The importance of The Economist in China

The Economist cover 2016

Wu Chen successfully launched the first Chinese-language news app by The Economist in China. Chen was the editor of CFO magazine China Magazine and worked for BusinessWeek in Hong Kong and Bloomberg News in Singapore, making him more than qualified for this job. 

Chen launched The Economist Global Business review in a Chinese-language format. China is infamous for its censorship, especially for news media. They will censor anything they think is detrimental to their country. Here are a few big-name publications censored in China: CNN, The New York Times, BBC, Wall Street Journal, etc. For this reason, the launch of The Economist Global Business Review app is so important.

Wu Chen and his team over at The Economist found a niche in the China economy and China-related commerce, which is very important in the magazine industry. However, they need to be careful because one wrong move may lead to being blocked. This situation happened once to The Economist in 2016 when it covered the President of China Xi Jinping with the heading "Beware the cult of Xi." The article was about Xi Jinping and his concerning rise to power.

Concerning the app in itself, the future looks bright. Wu Chen claims that he would not consider the project a major success yet, but they have all the tools necessary to grow. He emphasized the multi-media side of the app, providing subscribers with podcasts, videos, and articles. He pointed out how start-ups are changing the business model of their publications, with most making their viewers pay for the content. Chen points out how most viewers are willing to pay for good content if they have to. The rates of paying subscribers for publications with a solid digital platform have increased tremendously since 2021. For example, The New York Times saw 445,000 new digital subscribers in the third quarter of 2021.

The interface of the app is similar to those of other apps for magazines, the initial screen is a scroll down the page with all the most relevant articles at the time, but then the user can easily navigate to other features of the app through a drop-down bar at the top left of the screen.

Wu Chen is an innovator and always keeps up and stays ahead of technology against his competitors. He emphasized how "a successful business model provides the anchor for growth in his presentation."