Clifford, Mark

Mark L. Clifford is the Executive Director of the Asia Business Council, a Hong Kong-based organization of senior executives. Council members’ companies directly employ about 2 million people and a have a valuation of over $2 trillion. Council research focuses on subjects affecting the long-term competitiveness of Asia, including, energy, environment, food, corporate governance, health, and innovation policy. Clifford, who has been at the Council since 2007, was one of the authors of the Council’s book Building Energy Efficiency: Why Green Buildings Are Key to Asia’s Future. The book, which was also published in Chinese, looks at the economic and environmental importance of greater energy efficiency in Asia’s buildings. He wrote ‘South Korea’s Green Revolution’ for the recently published book, Korea 2020: Global Perspectives for the Next Decade. In Hong Kong, Clifford was Editor-in-Chief of the South China Morning Post and Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of The Standard. Previously, he was the Hong Kong-based Asia Regional Editor for BusinessWeek, with overall responsibility for the magazine’s bureaus from Bombay to Tokyo. Clifford came to Asia in 1987 as a Seoul, Korea-based correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review. Clifford is the co-author, with former WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi, of China and the WTO: Changing China, Changing World Trade, which was published at the time of China’s WTO accession in December 2001. Clifford’s other books include Troubled Tiger: Businessmen, Bureaucrats and Generals in South Korea and Meltdown: Asia's Boom, Bust and Beyond (co-authored with Pete Engardio). He contributed chapters to China’s Century and Japan in Asia and received the Overseas Press Club Award for best foreign business reporting. Clifford is an honors graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and was a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University in 1986-87. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.