About Sixth Tone

Sixth Tone

Sixth Tone (Chinese: 第六声) is a Chinese state-owned English-language online magazine based in Shanghai and published at sixthtone.com. It began publication on 6 April 2016, launched by the Shanghai United Media Group with an initial investment of US$4.5 million, as a sister publication of The Paper, the group's Chinese-language digital newspaper. Sixth Tone was created to tell human-centric stories from across China for international readers: instead of competing head-on with wire services or state broadcasters on breaking political news, it set out to show a fresh, everyday side of China through deep features, timely news reports and rich commentary. The publication quickly found an audience among foreign journalists, researchers and general readers interested in Chinese society, was being cited by Western media by 2018, and won multiple awards for editorial excellence from the Society of Publishers in Asia. It remains one of the best-known English-language magazines produced inside China's state media system.

Launch in April 2016

Sixth Tone began publication on April 6, 2016. The launch was publicly framed, in the magazine's own press release that day, as an attempt to showcase a "fresh" side of China through "deep features, timely news reports, and rich commentaries" and by "focusing on the everyday realities of Chinese people's lives." Founding editor-in-chief Wei Xing told Foreign Policy in an April 2016 interview that the plan was to "humanize" China news. The New York Times marked the launch by noting that the magazine's parent, The Paper, had become a new-media success story in a fast-changing Chinese marketplace, covering contentious issues such as official corruption and a vaccine-storage scandal, and that the English-language version was an attempt to make that recipe work abroad. Wei Xing served as the first editor-in-chief but left on 30 May 2016 to launch a start-up; his successor, Zhang Jun, became editor-in-chief later that year. Ting Wu is listed as editor-in-chief in the publication's current reference profiles. The magazine has been based in Shanghai throughout its existence, sharing resources with The Paper and the wider Shanghai United Media Group.

The name and the idea behind it

The magazine's name refers to the tones of Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin has four active tones and a fifth, neutral or "dropped" tone that carries less prominence than the other four. Because the language therefore has five tones, the name "Sixth Tone" expresses the publication's ideal of expanding beyond the items traditionally reported in Anglophone media — adding a further, previously unheard voice. The magazine's own mission statement develops the same idea: when it comes to coverage of China, Sixth Tone believes there is room for other voices that go beyond buzzwords and headlines to tell the uncommon stories of common people, covering issues from the perspectives of those most intimately involved in order to highlight the nuances and complexities of today's China. That positioning — neither a state wire nor an outside commentator, but a Shanghai newsroom writing about ordinary lives for foreign readers — has defined the brand since 2016, and the magazine restated the commitment at its seventh anniversary, saying it remained committed to telling human-centric stories from across China.

Parent group and sister publication

Sixth Tone is published by the Shanghai United Media Group, the state media company formed in 2013 and overseen by the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The group provided about US$4.5 million of the magazine's initial funding and remains its publisher. Sixth Tone is a sister publication of The Paper (Pengpai News), the mobile-first Chinese-language outlet launched by the group in July 2014, and at launch it shared The Paper's resources, newsroom culture and state-owned parent. Reporting on the magazine has consistently noted the other side of that structure: as a publication based in China, it is subject to strict censorship, and commentary at launch observed that it was not officially party-operated in form but operated under party oversight in practice. In October 2023 the Shanghai United Media Group set up an international communication centre, the Shanghai Global News Network, and Sixth Tone has since been part of that network and no longer under the supervision of The Paper, according to a senior executive of the group quoted by Nikkei. New management was installed at the publication in 2023 following repeated attacks by nationalists on Weibo.

Editorial approach: human-centric storytelling

Sixth Tone's editorial identity rests on human-centric storytelling. From its first weeks, the site mixed personal narratives connected to major national issues — an April 2016 essay by a former migrant worker who had become the director of an NGO is one early example cited by commentators — with long-form dives into social problems, such as an April 2016 piece about children's gangs in rural China. Its daily news coverage focuses on the issues that matter to everyday people, including urban trends, labour conditions, healthcare and education, while its deep features use extensive fieldwork and multiple perspectives to humanise complex systemic change, from the impact of climate change on the Tibetan plateau to changing patterns of marriage and family in rural provinces. Vincent Ni, writing in Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture two years after the launch, argued that Sixth Tone had proved far more effective than the far larger sums invested in the English-language programmes of state broadcasters, and noted that mainstream outlets such as the BBC often cited it as their source when reporting Chinese social stories, because foreign newsrooms lacked the resources to go deeper into many modern China stories themselves.

Sections: news, features, voices and multimedia

The magazine organises its output into clearly defined sections. Its revamped website, rolled out ahead of its seventh anniversary in April 2023, gathers all previous coverage into news, features, voices and opinion, "Sixth Tone ×" and multimedia sections, and added a dedicated Q&A section and an announcements page for events and other offerings. The news section carries timely reporting on society and everyday life; features carry the long-form, narrative and investigative work for which the magazine is best known; voices and opinion provide a platform for researchers, academics and citizens to offer first-person perspectives and analysis, serving as a forum where Chinese scholars can communicate their findings directly to an English-speaking audience; and the multimedia section reflects the magazine's heavy emphasis on visual storytelling, including documentary photography and short-form video. The 2023 relaunch also used the upgrade to spotlight the magazine's special projects, which showcase cross-team collaborations and innovative storytelling, and the improved site is available on computer and mobile phone as well as through the magazine's app.

Engaging readers and writers

Beyond daily publishing, Sixth Tone has built participatory formats around its brand. In 2022 it launched its first "China Writing Contest," seeking nonfiction submissions from writers around the world on the theme "Generations." The contest welcomed entries of 1,000 to 5,000 words offering fresh perspectives, in-depth observations and engaging storytelling related to China; individuals and teams of up to three people could enter, with a submission deadline of 30 April 2022, prizes ranging from 3,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan, winners announced over the summer of 2022, and outstanding works published on Sixth Tone's website. The contest announcement restated the magazine's founding facts — based in Shanghai, launched in 2016 to tell human-centric stories from across China — and noted that the publication and its stories had won widespread recognition, including multiple awards for editorial excellence from the Society of Publishers in Asia. Such initiatives underline that Sixth Tone's audience strategy has always combined professional reporting with contributed voices, rather than relying solely on staff journalism.

Recognition and awards

Sixth Tone's work has been repeatedly recognised by the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA), the Hong Kong-based organisation founded in 1982 to champion the best journalism practices in the Asia-Pacific region. The magazine's own materials state that it and its stories have won multiple SOPA awards for editorial excellence, and its photography and multimedia work are frequently described as award-winning. By 2018, Western media had begun to cite Sixth Tone in news reports, a marker of how thoroughly the magazine had entered the international information ecosystem around China. That recognition, however, later became a point of domestic controversy. After the magazine published a 2022 year-in-review feature highlighting terms such as "baby bust," "housing crisis," "gender violence" and "COVID" following the sudden lifting of China's zero-COVID measures, China nationalists attacked the outlet for an editorial bias akin to Western media and cited its frequent reception of international awards from SOPA as proof. Shanghai authorities requested senior editors to engage in self-reflection in response, and the outlet consequently stopped submitting entries for international awards such as SOPA; in the following award cycle both The Paper and Sixth Tone also dropped out of SOPA membership.

Position among China's English-language media

Sixth Tone occupies a niche that no other Chinese state outlet quite fills. Analysts noted at launch that it did not plan to compete directly with major international outlets such as The Wall Street Journal or with the English services of state broadcaster CCTV, but rather to fill a specific gap: well-produced, people-focused English journalism about contemporary China, made inside China. Its comparatively modest initial investment of US$4.5 million contrasts with the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in English-language news programmes by Xinhua, CCTV and China Radio International, yet within two years scholarly assessment judged it more effective than those programmes at reaching and influencing foreign audiences, precisely because it offered a diverse and authentic side of China that rarely received attention elsewhere. For foreign journalists it became a practical resource as well as a competitor — a Shanghai newsroom producing citable, on-the-ground social reporting in English. The tightening environment of 2022–2023, the management overhaul and its move into the Shanghai Global News Network show the limits within which that model operates, but the magazine continues to publish at sixthtone.com.

Sixth Tone today

Today Sixth Tone remains a Shanghai-based, English-language online magazine published by the Shanghai United Media Group, publishing news, features, voices and opinion and multimedia from its website and app. Its declared mission is unchanged: to go beyond buzzwords and headlines, to tell the uncommon stories of common people, and to cover contemporary China from the perspectives of those most intimately involved. From its April 2016 launch with US$4.5 million in backing, through its years of SOPA recognition and wide citation by Western media, to its 2023 website revamp, seventh anniversary and reorganisation under the Shanghai Global News Network, the magazine has been the international-facing half of Shanghai's state media reinvention — the "sixth tone" that its founders hoped would let English-speaking readers hear China differently.