Howard Waring French (born October 14, 1957) has been an American journalist, author and photographer as well as professor since 2008 at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

French has also reported on the political and social affairs of China, where he covered the growth of civil society, the government crackdown on dissent in the Dongzhou protests of 2005, and the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, among other topics.

French jointed The New York Times in 1986 and was its bureau chief for the Caribbean and Central America from 1990 to 1994, covering Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and numerous other countries.

In addition to covering China as Shanghai Bureau Chief for the Times, French worked as a weekly columnist on regional affairs for the International Herald Tribune.

A book containing this work, Disappearing Shanghai: Photographs and Poems of an Intimate Way of Life, was published in 2012, in collaboration with the novelist and poet Qiu Xiaolong.