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Tag: Chinese state media

Unmasking China’s Ranking Rejection

Written by LS Staff on . Posted in Flash Reports. No Comments on Unmasking China’s Ranking Rejection

Chinese state-run outlets in Hong Kong have launched a coordinated response against Reporters Without Borders after it ranked Hong Kong at 140 on its 2025 World Press Freedom Index — downgrading the city to its “very serious” category for the first time. The Ta Kung Pao (大公報) criticized RSF for “distorting facts” and “misrepresenting the truth,” while the Wen Wei Po (文匯報) claimed RSF views Hong Kong through an “ideological lens” that deliberately magnifies isolated cases. Meanwhile, pro-establishment lawmaker Elizabeth Quat (葛珮帆) accused RSF of “double standards,” citing a survey by the Bauhinia Institute (紫荊研究院) claiming 62.5 percent of Hong Kong residents believe the Basic Law (基本法) effectively protects press freedom.

Citing this source may actually support RSF’s basic concerns, however. The Bauhinia Institute, founded in 2016, is closely associated with the central government’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong. The company’s director and 100 percent shareholder is Zhang Chunsheng (張春生), a former Xinhua News Agency journalist who later joined Wen Wei Po and for many years was a top executive at the central government-run Bauhinia magazine.

RSF defended its methodology, noting that at least 28 journalists have been prosecuted and 10 remain detained since the implementation of national security legislation in 2020.

Telling China’s Story in Paris

Written by Dalia Parete on . Posted in Flash Reports. No Comments on Telling China’s Story in Paris

Founded in 2015 by Chen Shiming (陳世明), a restaurant owner turned media entrepreneur, France-based Mandarin TV (歐視TV) — rebranded in 2021 from “French Chinese TV” (法國華人衛視) — makes little effort to disguise its ambition to serve the agenda of the Chinese state. The outlet describes its mission as “spreading China’s voice, telling China’s story well” (傳播中國聲音，講好中國故事) — language that mirrors the goal for external propaganda set out by Xi Jinping in August 2013, less than two years before Chen’s media outfit set up shop in Paris’s 8th Arrondissement.

In interviews with Chinese media, Chen has said he hopes his station can counteract what he says are deeply biased views toward China in France, his home for the past four decades. “I want to show the real China to the French,” he told the Yueqing Daily (樂清日報), a county-level CCP-run newspaper in coastal Zhejiang province. The real China for Chen is apparently reflected by the country’s strictly controlled state-run media. As Chen himself acknowledged in a 2021 interview, the channel openly collaborates with central CCP media like China Central Television (中央電視臺) and China Radio International (中國國際廣播電臺), both under the China Media Group conglomerate directed by the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department. The channel has also cooperated with regional state broadcasters like Wenzhou TV (溫州電視臺).

Founded by through Chen’s C-MEDIA Group (歐洲中誼文化傳媒集團), and claiming to be the only Chinese-language television station authorized by France’s media regulator Arcom, the station broadcasts 24-hour content, almost entirely from its Chinese state partners. The same state content, including from CCTV and Xinhua News Agency, fills its YouTube channel.

Mandarin TV founder Chen Shiming (left). SOURCE: Mandarin TV.

A Loyal Megaphone on Labor

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May 1 is a red-letter day for the Chinese Communist Party, which continues to see worker’s rights as at the heart of its identity and legitimacy — even, or especially, in a period when well-paying jobs are in short supply and workers are over-qualified. International Labor Day this year also marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (中华全国总工会), a vehicle for strengthening proletarian unity and a CCP power base in the Party’s early days. The anniversary celebrations on April 28 made the front page of the People’s Daily, with Xi Jinping making a speech about how the federation had been able to “unite and mobilize the working class to follow in the Party’s steps.”

A portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong working at his desk in 1964, with calligraphy showing “工人日報” (Worker’s Daily) displayed prominently above. This image was originally photographed in 1964 and later published in the newspaper in 1965. SOURCE: All-China Journalist’s Association.

One way they have tried to do so is through their newspaper, the Worker’s Daily (工人日报). From the first days after its launch in July 1949, the outlet aimed to serve an audience of blue-collar laborers not used to the heavy ideological prose of the People’s Daily. Then-head of the Federation, Li Lisan (李立三) — who had spent his early days as a labor organizer in China’s coal mines — imagined a newspaper that could better guide workers on Party thinking by being relatable. Xinhua bulletins, for example, were re-written for the paper in simpler Chinese, with authors selected from among workers across the country.

Relatable propaganda is an idea Xi Jinping has tried to resurrect from the earliest days of his presidency. “Wherever readers are, wherever viewers are, that is where propaganda reports must extend their tentacles,” he told an audience at the PLA Daily in 2015. Like the rest of state media, Worker’s Daily has rolled out a news app and accounts on everyday Chinese apps like Douyin, posting videos of heart-warming stories about the toils of modern blue-collar workers across the country.

A Tattle Page for Taiwan

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China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (國務院台灣事務辦公室), a ministerial-level agency focused on pressing China’s territorial claims and often involved in disinformation campaigns targeting Taiwan, launched a new website column on March 26, 2025, encouraging people to report “Taiwan independence” (台獨) activities. Later the same afternoon, Chinese state media reported that the snitch page — essentially an attempt at participatory propaganda — had received 323 reports from the public, including accusations against Liu Shih-fang (劉世芳), Taiwan’s interior minister, and a number of legislators for the country’s Democratic Progressive Party.

According to a report by Taiwan’s United Daily News (UDN), Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher Chen Guiqing (陳桂清) warned that “Taiwan independence thugs” would face the mainland’s “powerful anti-independence punch” while criticizing President Lai’s actions as promoting “anti-Chinese sentiment.”