DAVID Chipp was a former editor for Reuters and the first non-communist reporter to be based in Beijing after the revolution.
Chipp scooped the world with his interview with the imprisoned last emperor of China, Pu Yi, and mixed with the Communis
t leadership of Mao Zedong, but was equally at home at the Henley Regatta.
Writing in retirement, Chipp said of his interview with the ageing Pu: "If not the best or most important story I wrote from China, it was probably the strangest and most original."
Chipp, born in 1927 at Kew in London, spent his early years in Australia, where he was a contemporary of Rupert Murdoch at Geelong Grammar School.
He returned to Britain on a merchant ship at the age of 17 and joined the Middlesex regiment in 1944, determined not to miss the Second World War.
Demobilised in 1947, he went to Cambridge University and graduated with a degree in history.
He joined Reuters in 1950 as a sports reporter and two years later was sent to south-east Asia. He opened the agency's post-war bureau in Rangoon and covered fighting in Burma and Indo-China before moving in 1956 to China.
His tale of those years was recounted in his book The Day I Stepped on Mao's Toes, a title illustrating just how close accredited reporters were allowed to get to the Communist leaders in those days.
He returned to Britain four years later and in 1968 was appointed editor of Reuters – a post he held until 1969.
Then he was asked to become editor-in-chief of the Press Association news agency (PA), a job he held until his retirement in 1986.
He is credited with reviving the style and fortunes of PA during his tenure, and was renowned for his fire and enthusiasm.
He was quoted as saying at his first PA editorial conference: "Journalism should be fun and if we don't find it so, we might as well be bank clerks."
The full article contains 350 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
