This is the GBJ Program

In 2006, when Professor Li Xiguang was appointed executive dean of what would later become Tsinghua’s School of Journalism and Communication, he had no program budget to speak of. “Not even a single penny,” he recalls. What he did have was institutional freedom and a conviction: that journalism, particularly business journalism, could only be taught journalist to journalist, through craft, mentorship, and practice, not slogans or theory alone.

A Transpacific Bet

The idea of establishing the program stemmed from Professor Li’s belief that many talented reporters in China lacked strong writing skills. Journalism had become abstract, formalistic, and distant from human experience. Meanwhile, the world’s dominant business narratives, largely written in English, shaped how China was understood globally.

Li had seen another model firsthand. In the mid-1990s, he worked as a science and medical writer for The Washington Post, covering subjects that were, on the surface, deeply technical. What made them compelling, he learned, was storytelling rooted in people. “Even archaeology and medical science can be human stories,” he said.

That belief became the foundation of GBJ.

Rather than build a conventional academic program, Li envisioned something radical for China at the time: an English-language graduate program taught by professional journalists, focused on business, economics, and global markets, and open equally to Chinese and international students.

The problem was obvious. Chinese universities required faculty to hold PhDs, effectively barring veteran journalists from the classroom. And Li had no funding to recruit foreign professionals.

So he did what journalists do. He looked for opportunities.

Using his own salary, Li flew to Washington, D.C. and New York. He met bankers, editors, and media executives, pitching an idea rather than an institution. The turning point came in a conversation with Matthew Winkler, then the founder and editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News.

Winkler immediately grasped the logic. China’s economy was accelerating onto the global stage. What the world lacked were journalists who could explain that transformation accurately, rigorously, and across cultures. Bloomberg agreed not only to send senior journalists to Beijing, but to cover their salaries directly, nearly one million yuan in total, without the money ever passing through the university.

Lee Miller, one of those journalists, would go on to become a central figure in the program, helping embed professional newsroom standards into the curriculum. Bloomberg also established a terminal lab on campus, giving students access to the same financial data tools used by professionals around the world.

In 2007, the Global Business Journalism program officially launched.

The Classroom as a Laboratory

From the beginning, GBJ was designed to be international in practice, not branding. Each cohort was deliberately balanced between Chinese and non-Chinese students. Over time, students from 77 countries would pass through the program, bringing with them different media systems, political assumptions, and lived experiences.

The diversity was not always comfortable. And that was the point.

“The classroom itself is the laboratory,” faculty often say. When students argue over a business story, they are also negotiating language, ideology, and cultural framing. Learning happens not just through lectures, but through friction.

This approach distinguished GBJ from traditional journalism programs in China and abroad. Business journalism was treated not as opinion or commentary, but as evidence-based storytelling. Students were trained to read balance sheets, interrogate data, and write with precision under deadline pressure.

Over time, the program shifted further toward professional practice. Academic theses gave way to reporting portfolios. By graduation, students were expected not to be “journalism students,” but working journalists.

Telling China’s Story By Seeing It

The program also served a larger purpose. Many international students arrived in Beijing with images of China shaped almost entirely by foreign media narratives. Living, studying, and reporting in China complicated those assumptions.

“They use their eyes. They use their minds,” Li says. This was never about propaganda, Li says, journalism improves when reporters understand the societies they cover, not from afar, but from within.

From its inception, the Global Business Journalism program was never intended to be one option among many. As Professor Rick Dunham, longtime co-director of GBJ, has repeatedly emphasized, the program was founded on a stark premise: if it could not be the best in China, it should not exist at all.

That standard shaped every decision behind the program’s design. For Dunham, excellence was not a slogan but a structural requirement. A journalism program operating in English, focused on China, and situated within one of Asia’s leading universities had to meet, and exceed, global benchmarks. Anything less would fail both students and the profession.

GBJ’s ambition, Dunham has noted, was to be genuinely world-class, not “good for China” or “international by label.” That meant recruiting veteran journalists rather than relying solely on academic credentials, holding students to professional newsroom standards, and insisting on rigorous reporting grounded in data, verification, and clarity. The classroom was designed to function as a working newsroom, where ideas were tested, challenged, and refined in real time.

Just as crucial was the program’s international composition. Dunham has argued that global business journalism cannot be taught in a monocultural environment. The daily interaction between Chinese and international students, often with sharply different assumptions about markets, politics, and media, was not incidental, but essential. It forced students to confront blind spots and strengthened their reporting as a result.

Under this philosophy, GBJ did not measure success by comfort or convenience. It measured success by whether graduates could compete globally, explain China accurately, and operate at the highest professional level. In Dunham’s view, that uncompromising standard is precisely why the program has endured, and why it continues to matter in a rapidly changing media landscape.

A Bridge That Still Holds

As of 2025, GBJ has produced more than 550 graduates across 18 cohorts. Its alumni network spans six continents. And its core philosophy – journalist to journalist, global by design – has changed remarkably little .

As GBJ looks toward its next chapter, it does so in a media environment that is markedly more complex than the one it entered in 2007. Rising tensions between China and the United States have reshaped international newsrooms’ presence in China, affecting not only what can be reported, but how journalism organizations operate, recruit talent and maintain visibility on the ground.

For many international media outlets, access has become more constrained. Reporting visas, travel permissions and on-the-ground mobility are less predictable than in earlier years. At the same time, the shrinking footprint of foreign newsrooms in China has altered career pathways for both international and Chinese journalists. Opportunities that once drew young reporters into long-term China-based assignments have narrowed, even as global demand for nuanced, China-literate reporting has grown.

These pressures intersect with another defining feature of the current media landscape: polarization. Business, technology and geopolitics are increasingly framed through competing narratives that leave little room for ambiguity. For journalists, the challenge is no longer just access to information, but the ability to contextualize it in ways that resist ideological compression.

For journalism education, these shifts carry profound implications. Programs like GBJ are no longer preparing students for a stable newsroom ecosystem. Instead, they are training journalists to navigate uncertainty: to work across borders when physical access is limited, to verify and interpret information in contested environments, and to communicate across polarized audiences without sacrificing accuracy or ethics. Journalism education, in this context, becomes less about mastering a beat and more about developing intellectual resilience.

For students, the challenge is formidable. But so is the opportunity. As traditional reporting pathways narrow, new forms of storytelling, collaboration and analysis are emerging. Journalists who can bridge cultures, interpret data and explain complexity are increasingly valuable, even as the conditions of their work evolve.

In this environment, GBJ’s original premise, that global business journalism demands both rigor and empathy, appears less idealistic than prescient. The program’s future, like the profession it serves, will be shaped by how effectively it continues to prepare journalists not just to report on a changing world, but to understand it.