United Daily News (聯合報) is a Taipei-based daily broadsheet newspaper founded on September 16, 1951, by Wang Ti-wu (王惕吾) as a merger of three papers: the Popular Daily (全民日報), the National Daily (民族報), and the Economic Times (經濟時報). It is the flagship publication of the United Daily News Group (聯合報系), whose other publications include the Economic Daily News (經濟日報), founded on April 20, 1967, and the World Journal (世界日報), founded in 1976 and described by the group as the largest Chinese-language newspaper in North America. The group launched the digital portal udn.com (聯合新聞網) in 1999 and introduced digital subscriptions in 2020. The group reports 16 million monthly unique visitors to its news website and 380 million monthly visits to udn.com. United Daily News is editorially aligned with Taiwan’s pan-Blue coalition and is considered one of Taiwan’s three major national dailies. A 2024 Reuters Institute Digital News Report survey of 16 Taiwanese news brands found United Daily received a trust rating of 51 percent from respondents, placing it in the middle of the surveyed outlets; the report also described United Daily as part of the pro-unification media camp that characterized pro-independence candidate William Lai as “the dangerous friend of the US” who would bring war to the region.
Meihua Media Group (梅花媒體集團) is a Taipei-based digital media group incorporated in October 2023 as Meihua Media Cultural Enterprises Co., Ltd. (梅花媒體文化事業股份有限公司). The group was founded by Wujue Miaotian (悟覺妙天), a Chan Buddhist master who self-describes as the 85th Chan Patriarch since Shakyamuni Buddha and who has a longstanding record of involvement in pan-Blue politics in Taiwan, who serves as chair, and Wang Cho-chung (王綽中), former president of the China Times (中國時報), who served as president as of February 2024. Its flagship outlet, Meihua News Network (梅花新聞網), launched on December 1, 2023, with editorial coverage focused on politics, cross-strait affairs, international news, and finance. A second outlet, Ai Media (愛傳媒), covering lifestyle, entertainment, and religion, was absorbed into the group around the same time. The group formally marked its establishment with a dinner on February 21, 2024, at the Sheraton Grand Taipei Hotel, attended by a range of KMT (國民黨) politicians and officials, including Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) and Taoyuan Mayor Chang Shan-cheng (張善政). According to the group’s stated mission, its editorial principles include “cross-strait peace” and “carrying forward Chinese culture,” framing consistent with a pan-Blue orientation that favors closer ties with mainland China. Wang Cho-chung’s participation in a seminar in Taipei in October 2025 marking the 80th anniversary of what Chinese state media described as “Taiwan’s restoration to China,” an event widely covered by Chinese state media, illustrates the group’s tendency to align with PRC historical narratives on cross-strait relations.
ETtoday (東森新聞雲) is a Taiwan-based digital news platform founded on November 1, 2011, by the Eastern Group (東森集團), a Taipei-based conglomerate with origins in grain storage that entered the media industry in 1991 by establishing what became Eastern Broadcasting Co., Ltd. According to the Eastern Group’s published corporate history, ETtoday was established as a news website in 2011, renamed ETtoday.net in 2013, and formally incorporated as ETtoday Co., Ltd. in 2019. It is operated by Eastern New Media Holdings Co., Ltd. (東森新媒體控股股份有限公司) and is headquartered in Taipei. According to the company’s self-reported figures as of May 2026, the platform reaches a peak daily traffic of 19 million, with app downloads exceeding 6.73 million, 44 Facebook fan pages with a combined following of 29.04 million, and a total claimed audience of 42.89 million. ETtoday covers politics, society, entertainment, sport, and lifestyle. Its news editor-in-chief is Lin Wen-chun (林妏純) and the parent company is chaired by Wang Ling-lin (王令麟). ETtoday has received Taiwan’s Golden Bell Award (金鐘獎) and recognition from Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for digital audience reach.
Taiwan Radio (台灣廣播公司), also known as TBC, is a privately operated radio network headquartered at Section 2, Renai Road, Zhongzheng District, Taipei. According to the company’s about page, it was formally established on May 29, 1973, by consolidating four predecessor stations and four relay transmitters into a single network. The company traces its origins to the Chung Hsing Broadcasting Station (中興廣播電台), founded on November 12, 1956, in Nantou County by Ma Chi-hsien (馬繼先). The three other constituent stations were the People’s Voice Broadcasting Company (民聲廣播公司), established March 15, 1950, in Taipei; the Taiwan Voice Broadcasting Company (台聲廣播公司), established January 15, 1956, in Hsinchu; and the People’s Sky Broadcasting Company (民天廣播公司), established December 5, 1958, in Taichung. Taiwan Radio operates five main broadcasting stations — in Taipei, Hsinchu, Taichung, Chung Hsing, and associated relay transmitters at Daxi, Guanxi, Songling, and Puli — serving listeners across northern, central, and western Taiwan.
The Newspaper Society of Hong Kong (香港報業公會) is a newspaper industry association established on May 10, 1954, originally founded by four of Hong Kong’s largest newspapers at the time: Kung Sheung Daily News (工商日報), Wah Kiu Yat Po (華僑日報), Sing Tao Daily (星島日報), and the English-language South China Morning Post. It serves as the largest newspaper industry body in Hong Kong, with current membership comprising 14 major newspapers, but has increasingly represented pro-government and pro-Beijing positions. The society organizes the annual Hong Kong Best Journalism Awards. A Lingua Sinica analysis in 2026 found that the Hong Kong Ta Kung Wen Wei Media Group (香港大公文匯傂媒集團) — run by the PRC government’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong — has ranked first in total awards at the society’s annual journalism competition every year since 2019, a period coinciding with Hong Kong’s broader press freedom contraction following the 2019 protests. As recently as 2016, the awards were distributed across a more diverse field of independent outlets. In May 2023, it hosted a delegation from the All-China Journalists Association (中華全國新職工作者協會), or ACJA, a party-led body whose constitution explicitly states it “serves as a bridge between the Party, the Chinese government and the press,” and which functions as a key instrument of CCP press control — managing the issuance of press cards to journalists in China and administering mandatory training in Marxist journalism doctrine. In June 2026, the society jointly signed a memorandum of understanding with Khabar Agency (哈巴爾通訊社), Kazakhstan’s state-owned broadcaster, alongside the Hong Kong News Executives’ Association (新職行政人員協會), during a visit to Astana by Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu that stressed the “telling of the Hong Kong story,” in echo of the CCP’s external propaganda objectives.
The Taiwan China Journalism Society (台灣中國新聞學會) is described by the All-China Journalists Association (中華全國新聞工作者協會), or ACJA, the party-led body that serves as the leading instrument of CCP press and journalism control in China, as an association of Taiwan mass media practitioners, originally founded in Chongqing in March 1941 and, according to the ACJA, “revived in Taiwan in 1965.” The ACJA profiles the Taiwan China Journalism Society on its own website alongside its own member organizations, and the society’s chair described, in the above-linked CNTV coverage, a longstanding tripartite cross-strait meeting mechanism between the society, the ACJA, and Hong Kong press organizations. The society has been closely tied to Taiwan’s private Shih Hsin University (世新大學) since its founding. The university was established by the society’s founder, Cheng She-wo (成舍我), and the chairperson of the university’s board of directors has concurrently served as the society’s president. In November 2019, Zhou Chenghu (周成虎), Shih Hsin’s board chair and Cheng She-wo’s grandson, was elected society president, succeeding his mother Cheng Chia-ling (成嘉玲), who had held both roles before him. The society is not a part of Taiwan’s recognized civic journalism sector, and is generally unknown by journalists in the country. Taiwan’s acknowledged representative journalism body is the Association of Taiwan Journalists (台灣新聞記者協會), a member of the International Federation of Journalists. The society publishes the Chinese Press Institute Bulletin (新聞界), a monthly publication covering Taiwan, mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and international media industry news. Until 2016, full versions were archived on its website, but since then can only be found in the “events” sections of the site. Analysis of the bulletin’s content suggests a consistent orientation toward PRC-framed cross-strait media cooperation. A 2016 issue documented a society delegation visit to Sichuan organized at the ACJA’s invitation and attended by Ma Xiaoguang (馬曉光), then head of the Taiwan Affairs Office’s news bureau, who urged cross-strait media practitioners to preserve the “results” of eight years of exchanges regardless of how political relations developed. The same issue covered a cross-strait journalism camp co-organized with the ACJA, in which participants were encouraged to “tell our story well” (說好我們的故事), an echo of Xi Jinping’s “tell China’s story well” directive. The society is formally registered with Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior, according to its charter, which was last revised at the 10th general membership meeting in May 2011 and filed under Ministry of the Interior reference number 1000142664. The charter explicitly provides for mainland Chinese news organizations and journalists to hold honorary membership, a structural mechanism that institutionalizes the society’s cross-strait ties with the ACJA and its affiliated bodies. In September 2025, a 19-member delegation led by the society’s chair visited Zhejiang University of Media and Communications (浙江傳媒學院). The visit was accompanied by Shen Yibing (沈毅兵), head of the ACJA’s Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Department, making the operational relationship between the two bodies explicit. In April 2026, society representatives attended the 40th anniversary dinner of the Hong Kong News Executives’ Association (新聞行政人員協會) in Hong Kong.
Khabar Agency (哈巴爾通訊社) is a state-owned media corporation in Kazakhstan, established on October 23, 1995, as the National Television News Agency — “Khabar” meaning “news” in Kazakh. It is wholly owned by Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Culture and Information and operates as one of the country’s largest broadcasters, delivering programming in Kazakh, Russian, and English. The agency operates the flagship socio-political channel Khabar and the 24-hour news channel 24KZ. According to the State Media Monitor, Khabar Agency carries out the informational directives of the Kazakh government, and no domestic legal framework or independent oversight mechanism has been identified to safeguard its editorial autonomy. According to the agency’s own sales portal, it maintained 22 active memorandums of understanding with foreign companies as of 2026, including with entities in China and Macau, and described itself as “rightfully considered the leader of Kazakhstan’s media landscape.” In June 2026, the agency signed a memorandum of understanding with the Newspaper Society of Hong Kong (香港報業公會) and the Hong Kong News Executives’ Association (新職行政人員協會) during a visit to Astana by Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu.
The Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Kazakhstan (哈薩克斯坦共和國文化與資訊部) is a central executive body of the Government of Kazakhstan responsible for state policy in the areas of culture, information, interethnic and interfaith harmony, religious affairs, youth and family policy, and what it describes as “modernization of public consciousness.” The ministry reached its current form on September 1, 2023, when President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed a decree restructuring the former Ministry of Culture and Sports, separating culture and information functions into the reconstituted ministry while spinning off sports and tourism into a separate body. The body traces its origins through a series of ministerial reorganizations dating to Kazakhstan’s independence in 1991, operating under various names. It is the sole owner of Khabar Agency (哈巴爾通訊社), Kazakhstan’s largest state broadcaster, and exercises oversight over state media policy and public information directives.
The Hong Kong News Executives’ Association (新聞行政人員協會) is a professional association established in 1986, dedicated according to its own description to safeguarding press freedom, enhancing cooperation among members, and maintaining professional standards. Membership comprises senior editorial staff — including chief editors, deputy chief editors, and news editors — from Hong Kong’s major media organizations, and numbered more than 100 at the time of the association’s most recent public membership statement. The association describes its activities as promoting journalism exchanges across “the two shores, Hong Kong and Macau” (兩岸港澳) — a formulation that reflects standard PRC framing of cross-strait relations. According to its own website, the association’s April 2026 40th anniversary dinner was attended by Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu, the secretary-general of the Central Government’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong, and a deputy commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ office in Hong Kong. Also present were representatives from Taiwan’s China Journalism Society (台灣中國新聞學會), an organization profiled on the website of the All-China Journalists Association (中華全國新聞工作者協會), or ACJA — the party-led body that serves as the leading instrument of CCP press and journalism control in China, managing the issuance of press cards to all journalists and administering mandatory training in Marxist journalism doctrine. The China Journalism Society was originally founded in Chongqing in March 1941 and revived in Taiwan in 1965, and its profile appears on the ACJA website alongside those of the ACJA’s own member organizations. In November 2025, the association’s executive committee met with Lee specifically to discuss the Policy Address directive on helping local media expand networks beyond Hong Kong. In February 2024, the association submitted recommendations on Article 23 national security legislation. In June 2026, it jointly signed a memorandum of understanding with Khabar Agency (哈巴爾通訊社), Kazakhstan’s state-owned broadcaster, alongside the Newspaper Society of Hong Kong (香港報業公會), during a visit to Astana by Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu.
