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View image in fullscreen Wang Jian in his office studio in Needham, Massachusetts, US. Photograph: Faith Ninivaggi/The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/the-long-read) The long read \u2018Americans are democracy\u2019s equivalent of second-generation wealth\u2019: a Chinese journalist on the US under Trump Wang Jian in his office studio in Needham, Massachusetts, US. Photograph: Faith Ninivaggi/The Guardian Once a stalwart of Hong Kong\u2019s journalism scene, Wang Jian has found a new audience on YouTube, dissecting global politics and US-China relations since the pandemic. To his fans, he\u2019s part newscaster, part professor, part friend By(https://www.theguardian.com/profile/lauren-hilgers) Lauren Hilgers Tue 14 Oct 2025 06.00 CEST Last modified on Tue 14 Oct 2025 16.37 CEST (mailto:?subject=\u2018Americans are democracy\u2019s equivalent of second-generation wealth\u2019: a Chinese journalist on the US under Trump&body=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/14/wang-jian-china-journalist-reports-united-states-donald-trump-xi-jinping?CMP=share_btn_url) Share O n a Friday night in late May, Wang Jian was getting ready to broadcast. It was pouring outside, and he was sitting in the garage apartment behind his house, just outside Boston, eating dinner. \u201cI am very sensitive to what Trump does,\u201d Wang was telling me, in Mandarin, waving a fork. \u201cWhen Trump holds a cabinet meeting, he sits there and the people next to him start to flatter him. And I think, isn\u2019t this the same as Mao Zedong? Trump sells the same thing: a little bit of populism, plus a little bit of small-town shrewdness, plus a little bit of \u2018I have money.\u2019\u201d Wang was sitting next to a rack of clothing \u2013 the shirts and jackets the 58-year-old newsman wears professionally \u2013 and sipping a seemingly bottomless cup of green tea that would eventually give way to coffee. By 11pm, he would walk across the room and snap on a set of ring lights, ready to carry on an unbroken string of chatter for a (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/youtube) YouTube news programme that he calls \u201cWang Jian\u2019s Daily Observations\u201d. It was a slow news night but he would end up talking until nearly 1am. This was his second broadcast of the day. Different time zones, he explained to me, different audiences. Wang, who has more than 800,000 subscribers on YouTube, is representative of a small but influential part of the Mandarin-language media landscape. He is part of an exodus of media professionals who have left Hong Kong and mainland China in the past decade; and one of a handful who have started posting news and analysis videos on YouTube. Wang serves an audience of Chinese expatriates \u2013 along with mainlanders savvy enough to get round China\u2019s (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/29/the-great-firewall-of-china-xi-jinpings-internet-shutdown) great firewall \u2013 who tune in hoping that he can fill in the gaps left by propaganda, censorship and disinformation. Wang\u2019s fans find him entertaining and reassuringly professional. (\u201cHe\u2019s very objective, I think,\u201d one told me.) His broadcast manner moves from the impersonal, rhythmic cadence of a veteran newscaster to personal asides that bring to mind a slightly incredulous university lecturer. He loves a rhetorical question (\u201cIs this the way a US president speaks?\u201d) followed by his favourite English-language interjection: \u201cC\u2019mon.\u201d I have spent the months since Trump\u2019s inauguration watching Wang on YouTube. He was first recommended to me by a journalist working at a prominent Chinese news outlet who, even while reporting for a similar audience, frequently checked in on Wang\u2019s broadcasts. \u201cHe\u2019ll be perfect for you,\u201d they said. Americans have always loved looking at themselves from a distance. Watching the US through Wang makes our political reality appear more comical and more dangerous. He centres (https://www.theguardian.com/world/china) China in all his broadcasts, offering a kind of been-there-done-that account of authoritarian creep. He places the US on an arc of history we have long pretended to transcend. \u201cAmericans are democracy\u2019s equivalent of second-generation wealth,\u201d he told me. They were born into democracy and have no appreciation of what life is like without it. Chinese people, on the other hand, \u201chave been bullied by rulers for thousands of years. We\u2019re very familiar with these situations.\u201d There are many American reporters, Wang said, who report competently on China. But when I asked how the US media was doing covering the US, he burst into laughter. \u201cIf I were the New York Times, I would be putting curse words on the front page every day,\u201d he told me. \u201cF-word, F-word, F-word.\u201d I n the US, the China narrative can fluctuate depending on the day. We thought, briefly, that the outbreak of the pandemic in Wuhan constituted a \u201cChornobyl moment\u201d that would undermine the regime. It did not. We wonder, on and off, how China builds rail systems so quickly. We worry about whether China will overtake us in AI development. Our sense of national decline is intensified by China\u2019s rise. In April, a New York Times op-ed by Thomas Friedman ran with the headline, \u201c(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/opinion/trump-tariffs-china.html) I just saw the future. It was not in America .\u201d (It was in China.) In China, meanwhile, people looking to understand the US are also subject to a push and pull based on the political climate and \u2013 under Xi Jinping, China\u2019s long-serving president \u2013 the narrowing space for free expression. China\u2019s propaganda operation no longer resembles the lumbering machinery of Orwell\u2019s Nineteen Eighty-Four. There are still fustier national newspapers \u2013 Xinhua and the People\u2019s Daily \u2013 that clearly represent a Communist party perspective. There is also the more nationalistic (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/dec/14/china-troll-king-hu-xijin-tabloid-editor-became-voice-chinese-nationalism) Global Times . \u201cIf the US did not interfere in China\u2019s internal affairs or challenge its sovereignty,\u201d said one recent article, \u201cthere would be no need for it to worry about China\u2019s defence development\u201d. (President Xi Jinping at the Global leaders\u2019 meeting on gender equality and women\u2019s empowerment in Beijing earlier this month.) View image in fullscreen President Xi Jinping at the Global leaders\u2019 meeting on gender equality and women\u2019s empowerment in Beijing earlier this month. Photograph: Getty Images At the turn of the last century, these bigger publications were balanced by a handful of independent, market-driven media outlets pushing the boundaries of censorship in China, although these mostly reported on domestic issues. Over time, however, most Chinese media consumers have moved online and today, just like Americans, they get most of their information on social media. Mainland China blocks Facebook, YouTube, X and Google. Instead, information spreads on Sina Weibo or, most commonly, WeChat. These platforms are monitored by human censors and AI programmes that hunt for sensitive phrases or keywords. China\u2019s censorship is not monolithic or infallible, but these combined efforts mean that, typically, the news that spreads is the news that the government permits to spread. \u201cMostly, the things that spread on WeChat are video clips or screenshots with text,\u201d Yaqiu Wang, a researcher based in Washington DC. Clips that highlight American gun violence, protests or inflation flow freely, without any censorship. She mentioned the popularity of snippets from the Trump-friendly Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Yaqiu Wang\u2019s parents will, not infrequently, call at night, concerned about her safety. They are not reading government propaganda so much as a curated selection of American bombast, spin and disinformation. How much Chinese people know about the reality of life in the US varies wildly. \u201cThere are those people with power, or those people working in universities, who will jump the great firewall,\u201d Yaqiu Wang told me. These people can read BBC\u2019s Mandarin news service, for example, or listen to the Mandarin-language podcast run by the New York Times journalist Yuan Li. But if these are too dry for news consumers, Wang Jian is there to chatter the night away. \u201cI think this satisfies people\u2019s needs,\u201d said a Chinese government employee who watches Wang\u2019s programme every day. \u201cYou can get real information.\u201d W ang has told viewers that, in all his years as a journalist, the last two had brought about some of the biggest global changes he had seen. Trump, Wang explained, has misidentified the US\u2019s strengths. \u201cYour strengths aren\u2019t your people,\u201d he told me later, expanding on his theme. \u201cI could find a bank teller in (https://www.theguardian.com/world/hong-kong) Hong Kong , bring them here, and they could do the job of 10 Americans.\u201d What the US has got, according to Wang, is allies and a reliable currency. (\u201cAnd now you\u2019re threatening to annex Canada?\u201d) Trump, according to Wang, would like to be more like (https://www.theguardian.com/world/xi-jinping) Xi Jinping \u2013 a strongman leading a nation with a huge manufacturing base. He likes to point out that the two leaders have birthdays a day apart. Trump would like to take back the supply chain and manufacture everything in the US \u2013 an idea that drew a \u201cc\u2019mon\u201d from Wang. There are, in turn, things about the US that Xi would like to emulate \u2013 the global influence, the financial power of the dollar. \u201cMaybe we should just let Xi and Trump switch places. We wouldn\u2019t need to do anything. They could leave the rest of us out of it,\u201d Wang joked. \u201cAlthough I think Xi Jinping would get beat up in the United States.\u201d It\u2019s this kind of irreverence that Wang\u2019s audience most enjoys. His viewers call him \u201cTeacher Wang\u201d and as he talks, a string of congratulatory messages pop up. They often say: \u201cTeacher Wang, JiaYou!\u201d (a term of encouragement that literally means \u201cadd oil!\u201d but is closer to \u201clet\u2019s go!\u201d). Sometimes: \u201cTeacher Wang, well said!\u201d And sometimes, when Wang is particularly critical: \u201cTeacher Wang, well scolded!\u201d (President Donald Trump speaking to the media in the Oval office in September after his two-hour conversation with President Xi.) View image in fullscreen President Donald Trump speaking to the media in the Oval office in September after his two-hour conversation with President Xi. Photograph: Aaron Schwartz/EPA Formally, there are three parts of Wang\u2019s programmes. He opens with a segment of recent news, moves on to a segment that offers opinions and deeper explorations of a particular topic. Finally, he will end with about half an hour of viewer comments and questions. Recent topics have included immigration protests in Australia (\u201cWithout immigration, Australia has no chance of being an influential country\u201d) and China\u2019s diplomatic overtures to India. This segment can also involve questions \u2013 \u201cShould I emigrate to another country?\u201d \u201cShould I buy an iPhone now?\u201d \u2013 that require him to play a variety of roles: agony uncle, consumer advice columnist, financial adviser. He does an episode every year while he makes dumplings. He is part newscaster, part professor, part friend. Few of Wang\u2019s fans wanted to talk on the record, but two of the handful I spoke with pointed to this as their favourite segment. Local news that might be censored in China makes its way out in the comments. Wang will discuss issues viewers have raised about mainland China \u2013 complaints, for example, that government employees are no longer allowed to go to restaurants in large groups; or that factory workers are being forced to take Breathalyser tests when they get home at night; or that falling real estate prices have wiped out someone\u2019s savings. Some of his listeners will address the US directly. \u201cIntroducing a tariff of this size is suicidal!\u201d wrote one viewer. \u201cIs it too simple to blame it on arrogance and wilfulness?\u201d Wang, when he\u2019s interested in a question, will stare into the camera. \u201cYou think Trump has thought it through?\u201d he asks. \u201cI don\u2019t think so. Trump is really simple. He doesn\u2019t think very deeply.\u201d Trump\u2019s brain, Wang told me, is a \u201cqian dao hu \u201d \u2013 a lake with 1,000 islands, none of them connected. W ang does not sleep much. He starts preparing for the broadcast somewhere between four and five hours in advance. Wang\u2019s first daily broadcast runs from around 11am to noon. He then eats lunch, sleeps if he can, and spends time with his family. Around 6pm, he starts the process again, aiming to go live at 11pm. And then at about 12.30 or 1.00am, he walks across the yard, back to his house, and gets his second, truncated, sleep. Wang has wanted to be a journalist since he was a teenager. He was born to middle class parents in Nanshan County, China, a protrusion of land in the south-west part of Shenzhen. When Wang, in high school, decided he was interested in studying journalism at university, his parents told him they couldn\u2019t support his choice. Wang understood their reservations. \u201cDuring the Cultural Revolution, the people who were most targeted were writers and journalists. They were afraid I would be denounced.\u201d Wang, however, had a stubborn streak. He stopped speaking at home. \u201cI had a cold war with my parents,\u201d Wang told me. He held out until they agreed. Wang arrived at Jinan University in Guangzhou in the mid 1980s, intending to study journalism, but it wasn\u2019t journalism, exactly, that he learned. \u201cWe studied the CCP\u2019s theory of media,\u201d Wang told me. According to the CCP, facts were secondary to the health of the party and the populace. Then, in 1990, Wang managed to land a job as a reporter in Hong Kong, which was still under British rule and enjoyed relatively robust freedom of the press. (Though the British did not extend Hongkongers the right to elect their leader.) (Wang in the garden of his home in Masssachusetts.) View image in fullscreen Wang in the garden of his home in Masssachusetts. Photograph: Faith Ninivaggi/The Guardian In Hong Kong, Wang was suddenly in the privileged position of writing honestly about his new city and the country that he had recently left. Wang won multiple press awards as a young reporter at the daily newspaper Ming Pao and then, in 2001, he joined Sing Tao Daily \u2013 the oldest Chinese-language newspaper in the city. By this time, Hong Kong had been transferred to PRC rule and, while Sing Tao operated independently, it had significant ties to Beijing. Wang would eventually oversee the publication\u2019s international expansion efforts, helping establish offices in New York, Toronto and San Francisco. He travelled to all these places but didn\u2019t do much exploring. He was working or meeting Chinese \u00e9migr\u00e9s for dinner. (\u201cYou ask me my impression of the United States. I didn\u2019t have a impression! My impression of New York was only: Chinatown.\u201d) Reporters in Hong Kong, at this time, were in a unique position. In authoritarian systems, reliable information has a special value, and Hong Kong journalists were granted some access to PRC officials. \u201cThis access made Hong Kong media influential not only among Chinese audiences but also among Chinese officials, who treated Hong Kong media as an alternative source of information,\u201d says Rose Liuqiu, a professor in the Department of Journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University. This was particularly true for journalists covering the economy, Wang\u2019s speciality. skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to First Thing Free daily newsletter Our US morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on(https://www.theguardian.com) theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our(https://www.theguardian.com/help/privacy-policy) Privacy Policy . We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google(https://policies.google.com/privacy) Privacy Policy and(https://policies.google.com/terms) Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion This work required diplomacy. Charles Ho, who owned the Sing Tao Daily, maintained close ties with Beijing. He famously said that if he followed Beijing\u2019s directives 100% of the time, he would lose value in Beijing\u2019s eyes. Wang\u2019s own work has always walked a line between attracting viewers, reporting the facts and balancing the concerns of a global power. The precarious balance that sustained Hong Kong\u2019s media did not last. Business ties between Hong Kong\u2019s media outlets and Beijing grew steadily, as did concerns about self-censorship. After democracy protests swept through the city in 2014, prominent editors and journalists became the targets of violent attacks. Jimmy Lai, the founder of Next Media, had his house firebombed more than once. Kevin Lau, the editor of the newspaper Ming Pao, was hospitalised in 2014 after being assaulted in the street with a meat cleaver. In 2016, Wang decided to retire. Beijing was beginning to limit press freedoms in the city and Wang didn\u2019t think the city would recover the openness that had changed his perspective so drastically as a young man. Wang decided to step back from work and, instead, focus on caring for his young daughter, while his wife continued her work in real estate. At the end of 2018, after a visit to his sister-in-law in San Francisco, Wang decided to move his family to the US. He called his wife and told her that he didn\u2019t think there was much future in Hong Kong. His daughter could attend high school in the US, he reasoned. By the time I met him, Wang told me that many of his friends \u2013 editors and reporters at news outlets like the now-shuttered Apple Daily \u2013 had either fled or were in jail. Wang thought he was done as a news man. But character is sometimes fate, and Wang loves to talk. In 2019, he started holding impromptu gatherings at his sister-in-law\u2019s house on the weekends. At the time, Trump was engaging in the first iteration of a trade war with China and many of their acquaintances in the Bay Area, most of whom worked in the tech industry, wanted to meet and discuss current events. The weekly crowd grew and it was his sister-in-law who suggested that Wang move the conversation online and out of her back yard. By the end of the year, Wang had started his YouTube channel. It was, initially, a chatty, informal programme. And then the pandemic hit, and Wang became a professional again. \u201cAll of a sudden it felt serious,\u201d he told me. \u201cI had a responsibility.\u201d I t didn\u2019t take long for Wang to acquire an audience, especially after he started broadcasting twice daily. (His is a volume game.) The pandemic was driving people online and China was limiting the flow of information coming out of the cities it had locked down. One regular viewer I spoke with \u2013 another government worker in China who asked to remain anonymous \u2013 came across Wang around this time, when they were at home during one of China\u2019s restrictive lockdowns. They still listen to his broadcasts daily, looking for news on the economy \u2013 still hoping for information that might not be flowing freely from town to town. \u201cDuring the comments you get a glimpse of what\u2019s happening locally in China,\u201d they told me. Eventually, Wang hired a handful of researchers \u2013 some of whom were journalists who had fled Hong Kong after a crackdown in 2019 \u2013 paying them from the advertising revenue from his broadcasts. He also started a membership programme and a Patreon and began offering a small selection of goods for sale. The tea he sells through YouTube, he told me, was sourced by a fan. \u201cWe don\u2019t make any money on the tea,\u201d he laughed. \u201cI\u2019m the one who buys most of it.\u201d Wang, and the handful of other newscasters like him, are part of an ecosystem of influencers, often called \u201cKOLs\u201d in China for \u201cKnowledge and Opinion Leaders\u201d (an English term that likely originated in Hong Kong). The KOLs compete for attention with western sources \u2013 the Joe Rogan and Fox News clips. Most KOLs are apolitical; posting on TikTok or XiaoHongShu about beauty trends or daily life. Within China, many of these influencers are tacitly approved by the CCP. A woman named Li Ziqi, for example, runs the most popular Mandarin-language programme on YouTube and cross-posts on sites in mainland China. Her videos offer an idealised portrait of village life \u2013 making traditional crafts while soothing music plays in the background. Political KOLs are less likely to be making video content, and those within China are either pro-CCP or frequently find their accounts blocked. One, who goes by the name Gu Ziming, is famous for managing to pop up with new accounts after having an old one shuttered by censors. (Jimmy Lai, the founder of Apple Daily, leaving the court of final appeal in Hong Kong, 1 February 2021. He had been arrested in August 2020 under charges relating to the national security law and remains in prison.) View image in fullscreen Jimmy Lai, the founder of Apple Daily, leaving the court of final appeal in Hong Kong, 1 February 2021. He had been arrested in August 2020 under charges relating to the national security law and remains in prison. Photograph: Tyrone Siu/Reuters When I visited Wang, it was Friday evening. His researchers \u2013 who also wished to remain anonymous \u2013 had submitted the evening\u2019s potential topics via a shared Google document. They laughed about Trump\u2019s negotiation strategies (\u201cNo one trusts him!\u201d) and speculated as to why a large job recruitment platform in Shanghai had stopped reporting salaries (\u201cIt means they\u2019re scared to issue the report\u201d). They moved topics up and down the list, in the order that Wang would plan to address them. In some cases, Wang questioned the news that they brought to him and urged them to seek out more sources. The proposed topics included elections in South Korea; a systemwide shutdown on San Francisco Bart trains; and a (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/15/texas-real-estate-chinese-nationals) Texas ban on Chinese nationals buying property. \u201cHave those Chinese living in Texas done nothing?\u201d Wang asked. \u201cNo resistance or protest?\u201d \u201cI think there were protests before,\u201d came the researcher\u2019s voice through the phone. \u201cBut it turns out they\u2019re giving exemptions to some people, but otherwise you have to have a green card.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s fine, then,\u201d Wang answered. \u201cDon\u2019t go to Texas to buy a house, then. The housing prices are falling in Texas anyway. This is a very red state. I can clearly see the momentum of this state.\u201d The topic made the broadcast. Y ears ago, when I first started reporting on the media landscape in China, I thought of it as a foil to the more raucous and open media environment in the west. Now it feels more like a funhouse mirror \u2013 a different, exaggerated version of something fundamentally the same. Chinese readers have long approached their news sources with cynicism. In the US and most of the west, media sources are, for the most part, still free and unrestricted. Facts, on the other hand, are increasingly under attack. According to the researcher Wang Yaqiu, there is a division she sees in the US and China. Those who have political power, money, or enough education or energy, will do their best to seek out reliable information. This was true when Wang Jian began his career in Hong Kong, when Communist party officials looked to Hong Kong media as a reliable source. It is true now, when reliable information often comes at a cost \u2013 to unlock paywalled information, or to get a VPN to evade the great firewall. Wang\u2019s programme is free to watch, but accessing it takes knowledge, desire and knowhow. Good information, and the ability to find it, Wang Yaqiu pointed out, is more and more a matter of privilege and money \u2013 and this is true on both sides of the Pacific. \u201cThe rest of us,\u201d she said, \u201cwill all be swimming in the same trash.\u201d Wang doesn\u2019t get asked, often, what to do about the authoritarian creep he is commenting on in the US. He has been in this position nearly his entire life \u2013 reporting from Hong Kong as its democratic freedoms were eroded, and now the US. He enjoys enough of a distance to look at things from a bird\u2019s-eye view, able to see events as funny and alarming. He has, at the same time, a truculent, slightly traditionalist, belief in the value of the news. After a lifetime patrolling the boundary between truth and nonsense, Wang believes that people build their realities based on what is available to them: their lived experiences, their teachers, the media they consume. They are reasonable. They just need access to reliable information. In recent months, as political violence and censorship in the US have grown, his references to the value of journalism have multiplied. When Charlie Kirk was assassinated in September, he gave a rapid, dispassionate explanation of Kirk\u2019s record. \u201cKirk pushed forward conservativism and Christian nationalism,\u201d Wang informed his viewers. \u201cHe denied the efficacy of vaccines. After Kirk\u2019s death, Trump ordered all the flags fly half-mast.\u201d The next day, Wang made a fresh argument for his line of work. \u201cMedia\u2019s role is helping everyone regulate power,\u201d he told his audience. \u201cChina castrated the media.\u201d A few days later, he returned to the question. \u201cHow do you change your destiny?\u201d he asked. \u201cYou change your destiny with knowledge. How do you gain knowledge?\u201d Wang continued. \u201cYou read the news.\u201d (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/apr/17/why-would-he-take-such-risk-my-censor-and-me-weibo-china) \u2018Why would he take such a risk?\u2019 How a famous Chinese author befriended his censor Read more Wang issues warnings, but his work is fundamentally hopeful. He often returns to his own experience arriving in Hong Kong. He walked the streets, looked at the buildings, and marvelled at the fact that he could just go and look up who owned them. That had not been possible back home. He read old copies of Life magazine and began questioning the Communist party\u2019s version of history. It was an epiphany. \u201cMy mission is to provide everyone with an opportunity to change their view of the world,\u201d Wang told me, as he transitioned from tea to coffee. \u201cThis is the value of this programme. You need to know that this world is made up of countless puzzles. This, what is happening in the US, is one of them.\u201d On the night I visited, Wang wrapped up around 1am. He thanked his audience. He sighed, momentarily letting his exhaustion slip through. He asked for upvotes and follows. \u201cJoin us as a member and help support us,\u201d he said. And then he closed with his regular signoff. \u201cBroadcast better,\u201d he said. \u201cBe better.\u201d Listen to our podcasts (https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/the-long-read) here and sign up to the long read weekly email (https://www.theguardian.com/info/ng-interactive/2017/may/05/sign-up-for-the-long-read-email) here . 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All rights reserved.(dcr) " ], "output": "htmltotext.txt", "pwd": "/data/archive/1760514941.715532", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-10-15T07:56:25.434213+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "media": [ { "cmd": [ "/usr/local/bin/yt-dlp", "--restrict-filenames", "--trim-filenames", "128", "--write-description", "--write-info-json", "--write-annotations", "--write-thumbnail", "--no-call-home", "--write-sub", "--write-auto-subs", "--convert-subs=srt", "--yes-playlist", "--continue", "--no-abort-on-error", "--ignore-errors", "--geo-bypass", "--add-metadata", "--format=(bv*+ba/b)[filesize<=750m][filesize_approx<=?750m]/(bv*+ba/b)", "--skip-download", "--cache-dir=/data/yt-dlp-cache/", "--cookies=/data/yt-dlp-cache/cookies.txt", "--proxy=socks5://tor-socks-proxy:9150", "--no-playlist", "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/14/wang-jian-china-journalist-reports-united-states-donald-trump-xi-jinping?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us" ], "cmd_version": "2024.10.7", "end_ts": "2025-10-15T07:56:33.127966+00:00", "index_texts": [], "output": "media/", "pwd": "/data/archive/1760514941.715532", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-10-15T07:56:27.803699+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/home/archivebox/.npm/bin/postlight-parser", "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/14/wang-jian-china-journalist-reports-united-states-donald-trump-xi-jinping?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us" ], "cmd_version": "2.2.3", "end_ts": "2025-10-15T07:56:25.377093+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury/", "pwd": "/data/archive/1760514941.715532", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-10-15T07:56:19.295939+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/home/archivebox/.npm/bin/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmp09i915fc", "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/14/wang-jian-china-journalist-reports-united-states-donald-trump-xi-jinping?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2025-10-15T07:56:10.296815+00:00", "index_texts": [ "On a Friday night in late May, Wang Jian was getting ready to broadcast. It was pouring outside, and he was sitting in the garage apartment behind his house, just outside Boston, eating dinner. \u201cI am very sensitive to what Trump does,\u201d Wang was telling me, in Mandarin, waving a fork. \u201cWhen Trump holds a cabinet meeting, he sits there and the people next to him start to flatter him. And I think, isn\u2019t this the same as Mao Zedong? Trump sells the same thing: a little bit of populism, plus a little bit of small-town shrewdness, plus a little bit of \u2018I have money.\u2019\u201dWang was sitting next to a rack of clothing \u2013 the shirts and jackets the 58-year-old newsman wears professionally \u2013 and sipping a seemingly bottomless cup of green tea that would eventually give way to coffee. By 11pm, he would walk across the room and snap on a set of ring lights, ready to carry on an unbroken string of chatter for a YouTube news programme that he calls \u201cWang Jian\u2019s Daily Observations\u201d. It was a slow news night but he would end up talking until nearly 1am. This was his second broadcast of the day. Different time zones, he explained to me, different audiences.Wang, who has more than 800,000 subscribers on YouTube, is representative of a small but influential part of the Mandarin-language media landscape. He is part of an exodus of media professionals who have left Hong Kong and mainland China in the past decade; and one of a handful who have started posting news and analysis videos on YouTube. Wang serves an audience of Chinese expatriates \u2013 along with mainlanders savvy enough to get round China\u2019s great firewall \u2013 who tune in hoping that he can fill in the gaps left by propaganda, censorship and disinformation.Wang\u2019s fans find him entertaining and reassuringly professional. (\u201cHe\u2019s very objective, I think,\u201d one told me.) His broadcast manner moves from the impersonal, rhythmic cadence of a veteran newscaster to personal asides that bring to mind a slightly incredulous university lecturer. He loves a rhetorical question (\u201cIs this the way a US president speaks?\u201d) followed by his favourite English-language interjection: \u201cC\u2019mon.\u201dI have spent the months since Trump\u2019s inauguration watching Wang on YouTube. He was first recommended to me by a journalist working at a prominent Chinese news outlet who, even while reporting for a similar audience, frequently checked in on Wang\u2019s broadcasts. \u201cHe\u2019ll be perfect for you,\u201d they said. Americans have always loved looking at themselves from a distance.Watching the US through Wang makes our political reality appear more comical and more dangerous. He centres China in all his broadcasts, offering a kind of been-there-done-that account of authoritarian creep. He places the US on an arc of history we have long pretended to transcend. \u201cAmericans are democracy\u2019s equivalent of second-generation wealth,\u201d he told me. They were born into democracy and have no appreciation of what life is like without it. Chinese people, on the other hand, \u201chave been bullied by rulers for thousands of years. We\u2019re very familiar with these situations.\u201dThere are many American reporters, Wang said, who report competently on China. But when I asked how the US media was doing covering the US, he burst into laughter. \u201cIf I were the New York Times, I would be putting curse words on the front page every day,\u201d he told me. \u201cF-word, F-word, F-word.\u201dIn the US, the China narrative can fluctuate depending on the day. We thought, briefly, that the outbreak of the pandemic in Wuhan constituted a \u201cChornobyl moment\u201d that would undermine the regime. It did not. We wonder, on and off, how China builds rail systems so quickly. We worry about whether China will overtake us in AI development. Our sense of national decline is intensified by China\u2019s rise. In April, a New York Times op-ed by Thomas Friedman ran with the headline, \u201cI just saw the future. It was not in America.\u201d (It was in China.)In China, meanwhile, people looking to understand the US are also subject to a push and pull based on the political climate and \u2013 under Xi Jinping, China\u2019s long-serving president \u2013 the narrowing space for free expression. China\u2019s propaganda operation no longer resembles the lumbering machinery of Orwell\u2019s Nineteen Eighty-Four. There are still fustier national newspapers \u2013 Xinhua and the People\u2019s Daily \u2013 that clearly represent a Communist party perspective. There is also the more nationalistic Global Times. \u201cIf the US did not interfere in China\u2019s internal affairs or challenge its sovereignty,\u201d said one recent article, \u201cthere would be no need for it to worry about China\u2019s defence development\u201d.President Xi Jinping at the Global leaders\u2019 meeting on gender equality and women\u2019s empowerment in Beijing earlier this month. Photograph: Getty ImagesAt the turn of the last century, these bigger publications were balanced by a handful of independent, market-driven media outlets pushing the boundaries of censorship in China, although these mostly reported on domestic issues. Over time, however, most Chinese media consumers have moved online and today, just like Americans, they get most of their information on social media. Mainland China blocks Facebook, YouTube, X and Google. Instead, information spreads on Sina Weibo or, most commonly, WeChat. These platforms are monitored by human censors and AI programmes that hunt for sensitive phrases or keywords. China\u2019s censorship is not monolithic or infallible, but these combined efforts mean that, typically, the news that spreads is the news that the government permits to spread.\u201cMostly, the things that spread on WeChat are video clips or screenshots with text,\u201d Yaqiu Wang, a researcher based in Washington DC. Clips that highlight American gun violence, protests or inflation flow freely, without any censorship. She mentioned the popularity of snippets from the Trump-friendly Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Yaqiu Wang\u2019s parents will, not infrequently, call at night, concerned about her safety. They are not reading government propaganda so much as a curated selection of American bombast, spin and disinformation.How much Chinese people know about the reality of life in the US varies wildly. \u201cThere are those people with power, or those people working in universities, who will jump the great firewall,\u201d Yaqiu Wang told me. These people can read BBC\u2019s Mandarin news service, for example, or listen to the Mandarin-language podcast run by the New York Times journalist Yuan Li. But if these are too dry for news consumers, Wang Jian is there to chatter the night away. \u201cI think this satisfies people\u2019s needs,\u201d said a Chinese government employee who watches Wang\u2019s programme every day. \u201cYou can get real information.\u201dWang has told viewers that, in all his years as a journalist, the last two had brought about some of the biggest global changes he had seen. Trump, Wang explained, has misidentified the US\u2019s strengths. \u201cYour strengths aren\u2019t your people,\u201d he told me later, expanding on his theme. \u201cI could find a bank teller in Hong Kong, bring them here, and they could do the job of 10 Americans.\u201d What the US has got, according to Wang, is allies and a reliable currency. (\u201cAnd now you\u2019re threatening to annex Canada?\u201d)Trump, according to Wang, would like to be more like Xi Jinping \u2013 a strongman leading a nation with a huge manufacturing base. He likes to point out that the two leaders have birthdays a day apart. Trump would like to take back the supply chain and manufacture everything in the US \u2013 an idea that drew a \u201cc\u2019mon\u201d from Wang. There are, in turn, things about the US that Xi would like to emulate \u2013 the global influence, the financial power of the dollar. \u201cMaybe we should just let Xi and Trump switch places. We wouldn\u2019t need to do anything. They could leave the rest of us out of it,\u201d Wang joked. \u201cAlthough I think Xi Jinping would get beat up in the United States.\u201dIt\u2019s this kind of irreverence that Wang\u2019s audience most enjoys. His viewers call him \u201cTeacher Wang\u201d and as he talks, a string of congratulatory messages pop up. They often say: \u201cTeacher Wang, JiaYou!\u201d (a term of encouragement that literally means \u201cadd oil!\u201d but is closer to \u201clet\u2019s go!\u201d). Sometimes: \u201cTeacher Wang, well said!\u201d And sometimes, when Wang is particularly critical: \u201cTeacher Wang, well scolded!\u201dPresident Donald Trump speaking to the media in the Oval office in September after his two-hour conversation with President Xi. Photograph: Aaron Schwartz/EPAFormally, there are three parts of Wang\u2019s programmes. He opens with a segment of recent news, moves on to a segment that offers opinions and deeper explorations of a particular topic. Finally, he will end with about half an hour of viewer comments and questions. Recent topics have included immigration protests in Australia (\u201cWithout immigration, Australia has no chance of being an influential country\u201d) and China\u2019s diplomatic overtures to India. This segment can also involve questions \u2013 \u201cShould I emigrate to another country?\u201d \u201cShould I buy an iPhone now?\u201d \u2013 that require him to play a variety of roles: agony uncle, consumer advice columnist, financial adviser. He does an episode every year while he makes dumplings. He is part newscaster, part professor, part friend.Few of Wang\u2019s fans wanted to talk on the record, but two of the handful I spoke with pointed to this as their favourite segment. Local news that might be censored in China makes its way out in the comments. Wang will discuss issues viewers have raised about mainland China \u2013 complaints, for example, that government employees are no longer allowed to go to restaurants in large groups; or that factory workers are being forced to take Breathalyser tests when they get home at night; or that falling real estate prices have wiped out someone\u2019s savings. Some of his listeners will address the US directly. \u201cIntroducing a tariff of this size is suicidal!\u201d wrote one viewer. \u201cIs it too simple to blame it on arrogance and wilfulness?\u201dWang, when he\u2019s interested in a question, will stare into the camera. \u201cYou think Trump has thought it through?\u201d he asks. \u201cI don\u2019t think so. Trump is really simple. He doesn\u2019t think very deeply.\u201d Trump\u2019s brain, Wang told me, is a \u201cqian dao hu\u201d \u2013 a lake with 1,000 islands, none of them connected.Wang does not sleep much. He starts preparing for the broadcast somewhere between four and five hours in advance. Wang\u2019s first daily broadcast runs from around 11am to noon. He then eats lunch, sleeps if he can, and spends time with his family. Around 6pm, he starts the process again, aiming to go live at 11pm. And then at about 12.30 or 1.00am, he walks across the yard, back to his house, and gets his second, truncated, sleep.Wang has wanted to be a journalist since he was a teenager. He was born to middle class parents in Nanshan County, China, a protrusion of land in the south-west part of Shenzhen. When Wang, in high school, decided he was interested in studying journalism at university, his parents told him they couldn\u2019t support his choice. Wang understood their reservations. \u201cDuring the Cultural Revolution, the people who were most targeted were writers and journalists. They were afraid I would be denounced.\u201d Wang, however, had a stubborn streak. He stopped speaking at home. \u201cI had a cold war with my parents,\u201d Wang told me. He held out until they agreed.Wang arrived at Jinan University in Guangzhou in the mid 1980s, intending to study journalism, but it wasn\u2019t journalism, exactly, that he learned. \u201cWe studied the CCP\u2019s theory of media,\u201d Wang told me. According to the CCP, facts were secondary to the health of the party and the populace. Then, in 1990, Wang managed to land a job as a reporter in Hong Kong, which was still under British rule and enjoyed relatively robust freedom of the press. (Though the British did not extend Hongkongers the right to elect their leader.)Wang in the garden of his home in Masssachusetts. Photograph: Faith Ninivaggi/The GuardianIn Hong Kong, Wang was suddenly in the privileged position of writing honestly about his new city and the country that he had recently left. Wang won multiple press awards as a young reporter at the daily newspaper Ming Pao and then, in 2001, he joined Sing Tao Daily \u2013 the oldest Chinese-language newspaper in the city. By this time, Hong Kong had been transferred to PRC rule and, while Sing Tao operated independently, it had significant ties to Beijing. Wang would eventually oversee the publication\u2019s international expansion efforts, helping establish offices in New York, Toronto and San Francisco. He travelled to all these places but didn\u2019t do much exploring. He was working or meeting Chinese \u00e9migr\u00e9s for dinner. (\u201cYou ask me my impression of the United States. I didn\u2019t have a impression! My impression of New York was only: Chinatown.\u201d)Reporters in Hong Kong, at this time, were in a unique position. In authoritarian systems, reliable information has a special value, and Hong Kong journalists were granted some access to PRC officials. \u201cThis access made Hong Kong media influential not only among Chinese audiences but also among Chinese officials, who treated Hong Kong media as an alternative source of information,\u201d says Rose Liuqiu, a professor in the Department of Journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University. This was particularly true for journalists covering the economy, Wang\u2019s speciality.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis work required diplomacy. Charles Ho, who owned the Sing Tao Daily, maintained close ties with Beijing. He famously said that if he followed Beijing\u2019s directives 100% of the time, he would lose value in Beijing\u2019s eyes. Wang\u2019s own work has always walked a line between attracting viewers, reporting the facts and balancing the concerns of a global power.The precarious balance that sustained Hong Kong\u2019s media did not last. Business ties between Hong Kong\u2019s media outlets and Beijing grew steadily, as did concerns about self-censorship. After democracy protests swept through the city in 2014, prominent editors and journalists became the targets of violent attacks. Jimmy Lai, the founder of Next Media, had his house firebombed more than once. Kevin Lau, the editor of the newspaper Ming Pao, was hospitalised in 2014 after being assaulted in the street with a meat cleaver. In 2016, Wang decided to retire. Beijing was beginning to limit press freedoms in the city and Wang didn\u2019t think the city would recover the openness that had changed his perspective so drastically as a young man.Wang decided to step back from work and, instead, focus on caring for his young daughter, while his wife continued her work in real estate. At the end of 2018, after a visit to his sister-in-law in San Francisco, Wang decided to move his family to the US. He called his wife and told her that he didn\u2019t think there was much future in Hong Kong. His daughter could attend high school in the US, he reasoned. By the time I met him, Wang told me that many of his friends \u2013 editors and reporters at news outlets like the now-shuttered Apple Daily \u2013 had either fled or were in jail.Wang thought he was done as a news man. But character is sometimes fate, and Wang loves to talk. In 2019, he started holding impromptu gatherings at his sister-in-law\u2019s house on the weekends. At the time, Trump was engaging in the first iteration of a trade war with China and many of their acquaintances in the Bay Area, most of whom worked in the tech industry, wanted to meet and discuss current events. The weekly crowd grew and it was his sister-in-law who suggested that Wang move the conversation online and out of her back yard. By the end of the year, Wang had started his YouTube channel. It was, initially, a chatty, informal programme. And then the pandemic hit, and Wang became a professional again. \u201cAll of a sudden it felt serious,\u201d he told me. \u201cI had a responsibility.\u201dIt didn\u2019t take long for Wang to acquire an audience, especially after he started broadcasting twice daily. (His is a volume game.) The pandemic was driving people online and China was limiting the flow of information coming out of the cities it had locked down. One regular viewer I spoke with \u2013 another government worker in China who asked to remain anonymous \u2013 came across Wang around this time, when they were at home during one of China\u2019s restrictive lockdowns. They still listen to his broadcasts daily, looking for news on the economy \u2013 still hoping for information that might not be flowing freely from town to town. \u201cDuring the comments you get a glimpse of what\u2019s happening locally in China,\u201d they told me.Eventually, Wang hired a handful of researchers \u2013 some of whom were journalists who had fled Hong Kong after a crackdown in 2019 \u2013 paying them from the advertising revenue from his broadcasts. He also started a membership programme and a Patreon and began offering a small selection of goods for sale. The tea he sells through YouTube, he told me, was sourced by a fan. \u201cWe don\u2019t make any money on the tea,\u201d he laughed. \u201cI\u2019m the one who buys most of it.\u201dWang, and the handful of other newscasters like him, are part of an ecosystem of influencers, often called \u201cKOLs\u201d in China for \u201cKnowledge and Opinion Leaders\u201d (an English term that likely originated in Hong Kong). The KOLs compete for attention with western sources \u2013 the Joe Rogan and Fox News clips. Most KOLs are apolitical; posting on TikTok or XiaoHongShu about beauty trends or daily life. Within China, many of these influencers are tacitly approved by the CCP. A woman named Li Ziqi, for example, runs the most popular Mandarin-language programme on YouTube and cross-posts on sites in mainland China. Her videos offer an idealised portrait of village life \u2013 making traditional crafts while soothing music plays in the background. Political KOLs are less likely to be making video content, and those within China are either pro-CCP or frequently find their accounts blocked. One, who goes by the name Gu Ziming, is famous for managing to pop up with new accounts after having an old one shuttered by censors.Jimmy Lai, the founder of Apple Daily, leaving the court of final appeal in Hong Kong, 1 February 2021. He had been arrested in August 2020 under charges relating to the national security law and remains in prison. Photograph: Tyrone Siu/ReutersWhen I visited Wang, it was Friday evening. His researchers \u2013 who also wished to remain anonymous \u2013 had submitted the evening\u2019s potential topics via a shared Google document. They laughed about Trump\u2019s negotiation strategies (\u201cNo one trusts him!\u201d) and speculated as to why a large job recruitment platform in Shanghai had stopped reporting salaries (\u201cIt means they\u2019re scared to issue the report\u201d). They moved topics up and down the list, in the order that Wang would plan to address them. In some cases, Wang questioned the news that they brought to him and urged them to seek out more sources.The proposed topics included elections in South Korea; a systemwide shutdown on San Francisco Bart trains; and a Texas ban on Chinese nationals buying property. \u201cHave those Chinese living in Texas done nothing?\u201d Wang asked. \u201cNo resistance or protest?\u201d\u201cI think there were protests before,\u201d came the researcher\u2019s voice through the phone. \u201cBut it turns out they\u2019re giving exemptions to some people, but otherwise you have to have a green card.\u201d\u201cThat\u2019s fine, then,\u201d Wang answered. \u201cDon\u2019t go to Texas to buy a house, then. The housing prices are falling in Texas anyway. This is a very red state. I can clearly see the momentum of this state.\u201d The topic made the broadcast.Years ago, when I first started reporting on the media landscape in China, I thought of it as a foil to the more raucous and open media environment in the west. Now it feels more like a funhouse mirror \u2013 a different, exaggerated version of something fundamentally the same. Chinese readers have long approached their news sources with cynicism. In the US and most of the west, media sources are, for the most part, still free and unrestricted. Facts, on the other hand, are increasingly under attack.According to the researcher Wang Yaqiu, there is a division she sees in the US and China. Those who have political power, money, or enough education or energy, will do their best to seek out reliable information. This was true when Wang Jian began his career in Hong Kong, when Communist party officials looked to Hong Kong media as a reliable source. It is true now, when reliable information often comes at a cost \u2013 to unlock paywalled information, or to get a VPN to evade the great firewall. Wang\u2019s programme is free to watch, but accessing it takes knowledge, desire and knowhow. Good information, and the ability to find it, Wang Yaqiu pointed out, is more and more a matter of privilege and money \u2013 and this is true on both sides of the Pacific. \u201cThe rest of us,\u201d she said, \u201cwill all be swimming in the same trash.\u201dWang doesn\u2019t get asked, often, what to do about the authoritarian creep he is commenting on in the US. He has been in this position nearly his entire life \u2013 reporting from Hong Kong as its democratic freedoms were eroded, and now the US. He enjoys enough of a distance to look at things from a bird\u2019s-eye view, able to see events as funny and alarming. He has, at the same time, a truculent, slightly traditionalist, belief in the value of the news. After a lifetime patrolling the boundary between truth and nonsense, Wang believes that people build their realities based on what is available to them: their lived experiences, their teachers, the media they consume. They are reasonable. They just need access to reliable information.In recent months, as political violence and censorship in the US have grown, his references to the value of journalism have multiplied. When Charlie Kirk was assassinated in September, he gave a rapid, dispassionate explanation of Kirk\u2019s record. \u201cKirk pushed forward conservativism and Christian nationalism,\u201d Wang informed his viewers. \u201cHe denied the efficacy of vaccines. After Kirk\u2019s death, Trump ordered all the flags fly half-mast.\u201d The next day, Wang made a fresh argument for his line of work. \u201cMedia\u2019s role is helping everyone regulate power,\u201d he told his audience. \u201cChina castrated the media.\u201d A few days later, he returned to the question. \u201cHow do you change your destiny?\u201d he asked. \u201cYou change your destiny with knowledge. How do you gain knowledge?\u201d Wang continued. \u201cYou read the news.\u201dWang issues warnings, but his work is fundamentally hopeful. He often returns to his own experience arriving in Hong Kong. He walked the streets, looked at the buildings, and marvelled at the fact that he could just go and look up who owned them. That had not been possible back home. He read old copies of Life magazine and began questioning the Communist party\u2019s version of history. It was an epiphany. \u201cMy mission is to provide everyone with an opportunity to change their view of the world,\u201d Wang told me, as he transitioned from tea to coffee. \u201cThis is the value of this programme. You need to know that this world is made up of countless puzzles. This, what is happening in the US, is one of them.\u201dOn the night I visited, Wang wrapped up around 1am. He thanked his audience. He sighed, momentarily letting his exhaustion slip through. He asked for upvotes and follows. \u201cJoin us as a member and help support us,\u201d he said. 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