Category: Announcements

After four thrilling years, our run has come to an end

Ed: Please note this site is no longer active, but is archived here in full. – Alec Ash

In September 2017 we launched the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel, “for the sinophile and the sinocurious,” to fill in the white space of China coverage. Since then we have published nearly 600 essays, reviews, dispatches, podcasts and more on Chinese society, politics, culture and history, from a range of trusted voices. We’ve been amazed at the success of the site, in terms of audience (20k+ monthly unique readers) and contributions (from hundreds of China experts, including Yu Hua, Julia Lovell and Geremie Barmé) over the years.

Yet all good things come to an end. After four years of generous support from grants and donors, we were unable to secure sustainable funding for the future. Already, limits on funds had brought our posting down from four or five posts a week to two or three. The coronavirus pandemic and economic downturn makes funding for nonprofit media particularly tricky at this moment in history, which we fully understand. And so it’s time to close the gates.

Join our translation fund drive by donating on Patreon

Since our launch in fall 2017, the China Channel has published over 400 articles, from book reviews to essays to narrative dispatches. We’ve also featured dozens of original translations of the best contemporary non-fiction, fiction and poetry, bringing new work from Chinese into English for the first time. In doing so, we have worked in partnership with Read Paper Republic, One-Way Street and The Initium, as well as commissioning original pieces – most recently new translations from the Picun Writers Group.

Our translations are funded in part by readers like you on Patreon. Your support allows us to commission Chinese authors as well as translators, so that Chinese writing that would otherwise remain inaccessible can be read by you. We are grateful to all our sponsors for making this happen, in especial Bill Bishop of Sinocism, and to Stephen O. Lesser, who has supported the Diaspora column. To date, 17 readers are currently donating a total of $161 per month. We thank all of these patrons for their continued support.

As we approach our third year, we are again calling on you to help us continue to fund original translations and meet our other commissioning costs. This July, we’re looking to hit our funding goal of $300 per month in contributions via Patreon. That extra $140 is will allow us to commission more translations from both emerging and established authors. If just two dozen of you committed $5 or $10 a month – as more than that did already in our recent reader survey – then we will hit that goal easily.

Take our short reader survey to win the book of your choice

The LARB China Channel is a digest of reviews, essays, dispatches and multimedia about Chinese culture, society, politics and more. We are a nonprofit, affiliated channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books, launched in September 2017. Your answers to this brief survey will help us to better serve you and other readers across the globe. You’ll also have the chance to enter a prize drawing for a copy of any book that we have reviewed. Please take three minutes to fill out the survey – we really appreciate it. Thank you for your support!

> Take the survey