HONG KONG -- The Nikkei Asian Review received a pair of journalism prizes on Wednesday from the Hong Kong-based Society of Publishers in Asia, or SOPA.

Commentaries by Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in the U.S. and a Shanghai native, won the award for excellence in opinion writing at SOPA's annual gala. Amid last year's market turmoil, Pei contributed sharply written pieces on China's economic challenges and offered potential solutions. In one article, he looked at how a potential hard landing could speed up badly needed reforms and deflate Beijing's geopolitical ambitions.