Eric Ellis

Eric Ellis is an award-winning Australian-born writer and correspondent specialising in Asian affairs, covering South and South-East Asia.

Career

Ellis writes about the politics, economics and societies of South and South-East Asia. He writes mostly for Fortune Magazine, and contribues to a range of international titles. He has written for the Financial Times, Time Magazine, The Times, The Bulletin/Newsweek, The Spectator, Institutional Investor, Euromoney, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, Australian Financial Review and the International Herald Tribune.

More recently, he has reported from Iran and Afghanistan, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami from Sri Lanka, and the Bali bombings over 2002-03, which won him the 2003 Walkley Award for Excellence in Journalism. He was a finalist for the 2006 Walkley Award for an investigative series from Poland and was also a finalist in the 1993 Walkley Awards for his reporting from China. In 2005 was short-listed for the 2005 British Business Journalist of the Year Awards for reporting from Afghanistan, where he has tracked its post September 11 attacks development. He was a finalist in the 2005 South Asian Journalists Association of North America awards for his reporting of the Sri Lankan tsunami for Fortune. In May 2007, an extensive profile he had prepared of the businesswoman Wendi Deng attracted international media attention.

He has interviewed 15 presidents, prime ministers and heads of state; Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia, Chandrika Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka, Pervez Musharraf and Shaukat Aziz of Pakistan, Fidel V. Ramos of the Philippines, Malaysia's Mahathir bin Mohamad and Abdullah Ahmad Badawi Singapore's Goh Chok Tong and Lee Kuan Yew, Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle of Chile, Mari Alkatiri and José Ramos-Horta of East Timor and Chuan Leekpai of Thailand.

In 1999, he was appointed the regional correspondent of Time Magazine, based in Singapore, and covering regional economic and political topics, notably the emergence of the Internet in Asia, and of independence in East Timor.

In 1996, he was posted to the United States as correspondent with Australia's influential daily newspaper - the Australian Financial Review - firstly to Los Angeles and later San Francisco - covering Corporate Hollywood, U.S politics and society, the emergence of the Internet and information technology, and the transformation of the U.S economy, and the resultant economic bubble.

In 1993, he was posted to Hong Kong as the AFR'S Asia correspondent, covering regional business, economic and political affairs with emphasis on China. He made a rare visit to North Korea after the 1994 death of Kim Il Sung; tracked Asia's overseas Chinese community; Cambodia's embrace of democracy, and Vietnam's and Mongolia's of capitalism; the karaoke phenomenon; and Asia's unusual passion for golf, and weapons.

From 1990-93, he was a correspondent in the Sydney Morning Herald's European bureau in London, with assignments such as the emergence of democracy and the market economies of Eastern Europe and Spain's 1992 "Year of Wonders" to a profile of Private Eye magazine. Notable exclusives during this time included being the first journalist to locate the rogue tycoon Christopher Skase in Majorca; Sydney Opera House designer Jorn Utzon's first interview in 26 years; a rare interview with the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and a meeting with bombers of the Basque separatist group ETA.

From 1986-89, he was the SMH correspondent in Hong Kong from 1986, covering corporate and political affairs in Hong Kong and China, including the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 in Beijing. Reporting during this period contributed to the 1988 arrest and conviction on corruption charges of Hong Kong Stock Exchange chairman Ronald Li.

Eric Ellis has been a journalist since 1982, and a foreign correspondent since 1986. He has visited more than 50 countries, reporting from 30. He has studied Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and Russian.