Reuters' David Chipp dies at 81

David Chipp, who had died aged 81, was the first Western correspondent to report from China after the founding of the new republic in 1949 and later an inspiring editor-in-chief of the Press Association(PA), Britain's national news agency, for 17 years.

Shortly after he was stationed in Beijing in 1956, Chipp got a Chinese name, Qidewei, given by then premier Zhou Enlai. He had interviewed Puyi, the last emperor of Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), and was one of the major sources of the West to know China in the late 1950s. He reportedly had stamped onto the foot of Chairman Mao Zedong in the Zhongnanhai, the central headquarters for the Communist Party of China and the central government.

PA had slid into a depressed state under the stewardship of an accountant when Chipp struck a fresh note by telling his first editorial conference in 1969 that journalism should be fun, then adding: "If we do not find it so, we might as well be bank clerks. He made news stories shorter and brighter, gave reporters bylines and encouraged them to slip out from under the umbrella of the political establishment.