In the late 1990s, the media landscape in China was overtaken by a wave of commercialization and marketization as the Chinese government sought new ways to support otherwise expensive newspaper and broadcasting operations — and to encourage a “media industry” (an entirely new concept at the time) that was more suited to the country’s rapidly developing economy. One after another, media companies launched market-oriented reforms. And while media groups, most linked to provincial and city governance structures, pursued economic benefits, many working within these emerging outlets began embracing something less expected: journalistic professionalism. 

The new generation of media outlets quickly distinguished themselves from their previous roles as propaganda outlets, serving growing, and increasingly affluent, audiences. Perhaps the most representative of these changes was the Nanfang Media Group (南方報業傳媒集團), which was known at the time for its suite of professional media outlets, including Southern Weekly (南方周末), was once praised by The New York Times as “China’s most influential liberal newspaper.” During this period, many liberal intellectuals used these media platforms to disseminate new ideas, and to speak more critically on social and political issues. 

Veteran journalist Li Sipan (李思磐) joined the Nanfang Media Group in 2002, working there in various roles for a decade. But even in the space afforded by this relatively free and open environment, she keenly felt frustration at the systematic neglect of women’s rights. Later, inspired by Sun Yat-sen University Professor Ai Xiaoming (艾晓明), a women’s rights activist and filmmaker, Li Sipan and a group of female media professionals established the feminist platform Women Awakening Network (新媒體女性). They conducted advocacy on women’s issues, organized training workshops for female journalists, and hosted exhibitions and lectures — all while actively producing critical reporting on gender-related topics.

The period of relative openness proved to be short-lived. Following a cascade of events — including the 2013 controversy over the censoring of the New Year special issue at Southern Weekly (南方周末), and the 2015 “Feminist Five” incident — China’s market-oriented media experienced a rapidly shrinking public discourse space. Feminist voices came under severe suppression, and the Women Awakening Network also faced mounting pressure. Li Sipan was forced to leave the NGO in 2018 to take a university teaching job. On May 21, 2021, the Women Awakening Network Weibo account suspended regular updates. Its final post was a repost about the Zhu Jun (朱軍) sexual harassment case.

Li Sipan sat down with Tian Jian (田間), the China Media Project’s Chinese-language outlet on journalism and media, and CMP researcher Dalia Parete to discuss the absence of feminist consciousness in China’s liberal media. Speaking as both a feminist activist and an investigative journalist, she offered her observations and insights on China’s feminist movement and women’s journalism since the 2000s.

Tian Jian/CMP: Chinese media institutions were historically male-dominated. Did you face any challenges as a woman?

Li Sipan:  I started working in the investigative department of Southern Metropolis Daily (南方都市報) in 2007. At that time, there were only two female reporters in the department — one in Guangzhou and another at a different bureau. The female reporter in Guangzhou was happy to have another woman join, noting that the constant presence of a large group of men in a smoke-filled room had made her feel very uncomfortable.

We didn’t have to work fixed office hours, and back then, every Monday, those of us who weren’t traveling for work would have dinner together. We were a really tight-knit group — everyone was good friends, and our work and personal lives overlapped quite a bit. But as a woman, I still felt a bit isolated. When we’d eat together, it was a male-dominated scene where the guys would drink heavily, competing to see who could drink more until they were making fools of themselves. Of course, the younger generation probably doesn’t do this anymore. But the way the men talked to each other often left us feeling awkward and quiet. They would casually toss around words like “beautiful” or “sexy” and other random, totally inappropriate words to refer to us.

This divide was also quite evident professionally. During the era of market-oriented journalism, social affairs and legal reporting were important beats that could easily enhance a journalist’s reputation. Since this type of reporting often involved cases of wrongful conviction and judicial injustice, it aligned with the traditional Chinese ideal that intellectuals shouldering moral responsibility and upholding justice, making it easier to capture readers’ attention and achieve notable results.

This type of reporting was typically easier for men to excel in. Public opinion supervision at that time was primarily conducted through cross-regional reporting, which required dealing with local officials. There was a common understanding that male reporters could drink with these officials until they became like sworn brothers — after some chest-thumping and shoulder-patting, they might receive news tips or key documents. I would also engage with officials, but honestly, many of these official drinking sessions were quite crude, with rampant sexual harassment, dirty jokes, and inappropriate physical contact. This made things really difficult for women, so I preferred to accept less-than-perfect results rather than drink with male officials.

The kinds of stories we covered back then were completely different from today’s. A large proportion of coverage focused on rural issues, whereas now approximately 90 percent of topics center on the urban middle class.

What’s particularly interesting is that many of the male reporters in the investigative department back then were quite legendary figures. Some had previously sold fruit for a living, others had never formally attended university, but they excelled at breaking through barriers and “getting the scoop.” However, the female reporters had somewhat different backgrounds—the women around us typically had stronger educational credentials. Most of the men held bachelor’s degrees, while quite a few of the women had master’s degrees. I originally joined the investigative department at Southern Metropolis Daily because the department head wanted someone who could cover intellectual affairs, civil society issues, and Greater China stories. They liked that I knew Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and Singapore, so I even spent some time reporting on Taiwan. As the Global Media Monitoring Project has observed, although I also covered politics as a female reporter, my assignments were still relatively “soft” — culture and society oriented — compared to the hard-hitting stories assigned to male reporters.

TJ/CMP: Why did you become so focused on women’s issues?

Li: It’s a long story. Feminism has appealed to me since middle school, probably. When I was in university and they held the World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, I wrote to the organizing committee asking for materials. My writing and studies were related to women’s issues, too. But what pushed me to take action was dealing with this male-dominated newsroom culture.

Nanfang Media Group was considered the most progressive media organization at that time. What impressed me about them was this: when I was in Shanghai, local newspapers would refer to migrant workers as “blindly flowing outsiders” (外來盲流), which I found to be an extremely discriminatory term. But when I arrived in Guangzhou and began reading Southern Metropolis Daily, I noticed they didn’t treat migrant workers as a special or marginalized group. Their reporting would provide detailed portraits of individual migrant workers, including where they came from, what kind of work they did, which factory they worked at, and so on.

Later, I realized that even in Guangzhou’s press industry — which seemed to be the freest in China — there were many gender-related aspects that made me feel uncomfortable. For example, in 2005, one district implemented gender education where, during exercise breaks, girls were required to dance while boys practiced martial arts. Several reputable newspapers in Guangzhou reported this as a progressive development.

There was also the Peking University minority language program admissions controversy, where parents protested because female students needed admission scores dozens of points higher than male students. At the time, Southern Metropolis Daily‘s editorial department was extremely progressive — constantly discussing political reform — and yet they published a commentary arguing this wasn’t gender discrimination. Also in 2005, when China was amending the Law on the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests (婦女權利保障法), women’s organizations worked tremendously hard to include anti-sexual harassment clauses. But Southern Metropolis Daily basically said it was ridiculous —“wu li tou”— like something out of a Stephen Chow (周星馳) martial arts comedy.

I sincerely believed in the Nanfang Media Group philosophy. It provided journalists with tremendous freedom. I had a lot of personal growth there, and I formed some of the most important friendships of my life. But regarding gender issues, it was problematic in so many ways. Southern Metropolis Daily had several female editorial board members, but the journalistic culture remained very male-centered. Even the female leaders lacked sensitivity to gender issues. Like leaders in many mainstream institutions, while these women may have demonstrated more empathetic leadership styles compared to men, professionally they felt compelled to perform after the pattern of their male counterparts  —perhaps even consciously or unconsciously distancing themselves from their female identities. In essence, everyone considered women’s rights unimportant, viewing gender equality as communist overreach — a failed ideological agenda.

Actually, I preferred being a reporter, but I started writing opinion pieces because of the Peking University minor languages program incident. I couldn’t sit still without writing about it, and that later became my standard response whenever I wrote commentaries. I wrote the piece, but Southern Metropolis Daily wouldn’t publish it, so I took it to Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post (東方早報) instead. The editor there said I wrote well, but he also said [giving his sense of why it couldn’t be published]: “What you have there isn’t liberalism — it’s anti-communist.” 

TJ/CMP: How did Women Awakening Network come about?

Li: The turning point was getting to know Professor Ai Xiaoming. Professor Ai was working tirelessly to transform the media reporting culture at the time. She once organized a seminar specifically about Southern Weekly’s misogynistic advertisements and invited the then editor-in-chief Xiangxi (向熹) to participate. But in reality, no one in the media industry would actually endorse that kind of approach.

Later, Professor Ai collaborated with the British Council to bring in BBC experts for training on media and gender. The establishment of Women Awakening Network (新媒體女性) was a direct result of this training initiative. I wasn’t the sole founder. We were a group consisting of 12 media professionals from Guangzhou who had participated in the training.

Actually, that training had some issues. Because we needed interpreters for everything, the two-day workshop couldn’t cover much ground. Additionally, the BBC has these ethical guidelines, the kind that are necessary from both a legal standpoint and for social responsibility in places where there is actually freedom of speech.

But matters of journalistic ethics are hard to push in China. Chinese journalists really hate the whole journalism ethics thing, mainly because China is a place where it’s tough to get public information out there in the first place. Journalists face all kinds of obstacles and risks. If you can manage to get a story published — that’s already something. 

So when we [at Women Awakening Network] advocated for gender mainstreaming, we didn’t position journalism ethics as our core training objective. We used the term “journalistic professionalism” (新聞專業主義) instead, focusing on providing journalists with more gender experts and activists as news sources — helping them develop their stories rather than telling them not to pursue certain types of coverage. We trained them on applying public service news values in their reporting, revealing truth, and promoting reform, based on the existing operating logic of market-oriented media.

Chinese women’s rights groups were unfamiliar with commercial media due to their operational methods. I noticed that the press avoided covering women’s issues because the two sides rarely interacted — in contrast to human rights lawyers and environmental groups at that time. So we wrote a few contact lists for women’s research and activism groups. We helped researchers, activists, and journalists connect. We provided organizations with lists of journalists they could contact, and journalists with lists of experts and groups they could call.

TJ/CMP: What was unique about Women Awakening Network‘s feminist activities?

Li: Before 2003, Guangzhou had no feminist organizations. In the wake of the World Conference on Women, a lot of feminist organizations were established in Beijing, as well as in Zhengzhou and Xi’an, building on the groundwork laid by previous generations of feminists in those places. So when international funding became available, they naturally prioritized investing in and developing these existing networks first.

At that time, feminists from northern China would often describe Guangzhou’s feminist activities as “very spirited.” Why did they say this? Because the leaders of women’s rights organizations in Beijing tended to come from official media outlets, or from the Women’s Federation (婦聯), or to be scholars from government think tanks. They were all people within the system. They not only needed to maintain good relationships with the government — they also had to consider the government’s operational logic, trying not to cause trouble. That is to say, rather than exposing social problems, they had to be helpful by promoting women’s rights concepts through publicizing the political achievements of local governments that were willing to support feminist projects.

But Guangzhou was different. We served as Women’s Federation experts for a period under Wang Yang’s (汪洋) governance of Guangdong, but our work wasn’t directly connected to the institutional Women’s Federation operations. Guangzhou is a media hub, so we used the media as our point of leverage. At that time, Guangzhou hosted all sorts of activities on remarkably progressive topics on a weekly basis. Public intellectuals were quite bold in the things they said, things that would be nearly impossible to hear publicly in other Chinese cities.

But there were hardly any female speakers back then. There were no talks about women’s issues — and definitely no feminist lectures. So we started organizing talks, exhibitions, seminars, and other events. We would invite journalists from the media to come. Commercial media journalists generally tend to resist being lectured to, or having ideas pushed on them. Instead, you need to let feminism exist in their city, and make feminist voices a real part of the conversation.

By the time the young feminist activists emerged in 2012, Guangzhou media already had a group of journalists who were interested in feminist issues and had a basic understanding of women’s rights organizations. This was the result of our decade of work. Therefore, Guangzhou media was the most supportive of young feminist activism. Of course, at that time feminism wasn’t the only movement flourishing. Guangzhou’s civil society was vibrant on many fronts. Young people were engaged in a range of causes, from environmental protection to budget transparency, cultural preservation, and so on. Our work in women’s rights also influenced a certain cohort of young people.

TJ/CMP: Women Awakening Network also worked with online platforms like NetEase (網易) and Phoenix.com (鳳凰網), putting out some of the in-depth stories. Why did you decide to partner with new media?

Li: In 2014, when the Wu Chunming (吳春明) sexual harassment case happened at Xiamen University, we launched an eight months-long campaign around it. We supported the victims, provided them with legal advocacy, and ensured their voices were heard in the media. We published a series of investigative pieces and detailed commentaries about the case. We collaborated with Chinese university teachers and scholars from around the world to translate anti-sexual harassment policies from various countries and universities. We also drafted policy recommendations for the Ministry of Education and Xiamen University, and secured the signatures of scholars around the world on joint letters to the Ministry of Education. We also put together sexual harassment prevention handbooks for college freshmen, organized film screenings about sexual harassment in academia for lawyers, social workers, and people from all walks of life — that sort of thing.

By that time, the advertising market for newspapers was already collapsing. After the 2013 Southern Weekend incident, investigative reporting departments were shuttered and many veteran journalists were leaving the profession. As experienced professionals left traditional outlets, many simply lost their voice. Most of the resources had shifted to online platforms. As competition between news apps heated up, online portal sites like Sohu, NetEase, Tencent, and Phoenix all started doing original news content for their apps. And they were poaching a lot of talent from traditional media, offering much higher salaries.

Internet companies had abundant resources, and they emphasized efficiency. They wanted to leverage their platforms to mobilize more resources. Therefore, they were very open and flexible. For example, when our grassroots advocacy group for legislation against domestic violence required media support, all the major portals provided us with resources to raise our public exposure — things like live streaming and expert interviews. During the Xiamen University incident, the departure of many veteran journalists left traditional media without the talent they needed to cover the story properly, leading to lots of mistakes. Internet companies were more flexible and could accommodate outside sources, such as people from NGOs, to collaborate on news content production. An outlet like Southern Weekly probably couldn’t publish an article by a women’s rights organization.

We worked with NetEase’s Plum News (真話頻道) to put out reports about the Xiamen University incident, which helped get the word out.

But relative to internet outlets, traditional news media still have a stronger watchdog role. This is because they are not purely commercial. In a way, they’re part of the propaganda system. Eventually, the Ministry of Education put out “Opinions on Establishing and Improving Long-term Mechanisms for University Teacher Ethics Construction.” This was the first Ministry of Education document that banned sexual harassment. At that point, Xiamen University was still dragging its feet on taking action against Wu Chunming (吳春明), the perpetrator in that case. So we arranged for two of the victims to appear on “Oriental Live Studio” (東方直播室), a program on Shanghai’s Dragon TV, where they could share their stories. The day after the program aired, Xiamen University finally announced they were stripping Wu Chunming of his Party membership and his teaching credentials. But the decline of traditional channels was about more than just money and changing technologies. Soon after that segment aired, “Oriental Live Studio” was shut down [for political reasons].

Internet platforms and traditional media each had their distinct roles. However, from 2015 to 2017, the traditional media space shrank rapidly, while social media also came under state control. For instance, in 2016, we organized a rather interesting campaign to resist March 7 — a feminist critique of the official “Girls Day” and its often sexist rituals. The “anti-March 7th” (反三七) opposed the official depoliticization of International Women’s Day, its detachment from women’s rights, and the support for or tolerance of “Girls’ Day” (女生节) — a campus tradition that reinforces gender stereotypes, discrimination, objectification, and the sexualization of women. In contrast, the call to “celebrate March 8th” (过三八) emphasized women’s civic identity and demanded gender equality, especially within the university context.

Still, by 2017, we could no longer do it because I personally experienced quite severe online harassment. Of course, today this type of [online harassment] is directed at activists and journalists across the board. Later on, due to the passage of China’s NGO law, NGO work became very high-risk. I was “advised” by [government agencies] and gently urged to exit the Women Awakening Network organization. That turned me toward teaching.

TJ/CMP: Given the current situation with such strict government control, how can feminist issues and movements be promoted and spread?

Li:I personally focus on women’s rights and journalism, and both areas have become extremely challenging since the pandemic.

At the beginning of the pandemic, many journalists were still actively doing reporting. Some were citizen journalists who weren’t affiliated with any news organization, but when they went to Wuhan, many of them were detained and arrested. Back then, we still felt journalists could still manage to do meaningful work through non-fiction platforms and other alternative institutional media (机构媒体). But today, journalists from established media outlets are facing the same fate as those citizen journalists back at that time. Everyone has become extremely cautious, and it has become very common for journalists to face both state violence and online violence.

And don’t even get me started on women’s rights. The feminist movement has actually been systematically suppressed step by step, from the 2015 “Feminist Five” incident right up to now. At this point, it’s basically impossible to have any registered women’s rights organizations or advocacy groups. New Media Women held out for a long time, but they were also forced to shut down between 2020 and 2022.

The [authorities] invest a lot of energy in controlling the spread of feminism. They will say to individuals and organizations: “Look, there are some things you can do, but don’t talk about them online.”

They control the dissemination of public and feminist-related information. What is meant here by “public”? It’s often connected to government authority, but it may also relate to the breadth of information transmission (傳播範圍擴大). Suppose you discuss domestic violence, bride prices, or marriage and family issues that generate significant controversy. In that case, they might say you’re inciting gender antagonism. This is what ordinary bloggers encounter. But you can still engage in these discussions. However, anything related to ideology or state institutions is strictly guarded against. For instance, the Liu Qiangdong (劉強東) sexual harassment case can still be discussed, but the Zhu Jun (朱軍) case [involving a prominent state media figure] cannot. 

I once made a social media post discussing how many women had been killed in the war in Ukraine, and then the police contacted me. Initially, I thought it was because of the Ukraine war, but it wasn’t. Their reasoning was that it involved women, because that article had garnered hundreds of thousands of views. Given how vigilant they are about the spread of feminism-related information, launching feminist advocacy campaigns as previously defined has become extremely difficult. For example, during the chained woman incident, some female netizens took personal action to visit that village. 

But the undeniable fact is that today, after years of advocacy and awareness-raising, feminism has become common knowledge. It no longer requires organized feminist groups to drive its influence. It’s more like individual water droplets converging into an ocean, with many different forces now working to spread feminist ideas. However, we no longer have the conditions for the kind of organized activism we had before, nor are we likely to see mainstream media rallying together to cover and support a centralized feminist movement.

Sina Weibo came under much greater scrutiny in 2012, and the citizen activism accelerated by Weibo, especially liberal citizen activism, became the primary target. Of course, the marginalization of public intellectuals that came with the crackdown brought the feminist movement two or three years of relative visibility on social media. But while feminist discourse still appears quite “mainstream” on social media today, the reality is that the current feminist discourse is a result of the feminist movement being systematically eliminated from the communication sphere. Therefore, I believe we can no longer rely on a digital space that is heavily subject to censorship and algorithmic control.

Feminism serves as a very important binding force. For building alternative cultural spaces and non-mainstream communities, the critical perspective of feminist theory is extremely valuable.

If we view only  these algorithm-influenced platforms, the feminist thought on them is extremely uniform. To use an academic term, it could be said to have very strong neoliberal characteristics. Due to the absence of face-to-face connections, feminism has become a popular catchword used by women of relatively higher social status to legitimize their self-worth and advantaged positions. It is no longer based on public participation and accountability as starting points. 

Algorithms and commercial interests might not eliminate your connection to the public. For example, when we organized our “Resist March 7, Celebrate March 8” campaign, the platform later gave me a “Weibo Big V Award.” But censorship breaks the connection. It systematically dismantles trust between people and undermines our capacity for collective action. So if the feminist movement wants to accomplish anything today, we need to step away from social media platforms and connect with real people again. Like in the early days, we should organize small in-person gatherings that foster genuine face-to-face human connections.

TJ/CMP: From your point of view, how does China’s current media environment differ from that of before? 

Li: It’s clear now that there are more female journalists doing in-depth reporting, around the same age as my students. But they haven’t experienced the hardcore news-reporting environment of the “golden age of journalism,” so I also feel that the way young journalists approach reporting has become quite different.

This has to do with the influence of political censorship, business models, and other factors. You’ll also notice that rural topics have become less common. Many young journalists grew up reading in-depth reporting that was primarily in a creative nonfiction style, and the in-depth pieces they write also lean toward that creative nonfiction approach. Of course, creative nonfiction is itself a way of pushing back against the censorship environment. But for example, when someone asks me to look over a draft, I’ll say that back when we worked at newspapers, this article would have been 5,000 words at most  —how did you end up writing 12,000? They tend to focus on literary writing and include a lot of details that we used to think were unimportant in journalism. But sometimes, parts of the fundamental news elements — the 5Ws and 1H — are missing, creating this kind of suspended state where time and place feel disconnected.

As for what’s possible, even media outlets with editorial rights (採編權) — [meaning they are authorized to conduct reporting] — in many cases no longer do investigative reporting or engage in watchdog journalism. Some long-form nonfiction or feature-oriented media outlets are perhaps still trying to find ways to carry out such work, but they cannot provide journalists with the necessary conditions to do it properly, including, in some cases, even the legitimate press credentials required to report.

TJ/CMP: In your article News Media and the Feminist Movement in China: A Brief History, you wrote that female journalists have their own community, noting how they supported each other during the Zhuhai hit-and-run incident of 2024, for example. Can this compensate to some extent for the industry-wide issues you mentioned?

Li: I think journalists all grow up with the company and competition of their peers. Actually, there’s more cooperation than competition, so it’s very good for female journalists to have a network. In the past, there might have been more media reports, and everyone’s cooperation was like scattered flowers — different provinces all had media reporting and publishing reports. But now only a few individual media outlets can publish much of anything — even if everyone’s level of cooperation remains the same.

TJ/CMP: After 2017, you went into teaching. What advice would you give to students or young Chinese people who want to become journalists?

Li: I previously taught domestically at Shantou University in Guangdong. Shantou University’s Cheung Kong School of Journalism and Communication was greatly influenced by its founding dean, Ying Chan [NOTE: Chan was also the founder of the China Media Project]. So it emphasized journalism practice and valued teachers’ newspaper industry backgrounds. But later it became much like other journalism schools in China, where teachers must have doctoral degrees [over practical experience]. I felt at the time that this was problematic.

On the other hand, some of my students were intimidated or interrogated by the police while still serving as interns. For all sorts of reasons, journalism has become extremely high-risk. The risks they face are completely different from what we faced back then. At that time, we had institutional protection. Now, even with institutional protection, it’s not really possible to do real journalism. 

But I still believe in journalism. The skills you develop as a journalist—learning to explore and understand the world on your own terms—will serve you no matter what path you take later. And for young people willing to pursue this work even in today’s harsh environment, driven by idealism and a desire for justice, that persistence will pay off. They will find ways to make a difference.

In the last decade, India’s media landscape has experienced dramatic digital transformation, resulting in both opportunities and vulnerabilities that foreign actors have sought to exploit. The country’s vast media ecosystem—comprising over 100,000 registered publications across 23 official languages and hundreds of television channels—has grown rapidly since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. This expansion has also introduced new challenges, particularly around misinformation and foreign influence operations.

China has emerged as a sophisticated actor in this space, deploying influence campaigns that exploit India’s open media environment despite deteriorating bilateral relations following the 2020 Galwan Valley clash. Unlike countries with significant Chinese diaspora communities, India’s minimal Chinese-speaking population has forced Beijing to adapt its strategies, utilizing AI translation, English-language content farms, and academic infiltration to reach Indian audiences.

Dalia Parete: For those of us who are unfamiliar with the media landscape and journalism practice in India, could you get us situated just briefly with the essentials? How would you characterize India’s media landscape?

Sriparna Pathak: Indian media is boisterous and noisy, but it’s a symbol of how a democracy should work. The Indian media landscape is vast, diverse, and dynamic, shaped by the country’s massive population.

In terms of diversity and scale, India has one of the world’s largest media networks with over 100,000 registered publications, including newspapers and magazines in multiple languages such as Hindi, English, Tamil, and Bengali. We have roughly 900 television channels and millions of internet users consuming digital media, alongside a booming social media scene.

Traditional print media, especially regional language newspapers, are highly influential, particularly in rural areas. Major dailies like Times of India, Dainik Jagran, and Malayalam Manorama reach a big audience. Television dominates both entertainment and news through numerous channels, including NDTV, Republic TV, and various regional networks. Given that we’re living in the internet age, there’s been a huge digital explosion in India. Digital media is surging through platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and X for news and entertainment, as well as online news portals like The Wire and Scroll. Regional media holds significant sway due to our linguistic diversity. Content in languages like Telugu, Marathi, and Kannada often outperforms national media. 

DP: It’s been over a decade since Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014. As a media expert who has closely observed this period, how would you characterize the transformation of India’s media landscape during the Modi era? What are the most significant changes you’ve witnessed?

SP: Indian media today is much more connected and inclusive than before. We still deal with trolling and online hate speech—that comes with digital anonymity. But overall, the transformation has been really remarkable. We’ve successfully leveraged technology to create a more accessible, diverse, and engaging media ecosystem that serves India’s complex, multilingual democracy. 

The most defining characteristic of India’s media landscape over the past decade has been its digital revolution. When Prime Minister Modi took office in 2014, India had roughly 250 million internet users. By 2025, we’re projected to reach 900 million—a transformation that fundamentally reshapes how Indians consume media. This transformation was pushed forward by government initiatives like Digital India, launched in 2015. 

The impact has been profound. Platforms like YouTube, Netflix, and homegrown OTT services became mainstream. Social media emerged as the primary source of news and information for millions. Media companies responded by creating content in multiple languages that focused on what users wanted, designed for India’s diverse and young population. The focus shifted to engaging people under 35, using regional languages and understanding local cultures across India’s 22 official languages.

DP: You mentioned the shift toward younger, multilingual audiences. Can you give me a specific example of how a major media company adapted its content strategy during this period?
SP: This focus on inclusive content was a big change from the more centralized, English-heavy media approach of previous decades.

The government itself embraced digital engagement in unprecedented ways. The Prime Minister’s monthly radio program “Mann Ki Baat,” launched in 2014, exemplifies this shift—reaching millions across rural and urban India through multiple platforms, creating more direct communication channels than traditional diplomatic approaches.

With this digital boom, India has to face several challenges like the rise of misinformation. This prompted significant investments in fact-checking journalism and verification systems. Initiatives like “Sach Ke Saathi” (Friends of Truth) prioritized credible reporting, while media houses adopted data-driven approaches and advanced tools for more accurate content production.

DP: Modi was one of the first politicians to really leverage X, the former Twitter, strategically. How did his approach to the platform change political communication in India?

SP: Absolutely, it was a game-changer. Politicians need direct audience connection to survive—if people don’t understand your policies, you’re at a disadvantage.

Modi’s Twitter strategy is brilliant because it is immediate. Instead of waiting for monthly radio addresses, citizens can track what he’s doing in real-time. Even I check Twitter first thing in the morning—it’s become our primary source for political updates.

This made him incredibly accessible compared to traditional political communication. When I lived in China, people asked why India uses Western platforms instead of creating our own. The reality is India embraced existing cost-effective tools like Twitter and Facebook as part of technological globalization.

Modi simply mastered these platforms better than anyone else. He created a template for direct political engagement that leaders worldwide now follow—proving that strategic social media use could transform political communication entirely.

DP: India has dropped from 140th to 151st in the World Press Freedom Index since Modi took office in 2014. As a media expert, what do you see as the key factors driving this decline? 

SP: The World Press Freedom Index has significant limitations. When the Press Council of India sought to understand Reporters Without Borders’ methodology, we received no response. This lack of transparency is concerning—credible rankings require clear, justifiable indicators.

Our investigation found the index relies heavily on perceptions rather than hard data, making it susceptible to bias. The specific weightage and data sources remain undisclosed. Consider India’s complexity: 23 official languages and media in hundreds of languages. How can any foreign organization comprehensively assess this without linguistic expertise or methodological transparency?

The index also doesn’t address media ownership concentration, which we acknowledge as a legitimate concern in India’s media landscape. There are now discussions about India developing its press freedom ranking to offer alternative global perspectives.

DP: Setting aside the international rankings, what’s your assessment as an Indian scholar of the current state of press freedom in the country? Are there specific developments that concern you?

SP: The Indian media landscape has become increasingly challenging to navigate, especially online media, where fact-checking and bias verification are questionable.

Let me share a personal example: during the latest India-Pakistan tensions, I was not in the country, and one morning I saw an online report claiming that New Delhi had been hit. Despite knowing this was unlikely, as someone with young children in New Delhi, I panicked. Even though I work on disinformation, I fell for it due to emotional vulnerability.

This fear-mongering is widespread in our media. Even after the India-Pakistan ceasefire, reports continued claiming that one or the other country did not respect it. News portals now resort to sensationalism as standard practice – I recently saw repeated stories about Macron allegedly being slapped by his wife. Why is this relevant to Indian audiences? Pure sensationalism for eyeball attraction.

Meta identified India as being at the highest risk for misinformation last year. Much originates from foreign content farms, particularly China. There is also concern about the lack of awareness among our journalists about foreign information manipulation. 

While the government has been proactive in leveraging the internet, there should be equal concern about tackling misinformation. The situation has become so problematic that I often wait for physical newspapers because they undergo more rigorous fact-checking. Civilians like me suffer from this information chaos, and protecting citizens from harmful misinformation should be a legitimate concern for the government.

DP: The term “Godi media” — meaning lapdog media, if I understand correctly — has become mainstream to describe outlets acting as government mouthpieces. Prominent journalists, such as Ravish Kumar, have used this term to criticize the media for no longer questioning authority. Could you explain this term?

SP: “Godi media” is indeed a pejorative term popularized by journalist Ravish Kumar to describe outlets perceived as lapdogs of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP since 2014. However, if you look back, there were always media houses that functioned as lap dogs for Congress or opposition parties, too. 

While there are pro-BJP outlets, there are equally pro-Congress ones. Take The Wire, an excellent but left-leaning portal. During India’s latest retaliation against Pakistan, the Information Ministry requested the media not disclose troop movements for security reasons – a reasonable directive lasting just two days. Most media complied, but The Wire invited Pakistani academics to discuss the unfolding conflict, inadvertently revealing coordinates and troop movements, and adding misinformation fueled by Pakistan.

Outlets commonly labeled “Godi media” include Republic World, Times Now, and Zee News, which amplify the BJP agendas and sometimes spread misinformation. This stems more from corporate ownership and revenue considerations than ideology. Educated Indians largely ignore Zee News, recognizing its sensationalism.

However, “Godi media” isn’t universally accepted. It dismisses outlets aligning with Indian ideology while failing to distinguish between party and country. BJP isn’t India, and India isn’t Congress.

DP: How does this phenomenon compare to state-media relationships you’ve observed in China? Is India adopting a Chinese model of control, or developing something distinctly different?

SP: India’s media landscape remains diverse, with over 100,000 registered publications and thousands of TV channels. Even if four outlets are pro-government, that’s negligible compared to the overall landscape.

The comparison with China is telling. Chinese media operates under direct CCP control through entities like Xinhua, with strict censorship via the Great Firewall. The content aligns with state priorities, downplaying issues such as Xinjiang or Hong Kong. During the 2025 India-Pakistan conflict, Chinese media echoed Pakistan’s narrative, framing India’s counter-terrorism response as provocative while ignoring the terror attack that killed 26 Indians.

India operates differently. There’s no centralized censorship or Great Firewall. The term “Godi media” itself represents dissent—something impossible in China. India’s media landscape is pluralistic with independent outlets, social media, and citizen journalism challenging mainstream narratives. China’s media is monolithic, filtered through state approval.

India’s Constitution protects press freedom despite corporate pressures. China offers no such safeguards, with journalists facing imprisonment for dissent.

The real comparison should be between Western media and Chinese media, which are becoming increasingly similar. 

DP: How would you characterize the current state of media relations between China and India? 

SP: Media relations between India and China are significantly strained and heavily adversarial, primarily due to geopolitical tensions, particularly since the 2020 Galwan Valley clash, where China infiltrated Indian territory. Chinese state media like Xinhua and Global Times consistently frame India’s actions as provocative while hiding the fact that it was primarily the People’s Liberation Army that infiltrated. They seem to forget that satellite imagery is easily accessible on the internet — and unlike China, internet access is very cheap in India.

Both countries have severely restricted journalistic access. By 2023, India expelled nearly all Chinese journalists, but this was in response to China starting this trend. India cited unfair treatment of its journalists, and by mid-2020, there were no Indian journalists left in China. This tit-for-tat expulsion has made direct reporting very challenging, leading to a greater reliance on official sources and social media, which in turn increases the risks of disinformation.

DP: Has coverage become predominantly adversarial, or do meaningful journalistic exchanges still exist between the two countries?

SP: China’s influence operations architecture is extensive, encompassing state-controlled media and troll farms. During India’s recent elections, these operations actively pushed narratives aimed at influencing voter choices. While governments worldwide face such challenges, India’s problem is more acute due to our shared border and the fact that we host the Central Tibetan Administration.

The general question is: how long can India tolerate this when we have no practical way to push back? As a democracy, we won’t resort to unethical practices, but we also can’t ignore constant attacks. Consequently, India has blocked Chinese social media accounts and content that constantly push anti-India narratives. Even though India is currently the world’s fastest-growing major economy, China continues promoting orientalist stereotypes – “land of snakes and snake charmers.”  

After the most recent India-Pakistan tensions, Chinese outlets like CGTN and Global Times actually echoed Pakistan’s narrative, further demonstrating their adversarial stance.

Meaningful journalistic exchanges between India and China have essentially ceased, replaced by state-driven propaganda and influence operations.

DP: You already mentioned the 2020 Galwan Valley clash, which marked the deadliest border confrontation in 45 years. I am wondering how the Indian media coverage of this incident reflects broader changes in how China is portrayed. 

SP: The Galwan clash was a turning point. Indians had grown tired of constantly extending the hand of friendship, only to receive another slap from China. The perception truly tanked after COVID-19. Even those of us who speak Chinese and studied in China faced backlash. 

Chinese state media and online Chinese nationalists made things worse by targeting Indian audiences with doctored videos showing Chinese forces supposedly defeating Indian soldiers. But this backfired spectacularly—much like threats against Taiwan make Taiwanese more anti-China, these videos only increased hatred and animosity in India. Even after last year’s disengagement at Depsang and Demchok [in the Eastern Ladakh border region], Chinese narratives continued claiming “China has defeated India.” How can China hope for friendship while portraying India as inferior?

Through my work with Taiwan’s Doublethink Lab, I’ve found that academia and media are China’s biggest influence vectors in India. Despite being a democracy, our newspapers give space to Chinese ambassadors writing about how China’s actions in Hong Kong are justified. When journalists like me push back, we’re labeled “Godi media” or ultra-nationalists, in Hindi “Hindutva”—even when simply saying that normalizing occupation isn’t okay.

However, some journalists do the opposite: when some Indian journalists were invited to visit Tibet, upon their return, they started calling it “Xizang” in their articles—the CCP’s preferred term for the region. They wrote about how “Xizang has done well under the CCP.” 

When I critique China’s influence operations, the attacks are personal: “She’s upper caste,” “She’s patriarchal,” “She’s religiously brainwashed.” No sane person wants to be called brainwashed, so many step back from writing on China. It’s effective, tacit censorship.

DP: Given the absence of Chinese-language newspapers in India, the relatively small Chinese diaspora, and restrictions on major Chinese digital platforms like WeChat, how do Chinese-language media outlets attempt to reach and influence Indian audiences?

SP: You’re right about the diaspora being tiny. I met them in West Bengal’s Chinatown back in 2015. When a Chinese delegation, including Hu Xijin, visited, I had to translate because the diaspora couldn’t understand Chinese. They spoke Bengali better and told the visitors, “India is now our motherland – we’ve been here for decades and can’t even speak Chinese.”

But China has adapted cleverly to the Indian public. First, they use AI translation – Chinese content farms post on Twitter/X in Chinese, which automatically translates to English or Bengali depending on your settings. Second, they operate directly in English through accounts like Shanghai Panda, recognizing most Indians won’t learn Chinese. I’ve also noticed coordinated Facebook profiles—Chinese women dressed in saris as display pictures. I saw 12-13 identical ones in a single day, clearly orchestrated.

DP: Beyond these digital tactics, how are they building deeper institutional influence within India itself?

SP: China Radio International broadcasts in Hindi, Bengali, and Urdu. But their most effective method remains planting academics and targeting the media. Until recently, my university had an “India-China Study Centre” run by a Chinese professor, proudly funded by the Chinese embassy. I attended events where Chinese academics flew in specifically to push narratives – like claiming the US is responsible for dividing India and China, or portraying China as gender-sensitive when it’s just as problematic as anywhere else.

Ambassador Xu Feihong regularly invites media figures who advocate friendship “even at the cost of India’s sovereignty.” People like Indian scholar Sudheendra Kulkarni get multiple invitations and photo opportunities.

While we don’t have the level of United Front Work that China deploys in Taiwan, Europe, or the US, they’ve still found ways to influence through academia, English-language content, and the diplomatic cultivation of sympathetic voices in the media.

DP: Tibet remains a sensitive issue in India-China relations, yet India hosts the world’s largest Tibetan exile community, including the Dalai Lama. How does India balance its support for Tibetans with its relationship with China? And are there concerns about Chinese influence on how Tibet is portrayed in Indian media?

SP: Tibetans are treated equally here. I work closely with the Central Tibetan Administration and Tibetan journalists on a regular basis. They organize events almost weekly, discussing China, Tibet, and India. I’ve hosted several such events at my university.

We treat Tibetans like us because we understand oppression. There’s a religious connection too.  Buddhism originated in India, so we feel responsible for protecting a population persecuted simply for  being “un-Chinese.” 

We’ve even started the International Buddhist Confederation in 2023, inviting Tibetan monks from India and abroad. The Dalai Lama has graced these occasions, and our Prime Minister attends to showcase support for Tibetan Buddhism. 

Tibetans can choose citizenship or not; it’s up to them. They’re essentially like us now. They speak Hindi and English with heavy Indian accents, and they’ve become as chaotic and democratic as we are.But Tibetans do raise one serious concern: Indian journalists visit Tibet on Chinese-sponsored trips and return using Beijing’s terminology—calling Tibet “Xizang” as the pinyin rendering of Tibet (西藏) and praising CCP rule. This isn’t just offensive—it’s a security threat. By accepting the term “Xizang,”  we risk normalizing China’s claim on the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh as “Zangnan” (藏南), a  term that literally means “South of Tibet,” implying that Arunachal Pradesh is merely an extension of Tibet, therefore under the CCP rule.

Once known for quality print journalism, Italy’s media industry has suffered several financial strain in recent decades that has in many ways weakened professional values. Traditional reporting has increasingly given way to “infotainment” — a trend pioneered since the 1990s by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset empire, the country’s largest broadcaster, which prioritizes entertainment over substantive news. Cash-strapped outlets struggle to maintain journalistic standards, resulting in declining salaries for reporters and cautious approaches to digital innovation and AI integration. Against this backdrop of economic vulnerability, China has been strategically expanding its influence throughout Italy’s weakened media landscape. 

Despite having nearly 285,000 Chinese residents, Italy has few Chinese-language media outlets. Meanwhile, collaborations between Chinese state media and Italian news agencies have facilitated the spread of Beijing’s narratives into mainstream discourse. To better understand the complex interplay between Italian media and Chinese state narratives and media engagement, we spoke to Italian journalist Giulia Pompili. As one of the few journalists who has critically covered the on-and-off saga of Italy’s involvement in Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative, Pompili offers a unique perspective on Beijing’s information strategy and its ongoing impact on the Italian media landscape.

Dalia Parete: When we look at media landscapes globally, each country has its unique characteristics and challenges. What are the most important things to understand about how media works in Italy today?

Giulia Pompili: The main challenge for Italian media is financial. Print media do not have the income or budgets they once had when they had large paid-for circulations. Television is still a strong presence in the media landscape. But over the past 40 years, it has increasingly shifted toward “infotainment” — a blend of information and entertainment. This means fewer programs are focused on delivering substantive information, and more segments are designed primarily to entertain viewers rather than inform them.

Regarding the “infotainment” trend in Italian media, [former Prime Minister] Berlusconi pioneered this transformation. He fundamentally changed how Italians consumed information with his three television channels under Mediaset Italia S.P.A. He was also the first in Italy to envision using media manipulation to cultivate public support. 

After Berlusconi, all Italian channels, including the national public broadcasting company Rai, considered the “Italian BBC,” transformed the way they presented information to follow the Mediaset path. So, there is now more “infotainment” and less information across the board. 

Newspapers lost many readers in the early 2000s, and printed information experienced a major crisis at that time. In the past decade, Italy has attempted to expand into digital media through websites and social media. But it has lagged behind countries like the United States. We’ve also seen the rise of influencers and information websites that often translate foreign articles. More recently, informational podcasts have gained some traction, but the business model remains unclear. No one has figured out how to monetize these platforms effectively. Nevertheless, this shift has once again changed the media landscape.

DP: What significant challenges and transformations do you see on the horizon for Italian media? For instance, how are developments like AI or changing consumption patterns affecting the industry?

GP: One of the biggest challenges is declining compensation for journalists. For example, if you are a freelancer, you cannot afford to pay rent for an apartment. And if you are a staff writer or a TV producer,  you likely have a very low monthly income. 

Italy remains quite conservative in the media sector. AI hasn’t been widely implemented in newsrooms, and significant fear surrounds it. Whenever I discuss this with colleagues, especially those from older generations, they express the concern that AI will take their jobs. 

From the consumption side, Italy has a significant information literacy gap because there is no education on media literacy. Most of the population is illiterate when it comes to media. They struggle to distinguish between information from influencers, reporters, staff writers, investigative journalists, and activists. This is especially problematic among younger generations, who often can’t differentiate between a TikTok influencer discussing Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region, for example, and a professional journalist who has thoroughly investigated the topic. Ideological perspectives create substantial barriers between activists, influencers, and traditional journalists — representing one of our biggest challenges.

DP: Despite Italy hosting nearly 285,000 Chinese nationals, few Chinese-language media outlets exist. What factors, in your view, have contributed to this limited media presence, and how does this affect information flow within the Chinese community?

GP: In Italy, it often seems that the large Chinese diaspora is already closely aligned with the Chinese Communist Party — though there is no specific research or data about this. They may not demand dedicated media because the Party already maintains a strong influence over diaspora groups, and pro-China content is known to dominate the media that are present. The main Chinese-language radio station, China FM Italia focuses primarily on entertainment rather than news. Another outlet, Cina in Italia (世界中国) began as a book publisher. They tried to publish educational books in Italian and Chinese. It was originally a cultural company, but it has now changed its business model, working directly with the official China News Service [under the United Front Work Department of the CCP].

Another unique character of the Chinese community in Italy is that you rarely hear any form of dissenting opinion. As the white-paper protests that began in Shanghai spread internationally in late 2022, there were attempts to organize demonstrations in major squares in Bologna and Rome — but these barely made an impact. Compared to similar protests in Germany, France, and the UK, which were much larger and more visible, the level of dissent in Italy was negligible. In Italy, such activities are notably absent.

DP: So, how would you characterize China’s approach to media or media engagement in Italy?

GP: The media engagement approach has been simple. Embassy personnel have built relationships with Italian editors, editors-in-chief, press agencies, and individual journalists. 

Before 2019, Chinese media had numerous bilateral contracts and cooperation programs between Chinese and Italian media. We engaged significantly with the official China Media Group [under the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department], which maintains the most prominent presence everywhere. In reality, they were paying for advertising in Italian newspapers. They would pitch original Chinese-language articles translated into Italian. Like everywhere in Europe, they tried to coordinate with Italian media outlets to publish Chinese dossiers written by the embassy or agencies working with the embassy. Generally, they attempted to use Italian media as a powerful tool to share their narratives. 

In 2019, something changed. Xi Jinping came to Italy for an official state visit. During that visit, Italy officially joined the Belt and Road Initiative, establishing numerous institutional cooperation agreements. One of the most notorious agreements for the media was between Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA), our country’s leading news agency, and the Chinese government’s Xinhua News Agency. ANSA is a primary news source for Italian journalists, so this partnership allowed Chinese state narratives to directly enter Italy’s mainstream news ecosystem. 

DP: How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect China’s information strategy in Italy?

GP The COVID-19 pandemic was a turning point for Italy, revealing China’s information manipulation tactics more sharply. A key example was when the Chinese Red Cross sent masks to Italy. Our former Foreign Affairs Minister Luigi Di Maio, who had signed the Belt and Road MOU the previous year, was entirely absorbed by Chinese propaganda and disinformation to rehabilitate China’s image as the country where the virus originated. 

By late March 2020, China was building its image as Europe’s savior. This tactic worked quite well in Italy. They manipulated the situation by sending masks and supplies to the Italian Red Cross, creating a major political event. However, these weren’t donations but rather purchases made by Italy. We still have numerous legal proceedings regarding emergency funds spent on Chinese supplies. The critical point is that during this emergency, China used Italy as an experiment to see how effectively they could manipulate information to craft their image as a savior amid the pandemic. 

DP: How did Chinese officials typically engage with foreign journalists, like yourself, who were critical of their policies? 

GP: At the time, I was one of the journalists who extensively covered Chinese-Italian bilateral relations. I was also among the few who criticized Italy’s joining the Belt and Road Initiative. At the time, the appointed spokesperson of the Chinese embassy confronted me at the Quirinale Palace during Xi’s visit. He aggressively told me, “You must stop saying bad things about China.” The next day, we published the news headline, “We are not in Beijing.” In the article that chronicled this confrontation, we included the spokesperson’s full name, which made him very angry.

This incident also marked the first time that the Italian political establishment realized that the silencing of journalists was something that could not go unanswered. 

DP: Despite claims of a tougher stance toward China since Italy’s exit from the Belt and Road Initiative, how would you assess the reality of Italian-Chinese relations, notably regarding media partnerships and Meloni’s broader political agenda?

GP: We are saying that we are restricting Chinese influence, right? Italian printed media generally reduced Chinese content partnerships, but some outlets still publish Chinese state-sponsored content for financial compensation. While the “Chinese dossiers” appear less frequently, Italy remains an outlier in Europe by continuing to monetize the publication of Chinese government messaging in its media landscape.

The Chinese government’s official Xinhua News Agency changed cooperation partners from ANSA to Agenzia Nova, a popular online news source. So, it is still doing what it was doing with new partners.

From a political perspective, Meloni’s core focus as Italian president is immigration — she doesn’t think about much of anything else. She knows that China is the only country that can help her in Africa because China currently has the most significant political influence there.

She understands that she cannot effectively deal with Libya, Algeria, or Egypt without support from Chinese officials and institutions. For Meloni, the only priority is this very concrete issue, and she is ready to do whatever it takes to achieve her singular foreign policy goal: managing immigration. She knows that she needs China to stabilize the relationship with Africa.