About CGTN Documentary

CGTN Documentary

CGTN Documentary is the English-language documentary channel of China Global Television Network, part of China Media Group, based in Beijing. It broadcasts English-language documentaries about China and the world for international distribution, and it is China's first state-level English-language documentary channel to broadcast globally. It is the international counterpart to the Mandarin documentary service CCTV-9: the same documentary institution speaking, in this version, to the world in English.

Launched on 1 January 2011 as CCTV-9 Documentary, it shared its birth and its name with the Mandarin channel until the great CGTN rebranding at the end of 2016 separated them — CCTV-9 kept the number for domestic viewers, and the English service took the CGTN Documentary name it carries today.

Ownership: CGTN within China Media Group

CGTN Documentary is operated by China Global Television Network (CGTN), the international division of China Central Television and one of the branches of China Media Group. CMG was founded in March 2018 as the fusion of CCTV, China National Radio and China Radio International, bringing CGTN under the same holding as the domestic CCTV channels. Headquartered in Beijing, CGTN runs television channels in English, Spanish, French, Arabic and Russian alongside this documentary service.

That structure explains the channel's dual character. It is programmed like a documentary channel — acquisitions, commissions and co-productions from the factual market — but it is owned like a national voice: the international documentary arm of the Chinese state broadcaster, charged with presenting China to the world in the most portable of all television forms, the documentary film.

Launch in 2011 as CCTV-9 Documentary

The channel launched on 1 January 2011 as CCTV-9 Documentary, on the same day as its Mandarin sister. The documentary project was two-faced from birth: a domestic channel to build Chinese documentary, and an international version, in English and Chinese, to offer a window on China to the world. The international service expanded quickly — by April 2012 the documentary channel reported reaching over 25 million homes in 60 countries, with coproduction deals already in place with BBC Worldwide, NHK, ITV, France Télévisions, National Geographic, KBS and others.

The English channel's early schedule drew on the same production web as the domestic service: some 2,500 hours of Chinese programming a year generated with over 100 television stations and 1,000 production companies across China, giving the international channel a supply of China subjects no foreign broadcaster could match.

The 2016 rebrand to CGTN Documentary

On 31 December 2016, all channels and divisions in the CCTV International group were rebranded as CGTN, and the English documentary channel became CGTN Documentary; the Mandarin service kept the CCTV-9 name for the domestic market. Reference accounts of the channel record the former name as CCTV-9 Documentary (2011–2016), and its launch date as 1 January 2011.

The rebrand placed the documentary service inside a single international brand with the English news channel and the French, Spanish, Arabic and Russian services. At the CGTN launch, President Xi Jinping's congratulatory letter urged the new network to tell China's story well and let the world know a three-dimensional, colourful China — a brief the documentary channel, with its cultural and natural subjects, is particularly built to fulfil.

Programming: China to the world, the world in English

CGTN Documentary broadcasts documentaries in English about China and the wider world: Chinese history, culture and heritage; natural history; science and engineering; biography and contemporary society. It has also been known to carry Mandarin-language programmes with English subtitles. Its daily pattern is distinctive: new programming is broadcast between 19:00 and 23:00 Beijing time, with archival programming repeated at other times — a prime-time premiere block for the international audience, wrapped in the channel's deep library.

The China subjects are its distinction in the world documentary market. Where international channels programme China occasionally, CGTN Documentary programmes it continuously — the Great Wall, the mega-projects, the minority cultures, the wildlife of the Tibetan plateau and the rainforests of Yunnan — made by Chinese producers and their international partners for viewers who will never see the Mandarin originals.

Co-productions and the documentary tradition

The channel inherits the co-production tradition of the CCTV documentary project. The lineage begins with 'Wild China', the six-part natural history series co-produced by the BBC Natural History Unit and CCTV, screened on BBC Two in 2008 as the culmination of the BBC's 'Continents' strand and broadcast in China as 'Beautiful China' — the first time CCTV had collaborated with a foreign broadcaster on such a project, produced for CCTV by Gao Xiaoping and for the BBC by Phil Chapman.

After the documentary channels launched, the method scaled: 'Generation Earth' with the BBC and Discovery, 'Wonders of Life' with the BBC and the Science Channel, a giant-sinkholes series with ITV Global and National Geographic, and 'Hidden Kingdoms' with BBC Worldwide's Natural History Unit. CGTN Documentary is the English-language home of that tradition — the channel through which Chinese co-productions meet the world audience in the world language.

Distribution: satellite, Hong Kong and the world

CGTN Documentary is distributed internationally by satellite and cable as a 24-hour English-language service, in high definition (1080i). Its Hong Kong history shows its strategic place: the public broadcaster RTHK simulcast the channel terrestrially as RTHK TV 33 until 29 May 2017, when RTHK began simulcasting a separate CCTV-1 version in its place; the CGTN Documentary simulcast resumed on 1 July 2022, on digital-only channel 34.

Beyond Hong Kong, the channel travels wherever CGTN's satellite and carriage deals reach, and its programmes are published through CGTN's digital platforms. It is, by design, the most exportable of China's channels: an English documentary is welcome in a hotel, a university and a cable bundle in a way a news channel often is not.

Audiences and purpose

The channel's audience is the international documentary audience — viewers of factual television reached through global distribution, together with the China-interested public of students, travellers, businesspeople and the overseas Chinese diaspora's English-speaking generations. Its stated institutional aim, from the documentary project's founding, is to be a window: at launch the international version's purpose was described as offering a window on China to the world.

Window is the right metaphor for its method. The channel rarely argues; it shows — landscapes, crafts, cities, animals, engineers at work. In the portfolio of Chinese international broadcasting, CGTN Documentary is the soft-spoken member, building familiarity with China one film at a time.

Digital presence and the official website

The channel's official home is cgtn.com — listed in references as www.cgtn.com/channel/documentary — carrying live streaming, programme pages and documentary video for an international audience, with the wider CGTN site at cgtn.com. CGTN's digital operation was relaunched with the 2016 rebrand, with new mobile apps for news and live broadcasting and social accounts aimed at international audiences.

Documentary suits that digital life well: complete films and series are natural on-demand viewing, and the channel's co-productions circulate through partners' platforms as well as CGTN's own.

Why CGTN Documentary matters

CGTN Documentary matters because it is China's documentary voice in the world's language. Born with CCTV-9 in 2011 as the country's first state-level English documentary channel to broadcast globally, renamed in the CGTN consolidation of 2016, and fed by a co-production tradition that runs from 'Wild China' to the present, it carries Chinese subjects — history, nature, engineering and everyday life — to audiences in more than sixty countries. Among China's international channels, it is the one most likely to be watched by someone who was not looking for China at all — which is precisely its value.