Stephen Vines

Stephen Vines   (author, journalist, broadcaster)

Stephen Vines is a British author, award-winning journalist and public speaker, who was based in Hong Kong from 1987 to 2021.

Career

After working as a political policy researcher he started his career as a freelance journalist specialising in Middle East affairs. He went on to focus on business and industrial matters, working primarily at The Observer where he became the Deputy Business Editor before moving to become the Labour Editor, covering the miner’s strike, the UK’s biggest political and industrial story of the 1980s.

In 1987 Steve Vines moved to Hong Kong as South East Asia correspondent for The Observer. Five years later he became The Guardian’s Hong Kong correspondent and a regular contributor to papers such as the Asian Wall Street Journal, Fortune and the Daily Telegraph. He also worked extensively in the broadcast media and became a regular contributor to the BBC, ABC (Australia) and Deutsche Welle and Radio Vaticana.

Founding Chief Editor

In 1993 he became the founding Chief Editor of Eastern Express, responsible for all editorial aspects of the paper’s launch; establishing a broadsheet newspaper in the record time of four months. The paper quickly established a reputation as Hong Kong’s most lively English language daily.

Departing Hong Kong

After a raucous ride at the paper and falling out with its owners, Steve Vines returned to working as a foreign correspondent, covering Hong Kong and the region for The Independent. He also worked for Radio Television Hong Kong as a presenter for television and radio programmes. In 2004 Vines became the publisher and co-founder of Spike, a ground breaking satirical magazine.

Before his abrupt departure from Hong Kong in 2021 he was writing opinion columns for a number of Hong Kong outlets and presented The Pulse, a current affairs television programme, as well as being a weekly contributor to the Morning Brew radio show, both of which were aired by the public broadcaster, Radio Television Hong Kong.

Awards

Stephen Vines is a four time winner of Amnesty International Human Rights Press Awards for commentary. He is a two time Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) awardee for Excellence in Opinion Writing and a two time winner of industrial journalist awards.

Obituary to Bernt Carlsson

On 23 December 1988, The Guardian published Stephen Vines' obituary to Lockerbie victim Bernt Carlsson:

Bernt Carlsson belonged to that venerable breed of Scandinavians who are found in the most unlikely places serving the global community.

Apart from his instinctively international outlook, shared with many in his post-war generation, he was also drawn towards socialist politics and as a student became a key leader of the ruling Social Democratic Party's youth wing.

He later became a full time official for the party and served as its International Secretary from 1970-76 and then became the General Secretary of the Socialist International, based in London. It was a period of transition for the umbrella body of the world's social democratic parties.

Under the presidency of former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt and the secretaryship of Bernt Carlsson, there was a major effort to push the International beyond its European base into Third World countries.

On the other hand the International was engaged in pioneering Middle East peace work, using its unique position of possessing Israel's ruling Labour Party as a member, and at the same time keeping very good ties with Arab countries and Yasser Arafat's faction in the PLO.

Bernt Carlsson developed a particularly close relationship with Arafat's right hand man Issam Sartawi, who was murdered during a conference of the International in Portugal.

Carlsson shunned the limelight, preferring a behind-the-scenes role. He instinctively distrusted grand gestures and high profile negotiations, believing instead in the art of consensus building. He was a better listener than a talker, indeed, an embarrassingly shy person who battled hard to perform his public duties. But he inspired the more trust among those among those with whom he had dealings.

Hence the late Swedish prime minister Olof Palme entrusted him with a special Middle East role during his delicate attempts at negotiating a peace agreement between Iran and Iraq.

Bernt Carlsson had only been doing the job of Namibia Commissioner for two years.

Books

His books include:

• Hong Kong: China’s New Colony
• The Years of Living Dangerously – Asia from Crisis to the New Millennium
• Market Panic: Wild Gyrations, Risks and Opportunities in Stock Markets
• Food Gurus

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References

This page imported content from Wikipedia on 21 December 2022.
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