Tianya, one of China’s best known online forums, has announced plans to restore public access on June 1 after nearly three years offline. The brief notice, carried on the Tianya public accounts on February 6, follows a prolonged period in which the community’s servers and public boards were largely inaccessible.
The relaunch appears to be accompanied by a commercial push: adjacent coverage on Chinese platforms advertises a "founding member" package priced at RMB1,999 and reportedly capped at 9,999 global purchasers. The pricing and limited availability suggest the relaunch will rely on a paid membership model to seed revenue and rebuild an initial user base rather than returning to the ad-driven, open-access model that characterised early web forums.
Tianya once served as a central space for Chinese netizens to share gossip, long-form personal essays, and viral discussions that often migrated into mainstream media. Its absence has been felt by communities that specialised in local news, serialised commentary, and niche interest groups; the platform’s return will be watched by users, advertisers and regulators alike.
The context for Tianya’s shutdown and slow return is the broader evolution of China’s internet: consolidation around major tech platforms, stricter content and data regulations, and the migration of conversational energy onto private chat apps and short video services. Industry observers say these structural shifts have made it harder for independent forums to sustain large, self-moderated communities without new business models and closer alignment with regulatory expectations.
A successful relaunch would test whether legacy community brands can be monetised through membership tiers, nostalgia and curated content, or whether the dynamics that hollowed out large public bulletin boards have hardened. Equally important will be how Tianya navigates content moderation, data governance and commercial partnerships in an environment where platforms are required to demonstrate compliance with state rules and platform liabilities.
For international observers, Tianya’s return is another signal about the living contours of China’s online public sphere. It is not simply a matter of a single brand reappearing but a moment that probes how social spaces are reconstituted — whether as paid communities, tightly moderated public squares, or hybrid models that accommodate both user expression and regulatory constraint.