Ian Johnson（張彥）和他的中國書

Ian Johnson (from his website)

Ian Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, researcher, and senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

His new book, Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, shows how–despite the best efforts of Xi Jinping’s surveillance state–a nationwide movement has coalesced to challenge the Communist Party on its most hallowed ground: its control of history.

Johnson has lived in China for more than 20 years and has been following the country since first going there as a student in Beijing from 1984 to 1985. He also studied Chinese in Taipei from 1986 to 1988, translating articles from mainland newspapers for a mainland monitoring service and traveling widely around the country.

He worked as a newspaper correspondent in China from 1994 to 1996 with Baltimore’s The Sun, and from 1997 to 2001 with The Wall Street Journal, where he covered macro economics, China’s WTO accession and social issues, such as the rise of popular religion and the Falun Gong crackdown. During this time also volunteered for a U.S. registered charity, The Taoist Restoration Society, which brought him into close contact with China’s only indigenous religion.

In 2009, Johnson returned to China, living there until 2020 when he was expelled from China as part of worsening tensions between China and the United States. He wrote regularly for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and other publications. He taught undergraduates at The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies, and served as an advisor to The Journal of Asian Studies. He is currently a senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, and is pursuing a PhD at the University of Leipzig on Chinese religious associations.

He has worked in Germany twice. From 1988 to 1992 he attended graduate school in West Berlin and covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and German unification. In 2001 he moved back to Berlin, working until 2009 as The Wall Street Journal‘s Germany bureau chief and senior writer. He managed reporters covering EU fiscal policy and macro-economics, and wrote about social issues such as Islamist terrorism.

Johnson won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of China, two awards from the Overseas Press Club, an award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Stanford University’s Shorenstein Journalism Award for his body of work covering Asia. In 2019 he won the American Academy of Religion’s “best in-depth newswriting” award. 

In 2006-07 he spent a year as a Nieman fellow at Harvard University, and later received research and writing grants from the Open Society Foundation, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and the Alicia Patterson Foundation. In 2020, he was an inaugural grantee of the Robert B. Silvers Foundation for work-in-progress. He was also awarded a 2020-2021 National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars fellowship for a new book he is writing on China’s unofficial history.

Johnson has published four books and contributed chapters to four others. In addition to Sparks, his other books explore China’s religious revival and its political implications (The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, 2017), civil society and grassroots protest in China (Wild Grass, 2004) and Islamism and the Cold War in Europe (A Mosque in Munich, 2010).

He has also contributed chapters to: My First Trip to China (2011), Chinese Characters (2012), the Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China(2016), and wrote a 5,000-word introduction to The Forbidden City: The Palace at the Heart of Chinese Culture (2021).

Johnson was born in Montréal, Canada. He holds U.S. and Canadian citizenship. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York.

張彥（Ian Johnson）

張彥在中國. 照片由Ian Johnson提供。　　

張彥是2001年美國普立茲獎得主，善於社會、政治、宗教議題的報導。常駐於北京，並於當地大學授課。出生於加拿大蒙特婁，在美國佛羅里達大學取得新聞學和亞洲研究學位。他在1984年至1985年期間以學生身分在北京生活了一年，這是他第一次到中國。1986年至1988年期間曾造訪台北。1994至1996年期間，他被巴爾的摩《太陽報》派駐於北京，擔任通信員。1997至2001年期間他服務於《華爾街日報》，負責中國經濟改革、中國加入世貿組織以及各種社會議題。2009年張彥為《紐約時報》服務時再度回到中國，並在「北京中國研究中心」（The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies）等機構教書，同時擔任諸如《亞洲研究月刊》（Journal of Asian Studies）等學術期刊與智庫的顧問，

張彥在德國也有豐富的經驗。他於1988至1992年間在柏林自由大學取得漢學碩士，並為巴爾的摩《太陽報》報導柏林圍牆倒塌與德國統一。2001至2009年他重返德國，成為《華爾街日報》德國分局主任與資深撰述，主要報導歐洲的經濟與伊斯蘭恐怖主義的專題。

他獲得普立茲獎提名兩次，並於2001年以法輪功學員遭到迫害的報導而獲得殊榮。他亦曾得到「海外記者俱樂部」（Overseas Press Club）與「專業記者協會」（Society of Professional Journalists）的頒獎。2006至2007年間他於哈佛大學擔任研究員（Nieman fellow），並獲得「開放社會基金會」（Open Society Foundation）、「普立茲危機報導中心」（Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting）等單位的研究與寫作經費贊助。

張彥長期關心中國社會的宗教與民主化問題，著有《野草：底層中國的緩慢革命》（Wild Grass）、《中國的靈魂：後毛澤東時代的宗教復興》（The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao）等。

他的最新作品《 Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, 》寫了一群在中國進行秘密地下歷史記錄的創作者，有學者艾曉明、獨立紀錄片導演胡傑、記者江雪等等，儘管在習近平時代，對公民的監和言論的控制進入一個前所未有的時期，但是這群人依然偷偷記錄下那些官方所不允許記錄的歷史。

張彥在中國. 照片由Ian Johnson提供。