About That's Online

That's Online

That's Online is the website at thatsmags.com of That's, the family of English-language city listings magazines in China that includes That's Shanghai, That's Beijing and That's GBA in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Published from Shanghai, the site carries the magazines' city-life journalism — restaurants, bars, nightlife, arts, events, sport and practical guidance for living in China's biggest cities — to the audience the print titles were built for: expatriates, overseas Chinese and English-proficient local professionals. The That's brand was started by British publisher Mark Kitto in 1998, growing out of a first Guangzhou listings magazine created in 1997, and the magazines became the biggest English magazines in Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen. The titles were owned by the Shanghai-based publishing group Urbanatomy Media, and as of May 2020 the publisher was JY International Cultural Communications. Online, the brand presents itself through its city editions, its WeChat presence under the name thatsonline, its awards for the cities' food, drink and sports scenes, and a weekly email digest — a listings magazine rebuilt for readers who plan their lives in China from a phone.

Origins: Clueless in Guangzhou and Mark Kitto

The That's story began in Guangzhou in 1997, when the magazine that became That's PRD — and, from January 2020, That's GBA — was created under the name Clueless in Guangzhou. Its founder, Mark Kitto, was a British national who had formerly worked as a metals trader in south China and, before that, served in the British army. In 1998 he formed Ish magazine, which became the popular That's series; the That's brand itself dates to 1998. Kitto modelled his magazines on Time Out and Bangkok Metro, and his formula was a listings magazine made for readers first — restaurants, bars, events and city coverage that expatriates actually needed — on the reasoning, as he put it, that the advertisers would follow the readers. Contemporary coverage in China Economic Review described a Shanghai market with no fewer than six English city magazines serving an expatriate population of roughly 60,000, alongside overseas Chinese and English-speaking local professionals, and recalled that when Kitto started there was little beyond Shanghai Talk and government publications such as China Today; even Shanghai Daily, the government's English newspaper, had not yet launched.

Expansion to Shanghai, Beijing and beyond

Within four years of the Guangzhou start, Kitto had built a stable of four English-language magazines in three cities, and by 2004 the business had a turnover of almost 4 million US dollars and more than 100 staff — over 120 staff at its height in early 2004, by Kitto's own account. That's Shanghai became the flagship: a monthly English-language listings and entertainment magazine which, as of May 2020, still had a staff of 30 and a circulation of 62,500, with 40 percent of its readership being expatriates. That's Beijing, founded in 2001 and published by China Intercontinental Press, is a monthly magazine distributed throughout Beijing with a focus on news, current events, culture, art, music, fashion, nightlife and dining in the capital. The southern title published as That's PRD — PRD standing for Pearl River Delta — for 13 years before saying goodbye to that name in January 2020 and adopting That's GBA, for Greater Bay Area, to reflect its local coverage in Guangzhou and Shenzhen and the political and societal changes in the region. The brand's media kit has also listed That's Tianjin and the Urban Family title alongside the Shanghai, Beijing and PRD editions, and the magazines are described as the biggest English magazines in their cities.

Licences, China Intercontinental Press and the loss of the founder

The early That's business operated inside one of the most tightly controlled corners of Chinese media. Foreigners could distribute magazines and sell advertising in China but could not be responsible for content, and every publication required a numbered permit issued through the press and publications authorities. From June 1999, That's Shanghai survived by using a licence number from the Yangzhou government in return for running a page each month about that city's attractions, under an exclusive consultancy arrangement. In July 2002 Kitto went to China Intercontinental Press, a Beijing-based publisher with close ties to the State Council Information Office and a brief to promote China to foreigners, seeking a route out of that legal limbo; CIP initially provided publishing numbers normally reserved for books. The relationship broke down as joint-venture negotiations began: CIP added a magazine of its own, called That's China, which sold advertising cheaply against Kitto's titles, and Kitto, worried about losing his magazines, talked confidentially to Hong Kong's Tom Group about an alternative future. By 2004 his publishing career in China had abruptly ended and he had lost the business he built. The Financial Times, in a May 2005 account quoted by both sides, presented the saga as a cautionary tale about the risks for foreign entrepreneurs in Chinese media; CIP's position was that the magazines had been illegal until CIP took over as publisher in 2002. Kitto later told the story in his memoir, published as That's China, and retreated to Moganshan, northwest of Shanghai, before leaving China in 2012.

Ownership after Kitto: Urbanatomy and JY

The magazines continued without their founder. The That's titles were owned by Urbanatomy Media, a Shanghai-based publishing group whose name remained attached to the brand's web presence — its archived site organised content for Shanghai, the PRD and Beijing under sections for news and features, bars and clubs, restaurants, life and style, arts and culture, events and listings, together with guidebooks, shopping and classifieds. As of May 2020 the publisher of record was JY International Cultural Communications, whose media kit presented thatsmags.com and the city titles, including That's Tianjin and Urban Family, as a group. China Intercontinental Press remained the named publisher of That's Beijing. That layered structure — a brand, a Shanghai publishing group, city publishers holding the permits — is the direct inheritance of the licence system that shaped the magazines from 1999 onward, and it explains why the That's name survived changes of owner and publisher that ended its founder's involvement.

What That's Online publishes

The website organises the same city-life material as the magazines, by city and by the practical questions of living in China. Its coverage runs from restaurant and bar news and food-and-drink features to arts and culture, nightlife and live music listings, sport, travel within China and explainers about everyday technology and life — a recent That's article, for example, walked readers through new WeChat features for voice and video chats, translation of voice messages and call handling, the kind of practical guidance its internationally mobile readership relies on. Longer features sit alongside the listings: the site has published in-depth pieces on subjects such as cricket in China, tracing the expatriate leagues in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangdong, the Shanghai Cricket Club's origins in 1858 and the difficulties of reporting on the Chinese national game. The tone is that of the listings magazine — service first, written for people who live in, or are arriving in, the city it covers.

Awards and the city communities

A distinctive part of the That's operation, visible across its site, is its awards. The That's Food and Drink Awards run in its cities, including a GBA edition for Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and the That's Shanghai Sports Awards reached their tenth annual edition in January 2026, held at Guinness Social in Shanghai to recognise the city's amateur sports scene — home-run hitters, fighters and the teammates who lift others up, in the site's words — with categories including Team of the Year and Die-Hard Fans of the Year, and nominees drawn from communities such as FitFam and the Shanghai Rugby Football Club, a club originally founded in 1881 and described as one of Asia's oldest rugby institutions. Voting runs through the brand's WeChat account, categories are strictly for amateurs, and submissions go to the thatsmags.com team. These events matter to the profile of the outlet because they show what the website is for: not national news, but the organised social life of the foreign and internationally minded communities in its cities.

WeChat, newsletters and how readers use it

That's tells its readers, in a standing message on its articles, that it is on WeChat, inviting them to follow at thatsonline for events, guides and giveaways, and it runs an email digest — 7 Days in China with thatsmags.com — delivered to subscribers' inboxes every Wednesday, with previous issues of the magazines available to download. Voting for its awards is conducted inside WeChat, and its articles routinely route readers there. That distribution pattern is the modern form of the listings magazine's old bargain: a free, useful guide to the city, supported by the businesses that want to reach the people reading it, now delivered through the platforms those readers actually open each day. The print magazines continue in parallel — That's Shanghai's reported staff of 30 and circulation of 62,500 as of May 2020 are print figures — but the website is where the daily listings, event announcements and awards machinery now live.

Place in China's English-language media

That's occupies a niche that Chinese state English media does not fill. Government-backed titles such as Shanghai Daily report the official city; That's reports the lived city — where to eat, what is on, which team won, what changed in the apps residents use. China Economic Review's early survey of the sector argued that the English city magazines mattered historically because they were the first publications since 1949 to be produced without government control, even as it noted the sector's political infighting, licence arrangements and inflated distribution claims. The Kitto story — a foreign founder who built the biggest English magazines in four cities and lost them to the permit system — remains the best-known illustration of the limits of that independence. What survived him is the brand and its format, carried online at thatsmags.com: a Shanghai-headquartered, English-language guide to city life in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and beyond, still publishing for the expatriate and internationally minded readers it was created in 1997 and 1998 to serve.