo Xilai has been accused of is exactly what we wrote about: your children benefited from your leadership and your oversight over certain parties. I think we were just being extra cautious. We were just saying that this is what we found. I would rather them call it corruption than for us to call it corruption. I think we should just report the facts, show the details, let people interpret it as they may, and come to their own conclusions about what it means. I do not say anyone should go to jail. I do not even say that I absolutely know that the prime minister or the other senior leaders knew it. I do not think we should go beyond what we know for sure. Many people have asked me: do you think the prime minister knew it? I do not have any evidence. If I had had it, I would have published it. We cannot prove that. We can only prove that: wow, isn’t it quite amazing if I told you that Obama or Clinton’s son had $2 billion, and how they did not know it. So that depends on how you interpret it, but it is an amazing fact that we wanted to show, which is how much wealth the family and the prime minister had. I do not think we need to go beyond that without more evidence.

In this situation, who do you think should be blamed?

Like my answer to the last question, as a journalist, my job is to try to help you understand what is happening. I am not a philosopher or politician or prosecutor. I do not really think that I should tell the Chinese government how to run its country or who to prosecute or who to blame. I live in China as a visitor and it is my duty to report journalism to the best of my ability. However, I am not trying to tell anyone how to operate the government. I think most people would agree corruption is not good, but I do not want to be seen as more than a journalist. As a journalist, you should be objective; you should be not an activist, nor a politician, nor a prosecutor. If I took the role of a journalist and told the Chinese government or people what to do, I think that is a little overstepping on what a good journalist should do. So I just stand back and try to be an unbiased, objective journalist. If you are always getting your opinion about how thing should run, you start not to sound like a journalist, and I want to be a journalist.

In 2012, you co-wrote an article that exposed the harsh labor conditions employed in many Chinese factories that supply parts to Apple. Since that time, have you seen changes regarding consumer willingness to purchase Apple products or corporate oversight of suppliers to demand the institution of humane labor practices?

I wrote about the situation by visiting the factory, for example, the Foxconn factory. There are some difficult conditions there. I went to Samsung’s factory recently, and they had like a 12-year-old working there. I do think that in the last 10 years factories in China have improved their labor standards dramatically. They were significantly worse in 2004. But if you visit a major Chinese factory tomorrow, you probably will not want to work there. It is often a pretty difficult place to work, even if they are generally safer. They have difficult work hours and difficult work shifts. China has moved up dramatically, and some of those factories are actually pretty nice, though many of them are still terrible place to work.

Do you think that the improvement is due to the oversight of the American corporations or the Chinese government?

I don’t think the Chinese government spends a lot of time upgrading the factories. When Foxconn decides where to put its factories, lots of provinces or cities want them to come to their neighborhood. The local governments would say: come and we will help you out by giving you free land and building facilities. They care about you bringing money and jobs into their area. As a result, the local authorities are often unwilling to investigate the factories that are creating so many jobs for the local economy. Actually, it is labor rights groups, human rights groups, and the media who expose these factory conditions. Sometimes the attention is raised because of an accident or a protest. The government does have regulators who inspect, but they have been inspecting for 20 years, and we still find that despite this, there have been lots of labor violations and even underage workers, 12-year-olds that sometimes show up. The situation could be worse without the inspectors. Yet, I would say the change is driven by pressure from a lot of different ways, but probably one of the biggest is embarrassment. When a factory shows up in the front page of The New York Times, that is going to lead to a lot of pressure. As I said before, we do not tell factories how to operate, but we wrote about it. There is a lot of media attention about the quality of factories. The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and many other publications have also written about this subject.

U.S. candidates for the 2016 presidential elections have not spared the electorate fiery comments on China, ranging from condemnations of its expansion in the South China Sea and hacking forays to China’s recent devaluation of the yuan. Which issues should candidates be concerned vis a vis China in 2016? Which policies would you advocate their backing to address these concerns?

This is again a question that I cannot really answer. If I were advocating certain policies that I am writing about, how would I write independently in an unbiased journal? I do not think that I should advocate policies, but certainly if you were asking what the major issues that are come up between the U.S. and China are, I would say that cyber attacks and the South China Sea are certainly at the top of the agenda. The currency and the stock market are also important. Obviously, the Obama administration is very concerned with all of these issues. China, under Xi’s leadership, also shows a pretty strong hand. So right now, you can tell that there are a number of hot issues between China and the U.S., but I do not know how this will play out. Notably, this is probably the most tension between China and the U.S. I have seen in my 11 years in China. When I arrived in China, currency was one of the major issues and U.S. congressmen were blaming China for stealing American jobs by manipulating the currency. Now the focus has shifted. It seems like the issues are not merely about whether China manipulates its currency but some in the West worry that China is posing a challenge to the U.S. militarily and technologically.

Do you see Xi’s impending visit to the US as an effort to allay some concerns?

I do not know. I am not really an expert in the politics of Sino-US relationship, but I do notice the importance of having a state dinner Xi will be treated at the White House in a way that only few leaders get. It is like a crowning moment for him in international relations to get that treatment, yet also to ameliorate some tensions since he took over it has been a pretty tense time. I think both the Obama administration and the Xi administration are a little worried about the potential for bigger problems if they do not resolve some of these conflicts. And with the presidential campaign starting, it might be difficult to have such a U.S. reception, so perhaps the idea is that if Xi does not come now, he probably would not be able to come until his own second term because it is getting too close to the U.S. presidential race. He probably would not want to visit during next year’s presidential election. So it seems they may have felt this is the best time for him to visit the U.S.

How will China’s recent stock market crash affect the “princelings” and others who benefit from close relations with Chinese leadership? To what extent is the recent Chinese stock market crash related to a lack of investor confidence in the capacity of China’s market to be truly free?

Obviously the public investors have lost confidence in the market because they are selling. There is a lot of worry about the stock market. As you may know, stock markets are about price valuation. You have to think about it in the business point of view, and I think for many of those investors, they maybe perceived that the government was encouraging the stock market goes up, so they got in. However, when they saw that it was getting dangerously high, a lot of people started selling off. Many people bought with borrowed money, so analysts began to warn about risks in the market. I think the concern was largely about worried over the valuation of some of these shares because stock prices were going up really fast, even though the economy was weakening. Stock prices tend to go up when corporate profits are expected to rise, and that typically happens when an economy improves. So it seemed odd that Chinese stocks were rally as the economy was weakening. That is why many analysts have likened the Chinese market to a casino. People do not really think the stock market functions like a normal stock market, or at least like an American stock market. Since I have been in China, the stock market has gone all over the map.

Why are the commentators worried about the stock market then?

Analysts are more worried because usually when China’s stock market has a problem, like in 2007 and maybe in 2001, the government does not show what many would perceive as panic. This time, however, the government immediately wanted to stop it from going down and they pumped money in. That made a lot of people worry that the government was signaling even bigger challenges ahead. People were responding to the government’s panic by panicking and selling off shares.

Many find being unbiased is hard, how did you achieve that?

Well I do not think I am not biased, but I think that in journalism – at least in American style journalism – what we are taught is to try to be as unbiased as possible. There is just no that journalist who is not to some degree biased, but the goal is to be as objective and unbiased as possible. For me, I try to really be fair, open-minded, and ethical in the way you treat people. Other than plagiarism, the worst thing I would want to be accused of is being arrogant. Being arrogant is thinking that you know the answers before you start writing. You are always thinking that you know what is going on. I think the journalist should strive to be modest, open-minded and fair-minded, and recognize that you do not know all the answers. We are pursuing truth. What I want to stress to you is that a journalist should have a philosophy of how they do journalism, and what their ethics are, and what their approaches are. You want someone who is serving the reader. So when I go into a story, I do not have a lot of opinions and try to think about it judiciously. I talk to my editors. I do a lot of research. I write drafts over and over again. I am trying to reach the highest level possible as a good journalist. In so that would mean fighting your biases as much as possible. If you do not admit you have biases, it is pretty hard to move ahead. I have to realize every day that I could be wrong, be biased or misled. What journalists should do is constantly review all of these things. For every story I write, I ask myself at the end, “Is this a fair story? Did I check everything? What would my colleagues and competitors say? What would the reader say?” That is how I fight my bias. Being open-minded and fair is crucial. I try my best not to take positions on any issues in journalism, no matter what my feelings are. As an American citizen writing about China, should I take the U.S. side of things, or should just write what China’s position is and what the U.S.’ position is? If China calls me and would share information with me, I would love to talk to them and gather the evidence. I am willing to write the story if it goes against my own government. That is my job.