Geoff Hiscock

As a youngster growing up in Sydney, Australia, I knew what I wanted to be: a journalist and eventually a foreign correspondent. I cut my teeth on a country newspaper in 1965 at age 17, and I've now been writing about Asian business for 40-plus years, since my first exposure to the region in 1969. I'd just quit my job as a journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald and was on my way from Australia to Japan via Southeast Asia. When I reached Bangkok after travelling through Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, I was smitten by what for me was a strange and wonderful new environment. It was a time of great change -- the war in Vietnam, the spillover into Laos and Cambodia, the Cultural Revolution in China, racial tensions in Singapore and Malaysia -- so I decided to stay in Bangkok for a while. I've been working in or on the region ever since, from Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan and Australia. During the 1970s and 1980s, I spent eight years in Japan, concentrating on North Asia. These days, I have a special interest in India and its relationship with China. Economically, India is well on its way to a place among the 21st century giants of Asia. But how it handles such issues as education, social inclusion, environmental protection, corruption, terrorism and regional rivalries will be pivotal to its progress. In the last couple of years I've expanded my editorial coverage to incorporate energy and resources, including food and water, and the competition for these scarce resources. The culmination of that reporting is my latest book, "Earth Wars: The Battle for Global Resources," which was published internationally by John Wiley & Sons (May-June 2012). In between books, I file as a freelance journalist for a number of media outlets, including The Australian and CNN.com.