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Dragon Newspaper

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Dragon Newspaper (龍報) is a Chinese-language newspaper serving the Chinese diaspora in Russia, headquartered in St. Petersburg and operated by a company rendered in Chinese as 聖彼得堡鳳凰傳媒公司, a name that cannot be independently confirmed in English. It registered with Russia’s publications ministry in February 2000, holding its launch ceremony in St. Petersburg on February 7 of that year, according to a 2012 profile from China Central Television. Its stated readership includes Chinese embassies, Chinese companies, and Chinese-run businesses in Russia. The same profile said the paper maintained “long-term, stable cooperative relationships” with China Central Television, China News Service, and the St. Petersburg Baltic Media Group (聖彼得堡波羅的海傳媒集團), a company then run by Oleg Rudnov, who was reported by Russian and international media to have been a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Baltic Media Group collapsed in 2015 following Rudnov’s death. Control passed to his son, Sergey Rudnov, later sanctioned by Canada, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and separately linked by Russian and international media to ownership of Komsomolskaya Pravda, one of Russia’s largest-circulation tabloid newspapers, through the company LDV Press. Dragon Newspaper’s own site says China News Service established a formal “strategic partnership” with Dragon Newspaper in 2012, backing expansion of its Chinese edition and launch of a Russian-language edition. That institutional tie appears to run deeper than a content partnership: Dragon Newspaper‘s website lists a Chinese government internet registration (ICP filing) naming Beijing Zhongxin Tangyin Technology Development Co., Ltd. (北京中新唐印科技發展有限公司) as registrant, a company that corporate registry records indicate is wholly owned by Beijing Zhongxin Tangfeng Culture Communication Co., Ltd. (北京中新唐風文化傳播有限公司), which is itself wholly owned by China News Service. The Tangfeng company operates as China News Service’s “Overseas Center” (海外中心), established in 1996 to supply full newspaper pages, rather than wire copy alone, to Chinese-language media abroad, according to a company recruitment listing. Separately, Dragon Newspaper‘s Android app is published under a Google Play developer account listing a chinanews.com.cn email address as its support contact, and the same account publishes apps for at least five other overseas Chinese-language outlets in Canada, Japan, and elsewhere, all sharing a “com.cns.” software package prefix. The paper is led by President Li Shuangjie (李雙傑), who in 2025 directed its coverage of Xi Jinping’s state visit to Russia and commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory in the “Great Patriotic War,” including interviews with war veterans, according to the overseas edition of the People’s Daily. The same profile said Li has overseen a 2023 series called Toward China’s Invitation (共赴中国之邀) on global development challenges and small-scale livelihood cooperation projects, and that she has organized Chinese-Russian painting exhibitions and youth friendship football matches, framing media as both a communication link and an avenue for cooperation between the two countries. Dragon Newspaper‘s site separately names a Russian-language chief editor whose name is rendered as “Leonid Georgievich Gulin” (列昂尼德·格奥尔基耶维奇·古林), a romanization unconfirmed elsewhere.

Heilongjiang Daily Press Group

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Heilongjiang Daily Press Group (黑龍江日報報業集團) is the largest newspaper conglomerate in Heilongjiang province, built around its flagship paper, Heilongjiang Daily (黑龍江日報), the official organ of the Chinese Communist Party’s Heilongjiang Provincial Committee. The paper was founded on December 1, 1945, in Bei’an through the merger of several wartime provincial newspapers, according to the group’s official history. China’s Central Propaganda Department approved formation of the press group on June 14, 2002, and the former State Press and Publication Administration approved it on June 20 that year, designating it a national pilot unit for provincial press-group formation. Under Party secretary and president Zhang Chunjiao (張春嬌), the group led formation of the Heilongjiang Northeast Asia International Communication Center in February 2024 as part of a stated “link south, open north” (南聯北開) outbound communication strategy.

Government of Heihe

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The government of Heihe (黑河市人民政府) is the municipal administration of Heihe, a prefecture-level city in northern Heilongjiang province on China’s border with Russia. The city was established on February 8, 1993, when the State Council dissolved Heihe Prefecture (黑河地區) and reconstituted it as a prefecture-level city, according to the Heihe city government’s own historical account. Heihe sits across the Amur River from Blagoveshchensk, the capital of Russia’s Amur Oblast, and is promoted by Chinese authorities as the closest and largest paired city on the China-Russia border. The city government oversees six county-level divisions and administers a national-level border economic cooperation zone. Heihe’s municipal government co-founded the Heilongjiang Northeast Asia International Communication Center in February 2024 alongside the Heilongjiang Daily Press Group and Hong Kong’s Ta Kung Net, part of Heihe’s stated role in Heilongjiang’s “link south, open north” (南聯北開) international communication strategy.

Heilongjiang Provincial People’s Government

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The Heilongjiang Provincial People’s Government (黑龍江省人民政府) serves as the executive administrative authority of Heilongjiang province in northeastern China, headquartered in Harbin. The province reached its current boundaries and capital arrangement in August 1954, when the former Heilongjiang and Songjiang provinces were merged following a June 1954 decree from China’s Central People’s Government, according to the provincial government’s own historical account. As a provincial-level government under China’s State Council, it oversees economic development, public administration, and policy implementation across the province’s prefecture-level divisions. Given Heilongjiang’s border with Russia’s Amur region, the government has emphasized cross-border trade and communication initiatives, including provincial support for outbound-facing media platforms such as the Heilongjiang Daily Press Group, which operates under guidance from the provincial Chinese Communist Party committee’s propaganda apparatus.

Qingdao Binhai University

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Qingdao Binhai University (青島濱海學院) is a private university in Qingdao’s West Coast New Area, Shandong province. Founded in 1992, it became one of Shandong’s first two private institutions authorized to grant bachelor’s degrees in 2005, according to the university’s own profile. The university reports approximately 24,000 full-time students and around 200 international students studying on campus annually, with a cumulative total of more than 2,000 long-term international students from nearly 30 countries over its history. It maintains partnerships with more than 140 universities and research institutions across 40 countries, including Russia, and Taiwan. The university operates a Shandong Provincial Foreign Affairs Research and Development Think Tank (山東省外事研究與發展智庫), one of several provincially designated research platforms hosted on campus. In April 2026, the university’s International Civil Diplomacy Research Center signed a cooperation agreement with the Russian outlet Dragon Newspaper.

GBTimes Oy

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GBTimes Oy (環球時代傳媒有限公司) is a Tampere-based Finnish media company producing China-related radio, print, and online content for European audiences. According to its own About Us page, the outlet was founded as Radio86 in 2004 and has “gradually worked to become the web’s most extensive China-related information base,” publishing news, travel, politics, food, history, and entertainment content in 11 languages, including English, Finnish, Swedish, and Chinese. GBTimes was formally registered as a Finnish company in 2007. In 2015, independent researcher Jichang Lulu told Reuters in 2015 that the network’s aim was “selling China’s story to the world” while “portray[ing] the content as coming from an independent party.” GBTiimes Oy CEO Zhao Yinong (趙亦農) told Reuters that CRI paid his firm “several million euros” annually, more than half its revenue, to produce local-language programming. When Reuters asked why CRI was working through private companies abroad, he defended the practice, saying there was no “no difference” between his operation and the US government-funded Voice of America (VOA). According to a separate Reuters report, a 60 percent stake in the Finnish company was held by a subsidiary of state broadcaster China Radio International (中國國際廣播電台). GBTimes Oy was part of a broader global network of 33 CRI-linked radio stations across 14 countries, “from Finland to Nepal to Australia, and from Philadelphia to San Francisco,” including a counterpart in Australia run by Melbourne-based media proprietor Tommy Jiang (姜兆慶) through Global CAMG Media. Four Corners, an Australian Broadcasting Corporation program, reported that CAMG’s radio stations functioned as an overseas outlet for Chinese state messaging and that Jiang was a major donor to Australia’s two main political parties.  

ISCOM

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ISCOM, or the Institut Supérieur de Communication, is a private French institution that trains students for careers in communications and advertising, with eight campuses across France. According to ISCOM’s own description of the school, it combines academic coursework with practical, hands-on training built on ongoing partnerships with industry professionals. Caroline Grassaud has directed the school’s Paris campus since 2023. In June 2026, Grassaud signed a cooperation agreement with the Communication University of China (中国传媒大学), arranging a student exchange tied to the Chinese university’s School of Advertising and Brand Communication. ISCOM is marking its 40th anniversary this year.

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

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The Vrije Universiteit Brussel (布鲁塞尔自由大学), or VUB, is a Dutch-speaking public research university in Brussels, Belgium. According to the university’s own account of its history, it traces its roots to the Free University of Brussels, founded in 1834 by lawyer Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen as a secular alternative to church-run higher education, which split along linguistic lines in 1969 into VUB and the French-speaking Université libre de Bruxelles. VUB became a fully independent institution in 1970. The university enrolls roughly 22,000 students across eight faculties and campuses in Etterbeek, Jette, Anderlecht, and Pajottegem. VUB previously hosted a Confucius Institute, a Chinese state-funded language and culture program, established in 2015 and shut down in 2019 after Belgian security services accused its director of working as a recruiter for Chinese intelligence.

Klasszik Radio

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Klasszik Rádió is a private commercial station that began broadcasting classical music in Budapest on December 1, 2009, and airs different types of classical music content alongside Hungarian and English-language news. In December 2010, the station partnered with GBTimes, a Finnish-registered but Chinese-owned distributor tied to China Radio International (CRI), selling part of its airtime. On June 24, 2011, it halted regular programming to air Chinese state-produced content timed precisely to the arrival of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), the first visit to Hungary by a Chinese premier in 24 years, investigative Hungarian outlet Direkt36 reported.