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Government of the Kingdom of Lesotho

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Lesotho, a constitutional monarchy landlocked within South Africa, gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1966. China and Lesotho restored diplomatic relations in 1993, and cooperation has since spanned infrastructure, health and media. In November 2013, China’s press and broadcast regulator and Lesotho National Broadcasting Services signed a license agreement. More recently, Lesotho’s Foreign Affairs Minister Limpho Tau signed WAICO’s founding agreement on Lesotho’s behalf in July 2026, describing Lesotho as “very honored” to become a founding member and citing the need to “safeguard the common rights and interests of the Global South countries,” according to Xinhua.

Rossiya Segodnya

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Rossiya Segodnya (今日俄羅斯國際通訊社) is a Russian state media group established after Vladimir Putin signed a presidential decree on December 9, 2013, ordering the liquidation of the state news agency RIA Novosti and the state broadcaster Voice of Russia and folding their staff and assets into the new entity. RIA Novosti itself traced its lineage to the Soviet Information Bureau, founded in 1941, though Rossiya Segodnya was created as a distinct entity by the 2013 decree, not a continuation of it. Putin’s chief of staff said the restructuring was meant to improve cost efficiency in state media, while RIA Novosti’s own reporting at the time suggested it reflected tightening Kremlin control over the media sector. The group’s outlets include Sputnik, its international multimedia brand publishing in 32 languages and broadcasting in 19 countries; RIA Novosti, which continues to operate as its Russian-language domestic wire service; Prime, a business and financial news wire; and Arctic.ru, a bilingual Russian-English outlet covering Arctic infrastructure, resource development, and indigenous culture that reports roughly 60 percent of its readership from outside Russia.

Government of the Republic of Cameroon

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Cameroon, a Central African state formed by the 1961 reunification of former French and British trust territories, established diplomatic relations with China in 1971. President Paul Biya, still in power at the time of this entry in July 2026, has ruled Cameroon since 1982, maintaining power through what the organization Freedom House has described as rigged elections, patronage and restrictions on the press and opposition parties. Ties with China were elevated to a “comprehensive strategic partnership” in September 2024. Cameroonian media links to Chinese state outlets run primarily through private broadcaster Canal 2 International, whose director general publicly pledged deeper CMG ties in February 2026. Cameroon has also taken part in the Forum on China-Africa Media Cooperation, a state-organized platform founded in 2012 that has produced joint statements on media-policy alignment among African broadcasters and China’s radio and television regulator. Cameroon became a founding member of WAICO in July 2026.

Mobile TeleSystems

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MTS (Mobile TeleSystems) is Russia’s largest mobile operator, with more than 86 million mobile subscribers across Russia and Belarus. The company was founded on October 28, 1993, as a joint venture between the Moscow City Telephone Network, Deutsche Telekom (through its DeTeMobil subsidiary), Siemens, and several smaller Russian shareholders. MTS is majority-owned by Sistema, Russia’s largest publicly traded diversified holding company. The core telecommunications business and retail network retained the MTS name throughout a 2024-2026 corporate reorganization that spun off the company’s non-telecom businesses, including media and entertainment, fintech, advertising technology, and kickscooter-sharing, into a separate holding structure. ON Media, the parent of the media assets involved in cooperation agreements with China Media Group, is among the businesses that passed through this restructuring.

Government of the Republic of the Congo

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The Republic of the Congo, a Central African state also known as Congo-Brazzaville, has (as of the writing of this entry in July 2026) been ruled by the presidency of Denis Sassou Nguesso for more than 40 years. Freedom House has cited severe repression of the opposition and credible, recurring corruption allegations against Nguesso’s family. Congo-Brazzaville established diplomatic relations with China in 1964, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has more recently described the country as a steadfast friend of China. The country has served as co-chair of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. Media-adjacent cooperation includes Congo’s participation in a China-funded satellite TV project bringing access to 10,000 African villages, demonstrated at a village site visited by senior Chinese officials in 2018. In July 2026, the Republic of the Congo was confirmed as a founding member of the China-led World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), with Chinese-language sourcing specifying “Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville),” distinguishing it from the DRC.

ON Media

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ON Media (known until November 25, 2025 as MTS Media) is a Russian entertainment holding created in February 2024 to consolidate the entertainment businesses of the digital ecosystem operated by MTS (Mobile TeleSystems), Russia’s largest mobile operator. The holding includes the KION streaming platform, the KIONFILM studio, the MTS Music streaming service, the Строки (Stroki) book service, the MTS Label record company, and the MTS Live events and ticketing division. ON Media briefly operated under a broader non-telecom holding structure called Erion, itself a late-2025 rebrand of what had been known as “MTS Ecosystem,” though that holding structure was reported to be under dissolution as of February 2026, with ON Media continuing to operate as an individual business. ON Media is led by general director Sofya Mitrofanova, who previously held senior roles at Gazprom-Media Holding, Okko, Ivi, and Premier.

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.