Founded in 2016, DxChannel (当下频道) is a video brand focused on China’s millennial generation. The brand’s well-produced videos, distributed through accounts on the Chinese video sharing site Bilibili (“B Site”) and on YouTube, are about life, the workplace, and consumerism. They also have a clear public focus, with an explanatory journalism style similar to that of the American news and opinion website Vox. Fang Kecheng spoke to DxChannel founder Lucia Shen about some of the stories behind the studio and her observations about China’s online video industry.

While news stories about the Russia-Ukraine war continue to dominate headlines in Western media, this stands in stark contrast to a restricted coverage evident in Chinese state and social media. Nonetheless, the sphere of Chinese public discourse has experienced interesting shifts in the months since the Russian invasion in the end of February. For an analysis on some key recent developments in Chinese media in this context, Joyce Chan spoke to Dr. Maria Repnikova, Associate Professor in Global Communication at Georgia State University, an expert on Chinese political communication and comparative information politics in China and Russia.

The past decade has seen two remarkable trends when it comes to China and its environment. Faced with worsening air, water, and soil pollution as a result of runaway economic development, the Chinese government got serious about building what it calls an “ecological civilization,” and, in late 2020, Xi Jinping pledged that China, currently the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, would achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. At the same time, environmental coverage went from a burgeoning beat to an underfunded afterthought. Hongqiao Liu began her environmental reporting career in 2010 and experienced first-hand how the ecosystem for journalists like her became inhospitable.

Since the early 2010s, Huazong (花总) has been an active presence on Chinese social media. In 2012, he launched microblog project on Weibo called “Timepiece Appraisals” (手表鉴定) that evaluated public photos of officials to estimate the value of wrist watches they were wearing. Huazong’s work led directly to the fall of Yang Dacai (杨达才), the head of the work safety administration in Shaanxi province. In early 2020, shortly after the outbreak of Covid-19, he released the award-winning online documentary “Mask Hunter,”(口罩猎人) which documented the story of a Chinese businessman who was buying masks around the world. Since 2020, Huazong has focused on livestreaming, which he says is an important and serious form of content production. At the end of 2021, Fang Kecheng spoke to Huazong about livestreaming on Weibo, as well as some of his previous content creation.

Positive Connections (正面连接), launched in September 2021, is a new media project and content brand with a focus on nonfiction writing (非虚构写作). The project’s goal is to “present important aspects of the complex world to which people generally turn a blind eye” and to “intervene in the rapidly changing times with newer language and more modern expressions on the basis of the truth.”

In late September 2021, Fang Kecheng spoke with Zeng Ming (曾鸣), the founder of Positive Connections and a former journalist for Guangzhou’s Southern Weekly (南方周末), The Beijing News (新京报), and GQ China, about his professional experiences and his new venture.

For hundreds of thousands of social media users, fandom culture is embedded in their daily routine, as online platforms traditionally offer an easily accessible channel for fans to publicly profess their affection towards favored idols. While the authorities have accused fandoms of becoming a “blind and toxic” culture and a “double-edged sword,” they have shown themselves to be a formidable force for good when the opportunity arises –for example in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. In this interview, Joyce Chan spoke with Dr. Yiyi Yin, assistant professor at the School of Arts and Communication of Beijing Normal University, to discuss fandom culture in the light of recent policy measures.

Back in July, Zhengzhou, the provincial capital of Henan, experienced record rainfall. The flooding that followed resulted in the death of more than 300 people. As dramatic scenes from Henan were shared across social media, coverage of the floods by the media became a controversial issue in China. While correspondents from the Los Angeles Times and Germany’s Deutsche Welle were surrounded and questioned by local residents, accused of biased coverage of the flood’s aftermath, some netizens asked whether Chinese domestic media had done an adequate job reporting the story. Last month, CMP’s Stella Chen reached out to Professor Zhan Jiang, an expert on Chinese media development, to reflect on Chinese media coverage of the flooding in Henan and other breaking stories, and to discuss more generally Chinese media developments over the past 30 years.