iSun Affairs magazine expands, betting on hard-hitting reports
Chen Ping is expanding his hard-hitting iSun Affairs weekly, confident a clear-eyed look at the mainland's problems will succeed in difficult times
Chen Ping says he has never been afraid.
When China was embroiled in Mao Zedong's personality cult during the Cultural Revolution, Chen - just 12 - had the guts to throw Mao's "little red book" onto the ground at school, call the great leader an "emperor" and "tyrant", and dismantle a loudspeaker used for broadcasting Mao's thoughts.
He was beaten, kicked and detained. The son of a Communist Party military expert captured by the Soviet Union, he was denounced as the offspring of a "Soviet revisionist rebel".
That same courage saw him found the iSun Affairs electronic magazine - a hard-hitting publication run by liberal mainland journalists that exploits the media freedom in Hong Kong to report and comment on issues that are mostly banned on the mainland.
Launched a year ago, the e-magazine has already established a reputation for its bold reports on China's political and social issues, winning four press awards for its coverage of the Wukan riot in Guangdong and blind activist Chen Guangcheng's escape from house arrest. According to the company, iSun Affairs ' electronic and print versions have reached a combined circulation of 130,000.
This week, iSun Affairs launched its print version - an ambitious project to give it a bigger market presence and broaden its readership.