All Lingua Sinica Dispatches
Rajawali Citra Televisi Indonesia (RCTI) is a commercial television network that began broadcasting as a pay-TV service in August 1989, initially limited to the Greater Jakarta area. The network transitioned to free-to-air terrestrial broadcasting and by August 1993 had received government permission to broadcast across Indonesia. RCTI offers diverse programming, including news, entertainment, and sports content.
PT Media Nusantara Citra Tbk is an Indonesian media conglomerate founded in June 1997 that operates four major free-to-air television stations: RCTI, MNCTV, GTV, and iNews. The company, which went public on the Indonesia Stock Exchange on June 22, 2007, claims that it produces more than 20,000 hours of content annually, including drama series, animation, and entertainment programming. PT Media Nusantara Citra operates digital streaming platforms RCTI+ and Vision+, and manages news portals such as iNews, SindoNews, and Okezone.
PT Bina Media Tenggara is an Indonesian media company founded in late 1982 as an independent newspaper institution to publish The Jakarta Post, an English-language daily newspaper based in Jakarta. The company was established as a private entity owned by four competing Indonesian media groups: the online daily newspaper Suara Karya, the national newspaper Kompas, the weekly magazine Tempo, and the evening daily Sinar Harapan. PT Bina Media Tenggara operates as a limited liability company with its headquarters in Jakarta.
Djarum Group is a family-owned Indonesian conglomerate company founded in 1951, when Oei Wie Gwan (黃惠源) acquired a nearly defunct cigarette manufacturer in Kudus, Central Java. The company is now controlled by brothers Robert Budi Hartono and Michael Bambang Hartono, and produces tobacco products, having also diversified into banking, technology, and media. In December 2024, Djarum’s venture capital arm, GDP Venture, acquired news platform Kumparan for 60 million dollars, consolidating control after earlier investments.
The Jakarta Post, an English language newspaper published by Indonesia’s PT Bina Media Tenggara, a media and consulting firm, reportedly signed a content-sharing arrangement with the Chinese government-run China Daily (中國日報) in 2016 to regularly publish a “China Watch” (看中國) insert. The specific date of the agreement, however, remains undocumented in public sources. China’s Mission to ASEAN stated in October 2016 that the cooperation “opens a new window for the Indonesian people to understand China.” The Indonesian newspaper’s editor-in-chief characterized the collaboration as “purely commercial,” telling Voice of America that China Daily “buys space for ads for its content” with disclaimers, and that there is “no editorial collaboration.” Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat, director of China-Indonesia Studies at the Center of Economic and Law Studies, noted in an interview with Taiwan’s Central News Agency in 2023 that the paper republishes content from China Daily and Xinhua (新華社), as well as articles by Chinese ambassadors. According to CNA, The Jakarta Post has published a full-page insert from the People’s Daily (人民日報), the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, every Friday since late 2023.
On December 10, 2020, China Media Group (中國媒體集團) hosted the 2020 European Media Partners Cooperation Online Forum, which the state-run China Global Television Network (CGTN) called a “Mutual Trust Dialogue for Win-Win Cooperation.” Representatives from several European countries were reportedly in attendance. The CMG president Shen Haixiong (慎海雄), also a deputy head of the Central Propaganda Department, used the forum to advocate for deeper media cooperation on pandemic coverage. The event featured the launch of China Business Video, a collaboration between the state-run CCTV+ and Reuters (archived) that “provides Reuters’ customers with financial news content from China,” according to a CCTV+ readout. CCTV+ also reportedly signed a memorandum with the European News Exchange (ENEX) to establish the European Media Partners initiative and launch BizToday, a program on the CCTV+ platform described in state media coverage as a joint Chinese-European news program. The forum exemplifies CMG’s strategy of cultivating media partnerships to expand its international influence.
Reuters is a British news agency established in London in October 1851 by Paul Julius Reuter, a German-born entrepreneur who pioneered the use of telegraph technology for news transmission. The agency provides news content, multimedia, and financial data to media organizations, businesses, and professionals globally through its Reuters Connect platform and various information services. Reuters currently employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists, posted at approximately 200 locations worldwide and producing content in 16 languages. The agency has won more than 300 awards for its news coverage in the past decade, including 2024 Pulitzer Prizes for National Reporting and Breaking News Photography.
On May 7, 2024, the Serbian newspaper Politika published a signed article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) titled “May the Light of Our Ironclad Friendship Shine on the Path of China-Serbia Cooperation” (願中塞鐵桿友誼之光照亮中塞合作之路). The placement of the article corresponded with Xi’s state visit to Serbia. In the article, Xi emphasized the “ironclad friendship” between China and Serbia, highlighting mutual support during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a Free Trade Agreement between the two countries. The article also referenced the 25th anniversary of the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia during a NATO aerial bombing campaign on May 7, 1999, which killed three Chinese journalists. Xi’s article referred to the bilateral relationship emotively as a “friendship forged in fresh blood” (中塞两国人民用鲜血凝成的友谊).
On November 20, 2025, Guangxi Radio and Television (廣西廣播電視台), a provincial-level broadcast media group, hosted the Lancang-Mekong Media Event (瀾湄國家媒體活動) in Nanning, where participating media from China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam announced more than 10 collaborative projects, including jointly produced documentaries, broadcast programs, and translated content featuring stories from the Mekong region. The Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) framework was established in 2016 as a China-led sub-regional mechanism. According to a report by the state-run China News Service (CNS), a representative from Guangxi Radio and Television said that the event aimed to explore innovative media trends and strengthen cooperation among media organizations from the Lancang-Mekong countries. Joint media productions, all apparently led by China, Included the documentary “Home Among Green Mountains and Waters—Lancang-Mekong in Bloom” (家在青山绿水间—澜湄花开); the multimedia program “Agricultural AI+” (农业AI+); the documentary “Li River” (漓江); the radio drama “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” (三国演义); and a series of China-Thailand micro-dramas and micro-documentaries.