China’s shrinking Radio Landscape

There are facts about China’s international broadcasting, and there are various options to interpret the changes it is undergoing. The China Media Project (CMP), once based in Hong Kong, now in Taiwan, sees a trend in China to "streamline" domestic media, namely radio and television channels, on classic terrestial or satellite frequencies.

While covering the trend, CMP also link to an earlier report funded by the Swedish Psychological Defence Agency.

The latter report focuses on the transformation of Chinese "external propaganda" from the past century into that of this early century, something that may be called "telling China’s story well" or (the same thing under a different name) an international "public opinion struggle". Either way, it comes as regionally decentralized, but politically as centrally controlled as ever.

Some trends in international and domestic mediawork are universal: a shift from linear broadcasting, classically on terrestrial frequencies, to media work that integrates broadcasting (frequently online), podcasting, use of video platforms, plus social media such as X, Bluesky, Tiktok, or Wechat.

Even though this kind of media integration is a familiar trend in Western countries, too,

[m]uch of the West’s understanding of China’s external propaganda apparatus remains anchored to an outdated model from the era of what scholars and ers of PRC communication and disinformation have termed “mega external propaganda” (大外宣), or da waixuan — essentially the structure of central staterun media such as Xinhua News Agency, China Daily, and CGTN that was bolstered from the late 2000s under Hu Jintao, and which has been amplified with mixed success through global social media platforms.

In fact, it would seem that Chinese external propaganda has been turned into sort of a rabbithole, both locally "decentralized" and in terms of platform variety, where Peking’s "struggle" may remain unnoticed by media watchers (except for the actual target groups). Can BBC Monitoring keep pace?

My first impression after the end of China Radio International (as we know it) was that Chinese external propaganda had abandoned the West as a bunch of lost souls. That was probably a too radiocentric view. The CMP reports draw up a different picture – after all, the decline of traditional radio broadcasting isn’t limited to China’s external propaganda, but includes domestic media, too.

Radio workers in Europe, possibly the Americas and parts of Oceania, and obviously in China, see the same trend at work. Wide ranges of the audience everyhwere, especially the younger, adopt new "media consumption" habits from the start.

All the same, China’s efforts – this is my impression, and not a statistic! – do seem to shift, to some extent, from Western audiences to South East Asian, East Asian, Central Asian and African ones.

Western countries remain target areas for China’s opinion struggle, but developing countries may provide audiences with better returns, i. e. appreciation rates. From China’s perspective, mediaworking on Africa’s public opinion looks more rewarding than mediaworking on car-making countries like Germany.

After all, the common trend in China and the West is no coincidence. It reflects converging technological levels and levels of consumption. These economies aren’t as complementary as they used to be, and sharper economic competition may have led to less openness for China’s propaganda in places like Europe.

United Nations News: “Radio remains essential”

Artificial intelligence is transforming the global audio landscape. In China, these shifts are unfolding at remarkable speed, with the podcast audience already exceeding 150 million and expected to grow further.

UN News Chinese heard from professor Sun Shaojing of Fudan University that audio content is becoming deeply woven into daily life, from electric vehicles navigating crowded cities to smart devices accompanying moments of solitude.

He notes that AI‑generated news presenters and synthetic voices are becoming increasingly common, offering accuracy, efficiency and multilingual reach on a scale once unimaginable. Yet, within this technological precision, professor Sun identifies a paradox: the very imperfections of human speech – the pauses, hesitations and emotional textures – are what give voice its soul.

“When reporting on disaster scenes, affected individuals, their suffering and their needs, AI would lose many of the emotional and empathetic dimensions that require human compassion and connection. It would not achieve the same depth of emotional impact or resonance,” he said.

United Nations News, February 12, 2026

Shortwave? “The entire Western World is walking away”

Pastor and broadcaster Bob Bierman presented a rather gloomy view on the future of shortwave broadcasting, according to "World of Radio", quoted by Sweden’s "SWB Bulletin", page 7, today. In addition to aging (and waning) engineers familiar with shortwave radio operation, and costly production of (high-powered, anyway) shortwave transmitters, Bierman doubts that there is still a substantial audience in the western world for shortwave broadcasts. The only chance to keep U.S. broadcasters on shortwave, if any, would be that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authorized 10 kW for transmitters in the USA, rather than the current minimum 50 kW standard. Another World of Radio forum participant added that domestic shortwave broadcasting, i. e. within the U.S., would have to be allowed, too.

At least as far as rendered by the SWB Bulletin, the issue of public and/or commercial broadcasting wasn’t addressed in the WoR debate. But when discussing radio in western countries, this seems to be a central question. If Europe’s small shortwave radio stations with their transmitters of just a few Watts or kiloWatts are commercially viable (I have no idea if they are), it is because a lot of DJs spend money to buy airtime which may or not be funded by faithful listeners. But while this may work for comparatively small energy bills, it probably won’t work for commercial stations that try to get a global reach, in the league of publicly mandated international shortwave broadcasters like Radio Taiwan International, All India Radio, KBS World Radio, or Radio New Zealand.

There are at least two cases in point that speak against big commercial shortwave stations. One is Radio WRNO. Its founder, Joe Costello, believed in the early 1980s that commercial shortwave radio of the WRNO kind (no religion, but lots of music, culture and stories from the U.S.) could be sustainable. Some ten years later, he told "Media Network", a program run by the now defunct Radio Netherlands, that he hadn’t been able to convince a critical mass of potential advertisers that there was a WRNO audience big enough for their commercials, because shortwave broadcasting didn’t conform with the criteria of the American rating-point system – probably this kind of economics.

Costello noted that "at this point, [WRNO Worldwide on shortwave] is not as economically viable as I thought it might be on the end of its first decade".

It took nearly a quarter of a century, after Costello’s remarks in 1991, before another American broadcaster with a format similar to WRNO’s gave shortwave a try. Unlike Costello, they didn’t build a transmitter site of their own, but hired one of WRMI’s transmitters in Okeechobee, Florida. That, too, was probably a heavyweight transmitter of something like 50 kW – its signal in my place in Europe certainly suggested that it was. WRMI manager Jeff White was quoted at the time as saying that the new broadcaster, named "Global 24",

represents another step in the long overdue commercialization of shortwave radio. We are excited to be working with them on their ambitious program to engage and entertain a global audience.

I’m not sure how long "Global 24" lasted, but it was probably for less than a year.

As far as I can tell, sustainable shortwave broadcasting needs a mandate. That can be a public mandate like in Taiwan, India, South Korea or New Zealand (see above), a party or state mandate (like in China or Vietnam), or a mandate by a religious organization (like in the case of Reach Beyond or KNLS), or one by dedicated listeners who are prepared to throw money into a broadcaster’s or DJ’s hat, or by DJs who pay for their airtime themselves. Radiation power will depend on local legislation and on budgets. In cases like those of Channel 292, Shortwave Gold or Realmix Radio in Europe, the mandates seem to come mostly from the grassroots.

#broadcasting #domesticRadio #Europe #foreignRadio #shortwave #USA

“When you talk Shortwave, you talk Nationwide”: NBC eyes SW Reintroduction

Papua New Guinea’s National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) reportedly hosted a workshop on the reintroduction of shortwave radio transmissions. The broadcaster’s managing director Kora Nou is quoted as saying that only a collaborative effort could achieve that reintroduction, and as pointing out the importance of shortwave broadcasting for remote communties’ "access to timely news and information".

The report, published by Radio New Zealand on Saturday, also quotes NBC’s engineering director Seloka Lewangu as saying that "When you talk shortwave, you talk countrywide. That’s why we are talking. If shortwave can do it for us, with all our rugged mountains and scattered islands." Besides, it is apparently hoped that the wide range of shortwave will reduce infrastructure maintenance costs.

The stated goal is to reintroduce shortwave transmissions by 2030.

#AsiaPacific #disasterRelief #domesticRadio #RadioNewZealand #shortwave

Brazil’s Rádio Nacional scheduled to air Programs in English and Spanish

Rádio Nacional have announced ten-minutes long news bulletins in Spanish and English, starting from March 31 at 10:50 pm local time or – according to El Radioescucha – at 01:50 UTC.

Radio Nácional apparently sees an opportunity, rather than a nuisance, in QSL requests from abroad. Their press release says that thanks to their shortwave transmissions, Rádio Nacional da Amazônia are Brazil’s only broadcaster with international radio propagation. Their central mission is to broadcast a culturally diverse program, to strengthen ties between Amazon communities and to further the Amazon region’s integration with other federal states.

According to Empresa Brasil de Comunicação’s director Thiago Regotto, many of the reception reports come from Spanish- and English-speaking countries. Interviews concerning international issues or cultural topics with international relevance are part of the planned programs.

EBC was in the international news last year when Empresa Brasil de Comunicação reportedly dedicated one of their shortwave transmitters to broadcasts for the South where many regions went through flood disasters.
–
–

#Brazil #domesticRadio #foreignRadio #LatinAmerica #publicDiplomacy #QSLCards #shortwave