Hannah Beech

Southeast Asia Bureau Chief

Hannah Beech is TIME’s bureau chief in Southeast Asia, where she covers politics, conflicts, diplomacy and regional issues from a regional base in Bangkok.

Over the past two years, Beech has been one of the few international journalists to report from Burma, covering the devastating impact of both the 2008 cyclone and the quashed democracy protests by Buddhist monks.

Beech joined TIME in 1997 as a reporter in Hong Kong and later worked as the chief of reporters there. In 2000, she moved to Beijing to be a correspondent, and in 2002 she relocated to Shanghai to work as Shanghai bureau chief. She became Southeast Asia bureau chief in 2006.

During her tenure at TIME, Beech has also reported from other places including Papua New Guinea, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Laos, East Timor, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Greece, Australia, Italy, England, Kenya, the U.S. and Mexico. She has won numerous reporting honors, including the Amnesty Human Rights Press Award, The Henry Luce Award and several Society of Publishers in Asia awards.

Beech, who is half-Japanese and half-American, graduated from Colby College in Maine, where she received degrees in English and international studies. She speaks Japanese, Mandarin Chinese and French.

Updated July 25, 2008