I'm not sure what the parent poster is getting at about information on Chinese business, politics and culture being hard to find because that stuff is widely written about in the global media, and there are plenty of English language sources. It almost seems counterproductive to provide links to resources because it's artificially limiting what you will be exposed to, but here we go anyway...
On the state-owned media tip there are also more blatant propaganda outlets like Global Times, People's Daily etc, plus private-owned media that largely toe the party line like South China Morning Post.
There are also a set of mostly US-based thinktanks that do solid macro-level reporting on geopolitical and economic issues, guys like Jamestown, CSIS, German Marshall Fund etc.
Then there are countless blogs and newsletters and influencers who report on specific niches, everything from economic analysis to boyslove fandom... You can jump on Bilibili to watch shows and see all the "bullet chat" jargon and memes, you can rub shoulders with the upper middle class on Xiaohongshu, read millions of Steam reviews or check out the forums of games popular in China, follow ABC or expat channels on YouTube etc. I find it very hard to believe that people in 2025 can't find any information about what's going on in China.
All that said, I do share the sense that there is a bit a trough between Chinese tech workers and foreign tech workers, and it's because most Chinese tech workers don't tend to prioritize learning English to the same degree that tech workers around the rest of the world do. There are lots of publications that report on the Chinese tech industry from an investor or economic perspective, probably written by all those MBAs who went to study overseas, but nerd-to-nerd level exchange is lacking imo. I suppose you could ask an LLM to summarize content from v2ex.com (HN-ish Reddit), tieba.baidu.com (Reddit-ish Reddit), segmentfault.com (StackOverflow) etc, but that doesn't really do much to engage in a social way so I'm not sure if it's what you're looking for. Chinese-language Github projects are one place you could explore, if you specifically want to interact with developers over there.
China Media Project (media analysis) - https://chinamediaproject.org/
China Leadership Monitor (political analysis) - https://www.prcleader.org/
Made in China Journal (social analysis) - https://madeinchinajournal.com/
What's on Weibo (pop culture reporting) - https://www.whatsonweibo.com/
The China Project (formerly SupChina, general reporting) - https://thechinaproject.com/
* edit to add: seems like The China Project shut down end of 2023, but leaving the link for context
Sixth Tone (state-owned media specializing in human interest stories) - https://www.sixthtone.com/
On the state-owned media tip there are also more blatant propaganda outlets like Global Times, People's Daily etc, plus private-owned media that largely toe the party line like South China Morning Post.
There are also a set of mostly US-based thinktanks that do solid macro-level reporting on geopolitical and economic issues, guys like Jamestown, CSIS, German Marshall Fund etc.
Then there are countless blogs and newsletters and influencers who report on specific niches, everything from economic analysis to boyslove fandom... You can jump on Bilibili to watch shows and see all the "bullet chat" jargon and memes, you can rub shoulders with the upper middle class on Xiaohongshu, read millions of Steam reviews or check out the forums of games popular in China, follow ABC or expat channels on YouTube etc. I find it very hard to believe that people in 2025 can't find any information about what's going on in China.
All that said, I do share the sense that there is a bit a trough between Chinese tech workers and foreign tech workers, and it's because most Chinese tech workers don't tend to prioritize learning English to the same degree that tech workers around the rest of the world do. There are lots of publications that report on the Chinese tech industry from an investor or economic perspective, probably written by all those MBAs who went to study overseas, but nerd-to-nerd level exchange is lacking imo. I suppose you could ask an LLM to summarize content from v2ex.com (HN-ish Reddit), tieba.baidu.com (Reddit-ish Reddit), segmentfault.com (StackOverflow) etc, but that doesn't really do much to engage in a social way so I'm not sure if it's what you're looking for. Chinese-language Github projects are one place you could explore, if you specifically want to interact with developers over there.