Hannah Beech

Hannah Beech is TIME's East Asia and China Bureau Chief. She lives in Shanghai and was previously based for TIME in Beijing, Bangkok and Hong Kong.

Articles from Contributor

Who’s the Other Islamic Militant Nabbed This Year in Abbottabad?

In January of this year, in the same Pakistani town of Abbottabad where Osama bin Laden met his demise, a senior Indonesian militant named Umar Patek was arrested. One of the leaders of the al-Qaeda-linked Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiah (JI), Patek is believed to have helped coordinate the 2002 bombings on the Indonesian …

How to Make a Dramatic Exit: Japan’s Nuke Advisor Quits

Like apologies, resignations are a delicate art in Japan. But the leave-taking of scientist Toshiso Kosako made waves not so much for its skilful dodging as for its remarkable bluntness. The University of Tokyo professor had been employed since mid-March as a nuclear advisor to the government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who is still …

What’s The One Thing Not Growing Fast In China? Its Population.

China, as we all know, is a rapidly expanding country. Economic growth is chugging along, the military is adding new high-tech hardware and international luxury brands are opening new stores on a near daily basis. But according to the results of the nation’s sixth census, China isn’t growing quite as dramatically in one key respect: …

A River’s Fate: Battles Loom over the Mekong

The Mekong River is one of the world’s most evocative waterways, a crucial channel that begins in China and runs through five other countries: Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Nations downstream, in particular, consider the river a lifeblood. But upriver in China, recently built dams have constrained the Mekong’s force, …

Why the BRICS Summit Won’t Accomplish Anything

Yep, just what the world needs—another international summit. On Thursday, leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa convened under the palm trees of China’s Hainan Island for the third BRICS summit. The acronym was coined back in 2001 by an economist at Goldman Sachs to describe the bright emerging economies of Brazil, …

Whose Human-Rights Record is Worse? The U.S. or China?

It’s a spring ritual. Each year, the U.S. publishes its report on China’s human-rights record the previous year—and then China presents its findings on America’s own performance in the same realm. Both countries, as might be expected, find plenty wrong with each other. Indeed, instead of highlighting the actual human-rights …

Why Burma’s Sanctions Debate Doesn’t Really Matter

The Burma sanctions debate in the West is made largely immaterial by the investment currently flooding the country, mostly from Asian nations that have few moral reservations about enriching the Burmese ruling generals. Chief among the eager investors are China, Thailand, South Korea, Singapore and India. Their target? Burma’s rich …

Fears Spiral Near Ground Zero of Japan’s Nuclear Disaster

Captain Yokoyama knows all about nuclear hazards. The Hiroshima native’s great-uncles and great-aunts were killed by the American atomic bomb that leveled the Japanese city at the end of the World War II. Yet here he was in the town of Natori, little more than 50 km from the site of the Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was damaged by …

How Japan Copes with Tragedy: A Lesson in the Art of Endurance

Japanese is one of those languages that is full of untranslatable words that define a unique culture. Gaman is one of them. It means something like the art of endurance, with a good dose of stoicism and resiliency mixed in. Gaman is what Japan in the wake of the killer earthquake and tsunami has displayed in abundance.

To riff on …

On a Mission with Japanese Soldiers in the Quake Zone

When Koji Haga looked toward the shore and saw the massive earthquake shuddering through his village of Akaushi on March 11, he knew what would come next. After all, every school child in the area is taught that roughly every 50 years, a seismic seizure triggers a giant wave that engulfs this tightknit fishing community. It had been a …

As Nuclear Emergency Worsens, Death Toll Jumps

Report from TIME’s Krista Mahr in Kesennuma:

There are few good places to be right now in what’s left of this savaged corner of Kesennuma, Japan. But the gymnasium at the Hibiki High School is the very last place anybody wants to have to visit. On a hilltop over the washed-out mud flats where houses stood this time last week, the …

Trying to Get to an Earthquake: Travels in Japan

Here are some initial thoughts on Japan’s disaster zone from TIME’s Hannah Beech and Krista Mahr:

This is a country that lives by timetables, that prides itself on predicting how to get people to places within the minute even under the most unusual circumstances. But no one could have predicted the unleashing of the worst-ever …

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