A Mighty Voice w/ Vivian Wu
Former BBC Hong Kong Bureau Chief and CEO of Dasheng Media discusses press freedom and the complexities of the Chinese diaspora
Vivian Wu is an award-winning journalist and the founder of Dasheng Media, an independent media platform that reports on China and the Chinese diaspora. Prior to founding Dasheng, she has reported for the BBC, Initium Media, and South China Morning Post. She served as the BBC’s Hong Kong Bureau Chief from 2017 to 2021, where she led the charge of BBC’s multimedia production and digitalization efforts.
In her recent article published on the Made in China Journal, she discusses the history, status quo, challenges, and futures of Chinese diasporic media. We spoke with Vivian about the article and recent developments associated with social media in China, including the newly-launched CTID system which would centralize the process of identity-verification for internet access for Chinese citizens. This interview transcript is edited for flow and communication of key ideas.
Diego Ge: Thank you for speaking with us today. To start off, can you tell me a little bit about your experience working with BBC Hong Kong, and what challenges you observed Western media face when covering China?
Vivian Wu: Even though foreign media have a presence in China, from my experience at BBC Hong Kong, their coverage is limited by several deep-rooted challenges. This includes things like speed of coverage, the language barrier and the lack of ‘felt experience’ when narrating Chinese news stories. First, institutional journalists often have a hard time keeping up with rapidly unfolding events inside China, as they face barriers ranging from state intervention to institutional bureaucracy. Second, many correspondents lack fluency in Chinese, so they rely heavily on translators, which creates a distance from source material and nuance. And third, most institutional reporters with Western backgrounds have never truly lived the emotional, cognitive, and ideological context of the people they report on. They often lack an understanding of how Chinese people define moments of change, how Chinese perceive and feel societal shifts or interpret local events.
They often sound like they are checking boxes when doing reporting, repeating buzzwords like human rights, censorship, authoritarianism. But once you talk to them directly it becomes clear they don’t have a grasp on how people in China actually think. There’s a disconnect between global narratives and Chinese individuals’ inner experiences. Institutional media struggles to connect personal stories to broader systems.
DG: What other major challenges stand out to you in the Chinese context?
VW: Over the past few decades, there’s been a steep decline in Chinese people’s cognitive capacity regarding public issues. This is not incidental—it’s the result of intentional state strategies: disinformation, manipulation, algorithmic filtering, and psychological warfare. China’s digital authoritarianism has weaponized technology for information control, which extends to emotional and ideological control. It’s difficult to develop critical media literacy when you’re trapped inside a curated digital bubble. This isn’t unique to China, but the scale and aggression of these strategies in support of an authoritarian regime are unmatched.
Without regular engagement in free, critical, self-reflective thinking, it’s almost impossible to break through these digital mechanisms.
DG: How would you characterize the landscape of Chinese diasporic media today, and what inspired you to create Dasheng within this context?
VW: Chinese diasporic media is a very fluid concept, and we need to think through the implications of this fluidity before we talk about it in general terms. For example, what do we mean by “Chinese”? Is it limited to people who have emigrated from the People’s Republic of China; is it a cultural concept of the broader ‘Sinophone’ or ‘Confucian cultures’ sphere? And who counts as “diasporic”? Are we just people outside China’s borders, or something more? When the CCP accuses people of being agents of “境外势力” [foreign forces], we have to ask, what does “境” [territory] mean in the digital age? And what counts as inside vs. outside?
The traditional diasporic media sphere includes players like Falun Gong-linked outlets, Boxun, Wenxue City, Apple Daily, World Journal. These media outlets are also products of their time. Many of them were formed during or shortly after the Tiananmen era. They carry specific political and emotional baggage. Some are heavily anti-communist, but being anti-communist doesn’t necessarily mean supporting universal values like democracy and human rights. That’s a dangerous illusion. Some people may have left China geographically but continue to think in CCP-style circuits: top-down propaganda logic, patriarchal moralism, feudal power worship. Wang Zhi’an, for instance, is extremely popular among older, anti-CCP men—he gives off a lot of “Beijing uncle” energy. Even if they oppose the Party, they still reproduce authoritarian and patriarchal values.
I’m not trying to replace these platforms. I want to create a new space—one that reflects how the next generation of Chinese people, especially those abroad, are breaking out of cognitive capture.
I started working on Dasheng before the White Paper protests, when I had just moved to New York from Hong Kong. I felt I occupied a rare position: I could understand China better than most people abroad, and I could understand the world better than most people in China. I saw myself as a bridge, a decoder, someone who could translate across political systems and cultural imaginaries. When the protests happened, I was overwhelmed by one thought: we really need to promote freedom of information, because it is foundational to critical thinking and to asking: who are we as Chinese people? What roles can we play globally? And what can we do if we’re physically outside China? At Dasheng, we aim to explore possible answers to these questions.
DG: What makes this generation different from previous generations of the diaspora?
VW: We’re different from the ‘89 generation and from earlier Chinese immigrant communities. Many of us have had education within Western contexts, economic mobility, and experienced rapid modernization. We’re a privileged transnational minority, which also means greater responsibilities.
The power structure in a dictatorship is structured as a pyramid: a small group controls most people and most resources. Media and cognition follow that same pyramid logic. But to break through this structure, we don’t need a new power elite—we need digitally empowered individuals who pursue self-enlightenment. Anyone, from academics to workers and farmers, if digitally empowered, can become an intellectual force.
DG: What does “Dasheng” mean to you in values and practice?
VW: I would say that the name Dasheng (大声) speaks to three values: freedom, in saying no to self-censorship and pushing back against internalized power dynamics; decency (体面), in dignity and respectful discourse; and beauty. To resist the ugliness of authoritarian power, we must not become what we oppose. You can’t fight authoritarianism by reproducing its logic of surveillance, control, and patriarchy.
In practice, this means that we aim to publish fact-checked, high-quality original stories; conduct thoughtful interviews with people who have insights on diverse subjects; upholding open and inclusive values. Ultimately, we want to connect Sinophone communities with the rest of the world, in our host countries and beyond.
DG: What role do you personally play in all this?
VW: I’m not just an observer. I’m a participant, a storyteller, a technician of meaning. I’ve worked across cities, platforms, and media types. I understand audience profiling—something many institutional journalists completely overlook. This also gives me a responsibility to communicate with the world given my skillset and knowledge. If I have access intellectually, culturally, or digitally, I must use that to contribute to civil society and help solve shared global challenges. A lot of Americans don’t understand authoritarian politics and ideology. We do--we’ve lived it ourselves. Can we help them see what they’ve never known? This is about mutual transformation. Diaspora Chinese shouldn’t just consume. We should contribute to our host society in this sense.
DG: How do you see the future of diasporic media given current funding challenges, particularly with the Trump administration’s moves to defund U.S. media institutions?
The market isn’t everything, but right now, if we want to survive, we need to test whether we can operate independently from state funding. We’re in a reshuffling period. Many people have been stunned into paralysis. But I think we need to see this moment as not just a crisis, but as an opportunity to experiment with new modes of doing things.
I’ve always believed that media institutions should be small, beautiful, accountable. Certainly, journalism needs support. Yes, there’s corruption and bureaucracy, but the answer isn’t to kill institutional support. Reform it. Re-marketize it. But keep the value of journalism alive. I think that this is when we will find out if people are really committed to the values that they claim to uphold, and if we are, we will find a way to carry the mission forward.
DG: What do you think about China’s CTID online identity system?
VW: This is just the latest iteration of China’s long campaign for total digital control. CTID builds on years of real-name verification, surveillance, and information ministry oversight. Xi Jinping’s approach is ruthless but careless—and it’s eroding what’s left of public discourse.
Control breeds fear. But neither people nor technologies can be truly locked down forever. The global Leviathan—the virus of authoritarianism—isn’t just a Chinese problem anymore.
DG: What do you hope to do with Dasheng in the future?
VW: I want to launch an oral history project focused on global Chinese stories. Chinese censorship forces amnesia on the public—of memories back in 1989 to even the memories of just a few years ago in COVID lockdowns. We need to rescue these forgotten narratives, not just for ourselves but for the world.
International journalists often want to understand Chinese people, but they lack access. I have that access. That’s my advantage and obligation. I want to go out into the world to conduct interviews, for a global audience with Chinese curiosity. Tell the story of the world to Chinese people and tell the story of China to the world. This is part of what we aim to do next, with a new part of our platform called ‘Dasheng Global.’ It’s not about competing with other platforms, as we don’t have the tech or scale. It’s about creating a new space that is intellectually independent and globally engaged.
Diego Ge is an intern for China Focus at The Carter Center and studies Political Science and International Comparative Studies at Duke University.
The views expressed in this article represent those of the author(s) and not those of The Carter Center.
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