WSJ names new leadership team in China

Wall Street Journal managing editor Gerard Baker sent out the following announcement on Friday:

I’m delighted to announce a new senior leadership team at The Wall Street Journal’s Chinese-language edition.

Li Yuan, who has steered CWSJ.com as its managing editor since 2008, is promoted to Editor-in-Chief. In her new role, Li will be a columnist focused on profiling the movers and shakers responsible for China’s stunning rise over the past three decades. She’ll represent CWSJ at national and international events and mentor the publication’s staff. Li is a 10-year Journal veteran. She joined in 2004 as a reporter covering technology and telecoms. Before coming to the Journal, Li was an editor for Xinhua in Beijing and a foreign correspondent, covering events in Thailand, Laos and Afghanistan.

Under Li’s stewardship, CWSJ has become a trusted source of timely, must-read news content. It has quadrupled its traffic and spread its influence widely over various Chinese social media channels. Between Li and our own CWSJ account on Sina Weibo, we now have a following of four million. Our reputation is that of a fair and independent voice, one that brings transparency to a place where that’s often hard to find. Through our China Innovator Awards, we’ve also become part of the fabric of China’s remarkable development story. For each of the past two years, we’ve assembled an esteemed and impartial judging panel to recognize the country’s best homegrown innovators in art, architecture, fashion, science and technology, food and philanthropy. In the last few months, CWSJ has also become a video brand in China, launching a native-language video center populated daily with original and subtitled content. And much more is in the cards, including creation of deep news verticals and an ambitious site relaunch later this year.

Xin Li will oversee CWSJ’s growth, its migration onto the Tesla platform and its day-to-day operations as managing editor. She’ll report to Li Yuan. Xin joins us from China’s prestigious Caixin Media, where she has been managing editor of the financial publication’s online English-language news unit since 2010. She served in a similar role for Caijing Magazine from 2007 to 2009 and was also the business magazine’s first U.S. correspondent in 2006 and 2007.

Rounding out CWSJ’s top management team are:

• Chinese-language Services Editor “Zach” Wei Zeyuan, who moved from Shanghai to Beijing earlier this year to oversee our newly merged translation unit and local-language analysts. Zach joined us as a Shanghai-based fixed-income and macroeconomic researcher in 2011 from CAI Business In-Depth, where he was the financial wire’s deputy managing editor.

• China Wealth Editor Wei Gu, who has taken on additional responsibility for original content and columnists. Wei came to us last year after a decade at Reuters. Wei is a multi-platform journalist, with a background in TV, the Web, wires and international newspapers. She has the distinction of finishing her rigorous three-year Chartered Financial Analyst program in just two years, speaks native Mandarin and Shanghainese, taught herself Cantonese, is fluent in English and spent several years studying Japanese. She has produced TV shows, appeared on television and writes the extremely popular “People’s Money” column for us in both English and Chinese.

•  China Digital Editor Xiao Li, who has served as a key multimedia editor for CWSJ for the past several years. She joined us as an intern in March 2008 after graduating from Shanghai University. Xiao writes, programs, works on multimedia projects, trains interns in our systems and always finds innovative solutions to problems or issues that crop up. She may be the only employee at this company to have an undergraduate degree in Polymer Science and Engineering. While still a student, she started a travel website (xanyou.com) and a social website (youfeeling.com) with two friends, after winning a venture capital award in the Trilogy Entrepreneurship Competition.

Please join me in congratulating our colleagues on their new and enhanced roles.