Mei Fong

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Mei Fong, also known as Fong Foongmei, was born on August 8, 1972, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She is a Malaysian-born American journalist who has reported for The Wall Street Journal and later worked in Washington, Hong Kong, and Beijing.

Education and early career
She grew up in Malaysia and studied at the National University of Singapore, then earned a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in 2001. She joined The Wall Street Journal in 2001, reporting first on New York City after 9/11, then from Hong Kong (2003–2006) and Beijing (2006–2009). She also opposed the 2007 proposed sale of the Journal to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

Awards and recognition
In 2007, Mei Fong won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting as part of the Journal’s China bureau for stories about China’s booming capitalism and its effects on people, including migrant workers. The same reporting earned a 2006 Human Rights Press Award from Amnesty International and the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club.

Book and public work
Her book One Child: The Past and Future Of China’s Most Radical Experiment was released as an ebook in 2015 and in hardcover in 2016. In 2017, Foreign Policy named her to its The U.S.-China 50 list.

Later roles
In 2019, Mei Fong became director of communications and strategy for the Center for Public Integrity. She also produced The Heist, a five-episode podcast about the Trump administration’s economic policies and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Teaching and contributions
She has taught at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and was a Schmidt Fellow at the New America Foundation. Mei Fong has written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Salon, The Atlantic, and NPR. Her work was featured on HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in 2019.