James Chau

Education

Chau was born in England and educated at City of London School and Cambridge University, where he was Varsity News Features Editor. He also studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music under Professor Graeme Humphrey. In interviews, he has cited the photographer Lord Snowdon for encouraging him as a writer, and guiding him to his first journalistic internship at Vogue. His parents were born in Indonesia and Hong Kong.

Television

After graduating from Cambridge, and interning at Vogue and Mirror Group Newspapers, he moved to Hong Kong for his first newsroom position. From 2001 he was a reporter and later an anchor at TVB Pearl. His first major story was in Washington where Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-Hwa met for talks with U.S. President George W. Bush. Chau returned to the White House a year later with Chinese leader Hu Jintao and was the only foreign journalist to cover all seven cities in what was the incoming President's debut overseas tour. During a reporting assignment to the World Trade Organisation in Geneva on 11 September 2001, he flew to London to cover the international reaction to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York. While promoted to anchor the news, he continued to report on the bird flu outbreak, the Doha Ministerial Conference where China was accepted as a WTO member, and the SARS pandemic that took him to outbreak areas in Hong Kong, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.

Chau joined China Central Television in 2004, where he features primarily as a main presenter on the 24-hour CCTV News English-language station. Since April 2010, he also co-fronts the channel's flagship China 24 show. He is one of the first foreign anchors to anchor the evening program for the state broadcaster that, across its various channels combined, draws an audience share of 1.2 billion. His breaking stories include the suicide of former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, Sichuan earthquake, and the 2009 Indian elections. In the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, he taped a television special on the Great Wall of China with the Australian actress and singer, Olivia Newton-John. During the Games, he anchored the morning show for the official Olympic broadcaster. His two-hour coverage of the live standoff where eight Hong Kong tourists died in the Manila hostage crisis was noted in the Guardian for the openness of this coverage in the Chinese state media. He continues to report on location for the Asian tsunami in Indonesia, International AIDS Conference in Vienna, and UN General Assembly and Millennium Development Goals Summit in New York.

He writes a newspaper column for the Global Times.

UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador

Chau has been described as one of China's leading AIDS activists. He came under the early mentorship of Belgian scientist Peter Piot, who co-discovered the Ebola virus, and has traveled on health missions to India, Norway, Indonesia, and the United States. In August 2009, the United Nations announced his appointment as its first UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador on the Chinese Mainland, joining Naomi Watts, Michael Ballack and Princess Stephanie of Monaco. In April 2010, his first show as presenter of the new China 24 program was headlined by China's lifting of the HIV-related travel ban,.

As UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador, he has been featured in GQ and Men's Health, and partners with leading Chinese internet portal, Sohu.com. In 2008, he was named to the inaugural Young Leaders Summit at the Google headquarters, and to the second edition hosted in Oslo by Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway. Chau chaired the closing session of the 2009 International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific in Bali, and hosted the opening televised town hall event of the 2010 International AIDS Conference in Vienna with singer and activist Annie Lennox, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé, U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe. At the same conference, he moderated the innovative financing debate between Global Fund chief Michel Kazatchkine and former French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy.

Chau is a member of aids2031 and Designers Against AIDS.

Interviews

He sat down with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe during the 2010 UN General Assembly, and at the same event with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, and South African Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi. His other interview guests are Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, Indonesian Trade Minister Mari Pangestu, former King Constantine II of Greece, Prince Edward, former Botswanan President Festus Mogae, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé, U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Howard Koh, and First Lady of Georgia Sandra Saakashvili. From the arts, he profiled Freedom Towers architect Daniel Libeskind, and in fashion, Jimmy Choo, Vivienne Tam, and Jason Wu. His interview with Chinese military singer Peng Liyuan was a rare television exclusive, and he has also spoken on camera to Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway, and French virologist Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, whose co-discovery of HIV won her the Nobel Prize in 2008.

Other

He is a Freeman of the City of London, a National Press Foundation Fellow., and a representative of the British Council.