Nikkei Asia has won the Hinrich Foundation Award for Distinguished Reporting on Trade from the National Press Foundation for its “fascinating” coverage of how the pandemic, war and the escalating U.S.-China strife over semiconductors combined to upend global supply chains in 2022.
Nikkei Asia reporter Cheng Ting-Fang accepted the award at the NPF awards dinner February 23, 2023:
The Guardian newspaper of Nigeria won honorable mention for a three-month-long investigation that exposed how herbal products marketed in Nigeria as hailing from Ghana were actually manufactured in Nigeria and falsely labeled.
Nikkei Asia reporters Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li had been covering Apple’s iPhone production woes in China in 2021. Their deep expertise on how the phones are manufactured and where their components are sourced was put to the test when Moscow attacked Kyiv on Feb. 24, 2022. Less than 36 hours later, Cheng and Li had filed a scoop from Japan revealing that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would jeopardize the global supply of industrial gases that are essential to the production of semiconductors.
The story noted that most of the noble gases and precious metals required for semiconductors came from Russia or Ukraine and that 70% of global supplies of neon were controlled by Ukraine. Kim Jaewon reported from Seoul on the South Korean companies affected by the industrial gas shortages.
Another story, titled “The Resilience Myth,” showed that supply chains are not actually chains but vast multinational webs that are so interdependent that the idea that decoupling semiconductor technology from China and reshoring it to Western nations is impossible, at least for now.
National Press Foundation judges called Cheng and Li’s work “fascinating.”
They noted the difficulty involved in taking the notion of decoupling — a critical issue for business and the international world order, but still a hazy one –- and breaking it down to the nuts and bolts of complex trading relations with the precision and detail required for a well-informed business readership. Judges also praised Nikkei’s infographics as adding significant value to a complicated story.
Judges Richard Dunham, Elaine Kurtenbach and Derek Wallbank awarded an honorable mention to reporter Gbenga Salau of The Guardian of Nigeria for his Sunday magazine story on labeling fraud. They noted the sheer ambition of a single reporter or news organization tackling the vast and underreported problem of labeling fraud – and catching perpetrators red-handed.
The Hinrich Foundation Award for Distinguished Reporting on Trade was created in 2019 to recognize exemplary journalism that illuminates and advances the public’s understanding of international business and trade. Previous winners include a Washington Post team in 2020 and a Wall Street Journal team in 2021.
Ting-Fang and Li will accept the award at the National Press Foundation’s annual awards ceremony, which will be held in person in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 23, 2023.
