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Tag: CCP

A Record Haul for Hong Kong’s State Media

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on A Record Haul for Hong Kong’s State Media

On March 13, the Newspaper Society of Hong Kong (香港報業公會) — founded in 1954 by the city’s four largest newspapers at the time, including Sing Tao Daily and the English-language South China Morning Post — announced the winners of its 2025 Hong Kong Best Journalism Awards (香港最佳新聞獎). The Hong Kong Ta Kung Wen Wei Media Group (香港大公文匯傳媒集團), run by the PRC government’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong, took home 29 prizes. It was record for the group and the largest haul for any media outlet in this year’s competition. Twelve media outlets reportedly participated, submitting 636 entries across 78 award categories. The result, offering plaudits to a state-run outlet that has been on the front lines in attacks on independent journalists and institutions (including the Hong Kong Journalists Association), would have been unimaginable a decade ago.

A large billboard for the Wen Wei Po newspaper looms over a street in Hong Kong’s Wan Chai District in 2013. SOURCE: Wikimedia Commons.

As recently as 2016, the awards were made across a relatively diverse field. Ming Pao (明報) took Best News Reporting for its Panama Papers coverage, reporting that would be almost unthinkable in Hong Kong today. Sing Tao Daily (星島日報) won Best Scoop and Best News Photography. The South China Morning Post (南華早報) swept both English-language writing categories. And the Hong Kong Economic Journal (信報財經新聞) won Best Business News Writing. Sure, media like the government-run China Daily and Ta Kung Pao did win a smattering of awards. But never were state media so dominant as seen this month.

This year, participation has narrowed sharply, with entries concentrated among pro-establishment media — those aligned with the Chinese government. Meanwhile, Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai serves a 20-year prison sentence handed down last month under the territory’s National Security Law, .

That transformation makes the Ta Kung Wen Wei Group’s dominance worth scrutinizing. Established in January 2016 through the merger of Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po, the group is the key voice of the Chinese government in Hong Kong. The group’s chairman and editor-in-chief, Li Dahong (李大宏), is simultaneously a delegate to the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the CCP-led political advisory body. The group’s own materials state that its newspapers are delivered directly to the central organs of the party, government and military every day — and that the group has ranked first in total awards at the Hong Kong Best Journalism Awards every year since 2019, a streak that hardly seems a coincidence given the political changes in Hong Kong since widespread protests that year.

Far from acting as a professional press organization, the group has been at the forefront of attacks on Hong Kong’s independent journalism community. The charge to smear and discredit the Hong Kong Journalists Association, a longstanding institution representing real news professionals, has been led by the Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po, which have consistently attacked the association and its leadership. Writing in Wen Wei Po back in April, a pro-Beijing lawmaker called the HKJA “a suspected anti-China organization that disrupts Hong Kong,” while Ta Kung Pao published an opinion article titled “dissolution is the only solution for the HKJA.”

The 2025 Hong Kong Best Journalism Awards send a clear message about what type of journalism the Hong Kong government and Liaison Office of China’s central government intend to reward.

Hoops Oops

Written by LS Staff on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on Hoops Oops

“Basketball is a bridge that connects us.” That was the headline of a commentary published in the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper earlier this month, with a soaring byline from none other than LeBron James, the LA Lakers star who is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer. “I’ve been deeply moved by the enthusiasm and friendliness of my Chinese friends,” the commentary began, with a typical CCP frame of people-to-people friendship. “What I can do in return is give my all in every game as a way to show my gratitude to everyone.” For a generally insipid Party-run mouthpiece, such a celebrity endorsement was too good to be true — and of course it was. Representatives for LeBron James quickly disavowed the story. The star, they said, had only ever conducted interviews with Chinese media.

What does this tell us? The flagship newspaper of the CCP feels it is perfectly acceptable to fake a commentary by one of the world’s most recognizable public figures if it suits the agenda, in this case talking up “friendship” and people-to-people exchange.

LeBron James. IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons.

It should not surprise readers that this is not an isolated case. In 2016, after a commentary with a byline from a journalism professor in the New York state university system appeared in the paper decrying the falsehood of Western freedom of speech, CMP reached out to the professor in question. In an e-mail exchange, the shocked professor said she had only spoken on the phone with a People’s Daily reporter and raised issues of journalism ethics more generally. Sound familiar?

At the People’s Daily, politics always trump professionalism. In order to have his official press card re-issued back in January, the staff member behind the LeBron James commentary, sports reporter Wang Liang (王亮) would almost certainly have taken refresher courses on the Marxist View of Journalism and fealty to the Party. The most basic ethics and good practice? Not so important. The People’s Daily has issued no public correction on the LeBron James commentary. Don’t bother waiting for the buzzer.

Guangxi Seeks Vietnamese Media Partners

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on Guangxi Seeks Vietnamese Media Partners

Offering an inside look into how China is using provincial-level media resources to strengthen external propaganda, the official Guangxi Daily (广西日报) issued a call for bidding this month for an exchange program with Vietnamese journalists.

The procurement notice, published July 25, seeks a third-party contractor to organize a nine-day joint reporting activity from August 3-11 involving approximately 30 Chinese and Vietnamese mainstream media representatives. The program will include coordinated interviews, a welcome ceremony, and exchange sessions, with services covering transportation, translation, photography, and promotional materials.

A procurement notice from the Guangxi Daily Media Group is posted on July 25, 2025.

The initiative is being organized by the Guangxi Daily International Communication Center (广西日报国际传播中心), part of the Guangxi Daily Media Group. The center represents a key component of China’s expanding external messaging apparatus at the subnational level.

The formation of international communication centers, or ICCs, at the provincial, city and even county levels across the country responds to a call from Xi Jinping to remake the nation’s system for what the Chinese Communist Party has typically called “external propaganda” (外宣).

The idea driving the policy is that the leadership might, by empowering provincial and local media entities to establish their own international communication centers, leverage more direct knowledge of cross-border dynamics, shared cultural ties, and economic partnerships that national-level outlets might overlook.

This approach reflects a calculated shift from China’s traditional reliance on centralized state media to a more distributed network that can exploit regional advantages. The dispersed structure — which might be called “centralization+” — enables the party to maintain unified messaging while appearing to offer diverse perspectives, creating what officials describe as “singing an international communication ‘chorus'” (唱响国际传播”大合唱”).