Anthony Kuhn

Foreign Correspondent Anthony Kuhn is currently based in Jakarta, Indonesia, where he opened NPR’s first bureau in that country in 2010. From there, he covers Southeast Asia, and the gamut of natural and human diversity stretching from Myanmar to Fiji and Vietnam to Tasmania.

Prior to Jakarta, Kuhn spent five years based in Beijing as a NPR foreign correspondent reporting on China and Northeast Asia. In that time Kuhn covered stories including the affect of China’s resurgence on rest of the world, diplomacy and the environment, the ancient cultural traditions that still exert a profound influence in today's China, and the people's quest for social justice in a period of rapid modernization and uneven development. His beat also included such diverse topics as popular theater in Japan and the New York Philharmonic’s 2008 musical diplomacy tour to Pyongyang, North Korea.

In 2004-2005, Kuhn was based in London for NPR. He covered stories ranging from the 2005 terrorist attacks on London's transport system to the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles. In the spring of 2005, he reported from Iraq on the formation of the post-election interim government.

Kuhn began contributing reports to NPR from China in 1996. During that time, he also worked as an accredited freelance reporter with the Los Angeles Times, and as Beijing correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review.

In what felt to him a previous incarnation, Kuhn once lived on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and walked down Broadway to work in Chinatown as a social worker. He majored in French literature at Washington University in St. Louis. He gravitated to China in the early 1980s, studying first at the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute and later at the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies in Nanjing.

Pages

2:14pm

Wed August 10, 2011
Asia

Indonesian Family Pays Price For Exposing Cheating

At the end of the summer exam season in Indonesia, education officials announced extraordinary results: a 99 percent pass rate for national high school entrance exams.

But among many Indonesians, the claim aroused scorn and suspicion of the country's education system, thanks in part to a young man named Alifah Achmad Maulana.

Alifah rides home from school most days on the back of his dad's motorbike. The pair tool past banana trees and hanging laundry to their small house in Gadel village outside Indonesia's second-largest city, Surabaya.

Read more

6:00am

Sun July 24, 2011
NPR Story

Asian Nations Agree To South China Sea Protocol

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is claiming some modest successes after several days of talks with Asian leaders in Bali, Indonesia. The issues that stood out included territorial disputes in the South China Sea, Myanmar and North Korea.

After three days of talks, Clinton noted that tensions over the South China Sea issue have eased since last year, thanks in part to nonbinding guidelines that China and ASEAN approved Thursday to handle the dispute.

Read more

5:23pm

Tue July 5, 2011
Asia

Indonesian School Accused Of Ties To Banned Group

Originally published on Wed May 30, 2012 8:12 am

A student's call to prayer echoes through an empty mosque at dusk. The scene is Al-Zaytun, Indonesia's largest "pesantren," or Islamic boarding school. More than 6,000 students in 12 grades study at its sprawling campus in Indramayu, West Java. They memorize the Koran, and they study computers, human rights and journalism.

Read more

7:32am

Sun July 3, 2011
Asia

In Thailand, A Campaign For An Exiled Leader

Thai music blasts from a sound truck, as villagers in red shirts dance, listen to speeches, and eat sticky rice and spicy local cuisine at a local Buddhist temple. The residents of Baan Suksomboon, in northeast Udon Thani province, are here to declare that this is a "Red Village," organized in support of opposition candidate Yingluck Shinawatra. Several polls show her with a substantial lead.

But the faces on the campaign posters here are not Yingluck Shinawatra's. They belong to Thaksin Shinawatra, her older brother, who was ousted as prime minister in 2006.

Read more

3:29pm

Mon June 20, 2011
Asia

Thailand To Tattoo Tourists: Think Before You Ink

Many of Thailand's tattoo tourists find their way to Bangkok's Khao San Road, where tattoo parlors are nestled among the Internet cafes, noodle stalls and other backpacker hangouts. A visitor along this road might pick up a tattoo, along with some beads and dreadlocks, and perhaps even a nose ring.

The Thais are famously welcoming to visitors. But last month, Thai Culture Minister Nipit Intarasombat called for a ban on foreigners getting religious tattoos that offend Thai people.

Read more

Pages