Original article: Entrevista con «Boston Round Face» (Zephyr): Cómo los medios occidentales eligen informar o difamar a China, honestamente, me importa muy poco

Interview with Boston Round Face (Zephyr): Navigating Western Media’s Approach to China with Indifference

Some view the world from the comfort of their desks, lost in the hypnotic flicker of screen pixels. Zephyr, however, observes it from the road, a fishing rod slung over his shoulder and the vast map of China as his compass. Boston Round Face (Zephyr) is an international political analyst based in Shanghai, yet his spirit cannot be confined to skyscrapers; his life elegantly balances thoughtful discourse with the contemplative pause of a fisherman, seamlessly blending the recording studio with the boundless freedom of a camper traversing the ancient paths of the giant nation.

We find him in his recording studio, close to friends from China Academy. Alongside his team, he greets us with the warmth of someone who understands that true dialogue doesn’t require flags. He hands me a microphone, and before I can ask my first question, he interviews me for his channel. It’s a game of mirrors, a duel of gazes where the interviewer becomes the interviewee, and time appears to stand still. As the conversation flows, the young man reveals himself in layers; not just a sharp analyst dissecting power and geopolitics, but a traveler seeking certainties in the ebb and flow of international politics.

As I said farewell to China, I knew this unresolved dialogue could not remain in the air. From a distance, I reached out to him. With the generosity of someone who understands that ideas know no borders, he agreed to respond. This young intellectual, who already gathers over 5.5 million souls on Bilibili and nearly 200,000 on YouTube, breaks media barriers each week with deep analyses of contemporary realities. He is unafraid to dive into waters others prefer to avoid; he casts his line into the river of the present and pulls out truths that others bury in forgetfulness. Today, we peer into his universe, one that refuses to be narrated by a single voice and looks up from the Global South.

By Bruno Sommer

-Let’s discuss your origins. What did Boston mean to you? How did that academic experience influence your worldview and your decision to pursue communication and geopolitical analysis? Why did you choose the name “Round Face”—did it originate from you, a friend, or elsewhere?

-My channel is called ‘Boston Round Face’. To understand why I chose that name, you need to go back to 2019. At that time, the United States was shaken by significant civil rights movements—particularly Black Lives Matter. Yet, while this was happening, my classmates, friends, and many other Asians in the U.S. faced widespread, relentless racial discrimination.

It was violent. One of my classmates was attacked on the street with a beer bottle, leaving him bloodied. However, the police minimized it, claiming there were no cameras, and some classmates told us not to expect help from the police—we had to defend ourselves. It became clear how crucial it was to find our own voice. The media was already saturated with protests; our small voices weren’t enough to grab attention amid the momentum of the BLM movement. It was a strange paradox: BLM represented absolute political correctness, yet discrimination against Asians was somehow deemed acceptable.

Amid that helplessness, I found a brave YouTuber named ‘Tokyo Long Face’, a PhD student in Tokyo. He had a very long face, and I found his content deeply inspiring. So, I modeled my account after his and named it ‘Boston Round Face’.

There were two reasons for this. First, I wanted to emulate his success. Secondly, I felt this naming convention had a powerful popular quality. It allows ordinary people to raise their voices for justice while protecting their privacy from those who might misuse it or even engage in doxxing for amusement. It was a call to the common man. In fact, after I launched my channel, hundreds of other channels appeared worldwide using the ‘City + Face Shape’ format.

My years of study in Boston were marked by almost daily protests. Being in a major political center and immersed in civil rights struggles taught me a harsh lesson: no rights are granted without a fight. However, the academic environment of a university city also allowed me to genuinely hear the stories of people from all over the world—their struggles and the same sense of helplessness I felt. That conviction propelled me to keep this channel going: to provide my audience with authentic front-line voices and contribute to the dream of global solidarity.

-It is said that your motivation arose from seeing the discrepancy between what old «Western intellectuals» used to say and the reality you experienced in the U.S. Can you explain that “revelatory” moment that led you to create your channel? What is the dichotomy between one narrative and the other?

-Certainly, the transition from a gradual accumulation of frustration to a complete change of perspective took time. But if you ask me what the catalyst was, the most unforgettable turning point was a course I took on genocide. My professor kept insisting, time and again, even in chapters unrelated to the topic, that the Nazi Holocaust was ‘singularly unique’ and incomparable to any other atrocity in human history. When I spoke up and mentioned the massacres committed by Japan against the Chinese people, my professor grew visibly impatient. He dismissively told me to speak with him privately after class. But when I did, he brushed me off again, saying that he simply didn’t have time.

I clearly remember the moment I stood up to question him. Moments before, my classmates had been crying over the Holocaust. But while I stood there, I looked around and saw my peers hunched over their desks, scrolling through Facebook, searching for where to eat or the best restaurant coupons.

The Japanese aggression against China during World War II caused at least 35 million casualties. However, some of the most horrific war crimes, such as the Nanking Massacre and the human experiments by Unit 731, remain severely understudied and overlooked in global scholarship. Japanese troops treated Chinese civilians like animals, officially labeling them as Maruda (logs), opened the bellies of pregnant women to study unborn fetuses, sprayed anthrax and plague from aircraft to maximize civilian deaths, and locked mothers and children in slowly heated iron cages just to observe how long a mother would try to shield her child from the flames. Unlike Germany, the Japanese government has never issued a formal and official apology for these atrocities to this day. Instead, it has promoted revisionist textbooks and actively funded media and scholars worldwide to try to erase this history from global memory. That is not only disrespectful to the victims but also a danger to historical truth itself, which is important not just for victims in Asian countries but for people worldwide who want to uphold justice and accountability for humanity.

I will never forget that feeling: I was there, staring into my professor’s eyes, fury rising from the base of my spine to my head; the looks of confusion and even resentment from my classmates as they turned to look at me; and that strange sensation of my body burning while I broke out in a cold sweat. It’s a moment imprinted in my memory forever.

-Outside of China, there is a widespread stereotype claiming that there is no freedom of expression in China. However, you produce international political commentary almost daily from within China, often with a strong critical focus on the West. Do you think your work is a living testament to the falsity of this stereotype? What are the real limits and the leeway for a communicator like yourself within the Chinese digital ecosystem?

-Chairman Mao once said: ‘The sun doesn’t rise because the rooster crows.’ In that spirit, I don’t see myself as a sort of ‘living proof’—because proof implies a subject and an object, and my existence as an independent Chinese content creator doesn’t need to serve as proof for anyone else.

Regarding how Western media chooses to report or defame China, honestly, I care very little. After decades of struggle, if people have learned nothing, their evident double standards and hypocrisy are on full display: look how they have minimized Gaza while whitewashing Netanyahu’s war crimes. There’s an old Chinese saying: ‘The people who harm you know better than anyone that they have harmed you.’ So why should we in the Global South waste our energy begging them for a better future? They will never ‘have mercy’ and give us one.

And I know quite a few veteran journalists from major Western outlets. To be fair, many of them are decent people. But beyond them, there are editors, and above them are editors-in-chief, directors, managers, and owners. Even when these journalists want to speak the truth, they simply cannot get it through. So my opinion is this: we in the Global South must unite and ally with conscientious media and regular people in the West who are deeply dissatisfied with the status quo—to produce real and factual information and share it with the world.

Of course, there are many challenges. First, we all feel it: the overload of tragic news has caused widespread informational fatigue. After a long, exhausting workday, hearing about how many more children the IDF has killed in a faraway place just numbs people. Over time, many choose to look away.

Secondly, the global economic recession, Trump’s isolationism, and the technocratic forces represented by Peter Thiel and Elon Musk—not only funding transnational organizations like Turning Point but also directly intervening in elections worldwide—have led many to feel that changing the system is a goal too far out of reach, and it’s easier to let these oligarchs act as they wish.

Thirdly, the global political shift to the right—extreme nationalism, resurgent Nazism, anti-intellectualism, and conspiracy theories—threatens science and international cooperation. We saw it during COVID with anti-vaxxers, and we see it now with climate deniers and skeptics of modern science. In the long run, this is a destructive apocalyptic challenge for human society. I firmly oppose these forces and openly fight against them. But the results so far have been rather bleak; to be honest, I have yet to find a good answer. None of us have found it.

-Bilibili has recognized you on several occasions. What do you believe is the reason for this official and community acknowledgment? Who is your “face friend” (as you call your followers) today? What is the general profile of your audience?

-I think this primarily reflects Bilibili’s efforts to encourage the younger generation in China, especially well-educated youth, to embrace the world in a better, more comprehensive, and high-quality manner. This aligns perfectly with the vision of the Communist Party of China and the government in seeking a higher quality of openness and advancing the concept of a community with a shared future for humanity.

Regarding my content, without the support of a large number of well-educated young Chinese, I simply would not have received as many views and plays. More importantly, even if they are well-educated, if they weren’t interested in uniting people worldwide or speaking for the oppressed everywhere, they wouldn’t bother to watch my videos. So, the fact that my content is well-received on certain Chinese platforms is, in itself, a reflection of intellectually curious Chinese youth: their curiosity, their passion, and their genuine love for the world.

-You are known for reading and dissecting original English texts from media such as The New York Times and CNN. In an age of information overload and deepfakes, how do you verify that a source is reliable? Have you ever been close to falling into an information trap?

-A relatively low-cost and effective method is cross-referencing. If there is only a single source, even if it’s a major outlet like The New York Times or The Washington Post, I wouldn’t give it a very high credibility rating. Secondly, once you become skilled at cross-referencing, you get a clearer understanding of each outlet’s biases and their angles and positions on different issues. You also learn the professional backgrounds and political leanings of their writers and contracted columnists. This gives me a mental expectation when they subsequently publish similar content, and I can anticipate where they might present misinformation or disinformation on certain topics, which largely helps me avoid falling into information traps. Of course, unless you go there and do on-the-ground reporting yourself, completely avoiding information traps is largely impossible. This is especially true for an independent Chinese commentator on international affairs, where we must consider China’s historical and political media landscape. The public here has high demands for authenticity, reliability, and depth of political information, yet at the same time expects that information to be free. As a result, investigative journalists in major Chinese media are also rapidly declining. I personally face the challenge of producing in-depth content that cannot sustain itself without losing too much money.

-You say: “I am rational and objective, but never neutral.” How do you explain that equation? Can one be faithful to the facts while maintaining such a strong political positioning without falling into bias?

-When I say that I am rational and objective but never neutral, I mean that rationality and objectivity are about methodology: I verify sources, fact-check, cross-reference accounts, and avoid logical fallacies. That’s how I stay true to the truth. Neutrality, on the other hand, is a political stance—it means refusing to take sides, often equating the aggressor with the victim, or the oppressor with the oppressed. I choose not to be neutral because some issues are not morally symmetrical. When you see civilian massacres, genocides broadcast live, illegal occupations, or blatant double standards in international affairs, neutrality becomes complicity.

Now, can one be faithful to the facts while maintaining a clear political stance without succumbing to bias? Absolutely, if you define bias as distorting facts to fit a narrative. My political stance comes from my values, but those values do not dictate the facts; they inform how I interpret them. For instance, I can criticize American interventionism while recognizing its technological achievements, and in fact, I deeply admire the efforts of many American scientists and their selfless struggle against global anti-science populism. I can condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza while also pointing out Hamas’s provocations.

The real bias, in my opinion, is pretending that neutrality exists. Every media outlet has a viewpoint—Western ones, too. The difference is that I am honest about mine and invite my audience to verify my facts. I also correct myself when I make mistakes. So yes, I believe I am faithful to the facts because I do not hide my position. I put it on the table and let the evidence speak—but I never pretend that evidence speaks without a voice. That voice is mine, and it comes from a place of justice, not prejudice. Frankly, that stance is sometimes so ‘offensive’ and rare on Chinese social media that I occasionally find myself criticized by some Chinese right-wingers for clarifying certain conspiracy theories or fake news that currently lack clear evidence to back them, which are quite popular among anti-intellectuals worldwide, such as ‘Professor Hawking went to Epstein’s Island to sleep with girls’ or ‘Trump died today.’ There are Chinese anti-intellectuals who make a living repeating fake news like ‘The IDF Brigade 401 commander was killed today by an Iranian missile.’ Even with millions of views on multiple platforms, pointing out that they are false news often leads to me being criticized as ‘not patriotic enough’ or ‘making a mountain out of a molehill.’

-You cover wars like the Russia-Ukraine conflict or the events in Gaza. But beyond these dramatic facts, what do you consider to be the structural or underlying conflict that is truly redefining the international order at this moment?

-I believe that the intensity and speed of the current changes in the international landscape have far exceeded what ordinary people around the world can assimilate and also far exceed the resources they are willing to commit to forge a new set of international rules. That is quite deadly. In other words, it’s relatively easy to point out that the unilateral architecture led by the U.S., or any kind of hegemonic order, simply cannot sustain itself anymore. But answering the question of what the new rules will be, what comes next, is a tremendously important topic that very few are genuinely discussing. Many scholars I know have been sounding the alarm, warning that we could be heading towards a lawless era altogether. To some extent, a world without rules is scarier than a world with bad rules.

-Increasingly, surveys show a rise in the positive perception of China in the Global South. What do you attribute this phenomenon to? Is it due to economic achievements, or has China learned to tell its own story better to the Global South?

-It has less to do with the world suddenly falling in love with China, and much more with a massive collapse of the global image of the United States.

The biggest driver here is the foreign policy of the Trump administration. When you push ‘America First,’ threaten with trade wars, and cast aside traditional global partnerships, you make our long-standing friends in Europe and Asia very nervous. Previous Pew reports had already paved the way for this, showing just how negative international reviews of Trump really are. The real catalyst that completely sunk the moral standing of the United States, particularly in the Global South, is the handling of the Gaza conflict. The New York Times highlighted a staggering figure: 76% of respondents disapprove of how the administration has managed Gaza. When you combine that with a highly aggressive stance in the Middle East, like pushing towards conflict with Iran, it only infuriates the global public. People see a blatant double standard, and that has absolutely caused U.S. favorability to plummet.

Then, there’s the underlying contrast: reliability. The world is suffering from the whiplash of U.S. policies flipping 180 degrees every time the White House changes. On the other hand, you have China. It’s not that Western countries have let their geopolitical guard down against Beijing. But in a highly volatile 2026, China offers predictability. They have long-term policy consistency and stable economic output.

The massive factor here is the distancing from the U.S. Global unilateralism and anger over Gaza have dragged American numbers down. The lesser factor is China’s stability.

-You are a strong advocate for breaking the information monopoly. Why do you believe it is so urgent and necessary to consolidate a network of media and communicators from the Global South? What advantage would it have over major Western agencies?

-The global news landscape remains overwhelmingly dominated by a handful of Western agencies; every day, 95% of the information we receive comes from the West. They set the agenda, frame the narrative, and decide what the world sees and what it ignores. The current system is not only unbalanced; it is actively deceiving. We have seen it repeatedly: in Gaza, in Ukraine, in the so-called ‘rules-based order’. Western media apply completely different standards to different conflicts, and routinely minimize or whitewash the actions of their allies while demonizing their adversaries. That’s not journalism; it’s propaganda disguised as objectivity. And as I mentioned earlier, many honest journalists within those same organizations want to tell the truth but are blocked by layers of editors, directors, and owners. So the system itself is structurally biased.

Secondly, the Global South: our stories are told through foreign lenses. Our perspectives, our stories, and our aspirations are ignored or reduced to stereotypes. That’s not just unfair; it’s dangerous because when people from the Global South don’t have their own voices, they are easily manipulated by narratives that serve the interests of other powers. We need a network that allows us to speak among ourselves and directly to the world without filtering everything through New York, London, or Paris. I’m not politically or academically enough to share grand, lofty ideas about what happens next, but I’m certain that what we need to do now is crucial and absolutely foundational for whatever we want to do afterward.

-Being a polarizing figure draws both praise and fierce attacks, both within and outside China. How do you manage the pressure, mental exhaustion, and personal criticism to maintain your publishing rhythm?

«Regarding how to address online harassment and how victims can legally protect their rights, that’s a common challenge worldwide, and China is no exception. To a large extent, there is no truly effective and fully legal means to protect yourself from online abuse and all kinds of threats to me or my family. Collecting evidence is extremely difficult and time-consuming, courts are not familiar with or aware of the damage and harm to victims, the laws are lax, and in many cases, you have to publicly disclose your personal information just to defend your basic rights. For most cases, it’s basically difficult for me to legally protect my privacy. That said, I believe China has made progress in addressing online harassment, and I think the future looks promising.

Personally, the good news is that even though my content reaches a large audience, I am not an intensive Internet user. I spend only about a third of my day online posting content; the rest of the time, I have other interests and responsibilities. That probably helps a lot—unlike some influencers whose entire lives are consumed by online harassment, I have a life outside the screen, which keeps things in perspective.

-To conclude, with over 1,500 videos and 5 million followers, what would you like people to say about “Round Face” in your country in 20 years?

-That he never deceived us» «That he gave his all.»

Ping Pong: 

Mao: Idol.

Peter Thiel: Schemer.

Putin: Meh.

Elon Musk: He will die on Mars.

Jack Ma: Inflated sense of his own importance.

Palestine: We stand with Palestine.

Latin America: Too close to the United States, sadly.

Japan: Suicidal policies by Takaichi.

Follow the channel: 波士顿圆脸 (Boston Round Face)

By Bruno Sommer

Founder El Ciudadano