China, Data, and Geopolitics with David Barboza

A discussion occurred on how the modern geopolitical relationship between the U.S. and China is shaped by access to data and through the stories we tell with it. David Barboza founded The Wire China and WireScreen, a news and data platform focused on China and global supply chains. His work informs conversations on economic (dis)integration, technological rivalry, and investment & export controls. We covered questions of journalistic integrity, unbiased media reporting, business-building, conflicts of interest, and the ethical implications of work affecting foreign policy discourse.

Barboza was previously a New York Times business reporter and foreign correspondent in China, winning a 2013 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting “for his striking exposure of corruption at high levels of the Chinese government,” and, “well-documented work published in the face of heavy pressure from the Chinese officials.”

Note: This event was not recorded.

Speaker

David Barboza is the co-founder of The Wire Digital Inc., a New York-based news and data platform focused on China and global supply chains. The startup consists of a digital weekly news magazine, called The Wire, and a data and software analytics platform named WireScreen. Previously, Barboza was a longtime business reporter and foreign correspondent at The New York Times. In 2013, 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, for his coverage of Apple’s operations in China. That same year, he won a George Polk Award for foreign reporting.

Barboza joined The Times in 1997 as a staff writer. He covered the stock market, and then served for five years as the Midwest business correspondent based in Chicago. He moved to China in 2004 as a business correspondent, and then, from 2008 to 2015, was the paper’s Shanghai bureau chief. In 2016, he was a visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

Barboza won two awards in the Society of American Business Editors and Writers’ 2007 Best in Business Journalism Contest, one for a 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, Barboza won The Times’s internal business award, the Nathaniel Nash Award. He has twice won the Gerald Loeb Award for business reporting. Barboza graduated from Boston University with a bachelor’s degree in history and attended Yale University Graduate School.

Student leader moderator

Ryan Zepeda, MBA ‘24