In December 2013, she was appointed BBC News' first editor for China based in Beijing. She resigned from this post at the end of December 2017/beginning of January 2018, citing pay discrimination over gender for the BBC's international editors. Her pay was £92,000 in 2009 and it was £135,000 in 2017, but she said the dispute was about parity and not about the amount. Jeremy Bowen, the BBC Middle East editor, earned somewhere between £150,000 and £199,000, while North American editor Jon Sopel earned somewhere between £200,000 and £249,000. The BBC had offered a 33% pay rise but, according to Gracie, had failed to offer equal pay. The dispute occurred against a background of complaints about excessive pay for some employees of the publicly funded BBC. The BBC stated it had "inadvertently" underpaid her by £100,000 because the senior journalist was “in development.”