Carrie Gracie (BBC China Editor)

Carrie grew up in Aberdeenshire and ran a restaurant between school and university. After graduating from Oxford with first class honours in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, she taught English in Chongqing and Yantai in 1985/86, then came home to ran a small independent production company for a year before joining the BBC in 1987.

She was appointed Beijing reporter in 1991, spent a year in London 1995/96 completing a Chinese BA at the University of Westminster and then served as Beijing bureau chief between 1997 and 1999 when she returned to the UK to focus on presenting. For several years she anchored the morning slot on the BBC News Channel and also hosted the weekly BBC World Service programme The Interview. During these years, she returned to China regularly on reporting assignments including coverage of the 2008 Olympics and an award winning series of films called White Horse Village.

In April 2014, she took up a newly created post as BBC China Editor and has since led coverage for all the BBC’s flagship news programmes on stories including the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong and President Xi’s state visit to the UK as well as making radio and TV documentaries including a Crossing Continents on China’s Almighty God cult, a Panorama on Xi Jinping and an Our World on innovation in China.