China Radio Live — Free Online Stations

Chinese radio has two histories that rarely meet in the same article. One is the story of a few foreign-run stations in 1920s Shanghai. The other is the story of a transmitter carried to a cave town in the north-west, which became the voice of a state that now runs one of the largest broadcasting systems on earth. Both explain what you hear today when you search for Chinese radio live or want to listen to Chinese radio online.

Shanghai, 1923: a station ahead of its audience

China's first broadcasting station opened in Shanghai in 1923. Known as the Osborn station, or XRO, it was set up by an American journalist, E. G. Osborn, with the backing of a wealthy overseas Chinese partner. Sun Yat-sen publicly praised the new medium, but the problem was simple: there were not yet enough receivers in the city to sustain it. A second station launched the following year from studios on Nanking Road and did better, and by the late 1920s Shanghai's airwaves even carried some of the first women broadcasters in East Asia. Through the 1930s commercial stations multiplied in Shanghai, Nanjing and other coastal cities, playing opera, advertising and the new popular songs of the era.

Yan'an, 1940: the station that became a nation's voice

The decisive moment came far from the coast. In 1940 the Communist base area at Yan'an received a transmitter from Moscow, and on 30 December 1940 the Yan'an Xinhua Broadcasting Station, call sign XNCR, went on air. At first it broadcast about two hours a day. In May 1941 Mao Zedong urged every citizen to listen to it, and on 3 December 1941 it began a programme in Japanese aimed at enemy soldiers — the start of China's foreign-language broadcasting.

After 1949 the station moved to Beijing and became the Central People's Broadcasting Station, known in English today as China National Radio. Its foreign service grew into Radio Peking, later China Radio International, broadcasting in dozens of languages from Korean and Russian to Swahili and Spanish.

Loudspeakers in every village

What made Chinese radio unique in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was not the receiver but the loudspeaker. Wired broadcasting networks carried national and local programmes into county towns, factories and agricultural production brigades, where speakers on poles and walls played news, music, children's shows and morning calisthenics. For hundreds of millions of rural people, radio was something heard in public, at fixed hours, rather than chosen at home. Many older Chinese still associate the sound of a crackling speaker with the rhythm of village life.

Opening up: provinces, cities and traffic radio

From the 1980s, as the economy opened, provincial and city broadcasters launched their own channels with more music, phone-in programmes and advertising. The most successful new format was traffic radio. In fast-growing cities where commuting can take hours, traffic stations became full-service networks mixing live road reports, music and conversation, and they now attract some of the biggest audiences in the country.

Many languages, one structure

Chinese radio is organised in layers. China National Radio runs national channels for news, business, music, literature and minority languages, and every province and major city operates its own networks. Stations broadcast in Mandarin, Cantonese and other Chinese languages, and in Tibetan, Uyghur, Mongolian, Korean and more. Since 2018 the national radio and television services have been combined in the China Media Group. All broadcasting operates under state supervision, which shapes news and talk programming in particular.

The mobile audio boom

China moved to smartphone listening faster than almost any country. Audio apps built huge audiences for audiobooks, talk shows and paid knowledge courses, and much traditional radio listening now happens through apps and car systems rather than a classic receiver.

Listening from abroad

For learners of Mandarin, a national news channel read at standard speed is an excellent teacher, and music stations offer a window into Chinese pop that rarely reaches foreign charts. Availability abroad varies from station to station. Below you can play the Chinese radio stations online that we index, free in your browser.