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A voice that China did not ask for, but earned.

Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波 25/05/2026

30 May 2026 marks five years since Yellowlion.org went online. No announcement was made. No campaign was run. The writing simply began. That quiet beginning makes what followed all the more striking.

Yellowlion.org is not a news outlet, a think tank or an NGO-funded project. It is an author’s archive: articles, lectures and books built up over decades.

I am Frans Vandenbosch, a Fleming by birth, I have adopted the Chinese name 方腾波 The role of Technology Director at a Chinese automotive engineering company was one of several posts held during all my years in China. Qingdao University served as a teaching base. More than fifty cities across the country were visited. That perspective on China was earned the hard way, on the ground, not from a Brussels office.

The yellowlion site went live on 30 May 2021. The founding page is still pinned at the top. It makes clear that the work was never promoted before. Lectures given for universities, business associations and service clubs were never published anywhere. Articles used to be scattered across a dozen third-party platforms. Yellowlion gathered everything in one place, in English, Dutch and Chinese. Three languages, one author, zero advertising.

Back in Flanders now after five weeks in China, this anniversary feels earned rather than merely celebrated.

The mission: honest information, nothing less

No formal mission statement was ever published on the site but the purpose is impossible to miss. It is stated plainly in ‘Statecraft & Society in China’ (2022). That goal: a harmonious world built on correct information.

The phrase 正确的信息 (correct information) matters. It is not just a call for balance in the Western media sense, the ritual of “on the other hand.” It is a flat rejection of all the Western manufactured narratives about China. The kind produced by committees in Washington and Brussels and dressed up as “journalism”.

The Chinese-language version of the site, 黄狮, has attracted its own readership. Chinese readers encounter something unusual there: a Westerner who spent real years in China, writing in their own language. The condescension that passes for most Western coverage of China is absent. The Chinese pages carry the same articles as the English and Dutch versions. They are translated not for diplomatic softening, but for reach.

The welcome page states it without apology: “In China, I learned what real freedom is. I had never seen that before in a Western country.” That line earned critics. It also earned readers.

A readership that grew and kept growing

Yellowlion’s readership was modest in its first two years. That changed sharply in 2024. The past two years have brought a strong, sustained rise in both visitors and newsletter subscribers. The growth is not driven by promotion. No social media campaigns are run. No media appearances are sought.

Readers find the site because they are looking for something unavailable elsewhere. The newsletter subscriber count has grown at a pace that came as a surprise. Readers arrive from across Europe, North America and China itself. They come specifically for the Chinese-language content. Some come to argue. Both are welcome. No money is asked for, only “straightforward feedback.” That feedback arrives in the comments, in three languages.

In the past three days alone, almost half of all visitors came from China. That is a striking and encouraging figure because only one third of the articles on the site are written in Chinese. The appetite, then, is not for translation. It is for the perspective itself.

Five articles that left a mark

Over five years, certain articles rose well above the rest. Not because they were polished, but because they said plainly what others avoided.

The essence of happiness in China is now the site’s most-read piece. It is a direct challenge to the Western assumption that 1.4 billion Chinese people must be miserable. The argument is backed with figures, photographs and first-hand observation. European readers pushed back hard. The article held its ground. Its Chinese version, 中国幸福的本质, drew a separate readership of its own.

The five stages of western grief applies the Kübler-Ross grief model to Western civilisational anxiety. The diagnosis is blunt: denial, anger, bargaining and a long way still to go. It drew fierce reactions from readers across the political spectrum.

A chronicle of being wrong is a methodical catalogue of failed Western expert predictions about China, economic, strategic and political. Decade by decade, the prominent analysts got it wrong. The record is documented without mercy.

Mao’s legacy lives is the most controversial piece in the archive. It takes Mao Zedong’s historical standing seriously, without apology. Western readers called it propaganda. Chinese readers called it overdue.

There are two Chinas dissects the manufactured image of China produced by Western media and the policy infrastructure funding it. Names are named and funding sources are cited. It is not comfortable reading for anyone who prefers the narrative intact.

Five years in, no signs of slowing

The most recent article, Journey to the West, was filed from the plane home. It describes an Austrian Airlines flight from Shanghai to Vienna. That flight took nearly two and a half hours longer than a Chinese carrier on the same route. The reason: EU sanctions bar European airlines from Russian airspace. Chinese carriers face no such restriction. The result is striking. Chinese airlines now hold 83% of seat capacity between Europe and China, up from 40% a decade ago. European carriers have grounded themselves with their own governments’ posturing. The personal experience opens the argument. The political and economic indictment follows.

That is the Yellowlion method in a sentence.

Yellowlion takes no advertising and no outside funding. It carries no institutional affiliation. It is free to read and free to disagree with. In a media landscape saturated with funded narratives and think-tank positioning, that combination is rarer than it should be.

A word of gratitude to the readers who were here from the very first article, and to those who found this site only in the past weeks: your reading is the only reward that matters. I am also grateful to China and the Chinese people. China has thoroughly changed my life. Chinese society gave me broader perspectives on geopolitics than any European institution ever did. And the Chinese people gave me balance and wisdom I could not find in the West.

The next five years will be at least as contested as the last. The West is not becoming more honest about China. The writing will continue anyway.

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本文中文: 《Yellowlion》五周年，值得铭记的五年
Dit artikel in het Nederlands: Vijf jaar Yellowlion: een uitgave om nooit te vergeten