Last updated on 2026-06-08

One of the best ways for upper intermediate Chinese students to acquire more useful vocabulary and phrases is to simply read more Chinese content that is relevant for your interest. And one of the most available content that is also useful to keep up to date on is news content.

News content is a good learning resource because if you are learning Chinese at an intermediate level or higher, then you are probably learning it for reasons beyond just travel or casual curiosity. You might have a professional, strong cultural, or academic reason to acquire the language.

Or you might work in business trading, technology, international relations, or the medical industry. There is news articles that is relevant to your field that can be used to pick up new terminologies and relevant phrases that is used by native Chinese speakers in your area of interest. This is also the reason we started with news first and not stories or simple phrases like many other apps that focus on more casual learners. It is always more motivating to learn a new language, especially one as diffult as Chinese when you know it help your career and you are learning new knowledge at the same time on top of getting better at Chinese.

There are many free sites that can be used to read news depending on your interest and what is relevant to you. In this post, I will go through a few that we enjoy browsing and reading ourselves as an everyday habit.

Lianhe Zaobao, https://www.zaobao.com (supported in LCN app)

The first and my daily go to read is Lianhe Zaobao 联合早报, which is Singapore’s main Chinese-language daily news site, published by SPH Media, created in 1983. The content caters to local Singaporeans and many readers from Southeast Asia also read it as an authoritive resource. The viewpoints are quite balance and neutral, covering international news with focus on US-China relations, China, Singapore local news, Southeast Asia 东南亚 news, opinion 观点, finance and economic news, and culture and living. In finance section, there is ample amount of news about technological developments such as AI, aviation, and manufacturing. I find myself looking at the headline articles on the homepage, then reading a couple finance 财经 articles on companies and industries I care about, then usually reading some lighter articles about daily life and culture in Singapore or Southeast Asia. I read around 5 articles per day on Zaobao and find the content to be digestible as an intermediate Chinese learner. Singapore goverment and media companies, in general tries to keep media accessible and simple enough to as many readers of different education levels as possible which makes it a good choice for Chinese learners!

Lianhe Zaobao has a strong ASEAN regional lens of looking at international events so would be a good choice to added for variety on top of the usual, dominant US western based or China PRC based viewpoints. The local daily life articles are great for intermediate readers who have a limited vocabulary. Since Singapore is a small city state, many news events that might not be news elsewhere are covered in extensive detail such as a new restaurant opening or closing, or even simply adding a new, hot dish that locals are crazy about!

During research for this post, I found out there was an student version of Zaobao at sbschools.sg that has easier to read articles for students.

ThePaperCN, https://www.thepaper.cn (supported in LCN app)

For a more China (PRC) based news source, you can try ThePaper.CN 澎湃新闻, or simply ThePaper. 澎湃新闻 is based in Shanghai, China and published by Shanghai United Media Group. It was launched in 2014 and the website feels much more modern than other China based news portals. Many articles have the bonus of AI generated audio read alongs that can be used for listening. It has both opinion and analysis type articles on current affairs, as well as investigative reporting that goes indepth on China domestic topics.

For Chinese learners, I find the text difficulty to be higher than Singaporean published news like Lianhe Zaobao. I heard that it is because, many literary works and news were historically targeted at highly educated Chinese scholars and not written for commoners, so Chinese media tends to be more difficult with more contextual knowledge and understanding of madvance sentence structures are required. I find myself having to use dictionary and translations more often when reading sites like ThePaper.CN. The articles also tend to be on the longer side, many over 1400 words so it might take a few reading sessions to finish an article. Which is why we have a feature in the LCN app to bookmark exact sentence location for long articles!

ThePaperCN is a good choice if you are upper-intermediate to advance learner with interest in China domestic viewpoints. I mainly read it to keep tabs on the domestic Chinese technology AI space and new startup news. There is a lot of news articles about US technology event such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX that is interesting to understand Chinese perspective on.

Huxiu, https://www.huxiu.com (working on supporting for LCN)

Huxiu is an independent news journal based in Beijing founded in May 2012 at the dawn of the Chinese mobile internet age. It has a range of interesting cultural topics on societal trends in China. Recently, I found myself gravitating towards it for indepth articles on AI’s impact on Chinese workforce and society like this article The articles are opinionated and interesting if you wanted more than just news reports on what happened like Zaobao. Some of the articles are super long like 2500+ words so can take multiple reading sessions even for advance Chinese learners, so prepare to sit down with a nice, warm brew and get immerse modern happenings in Chinese society that is not covered in headline news.

I find myself browsing Huxiu as my Chinese vocabulary improves and I can read longer form articles, recently I read one about the Chinese internet history covering the timeline between 1994 - 1999, I think it was the longest Chinese article that I read and it took a week to finish. There are paid articles, but most of the ones I wanted to read were free. Just looking at the frontpage, it covers all the heated topics you would expect like 前沿科技 Frontier Tech (AI layoffs), 商业消费 Business & consumer (Bytedance industry disruption), 出海 Going global (EU/China trade rules, Transsion in Africa), 社会文化 Society and culture (Gaokao essays, workplace culture, youth trends).

Reading Huxiu, if you have the sufficient word bank is great for acquiring career relevant vocabulary for industry specific knowledge. Whether it is AI, startups, EVs, finance, or China tech policy you are sure to find quality, indepth articles about recent developments. You will find modern, contemporary Chinese usage that reflect how the modern Chinese internet converses, eg: 小米：从哪里起飞，从哪里跌落” or “用什么AI暴露了你的阶层？

On the other hand, the text is a level or 2 harder than Lianhe Zaobao, which caters to the everyday Singaporean. Huxiu tends to cater towards educated, perhaps sophisticated native mainland Chinese adults so you better be upper intermediate - advance Chinese level to get the most value and sense out of Huxiu articles, but nothing that can not be overcome with a good En/X->Cn dictionary and AI translation tool. You will get a sense into how the upper educated view the world. The opinionated style also helps comprehension and remembering new words and concepts. Intermediate readers can start with 24小时 and 前沿科技 for shorter articles and move on to 观点 and 深度 for longer form opinionated articles.

WorldJournal https://www.worldjournal.com (supported in LCN app)

For a more US centric Chinese language news outlet, you can choose WorldJournal or 世界日报, this media outlet is based in the United States and is considered the most widely read newspaper for overseas Chinese based in North America. With publishing offices in New York and San Fransisco, the newspaper covers detailed ranged of US domestic topics with in depth cities coverage including NYC, Los Angeles, and San Fransisco. There is also a section that covers notable events in the Chinese community. I like reading about local Chinese businesses and to keep updated on the tech industry in the SF Bay Area. This is probably the most coverage of any news channel on American-Chinese community affairs and is read by many Chinese living in North America.

One thing to keep in mind is that, the default language used on 世界日报 is traditional Chinese, but there is a switch that lets your switch to simplified. The sections on housing, schools, health care, visas, and local crime provides lots of changes to encounter high frequency vocabulary and information relevant for life in the United States. There are articles for pretty much any interest and is a good option for heritage 2nd/3rd generation Chinese learners who want to read more Chinese, but still spend time reading relevant topics based on where they live.

Other news sources worth noting

  • 36kr.com, 36氪 is like the Techcrunch (on steroids) of China, but with a ton more articles because 36Kr is more of a platform like Medium where anyone can write and express their views on something. If your work is related to the technology industry such as AI, information technology, electric vehicles, 36kr is a good resource to learn about what is happening in China tech scene. The articles can be somewhat long and winding as many of the articles are indepth analysis that can keep deep into technical subjects. There are also lots of coverage about the US tech industry and interesting to read how the Chinese view things. I will probably write a more indepth article guide on navigating 36kr since it is a beast of a media channel.

  • geekpark.net, Geekpark 极客公园 is actually one of the better publishers on 36kr and I found myself just reading thier articles 70% of the time, so now I go directly on their website to read news on AI, robotics, and startups. The articles are on the longer side of things, but the word choice and phrasing is quite readable for intermediate learners with a good dictionary and occasional translation help. I really enjoy Geekpark for indepth coverage on the hottest AI tech industry topics on the week.

  • Jièmiàn Xīnwén 界面网, https://www.jiemian.com is all about business, finance, and technology. It is owned and operated by the same media conglomerate behind ThePaperCN, and launched in 2014. Although, I have not used it much myself yet, based on research and initial impressions, the site looks professional, clean, and loads fast. Jiemian has plenty of articles on economic affairs and should be a good resource for any intermediate Chinese learner working in finance, economic policy, international trade, or need to keep tabs on China’s tech industry.

  • https://huanqiu.com (supported on LCN), Huanqiu 环球网 or GlobalTimes is China’s official state news outlet. It covers domestic China events, and the official state perspective on internation events. Huanqui can be a good source of information for those learning Chinese to work in international relations and need to research or understand the Chinese state official stance on matters. There are a good source of news on state backed technology research and advancements and I browse it when looking for coverage on China’s space sector and agricultural news where other news outlets might not have as much coverage on.

  • https://www.zhihu.com (partial support on LCN), Zhihu 知乎, while not strictly a news site, it is more like the Chinese Quora. There is an question asked, and then many users can post answers to the question with the top rated answer coming to the top. The language used tends to be easier to understand than news articles so might be a good choice for lower intermediate Chinese learners. Because the answers are from common Chinese people, Zhihu is good site to understand the perspectives and opinions from the average person about everyday questions. In a future post, I will go more indepth about community forums like Zhihu and how to use it to learn Chinese more effectively.

There are several news aggregation apps like Tencent QQ News, Netease, Jinri Toutiao that were not mentioned since I wanted to focus on outlets for this post. These platforms have become increasingly video heavy over the last few years. Perhaps in a future post, we can cover each aggregator app in more detail, especially Tencent News which I use for the AI podcast feature.

Ofcourse, you can also use our 100% free and no ads app to read most of most of the news outlets above. we have integrations with Zaobao, ThePaper, WorldJournal, and many more connections are added. Just import the article urls into the LCN app and then you can read with pinyin assistant, local dictionary, native language translations, studying tools, and AI simplification.

We are always adding more sources that we find so there will always be articles for all Chinese learners no matter the area of interest.