China’s political debate finds a new home on YouTube

(Edited and refined by Grace Chong, with the assistance of AI translation.)

“Goodness! I’m speechless. That Bilibili video is just nonsensical. He’s overthinking it.”

The remark came from Yan Geling, author of the novel behind Youth (《芳华》), who has described herself as “hating the Cultural Revolution to death”.

She was responding to a Chinese commentary video on Bilibili last December that used the film Youth to revisit the Cultural Revolution, sparking discussion online and an unexpected wave of nostalgia among younger viewers.

Yan made the comment during a video podcast for JF Books, a US-based independent Chinese bookstore, reflecting on her personal experiences of the period. Uploaded to YouTube on 12 January, the episode became the bookstore’s most-viewed video since its channel launch.

Clips were later reposted on Chinese social media by users “outside the firewall”, drawing renewed attention within China’s tightly controlled “walled” internet. Platforms such as YouTube and Facebook are blocked in mainland China and are commonly referred to as the “world outside the firewall”.

Yan’s interviewer in the video podcast was He Liu, a post-95 youth from Beijing and research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution in the US, China, and the World programme. He began hosting this interview programme, JF Pod (季风播客), in his spare time last June, speaking with intellectuals from diverse backgrounds on topics such as “walking the line” (Chinese citizens crossing borders as illegal immigrants), rights lawyers and state-business relations — many of which are highly sensitive in China.

He told Lianhe Zaobao that, given China’s constrained speech environment with “a big knife hanging overhead at all times”, he hopes to “recreate the public life of Chinese civil society” through a relatively freer overseas programme.

As times have changed, many public intellectuals who once shaped Chinese public discourse have gradually lost their voice, facing varying degrees of censorship. In recent years, some have turned to YouTube, where they continue to comment on current affairs in a more open online environment. Figures such as former CCTV investigative journalist Chai Jing, host Cui Yongyuan and historian Qin Hui have become notable new YouTubers in the Chinese-language internet space outside China.

Chai, who moved to Europe with her family in 2017, launched her YouTube channel in July 2023. She revisits topics such as the Cultural Revolution, the Great Famine and the “crackdown on gangs” in Chongqing, while also covering major contemporary events such as the Hong Kong fire and tensions in the Taiwan Strait. Within less than three years, she has amassed over 1.1 million subscribers, becoming a top-tier creator in Chinese current affairs on YouTube.

Chai previously worked on grassroots-focused programmes such as News Probe (《新闻调查》) and Seeing (《看见》) at CCTV, and published a memoir in 2013 titled Seeing, based on her interviews across major public events. Regarded as a chronicle of social change in China, the book was removed from sale in mainland China last May. Ming Pao cited informed sources at the time, saying the removal was due to Chai “repeatedly touching on topics disliked by Beijing authorities on self-media platforms”.

Last June, Chai responded in her programme that she was not surprised by the book’s removal and felt neither angry nor sad, adding, “My first reaction was a sense of strength.”

Shortly afterwards, Eight and a Half, a podcast programme hosted by Hong Kong cultural commentator Leung Man-tao, in which he frequently discusses current affairs, was also removed from audio platforms in mainland China last August, and multiple social media accounts were banned. The exact reasons were never publicly disclosed. Leung, a Hong Kong public intellectual well known among mainland Chinese audiences, moved the programme to YouTube in January this year, where it continues.

In a public conversation with his production team, Leung revealed that when Eight and a Half was taken down, many overseas friends told him it was a good thing, as he no longer needed to be constrained by China’s restrictions: “Man-tao is liberated now”; “he can speak freely, the sky is the limit”.

However, as Leung Man-tao sees it, “dancing with shackles” can produce something distinctive. Although the current environment has effectively pushed him to work overseas, he says he was “very reluctant to go that far”, since maintaining access for even a small audience in China remains important to him, even if only in a “semi-underground” form. The programme, he adds, will still broadly follow its previous approach — “perhaps slightly more open in some respects, but still within certain limits”.

Leung said, “I have a strong emotional attachment to China, so I feel I can’t simply abandon it. I know many friends have left and still produce content about it from abroad, but that kind of work no longer has direct, concrete contact with ‘local people’. That connection matters to me because any meaningful change or development has to come from the ‘local’ ground.”

He Liu, however, argues that publishing on YouTube does not mean the audience is overseas: “In fact, most viewers are still in China, they just use a VPN.” He cited his conversation with Yan Geling as an example, saying the episode spread “unexpectedly widely” within China, further motivating him to continue.

On calibrating discussion boundaries, He said that in China, hinting at unclear red lines can create a sense of excitement: “Many people enjoy testing the boundaries of taboos.” But on overseas platforms without clear boundaries, a more direct and explicit style of expression is required.

He believes that, influenced by China’s public discourse environment, many people have “lost this kind of language”, and it took him a long time to “find it again”. “I’m still searching,” he said. “I often still feel my words aren’t clear enough or sharp enough.” 

In this process of “searching for language”, He noticed that the Chinese commentary ecosystem on YouTube includes many different voices, with varied production styles, visuals and writing approaches — some use attention-grabbing titles, others take a more solemn tone. 

He said, “Diversity is of course a good thing, especially for information not available inside the ‘wall’, where outside perspectives can help fill gaps in public discourse.”

Chinese columnist Lian Qingchuan has tried to find a balance within this diversity. In January, he launched CANNEWS, an “independent and objective” YouTube current affairs channel based in the US, and wrote that Chinese-language self-media outside of China, despite appearing richly diverse, carry an “almost inescapable curse”: with China as the reference point, it is sharply value-driven and polarised into either support or opposition.

He wrote: “They rely on the huge influence of the mainland Chinese state for sustenance: some become ‘pink’ supporters nurtured by it, earning rewards through patriotic traffic, while others turn to reckless speculation, insults, or misinformation.”

A paper in the academic journal Convergence found that “telling China’s conspiracy well” has become a dominant genre in the Chinese commentary ecosystem on YouTube, drawing large audiences both inside and outside China.

The study’s lead author, University of Amsterdam postdoctoral researcher Abby Qin, said in an interview that some popular Chinese dissidents-turned-YouTubers often shift from factual reporting to exaggerated and unverifiable claims: “It presents what appears to be a coherent chain of reasoning, but in fact the entire chain is broken.”

Qin stated bluntly that such conspiracy YouTubers often encourage viewers to donate money, leading to money-making behaviour that raises doubts about whether they truly hold political convictions: they treat it as a business rather than a form of dissent.

Within this YouTube ecosystem, Qin noted that Chinese intellectuals who have joined in recent years tend to ground their political critiques in facts. While they help fill content gaps on the platform, “sending out information is one thing; the extent to which it resonates with the public is another. Their influence is certainly not as great as that of those conspiracy theories.”

She added, “But I don’t think this is their problem. It may instead show that they are sticking to certain principles, rather than doing it purely for money.” 

He Liu said the Yan Geling episode received over 30,000 views on YouTube and generated US$70 in platform revenue. “For us, this is an idealistic pursuit — this level of traffic can’t generate money,” he said.

He added that he does not measure success by outcomes: “My mindset is to fulfil my civic responsibility, share my genuine thoughts and the voices I endorse, be part of the marketplace of ideas, and also try to heal my own political depression.” 

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “中国知识分子转战 YouTube针砭时局”.

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