Work on contemporary China, mostly in the popular media

• If they write it, you should read it
• (b) mostly organizations

China Digital Times - CDT is an independent bilingual media source.  CDT translates pertinent information from Chinese social media and some leaked government directives, particularly those from the Propaganda Ministry. Very useful. A standard disclaimer - Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. Some instructions are issued by local authorities or to specific sectors, and may not apply universally across China. The date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. See CDT’s collection of Directives from the Ministry of Truth since 2011.   China Digital Times

Sixth Tone – Writers from within China and outside, with stories of everyday Chinese that illustrate life, policy, economy.  Offices in Shanghai.  Modern stories that tell the truth but avoid too much politics.  State funded, so not too much that would offend.  David Bandurski on The Paper, the sister publication – “old wine, new bottle.”  Still, worth a look   Sixth Tone    Sample work – How China’s Middle Class Moms Became Their Kids’ “Agents”  Agent Moms

Macropolo -  publication from the Paulson Institute at the University of Chicago  Macropolo  Thoughtful analysis of China economic conditions.  The best understanding of both ends of the term political economy.   Sample work - Data and Analysis of the fallout from the debt overhang and  Footprint of Chinese in US Education

China File – Published by the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society.  Orville Schell is the masthead publisher. Original reporting and articles from hundreds of contributors on every topic.  From the About, on their Chinese name, zhongcanguan - Like the country we cover, our name contains multitudes and can be interpreted in many ways.

Our Chinese name was conceived and rendered graphically by Sun Yunfan. It contains the following Chinese characters:
中 (zhong), which means “central,” is the first character of the word for China. It can also mean neutral.
参 (can) means to join or to participate in, to refer, to consult, to reference, or to archive.
馆 (guan) is a word for a physical structure that appears in words for guest accommodations, libraries, museums, archives, and restaurants.

Put these characters together and, in addition to the many meanings suggested by their combination, they are a homophone for Chinese restaurant (中餐馆).

So, whether you see ChinaFile as a place for organizing and finding information, a tool for shaping and smoothing your views, or an establishment with a large menu and fare to suit a variety of tastes, we invite you to visit us often.   China File

21^st Century China Research Center - at University of California at San Diego.  Susan Shirk, Barry Naughton, Victor Shih, and many others.  The politics, public protest, and civil society papers available at SSRN -   UCSD China Research Center

Los Angeles Review of Book China Channel   Mostly longer form  news, history, interpretation.  Very useful. LARB   Sample post – Philosopher King, by Sam Crane  November 17, 2017   LARB China

Chublic Opinion - monthly digest of opinion by an anonymous Shanghai native.   Great Writing   Sample work -  Soft Power, Hard Sell  September 18, 2017    and  Anatomy of an (Alleged) Online Scam  December 18, 2016.

Jamestown Foundation – self-described right wing think tank focused on American foreign affairs, features indepth writing by former military and defense industry professionals.  China Brief features Willy Lam, who teaches at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and whose work focuses on Chinese politics.  Jamestown Foundation    He was the second person I know to publicly suggest in 2015 that Mr. Xi might not retire in 2022.

Mercator Institute for China Studies – Mercator is a Berlin-based research institute on China economics, public policy, and foreign relations.  https://www.merics.org/en/   Sample work – China Owns the Stage in Africa   https://www.merics.org/en/blog/china-owns-stage-africa   and an interview with Rogier Creemers,   The social credit system: China’s tool for moral education https://www.merics.org/en/blog/social-credit-system-chinas-tool-moral-education , August 21, 2018 

Tea Leaf Nation - The China blog of Foreign Policy magazine.    Tea Leaf Nation   Good coverage in many areas of China watching.   Sample work -  Beijing Deals Another Blow to Hong Kong’s Autonomy  End of Hong Kong Autonomy   and   Is Beijing Getting Scared of Homeschooled Confucian Activists?  (Sam Crane) Confucian activists?

Lowy Institute – Australian think tank focused on Australia’s role in the world, obviously balancing between the US and China.  Lowy Institute

China Smack – is now suspended, I think, but retains some good daily life stories from a few years ago.  China Smack

Nikkei Asian Review   Nikkei Asian Review   Business, politics, opinion stories.  Sample work - Huawei unveils world's most advanced chip to counter Apple.  September 1, 2018  Huawei-Apple

Caixin – the other magazine established by Hu Shuli, this one in 2010.  Now paywalled.  More insightful than Caijing and able to report news that other media shun.  Zhejiang Daily Press Group, a state owned newspaper conglomerate, is a large investor.  Their stake was purchased by China Media Capital in 2013, a central government media investment fund,  along with Tencent (owner of QQ, the message service, and WeChat).   As with many such magazines, the content in Chinese is different from that in English.   Caixin

Caijing -   News on business and finance.  Fortnightly, since 1998.  Has annual forecast and strategy edition.  Caijing

Southern Metropolis Daily – A daily newspaper published in Guangzhou, with circulation mostly in the Pearl River delta region.   In Chinese, but widely translated and reviewed. Sister to Southern Daily, which is the Guangdong CCP newspaper, and Southern Weekend, China’s most influential and still somewhat liberal newspaper.  But the “Guangzhou-based family of papers are known to possess superior reporting and higher level of frankness than many PRC mainstream press outlets.”  Southern Metropolis

South China Morning Post – venerable daily newspaper, now owned by Alibaba.  Known for independence, but that is obviously in question now.  Paywall was removed, making all content free access, and opening the way for SCMP to become a paper of record for China in Africa and the middle east.    SCMP

Hong Kong Free Press – non-profit, English language news source, begun in 2015 as a response to loss of press freedom in Hong Kong.  Looks very useful, for as long as it lasts.    HKFP   Sample work, describing another beginning of the end for Hong Kong freedoms - HKFP Mainland Rail

More Hangzhou – one of the China city magazines.  Useful for expats, and a good perspective on what is happening locally.   More Hangzhou

Jing Daily – the business of consumer luxury in China.  Market trends, brand news, travel, how to spend money.  Industry sectors – Art & Auction; Beauty & Health; Fashion; Food; Wine & Spirits; Investment & Real Estate; Watches & Jewelry.  Jing Daily    Sample work - Will Bottega Veneta’s Celeb Spokesman Jackson Yee Be Worth His Weight in Gold?  August 28, 2018   Jing Daily Bottega-Veneta

NEW in 2018 -   PandaPawDragonClaw – from their About - This blog is started by those who aspire to tell a better story about China’s involvement beyond its borders. We are journalists, campaigners, analysts, scholars and practitioners with years of experience navigating Chinese politics, bureaucracy, finance and their ramifications overseas.   PandaPawDragonClaw    Sample work - Letter from Ghana: Africa embraces its China partnership reluctantly,  August 22, 2018   and  a review of the Belt and Road, at five -  BRI at five

Work on contemporary China, academics and journalists but in the popular media

• If they write it, you should read it
• (a) mostly individuals

David Bandurski - Investigative journalist at the University of Hong Kong.  He writes frequently in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, South China Morning Post.  He manages the China Media Project  China Media Project   Bandurski received a Human Rights Press Award in 2007 for his feature about China’s Internet censorship guidelines.  Another indispensable resource.  Sample work - The court of Xinhua: Do not dare claim the truth for yourself; it is the Party’s through and through.  Hong Kong Free Press, August 20, 2018  Party Truth   and  What to Say When you are a Party Official, September 4, 2018   What to Say   and   Dragons in Diamond Village - Tales of Resistance from Urbanizing China.  Melville House, 2016.  Dragons in Diamond Village

Rogier Creemers – Law faculty at Leiden University in the Netherlands.  Translator and writer on Chinese law and governance.  Sample work - China’s Constitutionalism Debate: Content, Context And Implications, China Journal, 74: July, 2015   Constitutionalism    and    China's Social Credit System: An Evolving Practice of Control, SSRN, May 22, 2018  Social Credit System

Andrew Batson – Andrew is a founder of Gavekal Dragometrics, an economic consulting firm in Beijing and Hong Kong.  Personal blog at  Andrew's Blog

Ann Stevenson-Yang -  Founded of J Capital Research, an economic consulting firm in Beijing.  She tends to be a bit more pessimistic than I find useful, but she acts as a good correction to the panda hugging one often finds in the business press.  I read anything she writes.  Ann does not have a personal blog.   Bloomberg articles - Ann Stevenson-Yang    Interview in Barron’s with Jonathan Laing, Why Beijing’s Troubles Could Get a Lot Worse, December 6, 2014  Beijing's Troubles

Keith Bradsher - Shanghai Bureau Chief for the New York Times   NYT bio   Sample work – Trump’s Tariffs Are Changing Trade with China.  Here are 2 Emerging Endgames.  August 8, 2018  Tariff endgame

David Barboza - Former Shanghai Bureau Chief for the New York Times, until he helped break the story about the 2.7 billion dollars worth of assets controlled by the family of Wen Jiabao.  He won a Pulitzer for that work in 2013.   Wen Jiabao Family Wealth   

 (note - just FYI, the Bloomberg story on the family wealth of Xi Jinping broke just a couple of months earlier - Xi Jinping family wealth)

Susan Shirk – Professor at University of California at San Diego and chair of the 21^st Century China Center. Previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (1997-2000).  University profile   Author of China: Fragile Superpower, How China's Internal Politics Could Derail Its Peaceful Rise, Oxford University Press, 2007.   China: Fragile Superpower

Victor Shih – professor at University of California at San Diego.   One of the first to document excessive debt accumulation in local governments in China after 2008.  Sample work – Financial Instability in China – Possible Pathways and their Likelihood, MERICS China Monitor, October 20, 2017   Financial Instability

Isabel Hilton - Profile  independent writer with wide experience in writing about censorship and the environment in China.  founder of China Dialogue, a web site focusing on the environment and sustainability    China Dialogue

Eva Pils – attorney and academic, writer on comparative law and law in China.  Wrote China’s Human Rights Lawyers: Advocacy and Resistance, 2014.   China's Human Rights Lawyers   Sample work - Citizens? The Legal and Political Status of Peasants and Peasant Migrant Workers in China.  Legal and Political Status of Peasants

David Moser – Associate Dean, Yenching Academy at Peking University.  Sample work -  On the Struggle to Create a Modern Chinese Language  Language Struggle  and, for fun, Why is Chinese so Damn Hard?   Why is Chinese so Damn Hard?

Paul Gillis -  China Accounting Blog, focus as you might think.  Series of good articles on the refusal of Chinese government to honor requests for audit papers of Chinese companies listed on US stock exchanges, which should have been cause for delisting.  Rationale?  “State secrets.”  US response – ok.  China Accounting Blog  Sample work – ZTE – Where Were the Auditors?  ZTE - Where were the auditors?

Randall Peerenboom –  Professor of Law at UCLA.  Prolific author and attorney, with focus on law in China.  Sample work - Dispute Resolution in China: Patterns, Causes, and Prognosis  (with He Xin)     Foundation for Law, Justice, and Society, University of Oxford   Dispute Resolution in China

Balding’s World -  Christopher Balding taught at the HSBC Business School of Peking University in Shenzhen.  In 2018, he thought it best to leave China.  I don’t know if his blog will still be online, but there are good posts on China macro policy that will continue to be useful.  Balding's World

Perry Link -  Professor of languages and literature at Princeton and University of California, Riverside, and translator of Chinese; co-author of the Tian’anmen Papers, with Andrew Nathan, blacklisted by CCP since 1996.   Sample work - The Wonderfully Elusive Chinese Novel.  New York Review of Books April 23, 2015, at Wonderfully Elusive Chinese Novel  and   What It Means to Be Chinese.  Foreign Affairs, May/June 2015  What it means to be Chinese And    China: The Anaconda in the Chandelier.  New York Review of Books, April 11, 2002    Anaconda   and    Turned back at China’s door - Why Princeton should speak out against a blacklist of scholars. Princeton Perspective, February 9, 2005 Blacklisting of Scholars

Orville Schell - writer and academic, now head of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society.  An independent and original thinker on China and relations with the US.  Personal web site -  Orville Schell 

Andrew Nathan -  Professor of political science at Columbia, focusing on Chinese politics, public involvement, and human rights.  Co-editor with Perry Link of The Tian'anmen Papers.  Sample interview - Andrew Nathan and Gao Wenqian on the 19th Party Congress, October 31, 2016.  Human Rights in China  Nathan on 19th Party Congress

Minxin Pei -  Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College.  Author of China’s Crony Capitalism      Sample work -  China’s Troubled Bourbons.  Project Syndicate  Published Wednesday, 10/31/2012   China's Troubled Bourbons  and  Rising Uncertainty

Chris Buckley – is a correspondent for the New York Times.  He has lived in China for more than 25 years, and covers politics, foreign relations, and any other newsworthy topics. Jeremy Goldkorn from SupChina refers to Buckley as “the China journalist’s China journalist.”   Sample work - New York Times, Internal Dissent  Internal Dissent  and on the tariffs -   Retalitory Tariffs   Chris on a Sinica podcast - The China Journalist's China Journalist  

Bethany Allen-Ibrahimian - writer on foreign affairs, a lot on China.   Foreign Policy articles   and   Atlantic Magazine articles   Sample work - China is Exporting its Tian'anmen Censorship, and We Are All Victims   Exporting Censorship

Evan Osnos – staff writer at the New Yorker  and fellow at Brookings.  Personal Site  Author of Age of Ambition, acclaimed series of interviews with Chinese about the transformation. 

Bill Bishop -   editor and founder of Sinocism in 2011, one of the two best blogs on China news  Sinocism   He lived in China from 2005 to 2015, roughly three years prior to my term and about the same length of stay.  Fluent speaker.  Sinocism features daily stories from world media in English and Chinese, on most every topic of daily news interest.  Sample work – What it takes to be a good China watcher Good China Watcher podcast a podcast with Kaiser Kuo.  

Kaiser Kuo - is host of Sinica Podcast, with co-founder Jeremy Goldkorn.  The podcast is a weekly discussion of China current affairs  China File Sinica podcasts

Jeremy Goldkorn - edits SupChina, the other go-to daily China news source.  https://supchina.com/author/jeremygoldkorn/     https://jeremygoldkorn.com/category/china/   and   https://jeremygoldkorn.com/about/  

Danwei – blog on media and advertising, accompanying a marketing research firm,  founded by Jeremy Goldkorn  Danwei   Archives from 2003-2011 available.   The classic posts are worth looking at  Danwei classic posts

Jeremiah Jenne – writer and history teacher, based in Beijing since 2002.  Prolific writer on Chinese historical topics, and commentary on current affairs.      Personal site  Sample work – Kids Today, a review of the “young Chinese” books  Kids Today   July 1, 2018   and Boycotts and Barroom Brawls Boycotts and Brawls  May 10, 2018

ShanghaiScrap – personal blog of Adam Minter, writer who serves as Asian correspondent for Bloomberg and other major publications in the US.  Mostly on environmental issues.   Shanghai Scrap  Sample work – The Pavilion Wars, Atlantic Magazine, April 2009 (About the US pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010.  A little old, but a part of my experience in China as well.  Several students worked at the Expo, and many more attended Pavilion Wars

Eric Fish -  founder of Project Pengyou, a US-China student friendship organization, based in the US  Project Pengyou with China Hangup, a podcast with popular topics.  Sample work -  podcast   If You Are the One  fei chang wu rao  feichangwurao   and author of China’s Millennials – The Want Generation Want Generation  His blog, Sinostand seems to be on hiatus, but some good posts.  Sample work – 4 Things We Overlook about Tian’anmen Overlook About Tian'anmen  and  Are China’s Colleges Too Easy?  In The Economic Observer  College too easy?  April 1, 2013

History, Language and Culture Basics

 A short list …

Nicola di Cosmo – Researcher on the relations of imperial China to its steppe neighbors.  Before joining the Institute for Advanced Studies, diCosmo taught at Harvard and Cambridge.  Sample work - Ancient China and Its Enemies  Ancient China and Its Enemies

John K. Fairbank – widely acclaimed as having invented the field of China studies in the US.  China – A New History is his final work, written with Merle Goldman.  Fairbank taught at Harvard his entire career, and the Fairbank Center for China Studies is named after him.  Fairbank Center mission

Jonathan Spence – Emeritus Professor of History at Yale, author of The Search for Modern China   Search for Modern China   National Endowment for the Humanities bio -    National Endowment for the Humanities bio

Yuri Pines – Professor of Chinese history at University of Jerusalem.  Much of his work is available online.  Sample work – (with Gideon Shelach)  ‘Using the Past to Serve the Present’: Comparative Perspectives on Chinese and Western Theories of the Origins of the State. In Shaul Shaked, ed., Genesis and Regeneration: Essays on Conceptions of Origins.  Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Science and Humanities, 2005  Origins of the State  and  “The One That Pervades the All” in Ancient Chinese Political Thought: The Origins of “The Great Unity” Paradigm.  T’oung Pao LXXXVI.  and  Envisioning Eternal Empire.  Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Period.  Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009   Envisioning Eternal Empire

Richard Madsen - Professor of Sociology at University of California at San Diego.  Sample work - Morality and Power in a Chinese Village.     University of California Press, 1986.  This is an outstanding account of the confusion and anarchy that was the Cultural Revolution.    Co-author of Habits of the Heart, with Robert Bellah and others   Habits of the Heart    and   Confucian Conceptions of Civil Society.  Chapter 1 in Confucian Political Ethics, edited by Daniel A. Bell (2007). Confucian Conceptions of Civil Society     University web site

Victor Mair – Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at University of Pennsylvania.  He is the founder and editor of Sino-Platonic Papers, an occasional series containing original research from a variety of disciplines on Chinese history and philosophy.  University site   Sample work - Language and Ideology in Nationalist and Communist China, Sino-Platonic Papers No. 256, April, 2015  

David Pankenier -  taught intellectual history and cultural astronomy at Lehigh University.   Some of his work is available at  Academia site   Sample work -  The Cosmo-Political Background of Heaven’s Mandate.   and   ‘Astrology for an Empire: the ‘Treatise on the Celestial Offices’ in the Grand Scribe’s Records (ca. 100 BCE)’, eds. Nicholas Campion and Rolf Sinclair, Culture and Cosmos, Vol. 16 nos. 1 and 2, 2012   Culture and Cosmos

Albert Galvany -  Professor at University of the Basque Country, Spain   Sample work -  Sly Mouths and Silver Tongues: the Dynamics of Psychological Persuasion in Ancient China.  Political Rhetoric in Early China.   Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident  34, 2012 p. 15-40.   Available at http://journals.openedition.org/extremeorient/250   and  The court as a battlefield: The art of war and the art of politics in the Han Feizi.  Bulletin of the SOAS, University of London, 2017.  Court as a Battlefield

Li Liu -  professor of Chinese archeology at Stanford. University site  With Xingcan Chen, she wrote State Formation in Early China, describing the transition from tribal societies to state and empire.  Article version of book at  State Formation in Early China

Evelyn Rawski -  retired from University of Pittsburgh,  scholar particularly of Qing dynasty history.  Sample work - Education and Popular Literacy in Ch’ing China.  University of Michigan Press, 1979  Education and Literacy

Lu Xing – professor in rhetoric and communications at DePaul University  University site  Sample work -  Rhetoric in Ancient China, Fifth to Third Century B. C. E.: A Comparison with Greek Rhetoric​. University of South Carolina Press, 1998

The complicated Chinese Family Tree.  Off the Great Wall.  New Tang Dynasty television, an entertainment and news medium founded in 2001 by Falun Gong practitioners. News most decidedly not approved by CCP.   Although clearly not an academic or professional reference, this is too much fun to not serve as a reference.  Are you related to your grandmother’s sister’s daughter?   All the Off the Great Wall videos are fun   The Complicated Chinese Family Tree

David Keightley – was professor of Chinese history at University of California – Berkeley.  He was the preeminent American scholar of Shang dynasty oracle bones.  Sample work –  Art, Ancestors, and the Origins of Writing in China. Representations, vol. 56, Fall, 1996.   Art, Ancestors, and Writing  and Early Civilization in China: Reflections on how It Became Chinese. In Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization, edited by Paul S. Ropp. University of California Press, 1990,  Available at Harvard EdX site -  How did China become Chinese?

Fernand Braudel – One of the founders of the Annales school of historical scholarship – the longue duree as a principle determinant of culture and history. Necessary for consideration of China.   Sample work - The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, volume 2.  Harper Collins, 1976    Braudel - The Mediterranean World

Walter Ong – Though not a China scholar, Ong’s work on orality in cultures informs a view of the scholar-official in China as a privileged and sometimes oppressive class – writing as a tool of oppression, rather than equality.   Sample work -  Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen, 1982. Available  Orality and Literacy

Johanna Drucker –  Professor in the graduate school of education at UCLA.  Also not a China scholar, but an accessible story of the development of the alphabet at Art Meets Technology:  The History and Effects of the Alphabet.  Interview at Children of the Code website, September 12, 2003  Origins of the Alphabet

David Ze – Does not seem to have written much past the cited article, but takes the orality of Ong and applies it to Chinese cultural development.  I can’t agree with Ze entirely, but his views are largely persuasive.  Sample work -  Walter Ong's Paradigm and Chinese Literacy.  Canadian Journal of Communication.  20:4 (1995)  Orality in China

Alexis deTocqueville -  Well, ok, not quite history, and only slight references to China.  But not many better referents from the past for predictions about the future.  Sample work - Democracy in America, 1835. Translated by Henry Reeve.  The Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series, Jim Manis, Ed.,  2002   Democracy in America  Sample quote - “Among the laws that rule human societies there is one that seems more precise and clearer than all the others. In order that men remain civilized or become so, the art of associating must be developed and perfected among them in the same ratio as equality of conditions increases.” …. “In democratic countries the science of association is the mother of science; the progress of all the rest depends upon the progress it has made.”

Robert Kaplan – the foreign correspondent turned academic.  Now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.  Sample work -  Was Democracy Just a Moment?  Atlantic Magazine, December, 1997, Was Democracy Just a Moment?   Reminder that “democracy imported in a box” is not only a bad idea, but democracy itself requires care and attention that even the US and Britain can lose sight of.  Civil society is a prerequisite to democracy as we know it.    Personal web site

Mark S. Granovetter – Professor of sociology at Stanford, noted for his work on the spread of information in social networks   University site   Sample work - "The Strength of Weak Ties," American Journal of Sociology 78 (1973)      Strength of Weak Ties  

Francis Fukuyama -  Professor of political science at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford.  Forget the End of History argument – Fukuyama admits to an error in that regard. Sample work -   Social Capital and Civil Society.  IMF Working Paper 00/74.  IMF Institute, April, 2000, posted 2006 at  Social Capital and Civil Society   and Social Capital and Civil Society lecture prepared for IMF Conference on Second Generation Reforms, delivered at  The Institute of Public Policy, George Mason University October 1, 1999.    Social Capital and Civil Society lecture  and  America in Decay: The Sources of Political Dysfunction, Foreign Affairs September/October, 2014  Sources of American Decay  His books on the history of governance and its decay are good references.  The Origins of Political Order, 2011 and Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Present Day, 2014, both Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  Wiki - wiki on Origins of Political Order

 Australian National University and related  

Hands down, ANU has the most extensive, thoroughly integrated and insightful program of understanding China, in culture, literature, politics, and foreign and domestic policy.  The ANU programs and journals seems to be largely due to the rigorous work and high level of scholarship of Geremie Barme  wiki on Barme   and  University site

Geremie Barme  - The China Scholar  - founder, editor, scholar, writer, analyst. One could say, the China scholar’s China scholar. Barme is the founder of several China programs and journals.   Sample work - The Five Vermin 五蠹 Threatening China.  The China Story, at Australian Centre on China in the World, November 4, 2012  The Five Vermin

and    New China Newspeak.  The China Story.  Australian Centre on China in the World.  August 2, 2012   New China Newspeak

and   Interview with Barme by Evan Osnos, New Yorker Magazine, September 29, 2009, on the rationale for military parades in our times   Osnos New Yorker interview