Sinosphere

Contact between China and Sweden was likely first made in the late 18th century via the Swedish East India Company, which had interests primarily in Chinese tea. Most available accounts find that Choi Afock, an interpreter based in the Swedish East India Company’s Guangzhou factory, was the first Chinese person to visit Sweden. Elites maintained their fascination with and admiration for China as a highly mythologized faraway country thereafter. According to Göran Leijonhufvud, “there are few other examples of such long-lasting and quite regular direct contacts with other non-European countries in Swedish history.” Swedish companies established commercial interests in China throughout the first half of the 20th century, contributing to Sweden’s move to become the first Western country to establish relations with the People’s Republic in 1950. 

According to Taiwan’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Council, Chinese immigration to Sweden prior to World War II was sporadic and rare; those who came in the second half of the 20th century were a result of the political upheavals of that era, hailing mainly from China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Hong Kong, and to a lesser extent from Southeast Asian nations like Singapore and Indonesia. Immigrants began establishing restaurants and other small businesses in Gothenburg in 1949, which grew into a hub for the Chinese community; today, however, the largest concentration of Chinese in Sweden is in the capital of Stockholm, where many work in restaurants, grocery, tourism, or other businesses.

Scholars have noted the glaring absence of research about the historical and contemporary Chinese community in Sweden despite its significant size. This population has grown rapidly since the turn of the century: in 2000, about 8,000 Chinese were residing in Sweden, a number which by 2022 had grown to nearly 40,000. Sweden has become a popular destination for students seeking a slower Scandinavian lifestyle. Many are also “labor immigrants,” or those who come with the intention to work, though the number of foreigners seeking employment in Sweden is declining rapidly under new immigration rules.

Climate & Challenges

Sweden is one of the world’s freest countries for journalists and the media, ranking 5th out of 180 countries on independent media advocacy organization Reporters Without Borders’ World Freedom Index. The country’s pride in its historic commitment to media freedom has borne a strong legal framework for safeguarding journalistic independence in the country.

Sweden was the first country in the world to adopt legislation guaranteeing freedom of the press and information. The Freedom of the Press Act of 1766 abolished censorship of most printed publications in the country (which at the time also encompassed Finland) and granted citizens access to official documents. This law’s main principles were later incorporated into Sweden’s 1809 Constitution, which was followed by several further laws abolishing censorship in theological and academic publications and establishing principles of editorial responsibility. Revised in 1949, the law also places limitations on the circulation of certain information, such as threats, incitement to violence, and personal data aimed at putting another person at risk. Separate legislation grants freedom to television and radio broadcasters. In recent years, as concerns mounted over attacks against journalists (coming mainly from the far-right), the country increased penalties for crimes against journalists. Meanwhile, Swedish journalists have criticized the 2023 Foreign Espionage Act, which tightens restrictions on the reporting of “secret information” within the framework of cooperation with another state or international organization, warning that it could justify government surveillance and coercion of journalists.

Today, several government programs, organizations, and independent bodies exist to maintain a transparent, accountable, and independent media ecosystem. These include nonpartisan government subsidies to support smaller papers, as well as the Media Ombudsman — originally established in 1916 and reformed in 1969 — a self-regulatory mechanism that handles complaints about journalistic ethical violations and misconduct. Swedish media is generally considered independent of political influence, but self-regulatory mechanisms still lack safeguards to prevent external political influence. Public media journalists have also raised concerns over proposals to cut government funding to public broadcasters in an effort to find additional funds; in the past few years, cuts to public media have already led to over 200 journalist layoffs.

Domestic Chinese-Language Media

All of the major Chinese-language media outlets in Sweden cover the entire Nordic region (including Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Iceland), and most have strong connections to Chinese government or Party entities and media publications. All Chinese media based in Sweden currently appear to have at least some connection with the Chinese party-state and cover China favorably, leaving little space for independent regional reporting in the Chinese language. 

The most prominent of these outlets is the Nordic Chinese Times (北歐時報), founded in 2009 by He Ru 何儒, who also serves as the president of the Copenhagen-based Nordic-Chinese Chamber of Commerce. He told China’s official state broadcaster CCTV in 2019 that he established the outlet after realizing that “it was hard to find news about China in the local media, and if there was news it was largely negative.” The paper now sources much of its content — both online and in four full pages of its physical daily editions — from the overseas edition of the CCP’s flagship newspaper, the People’s Daily (人民日報); the two entered a cooperation agreement in 2016.

The Nordic Chinese Newspaper (北歐華人報) was founded by the Swedish Chinese Association (瑞典華人總會) in 2010 to “tell the story of global Chinese people well, and tell China’s story well.” It is headed by Zong Jinbo (宗金波), who has served as an overseas member of the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese (中華全國回國華僑聯合會) since 2018, an organization under the CCP’s United Front Work Department. Zong is also the president of the Swedish Chinese Medicine Association (瑞典中醫藥學會) — which serves as a website host for the newspaper — as well as of the Nordic International News Center (北歐國際新聞中心), or NINC, which was created in 2017 in response to Xi Jinping’s media convergence (媒體融合) efforts. Shortly after, the NINC and the Nordic Chinese Newspaper established a cooperative mechanism called “Double Nordic” (雙北歐), consisting of “one paper, two websites, one center” (一報[两網]一中心). The agreement has borne collaborative efforts to innovate media production as well as to host joint events for major Chinese holidays. Today, much of the content on the Nordic Chinese Newspaper’s website is credited to NINC reporters, though it also has cooperation agreements with regional and national Party newspapers like the Tianjin Evening News (天津今晚報傳媒集團), Liberation Daily (解放日報), Xinmin Evening News (新民晚報), Xinhua (新華社), China News Service (中國新聞社), and People’s Daily. According to a 2023 report, the newspaper has reporter stations and specialized offices across Northern Europe and in provinces throughout China.

Chinese Online (北歐中華網) is an information platform launched in 2016 to “reflect the lives of Chinese people and overseas Chinese living in Sweden and Northern Europe.” It was initially established in 2012 as “Sweden-China Bridge” (瑞中橋) and then again in 2015 as Green Post (北歐綠色郵報網) before moving operations to Chinese Online. In 2024, the government of Sweden expelled the platform’s founder, Xuefei Chen Axelsson, and banned her from returning to Sweden, calling her a threat to national security. According to an investigative podcast by the Swedish newspaper Göteborgs-Posten, the journalist was also working with Chinese intelligence agencies, though the details of the case have not been made public. Chinese Online continues to post original reports on events and information relevant to the Chinese community in Sweden; its reporters are also occasionally invited on press tours of China hosted by local and regional overseas Chinese federations. However, posts on both Chinese Online and Green Post’s websites are sporadic; the former has only published twice in 2026 (as of July), and the latter seven times.

Finally, the Epoch Times — the Falun Gong-affiliated newspaper based in the United States — has a significant presence in Sweden. Its Swedish edition was founded as an online newspaper in 2006, and its local edition publishes only in Swedish and not in Chinese.

Lines of PRC Impact & Engagement

Relations between Sweden and China have been tense for years, particularly after the transnational seizure of Swedish citizen Gui Minhai. Sweden’s domestic media, which tends to cover China critically, has not escaped China’s wolf warrior diplomacy, but this hasn’t stopped some media outlets from cooperating closely with Chinese diplomats and media in areas like content sharing. 

Soft Ties and Sympathies

Sweden has struggled to balance its concerns over technological security and human rights with economic and diplomatic interests vis-à-vis China. Human rights, in particular, have been a concern of Swedish elites and the general public since the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989. Swedish politicians’ and diplomats’ continued practice of criticizing oppression in China during diplomatic meetings has remained a point of tension in the relationship.

These tensions only became further strained when Sweden found itself at the center of one of China’s most notorious transnational repression cases in the past decade: the abduction of the Chinese-born publisher Gui Minhai in Thailand in 2015. Gui had renounced his Chinese citizenship for Swedish citizenship in the late 1980s. Gui was sentenced in 2020 to 10 years in prison in China for “illegally providing intelligence” to overseas parties, a charge widely considered politically motivated due to Gui’s past activities selling books about Chinese leaders and politics in Hong Kong. The Swedish government has demanded Gui’s release since his imprisonment, and in retaliation for their holding of a Swedish citizen, ended a twin-city agreement and closed all of its Confucius Institutes. 

Further public controversies involving China in the following years — including racist comments about Chinese tourists from a Swedish satirical television host in 2018, and the country’s ban on Huawei technology in its infrastructure in 2020 — only further inflamed tensions. In response, the Chinese side has embarked on campaigns of public criticism against Swedish politicians in line with its “wolf warrior” approach to diplomacy, and has targeted Swedish journalists with online and verbal harassment. In 2019, when Gui Minhai was offered the Tuscholsky prize, then-ambassador Gui Congyou (桂從友) responded: “We treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies, we have shotguns.” 

Domestic Swedish media coverage of China has focused particularly on human rights abuses like the Gui Minhai case and is generally critical toward China. Public opinion is aligned with these trends: A 2026 Pew survey found that Swedish views toward China were among the most unfavorable in the world (71% of survey respondents had an unfavorable view, down from 79% in 2025), equal to the United States and behind only Israel (73%) and Japan (88%), and representing the least favorable in the EU. Official and public attention to China’s impact in Sweden has also heightened in the past decade, prompting the creation of the Swedish National China Centre and more government-funded research on Chinese influence in Sweden.

Hard Approaches

As noted above, targeting Swedish journalists and media was part of China’s “wolf warrior” approach in Sweden, led primarily by  Ambassador Gui Congyou, who served from 2017 to 2021. This has included public statements posted to official websites and social media accounts, private letters and communications, and interviews, statements, and op-eds provided to the Swedish media, the goals of which seemed to be both to criticize negative coverage and to cultivate positive narratives about China in local media.

But tense diplomatic relations haven’t stopped some Swedish outlets from actively engaging with China. The ambassador following Gui, Cui Aimin (崔愛民), who served from 2022 to  2025, as well as the current charge d’affairs Wan Degang (萬德剛), have engaged frequently with Swedish media, often giving interviews and penning op-eds especially to friendly outlets like the right-wing Nya Dagbladet, the communist Proletären, and the China-focused FokusKina, which has maintained close ties to the Chinese embassy since its founding in 1952.

Perhaps China’s most active media partner in Sweden in recent years is NewsVoice, an outlet described by the Swedish National China Centre as “a news site catering to conspiracy theorists and vaccine sceptics.” NewsVoice signed a content-sharing agreement with People’s Daily in 2025 — a decision founder Torbjörn Sassersson said would help his website “become a player in media diplomacy using journalism to build bridges between countries and peoples,” but the outlet has been providing positive coverage of Chinese embassy events and diplomacy and publishing Cui’s op-eds since at least 2023. Sassersson has interviewed Cui for the paper several times. NewsVoice also has a partnership with TV BRICS (金磚國家電視), a Russia-based media network established in 2017 following the BRICS summit in Xiamen, and has taken part in meetings with representatives from the CCP-backed Chinese People’s Association for Peace and Disarmament (中國人民爭取和平與裁軍協會), arranged in Sweden by the Schiller Institute.

NewsVoice isn’t the only Swedish outlet that has cooperated with Chinese media. The Chinese embassy has run full-page paid features on its red-line issues such as the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and its territorial claims in the South China Sea. Other instances of cooperation have been more controversial, as in 2020 when a Swedish television broadcaster unpublished a documentary about Tibet that had been produced by the CCP’s China Intercontinental Communication Center in the wake of public scrutiny.