About Liangshan News Net

Liangshan News Net

Liangshan News Net is the official online news portal of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, in Sichuan, China. Produced by the local converged media centre, it publishes government, economy, society, livelihood and culture news in Chinese for the city and its subordinate counties and districts, carrying the reporting of the local newspaper alongside online-first coverage, short-video news and government service information.

Serving Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture and its region

Liangshan News Net is the official online news portal serving Liangshan prefecture in southern Sichuan. It is produced by the local converged media centre - the merged municipal newspaper, radio and television operation for the area - and publishes local government, economy, society, livelihood and culture news in Chinese for residents of the city and its subordinate counties and districts. As the area's dedicated local news website, it is the digital front door of the local media group: the place where official announcements, breaking local stories and service information appear first, and where the reporting of the area's journalists is gathered in one continuously updated stream. For readers inside the area it functions as a daily civic bulletin; for former residents, workers, students and businesspeople following their home area from elsewhere in China, it is often the most direct way of keeping in touch with events at home.

The place it reports on

Liangshan is China's largest Yi autonomous prefecture, occupying a large mountainous territory in southern Sichuan between the Sichuan Basin and Yunnan. Its capital, Xichang, sits in the Anning River valley beside Qionghai Lake, while the prefecture's seventeen counties and county-level cities spread across high ranges cut by the Jinsha, Yalong and Dadu rivers. Elevations and climates vary enormously, from subtropical valley floors to cool high plateaus. This is one of China's most geographically dramatic prefectures, and the distances between its county towns - some reached by long mountain roads and new expressways tunnelled through the ranges - shape everything about how news is gathered and read here. A portal's coverage is defined by this territory: every county, district and township within it is part of the newsroom's beat, and stories are organised so that readers can follow both the whole of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture and their own locality within it.

History and heritage in its coverage

Liangshan's Yi communities preserved a distinctive social and cultural order in their mountain strongholds into the twentieth century, and the prefecture's modern history includes the Long March passage remembered in the story of the Yihai Alliance, when Red Army forces allied with a local Yi leader in the 1930s. The defining modern landmark is the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, established in the mountains northwest of the city and used for many of China's best-known space launches, including lunar and communications missions. The launch centre, now also a listed red-tourism site, gives this largely agricultural prefecture an unexpected place in the national space programme - a duality local media constantly navigates. Heritage is not a decorative subject for a Chinese local portal; it is part of how a place explains itself. Anniversaries, excavations, restorations, museum exhibitions and the protection of historic sites are covered as civic news, and the historical record shapes features, photography and special reports throughout the year.

Economy and working life

Hydropower is a pillar of Liangshan's economy, with giant stations on the Jinsha and Yalong rivers, alongside mining, tobacco, agricultural processing and clean-energy development. Farming ranges from valley rice and fruit to highland buckwheat, potatoes and livestock, and in recent years the prefecture has been a major focus of poverty-alleviation and rural revitalisation work, with new roads, housing and industries documented closely by local media. Tourism has grown around Qionghai Lake, Luoji Mountain, the Yi Torch Festival and the Sichuan shore of Lugu Lake in Yanyuan County, which the prefecture shares with Yunnan. Space launches, energy projects and village-level change together form the backbone of Liangshan's economic news. The portal reports this economy at street level as well as in statistics: market prices, business openings, employment information, major project construction and the policies of the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture authorities that affect firms and households. Economic coverage in a local outlet of this kind is read practically - by traders checking prices, farmers checking policy, and workers and employers following the industries on which the area depends.

Culture, food and community life

Yi culture is at the heart of Liangshan's identity. The Torch Festival, held around the twenty-fourth day of the sixth lunar month, is the grandest Yi celebration, filling Xichang and the counties with bonfires, traditional costume, wrestling, horse racing and mass dancing; the prefecture counts many nationally listed items of intangible cultural heritage. Yi embroidery, lacquerware, the Bimo ritual tradition and Yi New Year celebrations all receive sustained cultural coverage, as do the Mosuo communities around Lugu Lake and the Tibetan, Hui and Han residents of the prefecture's towns. A Liangshan portal must therefore be, among other things, a record of one of China's most distinctive living cultures. Cultural reporting of this kind does practical work as well as celebratory work: it publicises festivals and performances, records crafts and customs that are changing as the area modernises, and gives community events - school achievements, village celebrations, sporting fixtures - a public record. In a converged media centre, these stories are also the raw material for short videos and photo features that travel widely on social platforms.

What it publishes: the news mix

The core of Liangshan News Net is daily local news. Government coverage carries the decisions, meetings and policy announcements of the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture authorities and the subordinate county and district governments, from development plans to public-service changes. Economy coverage follows the area's industries, agriculture, markets and major projects. Society and livelihood reporting - the category Chinese readers know as minsheng news - covers schools, hospitals, transport, housing, weather, prices and the everyday administrative matters that affect households directly. Culture and tourism coverage presents the area's heritage, festivals, food and scenery to readers at home and to potential visitors. Around these pillars sit announcements and practical information: recruitment notices, road and weather warnings, public-service guides and the official statements through which local government communicates with residents in emergencies as well as in routine administration.

Its place in the local converged media centre

Liangshan News Net is the online arm of a converged, or integrated, media centre: the organisational form into which China's county and prefecture-level media have been consolidated, merging the local newspaper, radio and television newsrooms with websites, apps and social-media accounts into a single operation. The model is often summarised as one newsroom collecting material once and distributing it in many forms - a reporter covering a story in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture may supply text and photographs for the website, video for television and short platforms, and audio for radio from the same assignment. The portal is distinct from the area's print daily newspaper, whose reporting it carries, but it is not simply the newspaper online: it adds online-first local coverage, short-video news and local government service information that print cannot provide, and it publishes throughout the day rather than on a print deadline.

Digital, mobile and video reporting

Like its counterparts across China, Liangshan News Net operates in a mobile-first media environment. Most readers encounter its stories on phones, through the portal itself, the media centre's app and its accounts on national platforms, where headlines, live blogs, photo sets and short videos compete for attention with every other source of information. Short-video news has become a standard part of the output, used for everything from festival scenes and new infrastructure to weather warnings and public-safety information. Live streaming is used for major local events, ceremonies and press conferences. This digital layer matters to the portal's civic role: in fast-moving situations - severe weather, traffic disruption, public emergencies - the website and its mobile channels are the fastest route by which the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture authorities and newsroom can reach the whole population of the area at once.

Licensing, standards and why it matters

Local news websites of this type operate under the internet news information service licensing system administered by the Cyberspace Administration of China, which governs which organisations may gather, edit and publish news online. That status gives Liangshan News Net a formal position in the information life of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture: it is an authorised, accountable local news source, staffed by the area's professional journalists and answerable for what it publishes, in contrast to the anonymous and commercial content that circulates on social platforms. Its value is ultimately local and practical. National media cover Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture only when events there become national stories; the portal covers it every day - the county meetings, the market prices, the school places, the roadworks, the festivals and the funerals of notable residents. In doing so it creates the continuous public record of a community's life, and for historians, businesses, officials and the area's own people, that record is the most complete account of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture as it changes from year to year.