MacKinnon takes over as CNN Beijing chief

Cable News Network's (CNN) Beijing bureau chief Andrea Koppel is to be replaced by Rebecca MacKinnon from next month.

Koppel will become CNN's US State Department correspondent in Washington DC, with MacKinnon being promoted from the Beijing bureau's producer to the role of bureau chief and correspondent.

MacKinnon was raised in Beijing and was a Fulbright scholar in Taiwan, where she worked as a freelance journalist.

She had been Beijing bureau producer since 1992.

One of MacKinnon's first on-air reporting assignments was the death of Deng Xiaoping last February.

She will share CNN's mainland coverage with Hong Kong bureau chief and correspondent Mike Chinoy, who also formerly ran the network's Beijing office.