Ian Johnson is deputy China bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal and is based in Beijing. He joined the Journal and The Asian Wall Street Journal as a reporter in the Beijing bureau in January 1997 and was named to his current assignment in 1999.

Mr. Johnson began his journalism career as a reporter and editor for the Independent Florida Alligator in 1981. He was a reporter for the Orlando (FL) Sentinel in 1985-86, and later in 1986, he moved to Taiwan and taught English. From 1988 to 1992, he was a free-lance correspondent in Berlin for the Baltimore Sun and the St. Petersburg (FL) Times. He joined the Baltimore Sun in 1992 as New York bureau chief and moved to Beijing as bureau chief in 1994.

In 1997, Mr. Johnson was a member of a Journal team that won the Overseas Press Club's Malcolm Forbes Award for business reporting from abroad for coverage of the Asian financial crisis. He is a member of the Foreign Correspondents Club of China and the Overseas Press Club.

Born in Montreal, Canada, Mr. Johnson received a bachelor's degree in Asian studies from the University of Florida. He earned a master's degree in Chinese studies from Freie Universitaet Berlin. He is fluent in Chinese and German and proficient in French and has done advanced Chinese language study at the Mandarin Training Center in Taipei, Taiwan, and intermediate and advanced German language study at Hartnack Schule in Berlin. He has also taken courses in financial accounting from the New York Society of Security Analysts.