Recommendations for news websites

[prateeksha]

Hello all! I am trying to find online sources for reading news on PRC, primarily political news. I understand that this is a tricky area and it will be difficult to find a single source which will be objective and unbiased (is there much news reporting in the world which is both of these, anyway?) I am currently a Masters student, so the likes of South China Morning Post and Wall Street Journal which require paid subscription are out of my reach. 

 

Which news websites do forum members here prefer? The websites don't have to focus entirely on domestic politics, and it is acceptable if they don't focus a lot on analysis as well. My primary motive is to remain up-to-date with the current events. Sadly, the international section in Indian English newspapers yet needs to go a very long way. I am primarily looking for English sources, good Chinese ones are welcome as well!

[Kobo-Daishi]

Use Google's news search.

 

https://www.google.com/search?&tbm=nws&q=china

 

Bookmark the above link.

 

 

And in the "Search settings" preferences set the number of results to 100.

 

 

 

 

I am currently a Masters student, so the likes of South China Morning Post and Wall Street Journal which require paid subscription are out of my reach.

 

 

I wouldn't completely rule out the Wall Street Journal. A lot of times they'll have free articles and other times some that are free for the day. Also sometimes an article will no longer be available, but, if you search and click through Google you're able to get to the article. Maybe they've a deal with Google so that you can access that particular article through Google.

 

Also, the South China Morning Post makes it that you are permitted to view a set number of articles for free per month. Don't know the number off hand, but, I haven't really had any problems with them. I'd tell you a go-around method to get articles once the limit has been reached, but, I'm afraid they'd hear about it and close the door, so, I won't. Tell you about it, that is.   

 

The Google news search is quite good, for the most part. Occasionally, there will be an article about someone named "China", an article on collecting "china", or about a city called "China". But I find these the rare exception rather than the rule.

 

Kobo.

[prateeksha]

@Kobo, thank you very much for the helpful response. The google search results method is pretty much what I do at the moment. As far as SCMP is concerned, they give a total of 5 articles per IP address free before one has to sign up and pay. Similar for WSJ. I too know a way to bypass this, but it soon becomes very 麻烦 and leads one to make a post like this, wondering if there are better things out there.

[Bad Cao Cao]

In order of most frequented, for me:

 

Caixin: http://www.caixin.com/ , English version: http://english.caixin.com/

Daily news reading, with transcripts : http://phtv.ifeng.com/program/ybttd/

Bill Bishop's twitter feed: @niubi https://twitter.com/niubi

BBC : http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp

yi jia yi, with transcripts: http://cctv.cntv.cn/lm/xinwenyijiayi/video/index.shtml

QQ news: http://news.qq.com/

 

If you are looking for a spectrum of Chinese news, from different regions, try these:

 

DW: http://www.dw.de/%E5%9C%A8%E7%BA%BF%E6%8A%A5%E5%AF%BC/s-9058

NYT: http://cn.nytimes.com/ (clear cache, etc)

NHK: http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/chinese/top/index.html

rfi: http://www.chinese.rfi.fr/

SBS: http://sbs.com.au/mandarin

SCMP, as mentioned.

CCTV: http://cctv.cntv.cn/lm/xinwenlianbo/

VOA: http://www.voachinese.com/

UN: http://www.unmultimedia.org/radio/chinese/

 

I think it also depends on what you really mean by "staying up with current events". Online forums are good for this:

 

Weibo, top topics : http://huati.weibo.com/

BBC interactive : http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/interactive

 

As are interesting podcasts like lwkd : gb.cri.cn/news/other/lwdc/lwkd.htm , or, popular talk shows (with transcripts to make it easy to follow) : http://phtv.ifeng.com/program/talk/

[prateeksha]

Bad Cao Cao, that's an amazing wealth of resources you've splashed open, thank you very much!

[aone]

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