Chai Jing Has Not Gone Silent: She Continues to Ask Questions at the Edge of the World

Luna Tian

I. Prologue: A Vanished Presence

The video lasted only an hour.

A four-minute, thirty-second trailer appeared briefly on WeChat’s video platform before being deleted. The reason given was “violating content.” No further explanation was offered. It was the first time in years that Chai Jing had reappeared in the public eye. A trailer about terrorism and human choices—restrained in voice and measured in visuals—discussing difficult questions, yet doing so with quiet calm.

Many didn’t click in time before it disappeared. I found the video later on an overseas platform. I was watching while scrolling through the comments. One stood out in its simplicity: “Thank you for still doing journalism.” I remember that moment clearly—a sense of familiarity long forgotten, as if a voice I once knew spoke softly from afar. It didn’t call out, it simply said, “I’m still here.”

Chai Jing was one of the reasons I began studying journalism. Her tone was never hurried, but each sentence sought to understand something deeper—a disease, a disaster, a misunderstood choice. When she spoke, it didn’t feel like she was teaching you something; it was more of a reminder—that some questions are worth asking again.

For many years, she remained silent. This time, she chose to respond to the violence and fear of reality from the other side of the world, not with noise or a return to the spotlight, but by continuing the work she knows best: to observe, to record, to question.

I am writing this not to make a statement, but to leave a trace. When so many voices have vanished, we can still remember that somewhere, the ones who once spoke up are still asking questions.

II. She Was Once the Conscience of a Nation

Chai Jing joined China Central Television (CCTV) in 2001. She was twenty-five years old, held no formal degree in journalism, but already displayed a rare sensitivity and perceptiveness. She did not enter the field of news as a blank slate. At the age of eighteen, she had already hosted a popular late-night radio show in Hunan titled Night is Tender, gaining attention for her calm voice and sincere delivery. By twenty-two, she was anchoring her own TV program New Youth, learning how to transition from radio’s quietude to the glare of television cameras.

These early experiences may not have been glamorous, but they laid the foundation for the kind of journalist she would later become—measured, careful not to dominate, never rushing to conclusions. In Seeing, her 2012 memoir, she recalls working as a temp without a press pass at CCTV. She often edited footage until 3 or 4 a.m., then handed the final tapes through the iron bars at the east gate to a kind-hearted broadcast technician. By the time she got home, the elevator had already shut down, and she would climb ten flights of stairs in silence. She never complained. She simply wrote about it, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.

Over the next decade at CCTV, she hosted News Probe, Face to Face, and later, her own in-depth interview program Seeing. She visited women’s prisons, ICU wards, mining towns, and rural schools. She reported on university admission fraud, HIV and LGBTQ rights, the silent deaths of children, and the haunting aftermath of domestic violence. These topics would be nearly impossible to air on Chinese national television today. Yet back then, she approached them with a deep sense of empathy and a style of language that was deliberate, never indulgent.

Published in 2012, Seeing became a quiet phenomenon. It was not filled with slogans or sweeping conclusions. Instead, it offered a series of portraits—individuals and events left to speak for themselves. She wrote about the tragic suicide of a schoolchild and noted, “I saw where the child died, and it hurt. That kind of pain shouldn’t be formatted.” She recounted her visit to a women’s prison, where a convicted murderer told her, “I didn’t feel like you were interrogating me. I just felt like you were really listening.”

That kind of language—the restraint, the attention—has become rare in journalism. Yet it is precisely this gentleness that allowed her to look past institutional surfaces and touch the wounds hidden beneath. The book doesn’t preach. It doesn’t point fingers. She rarely tells readers what they should think. Instead, she keeps asking questions. And sometimes, the questions feel more honest than the answers.

Seeing sold over three million copies in its first year—a remarkable feat for a quiet, non-political journalist’s memoir. But the book’s true legacy lies not in its sales, but in the kind of journalism it came to represent. A journalism that avoids grandstanding, that seeks not the spotlight but the story, and that remains confused and grieving alongside its subjects—but chooses to keep asking.

To many young people who later entered the field, Chai Jing is neither an idol nor a “success story.” She represents a possibility: that within a tightly constrained space, it is still possible to remain honest, and to respect the dignity of others.

III. Under the Dome: A Peak Moment and a Turning Point

On February 28, 2015, Under the Dome premiered online. Independently produced, narrated, reported, and self-funded by Chai Jing, the documentary focused on China’s worsening air pollution crisis. It did not air on CCTV but spread rapidly through online platforms. Within just 24 hours, it had over 100 million views. Many hailed it as “China’s moment of truth.”

The film opens with a simple shot: Chai standing against a black background, speaking calmly. “This is a personal grudge between me and smog,” she says. She describes how her newborn daughter had been diagnosed with a benign tumor, and how that personal story became the impetus for a year-long investigation. The documentary weaves together interviews, on-the-ground footage, and extensive data. It is emotionally resonant yet professionally rigorous, straightforward in tone, and methodically structured.

For many Chinese viewers, Under the Dome was a rare moment when the ideals of journalism—truth-telling, public interest, accountability—appeared vividly realized. Then-Minister of Environmental Protection Chen Jining publicly stated that he had watched the film and even sent a message of thanks to Chai Jing. State-affiliated media, including People’s Daily, published reviews and interviews. For a brief moment, it seemed possible that documentaries might re-enter China’s public discourse as a legitimate and powerful civic tool.

But that window closed almost as quickly as it had opened.

Less than 48 hours after its release, the film was quietly removed from major platforms without formal notice. Search results were scrubbed. Original links redirected to “content in violation of regulations.” The abruptness was startling. At the same time, skepticism began to rise online. Some questioned the accuracy of the statistics cited; others accused her of emotional manipulation. More alarmingly, conspiracy theories emerged suggesting that Chai was backed by foreign NGOs, implying she had received American funding and was “using environmentalism to disguise political agendas.”

The criticism quickly shifted from the documentary’s content to Chai Jing’s personal loyalty and political leanings. A year later, after she gave birth to her daughter in the United States, she was again attacked online as a “fake patriot” and someone “profiting off China’s problems.” The speed and intensity of the backlash far exceeded anything she had anticipated.

From a journalist’s perspective, Under the Dome was a professional and moral response to a public health crisis. But under the dual pressures of policy and public opinion, it became something else—a collective rejection, both by institutions and the public, of the person who made it. By the mid-2010s, China’s media environment had tightened dramatically. Outlets once known for investigative work, like Southern Weekly, began to wane. Investigative reporters either changed careers or went silent. Chai Jing’s experience was not an isolated incident, but a sign of a broader trajectory: when a journalist tries to speak in the gap between the system and the people, they are more likely to be suspected than understood.

After Under the Dome, Chai almost completely disappeared from the public eye. She stopped appearing on camera and gave no interviews to major media outlets. It wasn’t until years later that she re-emerged—this time overseas, beginning new work under a different name: Stranger.

To many, that long silence felt like a symbol of defeat. But for those of us who entered journalism inspired by her work, it was something else entirely—a quiet reminder that in an era where speaking becomes increasingly dangerous, choosing to keep speaking comes at a cost.

IV. After She Left, What Did She Choose?

In 2017, Chai Jing moved to Barcelona, Spain, following her husband’s job assignment. It was her first time truly leaving Beijing, leaving China’s media circles, and leaving everything she had once known. In a later interview, she mentioned that before she left, she gave away several tailored suits she used to wear for reporting. It was, she said, a symbolic act of “laying down the armor.” She thought she could finally rest—live a quiet, ordinary life.

But life didn’t stay quiet for long.

Just one month after the move, a major terrorist attack occurred in Barcelona. Thirteen people were killed, more than a hundred injured. For the first time, she found herself physically close to an act of terrorism—close enough to hear the running footsteps, to see the fear on people’s faces. She later said it pierced her deeply. Not out of fear, but out of the instinct she had developed over years as a journalist: when something happens, you have to find out why.

Two months later, she began investigating.

The language was not her own. Resources were limited. Her team was small, and all production costs came from personal savings. She had to relearn how to build trust with interviewees in a foreign culture. The documentary Stranger was born out of these constraints.

Filmed over five years and across several countries, Stranger tells the stories of former jihadists, witnesses of political movements, survivors of war, and displaced families. It was her first time working entirely in English, stepping into the lives of others as a foreigner. And yet, she held on to the same principles she had always practiced—no judgment, no interference, no pandering to the audience. She asked questions. She listened. She shaped stories from what she heard—just as she once did on News Probe.

In one segment, the father of a three-year-old boy who had died in a terror attack said:
“When do people start looking for the truth? Does it have to be me? A father of a dead three-year-old boy? What training do I have?”

Chai didn’t answer him. The camera simply lingered on her face. It was familiar, but more quiet now, more still. Later she said that his words struck her like a blow. “I’m a stranger in Europe,” she said, “but twenty years of professional training taught me how to look for answers.”

That single sentence captured her years of persistence and her sense of calling. Even without her native language, without institutional support or public spotlight, she was still reporting. Not because anyone asked her to—but because she understood that when someone is willing to speak their pain aloud, recording it is a form of response. Doing what is right may not change the world immediately—but someone has to do it.

In an era when journalism has been devalued into a tool of public opinion, and when many outstanding reporters have chosen to go silent, change careers, or walk away entirely, Stranger became her answer to another question:

When speaking the truth is no longer safe, how do we choose between speaking and staying silent?

Her answer is to keep going.

V. Stranger: Hearing Voices from the Edge of the World

On August 13, 2023, Chai Jing published the trailer for her new documentary Stranger on her WeChat video channel, A Stranger in Europe. It marked her first reappearance on the Chinese internet in eight years, since Under the Dome.

The trailer, four minutes and thirty seconds long, showed no graphic images, no provocative language. It dealt with terrorism—a story about young people in Europe who had turned toward extremism. Chai stood in front of the camera and said calmly:

“Terrorism requires secrecy to survive. Expose it, and it loses all its power.”

It was not a radical statement. It wasn’t an accusation or a moral judgment—just a journalist’s approach: if you cannot stop something from happening, you should at least try to understand how it happens. But even this calm stance encountered swift backlash in today’s Chinese media climate.

Within an hour, the trailer was removed from the platform, flagged for “violating content policies.” No details were provided. No opportunity for explanation was offered. Almost immediately, thousands of comments appeared under a Weibo post she had made seven years earlier: “She should be banned,” “foreign spy,” “traitor to the motherland,” “Western-funded mouthpiece.” Some comments came from real users, others from clearly mobilized anonymous accounts.

On Douban, a user under the name Sunflower Life published a lengthy essay claiming that Chai Jing had “deliberately degraded the image of Chinese people in order to win Western approval,” branding her a “banana”—yellow on the outside, white on the inside. The first episode of the documentary hadn’t even aired yet, but accusations that she was ideologically disloyal, emotionally manipulative, and financially compromised had already taken over the internet.

This is not a new phenomenon. In today’s Chinese social media landscape, once a person is labeled ideologically suspect, their entire past is rewritten. The support and praise Under the Dome once received? Erased. “I never liked her,” “I always knew she was a problem,” “She’ll never redeem herself”—such comments filled the reply sections, becoming a new form of performative correctness.

But the truly alarming part wasn’t the attacks themselves—it was how quickly they appeared, and how little evidence they required. The trailer had just been released. The first episode wasn’t even out. Yet the verdict had already been delivered. The criticism wasn’t aimed at the work, but at the person. It wasn’t suspicion—it was condemnation. Not discussion—but denunciation.

In an atmosphere like this, how does a journalist survive? One is not allowed to express harsh criticism. Even gentle questions are seen as subversive. Silence itself can be interpreted as insufficient loyalty. In an environment so polarized and defensive, even trying to understand the other side is treated as betrayal.

And yet, among the noise and hostility, a few people still quietly found the trailer—reuploaded on YouTube—and left comments:

“It’s so good to know you’re still doing journalism.”
“As long as you’re still here, there’s still hope in the world.”

These voices were quiet but enduring. They didn’t shout. They didn’t rally. They simply whispered from a quiet corner:

“We haven’t forgotten you.”

VI. Silence and Censorship Return

Her book was taken down too.

This month, a Beijing-based publishing house issued a brief notice: Chai Jing’s Seeing would be immediately withdrawn from circulation due to “quality issues.” No further explanation was provided—no indication of what “quality” referred to, no mention of which part of the text required correction or removal. It was as if an old file had been quietly dragged into the recycling bin and deleted without a trace.

For those familiar with the book, this decision was difficult to understand. Seeing was not a manifesto. It was not a collection of political critiques. It was a working reporter’s notebook—on-the-ground vignettes, conversations with people, reflections on pain, resilience, and the complexity of human choices. There were no enemies in the book, only lives: a coal miner’s widow rebuilding her family, a woman in prison remembering the night she killed her husband, a teenage boy drifting toward suicide.

To declare such a book “unfit for publication” was baffling—and yet, in today’s climate, oddly predictable. Because she is Chai Jing. Because she is still speaking.

Since her days on News Probe, she has stubbornly held to one guiding principle: to see the world through the lens of individual human beings. Outside the sweeping narratives of achievement and progress, she always sought the injured, the overlooked. In 2003, during the SARS outbreak, she entered the hospital wards seven times—not to be heroic, but to ask basic questions: How are the patients coping? Do the doctors sleep at night?

She once wrote, “It’s not that I see more than others. It’s that I’m willing to keep looking.”

And for someone like her, in today’s China, that willingness itself has become a risk.

From the banning of Under the Dome to the recall of Seeing, from the humiliation she endured on social media to the wholesale redefinition of her public image, ten years have passed. During this time, she has made no public rebuttals, taken no political stances. She has simply continued, from a foreign apartment, to record human stories, using the language and tools still available to her.

And yet, even this quiet continuation is seen by some as disobedience. The trailer for Stranger was barely released before being flagged, deleted, and condemned. Online discourse quickly branded her a “female spy” and a “mouthpiece for the West.” A Chinese journalist trying to understand the roots of terrorism in Europe became, in her own country, a threat.

She did nothing wrong. She merely upheld the basic duties of journalism. But in a system where only one narrative is allowed to exist, any voice that does not conform—no matter how gentle or professional—becomes a danger.

We have witnessed how a good person can be pushed, step by step, to the edges of speech. Once, her voice was one of the calmest and most trusted on television. She inspired countless young people to study journalism. Her questions were never sharp, but they always cut through surface rhetoric to reach something real. A journalist like that should not be treated as a threat.

And yet, that is perhaps the deepest sadness: in today’s China, a journalist’s role is no longer to seek the truth, but to struggle simply to remain audible.

To us as readers, she is more than a journalist. She is a memory. A living record of what journalism once stood for. She reminds us that, somewhere between power and silence, someone once chose honesty and compassion.

Her name still exists, but cannot be spoken aloud. Her book is still read, but no longer sold. Her documentary still circulates, but not in her homeland.

But she has not left the stage.

In a small apartment in Europe, where the language is foreign and resources are scarce, she still lifts her camera, opens her recorder, and asks the questions she believes must be asked. Not to prove anything. Not to reclaim visibility. But simply because she believes it is the right thing to do.

And that belief—that something is worth doing simply because it is right—is perhaps the rarest, most precious thing we have left.

VII. Conclusion: She Is Still Seeing—We Cannot Pretend Not to

Chai Jing has always had a profound influence on Chinese journalists. Many people—myself included—chose to study media because of her.

When I was still a student, I read Seeing again and again. Late at night, I would rewatch her interviews, replay her questions. It wasn’t just learning—it felt like guidance. She taught us how to look, how to listen, how to resist rushing to conclusions. She made it clear that a journalist is not merely a mouthpiece, but someone who dares to look others in the eye.

Years later, she left China, but not journalism. And what she is doing now may be even more difficult—and more extraordinary. She has spoken with former jihadists, interviewed survivors of the Russia-Ukraine war, met witnesses of China’s political upheavals, and even the daughter of a double agent. She has reported on the Zhu Ling poisoning case and interviewed the wife of a former U.S. diplomat. “I am trained,” she said. “I am a professional.”

Seeing her speak like that, seeing her do this work—gave me a kind of hope I can’t quite describe. That even in an age dominated by censorship and suspicion, someone still remembers what journalism is, and why we once chose this path. Her persistence isn’t some kind of grand defiance—it’s a moral compass. It tells us that no matter how bad things get, some things are still worth doing.

I once watched her interview Yang Bin, a former star prosecutor once praised by the system, who was later ostracized for criticizing China’s judicial practices. Now a visiting scholar in law abroad, he said:

“The reason we keep retreating is because we’re too afraid.”

That sentence was heavy—and accurate. When fear replaces conviction, even asking the simplest questions becomes a risk. And when that happens, collapse is not far off.

Han Xiu, another of her interviewees, once said:

“If every Chinese person made the right choice, China wouldn’t be like this.”

But doing the right thing has never been the easy thing. Since 2018, China’s media space has shrunk dramatically. Many journalists have changed careers, gone silent, or left entirely. The space for speech has narrowed and been rewritten. The wheel of history no longer rolls forward—it seems to reverse, gathering dust.

And yet, Chai Jing remains.

She continues to describe the world’s most unjust tragedies in the calmest voice. She doesn’t dramatize. She doesn’t shout. But every word she says moves me to tears. I am grateful—grateful that someone still investigates the facts, still tells these stories in Chinese, still speaks the truth with care and precision.

She did not betray the people who entrusted her with their stories. She is the conscience and spine of Chinese journalism.

In a system where only one voice is allowed to exist, I recall a quote I once read:

“If sharp criticism disappears, mild criticism becomes offensive.
If mild criticism is no longer allowed, silence becomes suspicious.
If silence is no longer tolerated, insufficient praise becomes a crime.
And if only one voice is permitted, then that voice is a lie.”

She is still seeing.
And we cannot pretend not to see.

We cannot pretend not to see the stories she has recorded.
We cannot pretend not to see how this era has treated her.

She has never been silent.
And we must remember her—
and remember the courage to keep looking.