Alice Su is senior China correspondent and co-host of the Drum Tower podcast for The Economist. She is based in Taipei, covering China and Taiwan. She was previously Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. Before that, she spent five years freelancing in the Middle East.

Su has reported from Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Tunisia, China, Germany, South Sudan, Pakistan, the United States, Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. She won the Asia Society’s 2021 Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Journalism on Asia, the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2020 Sigma Delta Chi Award for excellence in foreign correspondence, and the Society of Publishers in Asia’s 2021 Award for Young Journalists for her coverage of China.

She won the 2014 Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize (gold) from the United Nations Correspondents Association for her work on refugee survival in Jordan and Lebanon. She was a 2016 Livingston Award finalist for her work on youth extremism in Jordan and Tunisia. She is a seven-time grantee from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting and was an African Great Lakes Reporting Fellow with the International Women's Media Foundation in 2016.

Su grew up between California, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. She graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, where she wrote a thesis on soft power and public diplomacy in U.S. and Sino-Egyptian relations. She earned a Master’s in Chinese Politics and International Relations as a Yenching Scholar at Peking University, where her work focused on Chinese relations with the Islamic world. She has also studied Arabic, Persian and Middle Eastern politics in Oxford, Morocco, Oman and Iran, and worked with refugees in Jordan and Iraq through Jesuit Refugee Service and ARDD-Legal Aid.

Su is HEFAT certified through TYR Solutions, with support from the Rory Peck Trust and the IWMF’s inaugural Howard G. Buffet Fund for Women Journalists. She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, proficient in Levantine Arabic, and learning Uyghur.