[5] Vincent Ni, in an essay published in Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, stated that, "For foreign journalists, it has also shown a diverse and authentic side of China that rarely received much attention elsewhere" and that the publication "has proved far more effective than the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in English-language news programs by the state broadcaster Xinhua, CCTV, and CRI.

"[5] In 2022, following the sudden lifting of China's prolonged zero-COVID measures, Sixth Tone published a year-in-review feature highlighting key terms like "baby bust," "housing crisis," "gender violence," and "COVID".

[1] She stated, "If webby U.S. media startup Vox were acquired by the Chinese Communist Party, it might resemble Sixth Tone".

[1] In a 2016 interview with The New York Times, the then-editor-in-chief, Wei Xing, sought to differentiate his magazine from other Chinese English-language publications.

Wei stated that compared to other government-owned news publications, Sixth Tone would have an easier time growing since it "lacks a politics-saturated bureaucracy because it is a start-up".