Vijay Vaitheeswaran is an award-winning correspondent for The Economist. He opened the magazine’s Shanghai bureau in 2012 and currently serves as China business and finance editor. His editorial responsibilities range from business and finance to science, technology and innovation. He also serves as chairman of The Economist’s provocative series of conferences on innovation known as the Ideas Economy.

Mr Vaitheeswaran joined the editorial staff in 1992 as a London-based Latin America correspondent, and he opened the magazine’s first regional bureau in Mexico City. From 1998 to 2006, he covered the politics, economics, business and technology of energy and the environment. From 2007 to 2011 his portfolio encompassed innovation, global health, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.

Mr Vaitheeswaran is a life member at the Council on Foreign Relations, an adviser on sustainability and innovation to the World Economic Forum at Davos and a regular speaker at the Clinton Global Initiative. He has taught at the New York University Stern School of Business, and his commentaries have appeared on NPR and the BBC, and in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and the New York Times.

He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a National Merit Scholar and earned a degree in engineering. While at MIT, he was named a Harry S Truman Presidential Scholar by the US Congress.