Archives » Thursday, July 12, 2007
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Melinda Liu
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Jul 12, 2007 10:03 AM
When Nick Young arrived at my bureau tonight in Beijing, he was wheeling a tiny suitcase behind him – “in case I get detained and deported straight away,” he said, “You never know.” It was a bittersweet, hastily organized gathering. Some foreign journalists came by to ask Nick about the abrupt crackdown on “China Development Brief", a Beijing-based newsletter focused on Chinese and foreign NGO's on the mainland. An articulate Brit, Nick founded CDB more than 12 years ago, transforming it from a shoestring operation into a popular print and electronic newsletter (with both English- and Chinese-language editions), employing 11 Beijing staff. It was a valuable resource on everything from environment and international aid to family planning and poverty alleviation. For those of us seeking to understand China's NGO world --not just hacks, mind you, but also clients such as the Asian Development Bank, the British Council, and several dozen foreign universities -- it was a gold mine of information. Nick considered himself a "friend of China"; he called his work candid but "never hostile."
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