One of the last foreign media outlets available in China has decided to discontinue its Chinese-language version. The British magazine The Economist announced on February 28 that its application The Economist Global Business Review (commonly known as “GBR”) would cease publication on May 31. Launched in 2015, the publication translated into Mandarin a selection of articles from the magazine likely to be of interest to local readers.
Avoiding sensitive topics on China, this application reserved for subscribers managed to escape censorship, which blocks access to most foreign websites in China, from Google to Facebook and most newspapers. Other Western media that offer a Chinese version, the New York TimesTHE Wall Street Journalor the BBC, are all blocked in China.
In a brief press release addressed to its readership, the famous British publication does not justify its decision. But according to an internal source, it seems to have been motivated by both economic (limited commercial success) and political reasons. New rules announced in August 2023 require all creators of mobile applications to register with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, a process which strengthens the control of Chinese authorities over said applications.
New requirements
The ministry had given app publishers until the end of March 2024 to comply. Apple began requiring these licenses since October. Tencent, the digital giant that owns WeChat, explained that all “mini apps”, these simplified tools within the ultra-dominant social network in China, would be subject to the same registration rules. These new requirements, the concrete application of which is not yet clear, worried those responsible for the British magazine.
The decision could also be economic: if the accounts of The Economist bring together more than 2.3 million subscribers on the social network Weibo, similar to The impact, however, goes beyond these subscribers, since the magazine published long extracts from its articles on social networks.
This closure also raises the question of the future of two similar sites, FTchinesewhich offered both translated articles from the British daily Financial Times and essays by Chinese economists, and that of the Harvard Business Review, which also offers a version in Mandarin. These three media have been operating in a gray zone for years: the application of The Economist was for example available on the App Store, but not in Chinese app stores. The Chinese version of FT works with a website, inaccessible in China without VPN (software to circumvent censorship), but broadcasts articles to its 2.7 million subscribers on Weibo, thus participating in the public debate.