John Pomfret

Outlook Editor, Washington Post

John Pomfret is the editor of the Washington Post’s weekend opinion section, Outlook. Prior to that, he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years, covering wars in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Congo, Sri Lanka, Iraq, southwestern Turkey and northeastern Iran.

Mr. Pomfret has spent seven years covering China as a journalist — one in the late 1980s during the Tiananmen Square protests and then from 1998 to 2003 as the bureau chief for The Washington Post in Beijing.

He speaks, reads and writes Mandarin, having spent two years at Nanjing University in the early 1980s as part of one of the first groups of American students to study in China. He also studied at Stanford University.

In 2003, Mr. Pomfret was awarded the Osborne Elliot Award for the best coverage of Asia by the Asia Society. He is the author of “Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China.”