21st Century, founded in 1993, is an English-language weekly targeting young Chinese intellectuals and professionals. It aims to cultivate their inter-cultural communication competency in a context of increasing globalization.
21st Century delivers feature-style stories about news, culture, science and technology, entertainment and youth events. Readers are also treated to weekly pages that cover practical concerns such as money, careers and relationships.
21st Century Weekly has now grown to be one of the largest English news weeklies in China with its large nationwide circulation network.
Audience Composition
The target audience of 21st Century Weekly are young Chinese aged between 18-35. They're a vigorous group who are interested in cross-culture communications and are powerful consumer force.
1. Audience professions
College students 75% Young professionals 14.7%
Managerial staff 5.6% Teachers 5.2%
Others students 4.7%
2. Audience age groups
18-25 48.2% 25-30 30.1%
30-35 14.8% over 35 6.9%
21st Century Weekly sections
21st Century Weekly has 24 pages each issue, all of which provide authentic English content.
Page 1: Cover
Person or event of the week, bilingual highlights
Page 2 ,3: News
Analysis of hot issues; news highlights and keywords
Page 4,5: Focus
In-depth analysis of current events of interest to young people, complemented by foreign perspectives foreign perspectives
Page 6,7 :Opinion & Forum
Opinions and debate from young people
Page 8,9: Campus life
Exploration of vigorous campus life, voices from university students
Page 10,11: Entertainment
Reviews of hot films, music, profiles and gossip of pop stars
Page 12,13 New Horizon
A glance of the world’s culture, lifestyle and latest technology
Page 14,15:Get ahead
Recruitment, overseas internship, and career tips
Page 16: Books/people:
Review of English best-sellers; profiles of young peers abound the world.
Page 17:Relationships
Relationship stories from real life
Page 18: Fun corner
Fashion, gadget trend, and fun life
Page 19: My 2012
Olympic volunteers sharing their unique experience of the Games
Page 20: Sport
Profile of sports stars, learn the sports talk
Publishing time:
Released on Wednesday, a total of 50 period in the whole year
Each issue circulation: 560,000 copies/period
Circulated rate: 1:5
Learning express supplement (Page I-IV):
A weekly practical learning guide on how to improve English through reading 21st Century.
Cross-media cooperation and promotions
1. Mobile learning
21st Century Weekly has been working with Nokia China to become one of the content providers of “Mobiledu”, an English service embedded in mobile phones, from early 2007. The partnership has allowed 21st Century to pioneer mobile phone use in the media industry. “Mobiledu” is aimed at young professionals who are keen to learn English. The service reinforces 21st Century Weekly’s influence on this audience. 21st Century Weekly has a potential audience of 100 million mobile learners.
2. Partnership with prestigious institutions in the English-learning sector
21st Century has a long history of partnering with domestically and internationally recognized English teaching, learning and testing institutions and media organizations. They not only provide the newspaper with latest information on English learning, but also participate in and sponsor 21st Century Weekly initiated events, such as the “21st Century Cup” National English Speaking Competition. The British Council, English Speaking Union, ETS and BBC are all long-term partners with 21st Century Weekly.
3. Soft ads services
21st Century also provides custom-tailored editorial production services for domestic and multinational companies. These include publishing special supplements, providing a platform for sponsoring readers’ events, etc. Nokia China, the British Council, Random House, and Casio are among 21st Century’s partners/clients in this field.
Mr. Gavin Cheung
Senior Manager, Department of Media,
E-mail: Gavin.Cheung@findworldedu.com
Website: http://www.findworldedu.com/
