Radio Free Asia feature wins at 2019 New York Festivals Radio Awards
RFA’s Mandarin Service won a Silver Medal in the News Features category for its “Gray Rhino” series, a set of short videos focused on China’s financial sector and its risks for ordinary citizens.
“RFA Mandarin’s Gray Rhino video series brings awareness to our audiences in China of the under-reported risks and landmines in the Chinese economy at a time when state-controlled media is pushing out misleading information. Chinese citizens themselves are experiencing first-hand the impact of economic insecurity, unemployment, corporate closures, and empty new housing stock,” said Libby Liu, President of RFA.
Released in February 2019, when many Chinese households were beginning to feel the negative effects of China’s economic instability, RFA Mandarin’s “Gray Rhino” series took an in-depth look at major issues plaguing China’s financial system, such as bad debt in the financial and government sectors, and the Chinese real estate bubble. With the series, the Mandarin Service’s digital team provided clear, easy-to-understand analyses of complex issues that are not only neglected in Chinese domestic media, but also often left difficult to understand. As of June 2019, the series had about 375,000 views on YouTube.