
X Marks the Spot
Elon Musk’s new messaging app was built with Chinese users in mind. It was censored before it ever reached them, with related news coverage from state media also pulled down.

China Ocean Shipping News (中國遠洋海運報) is a Chinese-language industry newspaper owned by COSCO Shipping Group Co., Ltd. (中國遠洋海運集團有限公司), or COSCO Shipping, a Shanghai-headquartered state-owned marine transportation conglomerate owned by the State Council and supervised by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (國有資產監督管理委員會), or SASAC. The newspaper is registered in Shanghai and appears as a four-page color broadsheet issued every Friday. The newspaper’s coverage focuses on COSCO group activities and Chinese Communist Party study sessions. Its masthead states a mission to uphold the “guidance of public opinion” (輿論導向), a Party term for shaping news coverage to keep it in line with official messaging, and to serve China’s ocean shipping industry.
