Tim Beal homepage

Photo by Lucy Kynge, Beijing, 25 February 2006

Tim Beal: bionote

After completing an MA(Hons) in modern Chinese studies at the University of Edinburgh, Tim Beal went on to do a Diploma in Business Administration followed by a PhD on China's terms of trade. He subsequently studied Japanese at Sheffield University and was Ferranti Research Fellow at the Centre for Japanese Studies at Stirling University. He has taught on subjects ranging from Chinese politics to international marketing at universities in Britain, Japan, China and New Zealand, where he moved in 1987. He was a senior lecturer in the School of Marketing and International Business teaching mainly international marketing, and Asian business environment. He retired in July 2009 but continued part time as a Research Fellow for a period working on a project concerning New Zealand marketing of services to China and India funded by the New Zealand Foundation for Research, Science, and Technology. Before retirement he also coordinated a distance course on International Marketing MARK352 which is still running. In his final years at Victoria University he also worked on a research project on wine in Asia entitled 'Wine Marker of Social Change'. The major component of that was a study of the wine market in Japan and Singapore funded by the Asia: New Zealand Foundation. For the first three editions he was the New Zealand member of a team producing the Asia Pacific version of a leading textbook on International Marketing.

He was foundation director of the Centre for Asia/Pacific Law and Business (CAPLAB) at Victoria University of Wellington, 1992-98. He was Secretary of the NZ Asian Studies Society 1995-8 during which time he edited the 2nd edition of the NZASIA Directory of Asian Studies. He created the society's website and a web version of the Directory. He is currently Member of the Advisory Board of the NZ Journal of Asian Studies and a contributing editor of the Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. From 1999 to 2012 he edited and published the newsletter Pyongyang Report . He was a founder and for many years a coordinator of The Asia Forum. He has been an Honorary Research Fellow of the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, a member of the Council of the Asian Studies Institute of Victoria University, Honorary Research Fellow, Political Economy Research Centre (PERC), University of Sheffield and member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Islamic Marketing.

He was a recipient of a Canadian Government Canada-Asia-Pacific Award for 2003 to research Canada-DPRK relations. From September to December 2003 he was a visiting professor in the College of Business Administration, Korea University, Seoul. He also did occasional teaching at the European Overseas Campus in Bali of the University of Flensburg. He is a member of the National Forum of CSCAP New Zealand , the NZ arm of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific.

He has written numerous articles and two books on Korea published by Pluto Press in London; North Korea: The Struggle against American Power, in 2005 and Crisis in Korea: America, China and the Risk of War in 2011.

In October 2010 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Regional Economic Studies (CRES) of the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP), Seoul on a project entitled ‘Korea's FTAs and their implications for the Korean wine market’.

In November 2010 he paid a short visit to the DPRK (his fifth) with Hon Matt Robson. He has long been active in the NZ-DPRK Society. He has been Secretary, Vice Chairman and in January 2016 he took over as Chairman from the Rev Don Borrie, who retired and became Patron. He is an invited occasional columnist for the Washington based website NK News and he is frequently interviewed by the media , especially Russia Today in Moscow.

He is currently working on a book on the New Zealand China economic Relationship with Dr Kang Yuanfei of Massey University for Palgrave Macmillan.

He maintains a number of websites, the major one being on Asian Geopolitics

Recent activities and publications

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Last amended: 21 January 2016