A grave new world
- Where: Finlayson Meetings -hall, Tampere
- When: Mon Sep 22 at 6 pm
- Register at www.skr.fi/kutsu Use code PI2209 when registering.
A deadly serious new world. Did Donald Trump make China great again? In conversation: Rick Dunham (left), professor of journalism at Tsinghua University and American journalist, and Mika Hentunen, YLE correspondent and author of the book Kiinan maailma (The World of China).
Rick Dunham
Rick Dunham (pictured left) is a long-time White House correspondent and political journalist from the US who currently runs the Global Business Journalism programme at Tsinghua University in China (Peking). He also works as a senior visiting professor in the Tsinghua School of Journalism and Communication.
As a journalist, he is a frequent analyst on topics of global business, politics and journalism, offering commentary on international television networks and multimedia news platforms. As a journalism educator, he has trained professional journalists, students and professors in locations including the United States, China, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Lebanon and the Philippines.
Before beginning his China assignment in 2013, Professor Dunham was a veteran Washington journalist and former president of the National Press Club. He covered the White House for Business Week magazine and the Houston Chronicle. He served as chairman of the steering committee of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a leading advocate for media rights.
Dunham is the author of the textbook, “Multimedia Reporting” (Springer, 2020) and co-editor of Springer’s Tsinghua Global Business Journalism book series. He wrote “The Global Business Journalism Stylebook” (Tsinghua University, 2024) and is co-editor of “The Routledge Companion to Business Journalism” (Routledge, 2024). He also has contributed to five earlier books.
From 1992 to July 2007, Mr. Dunham was a Washington correspondent for Business Week, covering issues such as American politics, international economics, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Clinton, Bush and Obama White Houses. From 2007 to 2013 he was Washington bureau chief of the Houston Chronicle, where he created the popular political site “Texas on the Potomac.” He also served as Hearst Newspapers Washington bureau chief from 2009 to 2012. He was chosen as one of the top regional reporters in the United States by the Washington Post in a 2013 article.
Mr. Dunham earlier spent seven years in the Washington bureau of the Dallas Times Herald. He also worked on the city desk reporter in Dallas and the state capital bureau in Austin. During three decades in Washington, he appeared on most major television and radio channels, offering news analysis. From 2005 to 2009, he wrote a “Letter from America” column for the Finnish newspaper Aamulehti explaining U.S. politics and culture to an international audience.
Mika Hentunen
Foreign correspondent Mika Hentunen, whose career has already included seven postings around the world, is a familiar face to Finnish television audiences. In the summer of 2025, he became the Russia correspondent in Moscow for YLE, the Finnish public service broadcasting company. Previously, he has worked in the political power centres of Brussels, Washington and Beijing, and as a NATO Special Correspondent based in Helsinki.
Hentunen has co-authored a non-fiction book with Kristiina Helenius, called Kiinan maailma: tulevaisuuden supervalta ja sen tavoitteet (The Next Superpower. China’s Grand Plan to Reorder the World, not yet translated into English), which was published in Finnish in May 2025. This collaboration between two experienced journalists, business experts and eyewitnesses to international affairs shone a light on topical issues. In the book, they discuss superpower relations, the state of democracy and Chinese innovation.
In addition to reporting on news and current affairs, Hentunen has written screenplays, TV and radio documentaries, four non-fiction books, two thrillers and translated the best-selling book on business, Snakes in Suits, into Finnish (Käärmeet liituraidassa).
Hentunen actively shares his expertise as a teacher and lecturer with audiences around the world. He is a member of the NATOpoll research team, which is carrying out a four-year project to study Finns’ opinions on the defensive alliance. He is also godfather to the Kymi Libri book fair (summer 2025).
