Chinadialogue.net


Chinadialogue.net is an independent, non-profit organisation based in London and Beijing. It was launched on July 3, 2006. Chinadialogue is funded by a range of institutional supporters, including several major charitable foundations.
It focuses on the environment, especially in China, although it has an interest in environment and sustainability issues around the world.
It features articles by Chinese and non-Chinese authors from a variety of perspectives. These include an interview with former US vice-president Al Gore and Chinese economist Hu Angang. Other contributors include Pan Yue who was named New Statesman Person of the Year 2007 and a rising figure in Chinese government circles who is championing a green China, and Ma Jun a leading Chinese environmentalist named by Time magazine as one of its 100 most important people in 2006.
It has adopted a web 2.0 approach, which gives user-generated comment a key place in the site, and sees the use of RSS feeds, Creative Commons material, and news briefs and links collected from varied sources across the net.
Its tagline is "China and the world discuss the environment".
BBC Radio 4's Sheena McDonald said on the Talking Politics programme on December 23, 2006, that the site was the only fully bilingual website in English and Chinese focusing on the environment in the world. She interviewed editor Isabel Hilton, who at the time was also editor of openDemocracy, who said that the aim of the site was to foster a dialogue which might otherwise be defeated by language barriers.
It shares a similarity in construction and ethos with China Digital Times, which is run by the China Internet Project at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
The website was re-launched with a new design in September 2012.

Board members

The members of the chinadialogue Editorial Advisory Board are: Professor Mark Elvin, Caspar Henderson, Ma Jun, Professor Pan Jiahua, Lord Patten of Barnes, Professor Orville Schell, Sir Crispin Tickell, Professor Wang Canfa and Professor Wang Ming.