About New Weekly

New Weekly

New Weekly, known in Chinese as Xin Zhoukan, is a biweekly culture and current-events magazine published in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province in southern China. It is a current-affairs and lifestyle magazine written in simplified Chinese, and it has been appearing since 18 August 1996. From the beginning it set itself apart from most Chinese newsweeklies by its format and its price: it is a perfect-bound, glossy magazine, produced to higher production values than the typical Chinese weekly and sold at a higher cover price. Its headquarters are in Guangzhou's Haizhu District, on Xin'gang West Road. Over nearly three decades the magazine has moved from straightforward news aggregation toward the urban, cultural topics with which it is now most closely associated, and it has acquired a reputation in Chinese media circles as a place where topics originate — a magazine whose cover themes other outlets pick up and follow.

Founding in Guangzhou in 1996

New Weekly was founded on 18 August 1996. It was jointly sponsored by the Guangdong Publishing Group and the Sanjiu Enterprise Group, a pairing that combined a provincial publishing house with a large enterprise sponsor at a moment when Chinese magazines were increasingly expected to support themselves in the market. The founding editor was Feng Xincheng, whose name remains closely associated with the magazine's early identity; the entry record for the magazine notes that he later departed amid the digital transition of Chinese consumer magazines. The first issue was a modest physical object by the magazine's later standards: it was printed on newsprint and ran to 64 pages. That a Guangzhou title could be launched at all in this glossy, topic-driven form reflected the position of Guangdong, China's most commercially developed publishing market of the period, as the testing ground for market-oriented periodicals.

From Newsprint to a 128-Page Glossy

The magazine's physical development was rapid and deliberate. On 5 September 1997, little more than a year after launch, New Weekly switched from newsprint to coated paper and expanded to 112 pages. On 15 September 2001 it expanded again, adding 16 pages to reach 128 pages, printed in full colour on matte art paper and perfect bound — the flat-spined, book-like binding that distinguishes it from stapled weeklies. At that point it settled into publication at the start and middle of each month, and its retail price of 15 yuan was held unchanged through the expansion. The Danwei media guide, compiled when the magazine was around its tenth anniversary, described it in similar terms: a biweekly culture and current-events magazine, perfect bound, with more of a glossy look than other magazines in its category, and a price that reflected that positioning. Each issue still runs to 128 pages in full colour, published on the 1st and 15th of the month.

Positioning as China's Sharpest Current-Affairs Lifestyle Weekly

New Weekly positions itself, in its own Chinese formulation, as China's most cutting-edge or sharpest current-affairs lifestyle weekly. That self-description captures the hybrid the magazine has always attempted: it is classified as a current-affairs and lifestyle magazine rather than as a hard-news weekly, and its pages treat politics and public events alongside cities, consumption, popular culture and social trends. Being described in media circles as a "topic originator" is central to how the title understands itself. Rather than competing with daily newspapers or wire-driven weeklies on speed, a biweekly glossy competes on framing — on choosing a theme, a phrase or a social phenomenon and presenting it in a way that sets the terms of wider discussion. The magazine's longevity in that role is visible in its issue numbering: the cover of its 18th issue of 2025 was numbered as the 691st issue overall.

From News Integration to City Topics

The magazine's editorial centre of gravity has shifted over its life. In its early period, New Weekly devoted itself largely to news integration — selecting, synthesising and repackaging news in the manner of a news magazine. Over time it moved progressively away from the news-magazine model, and city topics became its main focus. That evolution is consistent with its biweekly rhythm: a magazine appearing on the 1st and 15th of each month cannot win on breaking news, especially in a digital environment, but it can examine how Chinese urban life is changing — how cities are built, branded, lived in and talked about. The shift also explains the magazine's durability. Titles that depended on repackaging the week's news were exposed when readers moved online; a magazine built around urban themes and cultural observation had a product that translated more naturally across platforms.

Editors and Writers

Several figures are recorded as having had a major influence on New Weekly. Feng Xincheng, the founding editor, heads that list. Alongside him, the people identified as most influential in shaping the magazine are He Shuqing, Xiao Feng, Linghu Lei and Zhou Ke. Its best-known lead writers have included Jiang Fangzhou, Huang Junjie and Hu Jiujiu. The presence of named lead writers matters for a magazine of this type: topic-driven glossies depend on recognisable bylines whose essays and cover packages readers seek out, and New Weekly's writers have been part of its public identity rather than anonymous producers of copy. Feng Xincheng's eventual departure, noted as occurring amid the digital transition of Chinese consumer magazines, marked the end of the founding era and the handover to a publishing structure in which the magazine is one title inside a larger media group.

Publisher and Corporate Home

New Weekly today sits inside Southern Publishing Media. Its corporate history took a further step on 18 November 2020, when Guangdong Times Media Company and the Guangdong New Weekly Magazine office merged to form Guangdong Times Media Group Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Southern Publishing Media Company. The magazine's original joint sponsors — Guangdong Publishing Group and the Sanjiu Enterprise Group — belong to its founding period; the present structure places the title within a listed publishing group's portfolio of periodicals. Its official registration details reflect its Guangzhou base: its ISSN is 1007-7006 and its Chinese domestic periodical number is CN 44-1416/G2, the 44 prefix denoting Guangdong Province.

Format, Frequency and Price

The practical facts of the magazine are consistent across its mature period. New Weekly is a biweekly, appearing on the 1st and 15th of each month. Each issue runs to 128 pages, printed in full colour. Its perfect binding and glossy stock placed it, as its profile notes, above most Chinese newsweeklies in both price and production values; the 15-yuan cover price recorded at the time of its 2001 expansion was high for a Chinese current-affairs magazine of the period, when the Danwei guide listed competing newsweeklies at considerably lower prices. That premium was deliberate: the magazine was sold as an object as much as a news source, aimed at urban readers willing to pay for design, photography and long-form cultural writing. It is published in simplified Chinese for a mainland readership.

Place Among Guangzhou's Magazines

New Weekly belongs to a distinctive Guangzhou magazine culture. The city is home to the Southern Media Group's titles, to Modern Weekly and to a cluster of nationally distributed magazines that grew out of Guangdong's early embrace of market-driven publishing. Within that company, New Weekly occupied the glossy, urban-culture niche: where Southern Weekly built its name on investigative reporting and Sanlian Lifeweek, in Beijing, on news and cultural commentary, New Weekly built its name on identifying the themes and moods of city life. Its description in international media guides simply as a biweekly culture and current-events magazine understates the role it came to play domestically, where being a source of topics for the wider media — setting agendas rather than following them — is the reputation its editors cultivated.

Digital Transition

Like every Chinese consumer magazine, New Weekly has had to negotiate the migration of readers and advertisers to digital platforms. The departure of its founding editor Feng Xincheng is explicitly linked in its record to that transition, which reshaped the economics of glossy print across China: production values that once justified a premium cover price became harder to sustain as reading moved to phones. The magazine's response, in corporate terms, was consolidation — the 2020 merger that folded the New Weekly magazine office together with Guangdong Times Media into a single group company under Southern Publishing Media, giving the title a larger organisational home for its print and digital operations. The magazine maintains an official web presence and a Sina Weibo account, the standard channels through which Chinese magazines of its generation reach online readers.

Legacy and Significance

New Weekly's significance in Chinese publishing rests on three things. First, its format: launched on newsprint in 1996, it demonstrated within five years that a Chinese current-affairs title could sustain a 128-page, full-colour, perfect-bound glossy at a premium price. Second, its editorial model: the move from news integration to city topics anticipated the direction of the wider magazine market, in which analysis, lifestyle and urban culture outlasted simple news repackaging. Third, its people and its agenda-setting reputation: under Feng Xincheng and the editors and lead writers who followed, it became known as a magazine where topics started. Nearly thirty years after its first 64-page issue, it continues to appear twice a month from Guangzhou — a survivor of the great age of Chinese glossy magazines.