NY Times tech reporter Zhong joining climate desk

Ray comes to Climate from the Business desk, where he covered tech in China. Between 2018 and 2020, when he and other Times correspondents were expelled from China, he lived in Beijing and wrote about giant tech companies like Alibaba and Huawei as well as the government’s high-tech tools for propaganda and surveillance. He visited soy growers to understand the trade war with the United States, tracked African swine fever through hog farms and followed the afterlife of plastic waste from the takeout-delivery industry. For a story on how the Chinese government controlled information about the coronavirus during the early weeks of the pandemic, he was part of the Times team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service.

“Ray is a master at turning technical jargon into lyrical prose, no small feat when you’re covering trade wars, semiconductors and all things China. While we are sad to lose him, we know he will be a great voice on one of the biggest issues in the world,” said Asia editor Adrienne Carter.

Before joining The Times in 2017, Ray was based in New Delhi for The Wall Street Journal and covered India’s economy, the conflict in Kashmir, earthquakes and avalanches in Nepal and the surprising number of people in the Maldives who don’t know how to swim.

He will be moving to New York City in January. He’ll join Climate at the end of November.

Hannah