About 8world

8world

8world, published in Chinese as 8 Shijie, is Mediacorp's one-stop Chinese-language digital portal for news, entertainment and lifestyle, published at 8world.com. Formally launched on 29 June 2019 after a soft launch at the end of 2018, it consolidated Mediacorp's Chinese digital platforms into a single service, combining the digital output of 8world News — the Mandarin news operation produced by Mediacorp's Chinese News and Current Affairs department for Channel 8 and Channel U — with the digital edition of i-Weekly magazine, which had merged into Channel 8 News as 8world in September 2018. The portal publishes breaking news, current affairs, video and lifestyle content focused on Singapore, Southeast Asia and Greater China for Singapore's Chinese-speaking majority population. It operates alongside Mediacorp's English-language CNA as the Chinese half of the national broadcaster's news output, and it is institutionally distinct from SPH Media's Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore's other major Chinese news brand.

Launch on 29 June 2019

Mediacorp launched 8world.com on 29 June 2019, describing it as a one-stop Chinese digital portal offering breaking news, current affairs and the latest in entertainment and lifestyle through multiplatform storytelling. Its catchphrase was "Watch. Listen. Read." — in addition to text, the portal offered rich video and audio, with easy, highly visual navigation and sharing via WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook, Twitter and Sina Weibo. Han Weiding, Senior Editor for Mediacorp's Chinese Digital Hub, explained the consolidation: as consumption habits evolved, Mediacorp had decided to recalibrate and consolidate its Chinese digital platforms, and 8world.com was an integrated and seamless digital experience providing a one-stop daily fix of Chinese news, entertainment and lifestyle content, anytime, anywhere. Mediacorp chief executive Tham Loke Kheng said 8world was designed with the Chinese community in mind, providing the latest news and perspectives on current events with a focus on visual storytelling, and aiming to cover the community's passions and interests, promote the use of Mandarin and uplift Chinese culture and values. Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong sent congratulatory remarks, saying the new portal would cover many new areas and expressing the hope that viewers would gain broader perspectives through it — a public welcome also recorded in the outlet's catalogue description.

A strong soft launch: the Q1 2019 figures

Unusually, 8world can document its audience from before its formal launch. The portal was soft-launched at the end of 2018, and in the first quarter of 2019 it recorded a monthly average of 15.3 million page views and 1.1 million unique visitors, according to Adobe Analytics figures published by Mediacorp. Han Weiding attributed the strong start to customer-centricity: the team combined the best of Mediacorp's television, radio and digital content, tailored it to audience needs and added creativity and innovation to create bite-sized information, an approach he said had proven very effective in engaging younger audiences. Those figures matter for understanding what 8world is: not a start-up website, but the unified front door for the Chinese-language output of Singapore's national broadcaster, inheriting audiences from Channel 8 television, Chinese radio and the merged i-Weekly digital magazine from its first day.

The consolidation behind the portal

The portal was the product of a deliberate consolidation of Mediacorp's Chinese media. In September 2018, Mediacorp's magazines 8 Days and i-Weekly ceased print publication and went digital-only; i-Weekly, the Chinese-language entertainment magazine, then merged with Channel 8 News to form 8world for Chinese news, entertainment and lifestyle content. The launch therefore fused two previously separate digital traditions: a television newsroom's output and a magazine's entertainment coverage. Mediacorp presented the result as a media transformation, recalibrating its Chinese platforms for changed consumption habits, and advertisers were addressed in the same terms — Mediacorp offered 8world as part of a holistic transmedia solution across television, radio and digital, with the widest reach to Singapore audiences. The 8world app, available from the App Store and Google Play, carried the consolidation to mobile, with push notifications for breaking news and the most important stories of the day and easy on-demand access to news and current affairs video; its store listing describes 8world as the one-stop Chinese-language portal with the widest coverage of news, entertainment and lifestyle stories from Singapore and around the world, brought to audiences by Mediacorp's Chinese television and radio stations.

8world News: the newsroom that feeds the portal

The portal's news spine is 8world News, the Mandarin news broadcasting operation produced by Mediacorp's Chinese News and Current Affairs department, which also creates programming for Mediacorp's Mandarin television channels, Channel 8 and Channel U. Its headquarters are at the Mediacorp Campus, 1 Stars Avenue, Singapore. The newsroom's documented history runs through decades of Singapore Mandarin television news. Before 2010, it delivered broadcasts at midday, in the evening and late at night. In 2010, Mediacorp underwent organisational changes, including a reduction in the MediaCorp News Group workforce. On 20 October 2014, further scheduling changes replaced Singapore Today with Hello Singapore as the weekday evening programme, integrating news segments within the show in a live format, while midday news was abandoned on weekends. On 13 March 2017, Channel 8 News began broadcasting from its new headquarters at the Mediacorp Campus, the day after its final broadcast from Caldecott Hill, bringing revised graphics, modernised subtitles and advanced hardware. On 1 April 2021, 8world News implemented subtitling in Chinese for its programmes. The portal draws this television newsroom's reporting into digital form — text, video and audio published continuously — rather than operating a separate web-only news desk.

What 8world publishes

8world's content spans the three fields in its founding description: news, entertainment and lifestyle. Its news coverage provides breaking news and perspectives on current events, focused on Singapore first, with Southeast Asia and Greater China as its wider frame. Its entertainment coverage descends from both Channel 8's drama and variety output and i-Weekly's magazine tradition, covering Mediacorp artistes and Chinese-language entertainment; at the launch, veteran artiste Chen Hanwei said the portal gave him a broader perspective of the world, and actress Rebecca Lim cited it as a credible source of news and learning that she read daily to improve her Mandarin. Its lifestyle coverage unveils trends in style, food and travel. The common thread, in Mediacorp's launch formulation, is visual, multiplatform storytelling for a Chinese-speaking audience — a deliberate contrast with the text-heavy broadsheet tradition of its Singapore rival, Zaobao. Roland Ng, president of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, called the move timely for local businesses, saying 8world presented a diversity of information that would help businesses establish closer links with the rest of the world.

Audience and community role in Singapore

8world's audience is, in the first instance, Singapore's Chinese-speaking majority, for whom Mandarin media is a daily habit and a cultural anchor. Mediacorp framed the portal explicitly as a community service: designed with the Chinese community in mind, promoting the use of Mandarin and uplifting Chinese culture and values. That mission sits within Mediacorp's position as Singapore's state-owned national media company, owned by Temasek Holdings, operating the country's free-to-air television, radio and digital properties. The portal's early figures — 15.3 million monthly page views and 1.1 million monthly unique visitors before its formal launch — made it one of Singapore's largest Chinese-language digital services from the outset. Its sharing tools, spanning WeChat and Sina Weibo alongside WhatsApp and Facebook, also acknowledge its secondary audiences in Greater China and the diaspora, who follow Singapore news in Chinese through the portal even though Singapore remains its editorial centre of gravity.

Place in Singapore's Chinese media landscape

Singapore has two great Chinese news institutions, and 8world is the broadcast-born one. Lianhe Zaobao, owned by SPH Media, is a print-born broadsheet whose online portal, launched in 1995, is oriented heavily toward Greater China readers. 8world, owned by Mediacorp, is a television-born portal launched in 2019, oriented toward Singapore viewers first, built from a TV newsroom, Chinese radio and a merged entertainment magazine. Within Mediacorp itself, 8world is the Chinese counterpart to CNA, the English-language news service: the same national broadcaster speaks to Singapore in both languages, but through separately branded, separately staffed services — the Chinese News and Current Affairs department in 8world's case. The distinction matters for cataloguing: 8world is not the Chinese edition of CNA, not a section of Zaobao, and not simply the website of Channel 8. It is a distinct digital portal with its own launch date, name, editorial hub under its Chinese Digital Hub senior editor, and consolidated content drawn from across Mediacorp's Chinese television, radio and magazine properties.

Broadcast landmarks in the portal's record

The newsroom behind the portal also carries the fixed rituals and exceptions of Singapore television news, which the portal reports and extends online. Its news timeslots are mostly fixed, with documented exceptions: on National Day, 9 August, its evening programmes move earlier for the live National Day Parade broadcast; on National Day Rally night, the weekend programme is presented before the rally speeches; its late News Tonight is not presented on polling day of a general election. Channel U aired a live 11pm edition of News Tonight on 5 May 2013 — its first in three years — for the results of the Malaysian general election, and again on 1 September 2023 for the results of the Singapore presidential election. During the period of national mourning for Lee Kuan Yew from 23 to 29 March 2015, all Mediacorp channels carried highlights and the latest news of his death, including a special edition of the channel's news. These landmarks belong to the broadcasting operation whose digital face 8world became in 2019, and they illustrate the portal's inheritance: the routines of a national television newsroom, republished for a digital, Chinese-speaking audience.

Continuing development

Since its 2019 launch, 8world has continued as Mediacorp's consolidated Chinese digital home, publishing through 8world.com and its mobile app, which continues to be updated and describes itself as a Chinese portal by Mediacorp offering news, entertainment and lifestyle content. The changes inside its newsroom — such as the introduction of Chinese subtitling across its programmes on 1 April 2021 — flow directly into the portal's video offering, keeping its television and digital identities fused. For the directory reader, 8world is best understood as the digital consolidation of Singapore's Mandarin broadcasting: a 2019 portal, soft-launched in 2018 on the merger of Channel 8 News and i-Weekly, that turned the Chinese output of the national broadcaster into a single Chinese-language destination for news, entertainment and lifestyle, serving Singapore's Chinese-speaking majority and readers across Southeast Asia and Greater China.