Frank Sieren

Frank Sieren, bestselling author, documentary film maker and Asia specialist is senio asia columnist for Handelsblatt, Germany’s leading business daily. He also writes for DIE ZEIT, the country´s leading weekly newspaper. He has been living in China since 1994. The London Times calls him one of the “decisive China authorities“.

Frank Sieren, who studied political science with a focus on economics in Berlin is one of the few German journalists, who has reported on China’s rise first hand as he accompanies this remarkable process from his unique Beijing vantage point.

With his bestseller “The China Code – How the Booming Middle Kingdom is Changing Germany”, Sieren kicked off a literary trend looking not only at how China itself is changing, but how China is changing the world. “Sieren has started a missing debate”, commented the German news magazine Stern. The book topped the economic bestseller lists for several months. The book has been translated into five different languages including a censored version for the Mainland and an uncensored version for Taiwan.

In February 2008, Frank Sieren’s book “The China Shock – The End of a Westernized World” was published. In this book he anticipated the course of the economic crisis: “The United States is sliding into a major crisis, while the German economic recovery is coming to an end. Yet China’s economy continues to boom and resist economic downturn. ” “A brilliant book” asserts the Southern German Times, while German newspaper Handelsblatt comments: “Sieren skillfully and engagingly tells the story of how the Chinese are taking advantage of the mistakes made by the Western nations. He reports on people and countries, linking episodes taken from everyday life to their historical and politicalbackground.“

Frank Sieren also convinced Germany’s elder statesman Helmut Schmidt to share his insights on China.

The 88-year old Schmidt granted the young author Frank Sieren access to unpublished meeting transcripts of his numerous talks with Chinese leaders. Helmut Schmidt is the last living German to have met with Mao Zedong. An account of these extraordinary experiences, unfolding over long discussions with Sieren, resulted in the book “Neighbour China”, which has been amongst the top bestsellers in its class since coming onto the market. It has also been translated into Chinese and has been read by China’s President Hu Jintao.

Frank Sieren’s 45-minute documentary film “China’s Grip on Africa – The Fight for Influence, Power, Natural Resources and Markets” was broadcast by ZDF on the occasion of the G-8 Summit in 2007, and had a viewership of over 10 percent on German TV. It has also been broadcast in English language around the world. His 45-minute film on China and Iran “Beijing Opera on a Persian Carpet” aired in the fall of 2008 on ZDF and was screened atthe South-by-Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas. This was followed by “China’s Young Elite in the Porsche Lane – Driving Fast on Germany’s Autobahn” in autumn 2009 and “Inside Asian Sweatshops – The Struggle to Enforce Workers’ Rights” in winter 2010. In 2009 Sieren hosted the Beijing produced international talk show, Asiatalk, in German and English.