Chinese Rumblers & Jammers

Related content: China AM ID Database | Seoul AM Radio Listening Guide

Chinese rumblers and jammers are broadcasts heard across east and southeast Asia and originating in China. Heard on more than thirty frequencies on the AM band, these stations mysteriously broadcast rumbling sidebands that interfere with local stations in the region, some rumblers even being audible around the globe.

This guide analyzes these stations, including their source, their broadcasting schedules, SDR (software-defined radio) captures, and audio, as well as propaganda stations in the Taiwan Strait region. The process taken to uncover the source and purpose of these rumblers and jammers is discussed in the article “Chasing the Chinese Rumblers: Who Killed the Frequency?” found below.

Rumbler & Jammer Schedule and Station List

The process of determining the source of these signals began with three monitoring sites: Aomori, Japan; Seoul, Korea; and Nanchong, China. Each frequency was observed hourly with the pattern and frequencies of its sidebands logged by location to assist in finding the source of the offending stations. Two well-establish jammer frequencies — 1098 and 1557 — use their own sideband patterns, which match those of different rumblers across the country.

This guide outlines the results of this project, including the transmitting source of the majority of the rumblers, their broadcasting hours, sideband patterns, and signal strength. Signals were monitored over the course of an entire month. The dates of initial observations are noted in the guide, though additional details were added in the days and weeks to follow where necessary.

Chasing the Chinese Rumblers: Who Killed the Frequency?

Chris Kadlec and Nick Hall-Patch go on a month-long quest to track down the source of more than thirty rumbling frequencies
by Chris Kadlec, March 2024

Background

It’s a true murder mystery dinner theater for those in the radio hobby: “Who Killed the Frequency?” Join us for a dinner of drama, mystery, and debate as we attempt to answer the great Chinese enigma. But the morning after, everyone remains at their table, half passed out from exhaustion and the other half are still debating the dead-end possibilities. This is the story of the Chinese rumblers.

Some years ago, those who closely monitor Chinese stations on the AM band noted the presence of a few signals with sidebands that appeared to “rumble,” soon dubbed the “Chinese rumblers.” Gary DeBock first observed a rumbler on Taiwan’s 738 frequency of Fishery Radio back in 2019, a rumbler that has long since disappeared. While China has jammed Radio Taiwan International (RTI) signals for years — whether it be on AM or shortwave — these newly-noted signals heard as early as January 2022 had sidebands similar to those of the RTI jammers, but were on frequencies unlikely to be jammed by the Chinese government. Fast forward two years and they’re still there on the same frequencies, but with a few dozen more rumbling friends. Thus began the quest to once and for all determine the origin and purpose behind these signals.

To start, Nick Hall-Patch, the technical editor for the International Radio Club of America (IRCA) and an experienced DXer based in coastal British Columbia, originally questioned the source (IRCA Reprints, F-116) of the rumblers in January 2022. Two years later, he searched the band to create a list of all frequencies with sidebands as received across the Pacific. I took that list and personally listened to each of the frequencies as they are heard in Asia, omitting stations that didn’t fit the rumbler patterns. Rumbler patterns typically have harmonically-related sidebands radiating outward, each around 30 to 40 Hz (0.03 to 0.04 kHz) on either side of the main frequency, along with multiples of those 30 to 40 Hz, with the number of sidebands received increasing with a stronger signal and steadily decreasing with distance from the tower. Other stations received with sidebands that were legitimately part of their well-functioning transmitters were consequently ruled out and were no longer monitored. Those with the very distinct low rumble were obvious candidates to observe, while others had sidebands with a lack of rumbling. In the end, in excess of 30 frequencies were found to be affected by these rumblers, all of them at or above 900 kHz.

Monitoring locations and methods

With a rather accurate list of rumblers, I turned to the details of each, monitoring each frequency every day over the course of a full month. This amounted to a comprehensive list of signals and sidebands as heard across Asia over a period of 17 hours a day.

An eastern listening site was selected in coastal Japan on the northern tip of Honshu, which would prove immensely helpful for stations in northeastern China. A second site was chosen 1,250 km. (775 mi.) to the southwest near my former home in the Seoul metro area; this was to monitor both the northeastern stations and those along the east coast of China. Finally, a third site was chosen in central China, just north of Chongqing, another 2,050 km. (1,275 mi.) southwest of Seoul. With its central location, it was most beneficial for the most populated areas, both north and south, with the exception of outlying Tibet and Xinjiang. However, late in the project, this site had technical difficulties and was replaced with Hanoi, more than 1,075 km. (675 mi.) to the south, though equally helpful with most of the same stations and still along the Chinese border. With those three original sites, a nearly straight line extending across all of East Asia was established to monitor what would become more than thirty signals. Additional international listening locations were added on a very limited basis to discover each signal’s reach and to better establish the transmitting location of each. One location in western Zhejiang was also used for additional domestic comparison.

Each signal’s sidebands were logged by location and time throughout the day, allowing me to establish an approximate or exact tower site for each. The daily sign-on and sign-off time of each station was painstakingly logged by hours upon hours of live observation and waiting, though some times varied by up to ten minutes and others varied day by day, sometimes not even appearing for days. Nick was graciously accommodating in this search and used the Carrier Sleuth software — a program that can pick out individual carriers from an SDR waterfall and show their exact sign-on and sign-off times — to provide specific times to expedite my own research. Screenshots of sign-ons and sign-offs of each frequency were captured on SDRs — more than 400 such captures — and audio recordings were obtained for most frequencies; 150 of them, totaling in excess of seven hours.

From there, questions arose. And after seven weeks of connecting the dots, so did answers.

Sidebands with an intent to jam

While jamming of RTI was right in line with the current Chinese government’s objectives and cross-strait aggression, what about all these other frequencies? Most of them have little to nothing in common and while a few may be worthy of jamming, other frequencies are rather quiet or broadcast nothing of great interest to the government. We established that all three dozen or so signals were certainly originating from within China’s borders and they also were broadcasting the same rumbling sideband pattern of the RTI jammers, which along with the traditional Chinese music of the government’s Firedrake jammer, attempt to rumble away RTI’s signal from a transmitter site on the western shore of the Taiwan Strait. So, did that mean the rumblers also existed with the purpose of jamming?

Further advancing this narrative was the fact that two frequencies, 1188 and 1566, were swapping overnight duties clearly to jam two of Korea’s high-powered FEBC (Far East Broadcasting Company) signals. Originally, it was assumed that China was blocking the Chinese-language programming block of these signals, but the rumblers didn’t match that schedule. However, 1188 broadcasts Radio Free Asia in Korean, though the rumbler obscures this signal one hour too late and extends its rumble for an hour beyond its conclusion. There are few explanations for this, but if the jamming is intentional, a simple error reading a local Korean radio schedule and failing to account for the one-hour time difference would be one explanation, though an incredibly careless and improbable one at that. Both frequencies, among others, are intentionally blocked with local programming in China’s Yanbian autonomous region, home to many Korean speakers who could be easily influenced by these signals broadcasting in their home language. The intent to jam these signals in Yanbian has been proven for many years as local stations gained frequency assignments purposely matching those of Korean-language ones to the south. In more recent years, China has filled the 1557 frequency with dozens of local stations in an attempt to passively jam RTI, much as they had done in Yanbian with FEBC and others.

One could easily close the book on these questions, assuming that with these similarities alone, the government must be jamming all of these frequencies with rumblers. And in turn, they are voluntarily obliterating their own local programming. Because of the nature of the rumblers, the sidebands on otherwise open frequencies propagate much further than the main channel, therefore crushing local, provincial, and government stations throughout all of East Asia, but that point wasn’t so obvious at the time. But for all the effort the government puts into propaganda — and it’s an immense amount — why would they jam multiple frequencies hosting their own high-powered propaganda signals? Both the Voice of China (CNR-1) and China Radio International (CRI) are greatly affected by these rumblers. Rumblers squash three of the biggest CNR frequencies throughout much of the country and are present on three part-time high-powered CRI signals.

Sidebands as a feature of a commercial broadcast

With hours upon hours of listening on a daily basis, more facts came to light. Listening to station sign-ons indicated that these sidebands in question belonged to commercial and government-affiliated stations that would sign on with sidebands and rumbling already intact. Now the question shifted to the possibility of rumbling sidebands being intentionally added to existing stations. And if that was the case, why? I noted more and more often that when one rumbling station would sign off at night, another would be under it, and in some cases, even another. That indicated that it wasn’t merely an individual station with an issue, but an entire frequency that was rumbled out of existence across half of China. One rumbler might cover the eastern half of the country, while another was rumbling away in the west.

The more I monitored these signals, the more it seemed that rumblers were intentionally added, but at a much higher transmitting power than the main signal. While a normal signal on any given frequency would not be heard halfway across the globe, the rumblers had no problem in their long-distance travels.

Curious, I inquired with engineers about the possibility of such a transmission. Is it possible to manually add rumbling sidebands to an existing station, allowing the local listening range to remain intact and without rumbling interference to some degree, but jack up the power of jamming sidebands in addition to an existing signal? One broadcast engineer, who wishes to remain anonymous as to not get dragged into the open-ended debate, hypothetically concludes about intentionally creating a rumbler that “it’s actually fairly easy to do on AM, and there’s a method to the madness in this case. Generally, what happens is that the station removes all of the narrow band filtering on the output of the transmitter. With amplitude modulation, the lower and louder the audio frequency, the more bandwidth and power it transmits. For the stations that are broadcasting programming along with the rumble, [there could be] some sort of notch filter that allows the 3-6kHz of programming to get through while passing the rumble on each side.” So it is indeed possible from an engineering standpoint. Though the same engineer states that it does look like the rumblers are being generated on purpose.

But at the same time, one cannot ignore the fact that the main signal (in the absence of any offsets) is received only for a limited distance before another closer or stronger signal interferes with it, which in most cases is inevitable shy of a completely open frequency. But open frequencies are what all the rumbling sidebands have in common. Either side of the main frequencies are in fact open — after all, signals shouldn’t exist on a 100 Hz offset — hence the effortless propagation of the rumbling sound in the absence of a station on the main frequency.

Conspiracy theories abound — the Chinese government has already proven nefarious intent isn’t out of the question, but is instead the norm — I couldn’t help but concentrate on the similarities between the already-established jamming signals and the rumblers. But then again, I did reside for many years literally within sight of the transmitting towers that are central to Korea’s propaganda and jammer war and previously recorded an entire audio documentary about them. There were similarities to some of Seoul’s rumbling jammers, though the similar signals largely broadcasted dead air with an added low rumble. In the midst of that project, a nearby Chinese station on 1305 broadcasted an almost identical rumble as far back as 2015. It continues to broadcast the same rumble, albeit with sidebands today which it didn’t previously have, though it is far more wobbly than most of the rumbling stations today.

A few weeks into listening and recording these rumblers, it became clearly evident that each rumbler — whether by listening to the station sign-on and sign-off or solely by looking at the sign-on and sign-off times — matched with a local, provincial, or government-run station. None of them were standalone jammers, aside from 1098 and 1557, both utilized to jam RTI. The large majority of the rumbler’s host stations were rather easily identified by noting which were received at each of the three sites, with the number and strength of the sidebands being the definitive method of determining signal strength. Some of them were expansive networks transmitting a number of stations on the same frequency, some with as many as six rumblers on a single frequency. Some, such as Inner Mongolia on 1458 or CNR-1 on 1035, have networks spanning long distances east to west, hence rumblers thought to cover both sides of China individually.

Other theories were floated, including the possibility that the sidebands were a type of data transmission, despite the appearance of the sidebands deviating from what is typically seen with such transmissions. In addition, because the same sidebands can be seen on established jamming frequencies, we investigated the possibility that with such power — 1557 can be heard about 3,000 km. (1,900 mi.) in all directions through the use of transmitter sites in coastal Fujian, Yunnan, Yanbian, and in central China, possibly among others — perhaps a poorly maintained transmitter was throwing out interference, complete with its sidebands, onto other frequencies. To support this, possible patterns were investigated. Rumbling broadcasts follow two sideband patterns: many have a +/- .03, .06, and .09 kHz sideband pattern, while others have a .04 and .08 pattern. The former matches that of high-powered jammer 1557 while the latter matches that of the 1098 jammer. In fact, both of these jammers also have carriers 1 kHz on either side of their main frequency, each of which also has their own sidebands. However, pushing aside the similarity of rumblers matching one jammer or the other, no other patterns were noted. In addition, such interference from a single transmitter is unlikely to fall solely on assigned broadcast frequencies but would instead also be found between assigned frequencies. With all the stations being based in rural areas, is there a chance that the power grid is so noisy that the noise is getting in via the AC power line? Perhaps the antennas are not well-matched to the carrier frequency, so one can see spectral regrowth from RF being reflected back to the transmitter. Alas, all these theories were abandoned due to lack of definitive proof, but not that of faulty transmitters at play.

Transmitter faults at fault

So why was this group of stations broadcasting these sidebands? Of all 3,000+ AM signals in the country, what was so special about these 1% of stations interfering with the rest? The large majority of these stations have one thing in common: almost all of them transmit from more impoverished areas, many of them in ethnic areas the government doesn’t support, and many of them rather distant from Beijing. Few rumbler stations exist in the highly-populated areas such as Beijing, the east coast, or the southern province of Guangdong. Instead, stations were grouped in locations like Yanbian and the province of Jilin — both home to China’s Korean population — or Inner Mongolia, home to China’s ethnic Mongolians living on occupied land. In the southwest, mountainous Guizhou, Guangxi, and Yunnan are home to ethnic populations comprising of 40% of each province. All of them are a full day’s drive from Shenzhen in the south, even a two-day drive from Beijing. In the west, Gannan is a Tibetan autonomous region with 60% of the population being of various ethnic groups. Almost all the stations in question originated from these regions.

In the absence of a clear explanation for all of the anomolies in the intentional jamming theory, transmitter faults were instead discussed and became the primary theory. While that may not adequately explain away some of the happenings, namely the seemingly-intentional swapping of two rumbling frequencies originating from Yanbian or the fact the RTI jammers share the same sideband patterns and frequencies as the many rumblers, it was the next obvious step in investigating the source of the rumblers.

A number of facts supported the failing or improperly maintained transmitter theory.

1. With most of the rumblers originating from rural areas with less money, it is more likely that there is less money to spend on maintaining a radio transmitter, especially for broadcasting on the AM band at a time when most signals also broadcast on FM where listenership is higher.

2. Rumbling sidebands are present the moment a station signs on the air in the morning and disappear when the station signs off at night. The stronger the primary signal is, the stronger the sidebands. They are part of the signal itself as opposed to being turned on or off independently. At a distance, this was originally hard to notice for some as the signal on the main frequency would be inaudible due to the rumbling. At closer range, it is immediately apparent.

3. The number of rumblers has steadily increased over the years but without any clear targets to jam. This would indicate that stations have failed to maintain their transmitters for a number of reasons and as the months and years go on, the number of affected stations only increases. In fact, during the study, some stations that had rumbling sidebands would have them disappear, sometimes vanishing intermittently during broadcasts only to reappear seconds later, and for others, the sidebands disappeared in the middle of the study never to return again.

4. The transmission of data was ruled out due to the nature of the sidebands. Typical higher-speed digital transmission such as in-band on-channel (IBOC) appears as a dense block on either side of the frequency and broadcasts with a sound similar to that of a buzzsaw. The Chinese FM band has been using IBOC with the option of three OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing) transmission modes since 2013, a system referred to as CDR, or China Digital Radio. In addition, Yunnan began running a two-channel DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale) broadcast on its 1557 signal in October 2023, the same frequency as the RTI jammers, perhaps coincidental or perhaps not given the choice of such a rural area for a higher-tech broadcast. The signal — when it’s on the air — blocks the frequency and adjacent frequencies with digital noise whilst the jammer is still heard behind. This digital broadcast, though with a rather limited range, effectively further blocks RTI in this region. Despite all this, in the case of our rumblers, none of these data transmission options were found to be the likely culprit as none of the rumblers have patterns matching data-based broadcasts like the DRM signal.

5. It would be highly unlikely that the Chinese government would run such rumblers as jammers with the end result of wiping out their own government-run broadcasts such as CNR and CRI. The collateral damage would not justify the jamming of frequencies with a lack of target stations.

6. When presented with this case, Dave Porter (G4OYX), a retired BBC Senior Transmitter Engineer with decades of experience and author of many engineering articles, was reminded of a past experience with a modulator system fault. He believed that the issue is not mains-derived for the fact the sidebands don’t show as multiples of 50 or 60 Hz, but is rather caused by a modulator system fault, likely an instability with the modulator itself creating the problem due to duff negative feedback. He recollects that the BBC “used to have the same [issue] on the Marconi BD272 when the Leak TL12 Plus preamplifier EF86 tube [became] unstable and produced a supersonic output, normally at 10 to 15 kHz,” concluding that the output would find its way through the modulator and appear on the carrier.

Conclusions

Over the course of a one-month observation period, we have explored many theories for the existence of Chinese rumbling sidebands. Among the theories were intentional jamming, spurs or images from the high-powered RTI jammers in the Taiwan Strait region and beyond, data transmission, power grid noise, mismatched antennas, and faulty transmitters. With most of these theories adequately examined, the likelihood of faulty transmitters is exceptionally high. With many Chinese stations using the domestically-produced TS-10C PDM transmitter, the probability that an increasing number of these — or any other transmitter that affected stations may have in common — have experienced audio instability matching that of our rumblers is a very real possibility and situationally would match our observations.

This conclusion does not adequately answer all the questions posed during this study period and therefore does not conclusively solve the mystery of the Chinese rumblers. However, the discussion and examination of each theory has shed some light on the details and sources of these transmissions, which still remains merely a puzzle with a missing piece.

Thanks to Mauno Ritola for his immense help with this project, both in resources and insight. Thanks to Walt Salmaniw, Shuang Cheng, Zhenheng Kang and others for their equipment. The Carrier Sleuth program is available from Black Cat Systems for $20 with a free trial.

Chris Kadlec is the author of “The art of going mobile,” an article and primer on mobile DXing. Other work includes the 3-hour Seoul AM Radio Listening Guide audio documentary, including a comprehensive review of the AM band as heard from Seoul, as well as the most extensive look available at Korean propaganda and jammers. The China AM ID Database, a radio database archiving top-of-hour station IDs and time pips of nearly 650 AM stations totaling more than 50 hours of audio immediately preceded this study of the Chinese rumblers.

Rumbler & Jammer Gallery / Audio Collection

Below is a selection of SDR captures of the Chinese rumbler and jammers currently on the air as of February 2024, though it is by no means a complete collection. Some of these images include station sign-ons and sign-offs, while a few even include sidebands switching on and off during regular programming. Images were captured at various sites across Asia, primarily in Aomori (at the northern tip of Honshu, Japan), Seoul, Nanchong (north of Chongqing), Hanoi, and Taipei with a few others in Hong Kong and outside Vientiane, Laos.

* Audio files marked with asterisks indicate the audio file matches the exact time of the SDR capture. Many others, but not all, match the approximate time, such as sign-ons or sign-offs, but may have been recorded on different days or from different locations.

Due to the low frequency of the rumble, earphones or a speaker system are required to listen to these clips or else the rumble may be entirely inaudible despite hearing the interference it causes to the main signal.

Taiwan Strait Propaganda & Jammers

Taiwan Strait Propaganda

Both Taiwan and China have their own propaganda outlets, though the effort to jam them is quite lopsided with most of the effort put forth by China. In recent years, Taiwan has switched off a number of its own broadcasts, lacking the wattage necessary to overcome China’s persistent jamming. Nearly a dozen high-powered propaganda stations are directed at Taiwan from just across the Taiwan Strait. As the messages these stations disseminate fall mostly on deaf ears in Taiwan, the CCP has gone to great lengths to instead spread disinformation off the air waves. Is it effective? (PDF)

Taiwan has Voice of Kuanghua (光華之聲), a popular music and talk station currently licensed to four frequencies yet running daily on two of those at 250kw. The station is paired with the domestic military radio network, Voice of Han (VOH), which runs programming on both AM and FM in Taiwan, including stations in Kinmen, Taiwanese territory just 5 km. (3 mi.) from Xiamen on the Chinese mainland. Fu Hsing Radio also broadcasts propaganda, with its first program aimed at a domestic audience and its second at a cross-strait Chinese audience. In addition to high-powered Kuanghua and these lower-powered networks, Radio Taiwan International with two 300kw frequencies aimed at China carries the bulk of pro-Taiwan programming and is the only propaganda voice that is jammed.

On the opposite shore, China runs a handful of high-powered directional and non-directional signals. Both Voice of the Taiwan Strait (CNR-5 / 中央广播电视总台台海之声) and Voice of Shenzhou (CNR-6 / 中央人民广播电台神州之声) are government-run propaganda stations, while Voice of the Strait News (海峡之声新闻广播) and Voice of the Strait Minnan (海峡之声闽南话广播) also run propaganda programming in the region, the latter broadcasting content in Minnan languages, a language group that includes Taiwanese and Amoy, which are heavily spoken in the area of the strait. China Huayi (中国华艺广播公司) is a privately-run propaganda station with a high-powered signal. None of these broadcasts, which occupy 11 frequencies, are blocked on the Taiwanese side, despite the fact their broadcasts block out licensed Taiwanese stations such as VOH in Taipei.

Taiwan Strait Jammers

Just as the Korean DMZ is the center of Korean jammer activity to the north, the Taiwan Strait is the center of such activity between China and Taiwan to the south. Radio Taiwan International (RTI) is the target of these jammers and the jamming appears to be present on both sides of the strait.

The main jammer in this region is known as Firedrake (火龙 / Fire Dragon), a traditional music jammer with a one-hour 12-song loop sourced from the Chinasat 6B satellite. The satellite feed is typically rebroadcasted on ground transmitters to be used against broadcasts the Chinese government wants to block out, whether on AM or shortwave. Due to the fact the purpose and source of the rumblers are yet unknown, it can’t be definitively determined if the Firedrake signal is the source of the rumbling in this region, but the two appear to sign-on at different times with the rumbler sidebands already present more than two hours prior to local sunset and Firedrake signing on much later, just twelve minutes before 5 p.m. local time (0900 UTC) for 1557 and the same (1300 UTC) prior to 1098 signing on with RTI.

On the Taiwanese side, RTI on 1557 broadcasts directionally with 300kw from its four towers in coastal Kouhu Township and aims across the water at Xiamen and Quanzhou, the same area believed to host the Firedrake jammer. Just a moment’s drive down the road, also in the Hukou Wetlands, are the two towers of 1098, broadcasting directionally at 300kw in a similar direction.

Firedrake, which appears to be non-directional, has a powerful signal on 1557 but a far less potent signal on 1098. The signal on 1557 can be heard across most of Asia from northern Japan to Thailand and beyond, but is heard less widely on 1098 where RTI is also very directional toward China. RTI on 1098 scheduled antenna maintenance work for two months in September 2020, but remained off for more than three years until signing back on in February 2024. Its return came soon after rumblers crowded out 1557 and it could be assumed it signed back on due to the heavy interference RTI was experiencing on its then-only broadcasting frequency. All other frequencies had since turned off by the start of 2024. In areas not covered by Firedrake or rumblers, RTI can often be heard rather clearly, even well into central China and beyond. Due to its directionality, it can be quite challenging to hear it in Taiwan itself.

Between Firedrake, RTI, and the rumbling, you’d think the 1557 frequency was full enough. Not so. Add in a touch of heavy metal music — leaning more on the side of goth and death metal — and you’ve now gotten the full experience of jamming in this region.

This jammer appears to exist not to jam RTI — in fact, it broadcasts from coastal Taiwan just as RTI does — but seems to be a jammer against the generally-annoying Firedrake. Not much is known about the heavy metal jammer, but it is already on the air prior to 0800 UTC, an hour before RTI signs on for the day, so if it does in fact sign on or off, that occurs well before sunset and well after sunrise, much like the other jammers in the region. The heavy metal jammer broadcasts from a site on Taiwan’s west coast, though exactly where from has yet to be determined. It is strongest from Hsinchu and southward, has a fair signal in nearby Taoyuan, but a merely listenable signal in Taipei just to the east. East of Taipei, both the heavy metal jammer and the rumbler are almost entirely absent, leaving only Firedrake. By the heavy metal jammer’s ability to still occasionally be picked up in central China, Korea, and Japan much like its RTI neighbors, one could believe it is aimed similarly toward China.

The aforementioned Voice of Kuanghua is assigned four frequencies with two of them currently not utilized. Those two would broadcast from a tower site in Guanyin District, lying between the populated centers of Hsinchu and Taoyuan and run by the Ministry of National Defense’s Political Warfare Bureau. The tower site may be transmitting the heavy metal jammer with a highly-directional signal; however, it may instead be broadcasting from further south in the area of Taichung. It is currently unknown if this broadcast is privately-run or government-sponsored, though its playlist does not suggest a government-run effort similar to Kuanghua’s popular Taiwanese music.

The heavy metal jammer runs a loop of songs, typically in the same order every hour or two, with no talk, IDs, or breaks. While such music is not widely popular in China, it is hugely popular in Taiwan and its presence on the dial well before dusk strongly suggests it is a domestic broadcast, albeit perhaps at a power as low as 10kw. Almost all of its music selections are popular metal songs released between 2000 and 2013 in contrast to anything recent, and all are English. Due to such an active frequency, it is hard to pick out individual songs for a complete list, but the following songs comprise most of its playlist and have been confirmed a number of times playing in a specific order.

A sampling of songs played by this jammer, which runs a music loop of 90+ minutes: