In-Depth Interview with «Boston Round Face» (Zephyr): How Western Media Choose to Inform or Defame China

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

Some people view the world from the comfort of their desks, entranced by the hypnotic glow of pixels. In contrast, Zephyr experiences it from the open road, fishing rod in hand and the vast map of China as his compass. Boston Round Face (Zephyr) is an international political analyst living in Shanghai, yet his spirit does not fit within skyscrapers; his life is a delicate balance between thoughtful musings and the contemplative pause of a fisherman, between the recording studio and the boundless freedom of an RV traversing the ancient paths of the Asian giant.

We meet in his recording studio, located near friends at the China Academy. With his team, he greets me warmly, understanding that true dialogue needs no flags. He hands me a microphone and before I can ask my first question, he interviews me for his channel. It becomes a game of mirrors, a duel of glances where the interviewer becomes the interviewee, and where time seems to stand still. As the conversation floats, the young man reveals layers of himself, not only as a sharp analyst dissecting power and geopolitics but as a traveler who finds certainties in the ebb and flow of international politics.

As I bid farewell to China, I knew that our unfinished dialogue could not linger in the air. From a distance, I reached out to him through writing. Baulking at boundaries, he generously agreed to respond. This young intellectual, who already connects with more than 5.5 million followers on Bilibili and nearly 200,000 on YouTube, breaks through media barriers each week, delivering profound analyses of our contemporary reality. He is unafraid to dive into waters others prefer to avoid; he fishes for truths submerged by collective amnesia. Today, we peek into his universe, one that resists being narrated with a single voice and elevates perspectives 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 nickname «Round Face»? Did it originate from yourself, a friend, or elsewhere?

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

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

Amidst that impotence, I discovered a brave YouTuber named ‘Tokyo Long Face’, a PhD student in Tokyo. He had a long face and his content deeply inspired me. I modeled my channel after his and named it ‘Boston Round Face’.

There were two reasons for this. First, I sought to emulate his success. Second, I felt this naming convention had powerful popular qualities. It allows everyday 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 good. Indeed, after I launched my channel, hundreds of others emerged worldwide using the ‘City + Face Shape’ format.

My years of study in Boston were marked by almost daily protests. Being in a major political hub, immersed in civil rights struggles taught me a hard lesson: no right is granted without a fight. Yet the academic environment of a university town also enabled me to truly hear the stories of individuals from around the world—their struggles and the very impotence I felt. That conviction compelled me to keep this channel alive: to provide my audience with authentic front-line voices and contribute to the dream of global solidarity.

-It is said that your motivation arose upon witnessing the discrepancy between what former «Western intellectuals» used to say and the reality you experienced in the U.S. Can you share that ‘revealing’ moment that led you to create your channel? What is the dichotomy between one narrative and the other?

-Certainly, the transition from a gradual buildup of frustration to a complete shift in perspective took time. But if you ask me what the trigger was, the most memorable turning point was a course I took on genocide. My professor repeatedly insisted, over and over, 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 visibly grew impatient. He disdainfully told me to speak to him privately after class. However, when I did, he rebuffed me again, stating he simply had no time.

I vividly recall the moment I stood up to question him. Just moments before, my classmates had been crying about the Holocaust. But as I stood there, I looked around and saw them slumped at their desks, scrolling through Facebook, looking for lunch spots or the best restaurant coupons.

The Japanese aggression against China during World War II caused at least 35 million casualties. Yet, some of the most horrific war crimes—such as the Nanking Massacre and the human experiments conducted by Unit 731—remain severely understudied and overlooked in global scholarship. Japanese troops treated Chinese civilians like animals, officially labeling them as Maruda (wooden 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 their children in slowly heating iron cages just to observe how long a mother would attempt to protect her child from flames. Unlike Germany, the Japanese government has never issued a formal, official apology for these atrocities up to this day. Instead, it has promoted revisionist textbooks and actively funded media and academics globally, trying to erase this history from our collective memory. This is not only a profound disrespect to the victims but also a threat to historical truth itself, not just significant for victims of Asian countries but for people worldwide who seek to uphold justice and accountability for humanity.

I will never forget that feeling: I was there, staring into my professor’s eyes, the wave of anger 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 as I broke into a cold sweat. It’s a moment etched 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, with a robustly critical approach to the West. Do you see your work as a living testament that this stereotype is false? What are the actual limits and leeway you find as a communicator within the Chinese digital ecosystem?

-Chairman Mao once said, ‘The rooster does not crow because the sun rises.’ In that spirit, I do not see myself as a kind of ‘living proof’—because proof implies a subject and an object, and my existence as an independent Chinese content creator does not need to serve as proof for anyone else.

Regarding how Western media choose to inform 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 at how they have downplayed Gaza while whitewashing Netanyahu’s war crimes. There is an old Chinese saying: ‘People who harm you know better than anyone they have done you harm.’ So why should we, in the Global South, waste our energy begging them for a better future? They will never ‘have mercy’ and grant us one.

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

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

Second, the global economic recession, Trump’s isolationism, and the tech forces represented by Peter Thiel and Elon Musk—not only funding transnational organizations like Turning Point but also intervening directly in elections worldwide—have made many feel that changing the system is too distant a goal, and that it is easier to let these oligarchs act at will.

Third, the global political shift to the right—extreme nationalism, resurgent Nazism, anti-intellectualism, and conspiracy theories—all threaten science and international cooperation. We saw this during COVID with anti-vaxxers, and we see it now with climate deniers and skeptics of modern science. In the long run, this poses a destructive apocalyptic challenge to human society. I firmly oppose these forces and openly fight against them. But so far the results have been rather gloomy; to be honest, I have not yet found a good answer. None of us has found it.

-Bilibili has recognized you on several occasions. What do you think accounts for this official and community recognition? Who is your ‘face friend’ today (as you refer to your followers)? What is the general profile of your audience?

-I believe this primarily reflects Bilibili’s efforts to encourage the younger generation of China, especially well-educated youths, to embrace the world in a better, more integral, and higher-quality manner. And this aligns perfectly with the vision of the Communist Party of China and the government to seek higher-quality openness and advance the idea of a community with a shared future for humanity.

As for my own content, without the support of a vast number of well-educated young Chinese, I simply would not have garnered so many views and plays. More importantly, even if they are well-educated, if they lacked interest in the unity of people worldwide or in speaking for the oppressed everywhere, they would never bother to watch my videos. Therefore, the fact that my content is well-received on various Chinese platforms reflects the 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 or CNN. In an era of information overload and deepfakes, how do you verify that a source is reliable? Have you ever come close to falling into an information trap?

-A relatively cost-effective and efficient method is cross-verifying. If there is only a single source, even if it is a major outlet like The New York Times or The Washington Post, I would not assign it a very high credibility rating. Secondly, once you become skilled in cross-verifying, you gain a clearer understanding of each outlet’s biases, angles, and positions on various topics. You also become familiar with the professional backgrounds and political inclinations of their authors and hired columnists. This provides me with a mental expectation when they subsequently publish similar content, and I can roughly anticipate where they might present misinformation or disinformation on certain issues, which largely helps me avoid falling into information traps. Of course, unless you go on-site and report yourself, avoiding information traps entirely is largely impossible. This is especially true for an independent Chinese commentator on international affairs because we must consider the historical and political media environment of China. The public here has high demands for authenticity, reliability, and depth of political information; however, they also expect that such information be free. Consequently, investigative journalism is rapidly shrinking in major Chinese media. I face the challenge that in-depth content production 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 marked political stance without falling into bias?

-When I say I am rational and objective but never neutral, I mean that rationality and objectivity pertain to methodology: I verify sources, fact-check, cross-examine reports, and avoid logical fallacies. That is how I remain 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 symmetric. When you witness civilian massacres, live-streamed genocides, illegal occupations, or blatant double standards in international affairs, neutrality becomes complicity.

Now, can one be true to the facts while maintaining a clear political stance without falling into bias? Absolutely, if you define bias as distorting facts to fit a narrative. My political stance stems from my values, but these values do not dictate the facts; they inform how I interpret them. For example, I can criticize U.S. interventionism while recognizing its technological achievements; 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 do too. The difference is that I am upfront about mine and invite my audience to verify my data. I also correct myself when I make mistakes. So yes, I believe I am faithful to the facts precisely because I do not conceal my position. I put it on the table and allow the evidence to speak—but I never pretend that the 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 am occasionally criticized by some Chinese right-wingers for clarifying certain conspiracy theories or fake news that currently lack clear evidence to back them up, which are quite popular among anti-intellectuals worldwide, such as ‘Professor Hawking went to Epstein Island to sleep with girls’ or ‘Trump died today’. There are even Chinese anti-intellectuals who make a living repeating false news like ‘The commander of IDF’s Brigade 401 was killed today by an Iranian missile’. Even with millions of views across multiple platforms, pointing out that these are fake news often leads me to be labeled as ‘not patriotic enough’ or ‘making a mountain out of a molehill.’

-You cover wars like that in Russia – Ukraine or what occurred in Gaza. But beyond these dramatic events, 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 change in the international landscape greatly exceed what ordinary people globally can absorb, and also far surpass the resources they are willing to commit to forge a new set of international rules. That is quite lethal. In other words, it is relatively easy to point out that the U.S.-led unilateral architecture or any type of hegemonic order cannot sustain itself any longer. But answering the question of what the new rules will be, what comes next, is a tremendously important subject that very few people are genuinely discussing. Many scholars I know have been sounding alarms, warning that we might be heading toward an era with no rules whatsoever. 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 trade wars, and discard traditional global partnerships, you make our longtime friends in Europe and Asia very nervous. Previous Pew reports had already laid the groundwork for this, showing just how negative the international reviews of Trump truly are. The actual catalyst that completely sank the moral standing of the U.S., especially in the Global South, is the handling of the Gaza conflict. The New York Times highlighted a staggering number: 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 for conflict with Iran, it simply enrages the global public. People see a blatant double standard, and this caused American favorability to plummet.

Then there’s the underlying contrast: reliability. The world is suffering whiplash from U.S. policies shifting 180 degrees every time the White House changes. On the other hand, you have China. It’s not that Western countries have lowered their geopolitical guard 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. Unilateralism and global fury over Gaza drove U.S. numbers into the ground. The minor factor is China’s stability.

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

-The global information 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 imbalanced; it is actively deceiving. We have repeatedly seen this: in Gaza, in Ukraine, in the so-called ‘rules-based order’. Western media apply completely different standards to different conflicts, routinely downplaying or whitewashing the actions of their allies while demonizing their adversaries. That is not journalism; it is propaganda disguised as objectivity. And as I mentioned earlier, many honest journalists within those same organizations want to tell the truth, but they are blocked by layers of editors, directors, and owners. So the system itself is structurally biased.

Furthermore, the Global South: our stories are narrated through foreign lenses. Our perspectives, our stories, and our aspirations are ignored or reduced to stereotypes. That is not only unjust; it is dangerous, because when people in the Global South lack their own voices, they are easily manipulated by narratives serving 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 am not sufficiently political or academic to throw big elevated ideas at you regarding what happens next, but I am sure that what we need to do now is crucial and is the absolute cornerstone of whatever we want to do afterward.

-Being a polarizing figure attracts much praise but also fierce attacks both inside and outside China. How do you manage pressure, mental exhaustion, and personal criticism to maintain your publishing pace?

-As for how to address online harassment and how victims can legally protect their rights, that is a common challenge worldwide, and China is no exception. Largely, there is no truly effective and completely legal way to protect oneself from online abuse and all sorts of threats against me or my family. Gathering evidence is extremely difficult and time-consuming; courts are unfamiliar with or unaware of the harm and damage 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 becomes incredibly challenging for me to legally protect my privacy. That said, I believe that China has made progress in combatting online harassment, and I think the future is promising.

On a personal note, the good news is that although my content reaches a large audience, I am not an intensive internet user. I spend only about a third of my day online creating content; the rest of the time I have other interests and responsibilities. That likely 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 more than 1,500 videos and 5 million followers, what would you like people to say about «Round Face» in your country 20 years from now?

-That he never deceived us. That he gave his best.

Ping Pong: 

Mao: Idol.

Peter Thiel: Manipulator.

Putin: Meh.

Elon Musk: Will die on Mars.

Jack Ma: Inflated sense of self-importance.

Palestine: We stand with Palestine.

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

Japan: Suicidal policies of Takaichi.

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

By Bruno Sommer

Founder El Ciudadano