About CrossPacificWatchers

CrossPacificWatchers

CrossPacificWatchers is a Substack newsletter run by Tian Dongdong, a Chinese journalist who worked as a correspondent for Chinese media in Brussels, London, Cairo and Tripoli and is now based in Beijing. Titled around the promise of "everything you need to know about the Chinese economy," its flagship series, "Everything You Should Know About China's Economy," publishes daily updates on China's economy, financial markets and trade, together with regular insights from young Chinese professionals on Sino-United States and Sino-European Union relations. It is recommended by both Pekingnology and Ginger River Review in their curated lists of China newsletters. The newsletter is published in English from Beijing for an international readership that follows China's economy day by day.

The author: Tian Dongdong

The newsletter's about page introduces its writer directly: "The writer of the Substack is TIAN Dongdong, a Chinese journalist who has worked as a correspondent for Chinese media in Brussels, London, Cairo, and Tripoli, among other cities outside of China. Now he is back in Beijing, capital city of China." The same biography closes each edition of the daily series: "Run by TIAN Dongdong, this newsletter features daily and trustworthy content on China's economy. Having worked in Brussels, London, Cairo, and Tripoli for Chinese media as correspondent for several years, TIAN is now" based in Beijing. That correspondent's career — postings in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa before returning to the capital — frames the newsletter's outward-looking brief: explaining China's economy to readers abroad, including the audiences of the regions from which he once reported. Tian addresses readers personally in each edition, opening with a greeting — "Ciao there. TIAN with you" — and signing his location as Beijing.

The daily series and its format

The newsletter's flagship product is the weekday series "Everything You Should Know About China's Economy" — also styled "Everything You Need to Know About China's Economy." Editions follow a stable format. A headline summary lists the day's two or three leading items. A "Driving the News" section develops the lead story with official statements and data. An "In Addition" or "Meanwhile" section covers secondary developments. A financial markets section, "In Today's Financial Market," reports the day's closes: the Shanghai Composite Index, the STAR Composite Index for the sci-tech innovation board, Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index, the central bank's open market operations announcements, and the central parity rate of the yuan against the US dollar from the China Foreign Exchange Trade System, with commodity futures such as Zhengzhou cotton where relevant. Readers can thus follow both policy news and market levels in a single daily email.

What a day's edition covers

The edition of Monday 19 October 2026 illustrates the series at work on a data day. Leading with the National Bureau of Statistics release for the first three quarters of 2026, it reported GDP of 107,107.1 billion yuan, up 4.6 percent year on year at constant prices, with quarterly growth of 5.0, 4.3 and 4.5 percent and third-quarter growth of 1.2 percent quarter on quarter, and value added of industrial enterprises above designated size up 5.3 percent. The markets section recorded the Shanghai Composite closing up 0.39 percent at 3,730.92 points, the central bank's Open Market Operations Announcement No. 201 of 2026, and the yuan strengthening to 6.7208 against the dollar. Other October editions led on cross-Strait agricultural market access and China–Switzerland relations; on Apple Intelligence's approval for China and yuan loan growth of 11.52 trillion yuan in the first nine months; and on revised measures for outbound investment, with China's outbound investment stock at nearly 3.4 trillion dollars by the end of 2025.

Trade, finance and policy coverage

Across its daily editions the newsletter tracks the recurring indicators of China's external economy: cross-border capital flows, as in its report of net non-bank inflows of 40.7 billion dollars in September 2026, down 35 percent from August, with banks settling 294.2 billion dollars of foreign exchange; monetary data, including central bank lending and money supply commentary from Chinese academics; and industrial data, as in its report that 5G subscriptions reached 1.3 billion, 70.5 percent of China's mobile subscriptions, by the end of July 2026, and that China's new economic growth drivers index rose 12.5 percent in 2025 to 153 against a 2022 base of 100. Diplomacy with economic content — visits by foreign leaders, trade talks, Taiwan-related economic measures — is covered in the same editions, sourced to official briefings by the Foreign Ministry, the Taiwan Affairs Office and other agencies.

Youth insights on Sino-US and Sino-EU relations

Beyond the daily economy series, the newsletter's about page promises "regular updates about Chinese youth's insights on Sino-US and Sino-EU relations," and describes the publication as providing regular insights from young Chinese professionals on those relationships. That strand distinguishes CrossPacificWatchers from a pure markets briefing: alongside data and official statements, it carries the perspectives of younger Chinese voices on the two relationships that dominate China's external economic environment. The about page addresses its welcome pointedly to academics — "Dear professors and researchers, it's great to have you here!" — and presents subscribing as joining "a community of people who share your interests," with every new edition delivered directly to the inbox.

Recommendations and standing

CrossPacificWatchers is recommended by both Pekingnology and Ginger River Review in their curated lists of China newsletters — Pekingnology's recommendations page carries CrossPacificWatchers' newsletter among the titles it directs its readers to follow. Inclusion in those two lists is the standard mark of standing in the Beijing English-language newsletter ecosystem, whose editors read and recommend one another's work closely. The newsletter's value to that community is its rhythm: a daily, dated, archived record of China's economic news and market closes, produced by a named journalist with a foreign correspondent's background, at a frequency few other titles in the cohort attempt.

Method and sourcing

The daily editions are built from official Chinese sources: National Bureau of Statistics releases, People's Bank of China announcements, State Administration of Foreign Exchange data, ministry briefings and spokesperson remarks, each attributed in the text. Tian presents the material in a wire-informed digest style — headline, development, market close — with light personal framing at the opening and close of each edition. The newsletter describes its own content as "daily and trustworthy," and its method is consistency: the same sections, the same indicators and the same sourcing, day after day, so that regular readers can compare readings across time. Its archive on Substack amounts to a day-by-day chronicle of China's economy in 2026 and earlier, searchable by date.

Audience and use

The newsletter addresses professors, researchers and other professional readers who need China's economic day in English without following Chinese-language wires. Its combination of a policy lead story, secondary items, market closes, the yuan's central parity and periodic youth commentary on Sino-US and Sino-EU relations makes it a briefing product rather than an essay title. For embassies, universities, investors and journalists, the archive serves as a reference chronology: what the official data said on a given day, how markets closed, and which official statements led the news.

Status and place in the directory

CrossPacificWatchers remains active, with daily editions documented through late October 2026. It is catalogued in this directory as an online news outlet based in Beijing, China, published in English on Substack. Within the China newsletter field it occupies the daily-briefing niche: less analytical than Pekingnology, less specialized than the technology and health titles, but unmatched in its cohort for frequency — a working correspondent's daily record of the world's second-largest economy, recommended by the field's two principal curators.