People’s Daily
People’s Daily, first launched in 1946 and established on June 15, 1948, is the official flagship newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), operating directly under the CCP Central Committee. The paper conveys party consensus through highly regimented content and specialized party terminologies known as tifa (提法), with an estimated circulation of approximately 3 million daily copies in multiple languages. From 1966 to 1976 during the Cultural Revolution, it was part of an influential media triumvirate referred to as “two newspapers and one journal” (兩報一刊) that uniformly featured Mao Zedong’s commentaries across their front pages—a centralized control of messaging later viewed as contributing to the period’s chaos. The paper continues to serve as a primary resource for official CCP discourse, focusing on party positions rather than independent reporting, with Xi Jinping’s recent prominence in its headlines widely interpreted as reflecting his consolidation of power within the party.
