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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.

CUC Co-Hosts Accessible Film Event at UNESCO

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On June 17, 2026, UNESCO’s Information for All Programme, the China Foundation for Human Rights Development (中国人权发展基金会), a nominally independent charity whose governing charter names the Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department as its supervising authority, and Communication University of China (中国传媒大学) jointly held a symposium on accessible information and cultural rights at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The event corresponded with China’s release of its most recent “national human rights action plan” (2026-2030), and was part of a related promotional strategy. CUC deputy Party secretary Zheng Peng (郑鹏) told attendees that Guangming Cinema (光明影院), a CUC-run project producing audio-described films for blind and visually impaired viewers, now reaches more than 2,200 special education schools across China. That evening, the three organizers held a screening of the project’s films, attended by Mariya Gabriel, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, who previously served as Bulgaria’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, according to Communication University of China.

CUC Signs Cooperation Deal With ISCOM in Paris

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On June 16, 2026, a Communication University of China (中国传媒大学) delegation led by deputy Party secretary Zheng Peng (郑鹏) signed a cooperation memorandum with ISCOM (Institut Supérieur de Communication), a private communication and advertising school in Paris marking its 40th anniversary this year. The agreement was signed with Caroline Grassaud, who became director of ISCOM Paris in 2023. According to the Communication University of China, Zheng called the signing a new starting point for cooperation between the two schools, and said the deal would expand a student exchange tied to CUC’s School of Advertising and Brand Communication. Grassaud said she was confident in the partnership and invited CUC students to a summer program on digital communication at ISCOM, with joint discussions planned on technology’s role in media.

Zhejiang Media Group Signs Content Sharing Agreement with Barcelona Public Broadcaster

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On September 9, 2019, officials from Zhejiang Media Group (浙江廣播電視集團), a state-owned Chinese broadcaster, and Barcelona’s publicly owned broadcaster Betevé signed a cooperation agreement under which Zhejiang’s broadcaster would supply documentaries to Betevé while Betevé would provide Spanish-produced content to Zhejiang television. The agreement, titled “Beautiful Zhejiang, Vibrant Barcelona,” was signed in Barcelona and also involved the Barcelona Chinese Education Foundation (巴塞羅那中文教育基金會), known in Spanish as “Any Nou Xinès amb Barcelona,” which assisted in producing a related program segment. Attendees included Zhu Guoxian (朱國賢), a Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee Standing Committee member and propaganda chief, and China’s consul general in Barcelona, Lin Nan (林楠). Betevé’s director, Sergi Vicente, said the partnership would “promote Chinese and Western culture” (弘揚中西方文化), echoing standard formulations from Chinese official political discourse.

Chinese Ambassador to Denmark Addresses China-EU Trade in Copenhagen Post

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On May 29, 2026, Wang Xuefeng (王雪峰), China’s ambassador to Denmark, published an op-ed in the Copenhagen Post, Denmark’s English media outlet, responding to the question of whether Europe lost its economic momentum as China’s trade surplus with the EU last year rose to nearly USD 300 billion. Wang argued that “the reality is not as it seems,” and that “the evolution of the China-EU trade landscape is a natural consequence of globalization and industrial upgrading.” Wang suggested that criticism of the imbalance overlooked what he called “mutual benefit.” Wang also listed the “multi-structural factors” that he said led to the trade imbalance, including the EU’s policy adjustments in response to the energy landscape following the Ukraine crisis, and controls on exports of technology products. The ambassador underscored what China has seen as “discriminatory and exclusionary” legal amendments that he said are “undermining” EU-China trade relations. He called for the EU to “embrace China” to create a “win-win partnership” rather than making it a “zero-sum” game — this being a framing used consistently by China to characterize its global trade relationships as broadly beneficial. During the first quarter of 2026, the EU’s trade deficit with China reached its highest level since 2022.