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Canada’s Last Chinese Daily Closes

Written by Mark Chiu on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on Canada’s Last Chinese Daily Closes

Ming Pao Canada (加拿大明報), which since 2022 has been the country’s only locally published Chinese-language daily, ran its final issue last week, ending more than three decades of operations. The closure leaves Canada and its estimated 1.7 million population of Chinese origin without a locally published Chinese-language daily newspaper. 

The closure is also a sign of the times, reflecting the accelerating collapse of print newspapers in Canada and right across the world. 

Citing the broader shift of news consumers to digital platforms, Ming Pao’s parent company, Media Chinese International Limited (世界華文媒體有限公司), reported that its North American operations had losses of 1.7 million US dollars in the third quarter of 2025 alone. The Malaysian conglomerate, founded in 1995 by timber tycoon Tiong Hiew King (張曉卿) — who passed away in November last year — reported after-tax losses of 8.5 million US dollars for its global operations in the year to March 31, 2025, with a 6 percent decline in advertising revenue.

Launched in Toronto in May 1993 and in Vancouver in October 1993, Ming Pao Canada arrived to serve the wave of Hong Kong immigrants fleeing the 1997 handover, with immigration peaking at over 44,000 in 1994 alone. The newspaper competed with rival Sing Tao Daily (星島日報) — another paper with Hong Kong roots — for three decades until Sing Tao ceased print operations in 2022, leaving Ming Pao as Canada’s sole locally published Chinese daily.

But the community that sustained Ming Pao was changing. By the 2000s, mainland Chinese migrants had overtaken Hong Kong as the largest source of Chinese immigration to Canada. These newer arrivals increasingly turned to digital platforms like WeChat for news and community connection, while younger Canadian-born Chinese preferred English-language media.

1994 staff photo of Ming Pao’s Western Canada edition editorial team. SOURCE: Singtao.

Lee Wai-Keung (李偉強), one of Ming Pao‘s earliest reporters who stayed for 24 years and rose to senior editorial director, witnessed firsthand how the paper’s workforce reflected changing immigration patterns. “We started by hiring Hong Kong immigrants from the 1990s,” he told Sing Tao (星島日報) in a lengthy online tribute to the closure. “Then came the ‘Hong Kong second generation’ born there but raised here, followed by mainland Chinese arrivals after 2010.” He described the closure as marking the end of an era dominated by Hong Kong immigrants in Canada’s Chinese community. 

Teresa Wat (屈潔冰), a member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia who served as Ming Pao‘s news director in 1996 during the paper’s fierce rivalry with Sing Tao, wept when she heard the news. “Ming Pao has been more than a newspaper,” she wrote on Instagram. “It helped newcomers navigate housing, employment, language barriers, and integration, and it brought an immigrant perspective to Canadian issues while challenging stereotypes.” A deliveryman who spent 26 years distributing copies of Ming Pao to newsstands and subscribers told Sing Tao he learned of the closure only days beforehand. On social media, readers organized a gathering at the newspaper’s Richmond headquarters to bid farewell together.

The final edition carried a front-page message: “All things that begin must end; every conclusion is complete.”  

A Taipei Girl in Beijing

Written by Dalia Parete on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on A Taipei Girl in Beijing

“She criticizes Taiwan, and this actually resonates with many young media friends in Taiwan.” So, with mendacity, began a June 11 profile of Taiwanese writer Guo Xueyun (郭雪筠) in Shanghai-based outlet The Paper (澎湃), coming two days after she published an essay in Guancha (觀察網), another of the city’s online outlets.

The coverage exemplifies China’s cultivation of sympathetic Taiwanese voices to support unification messaging. Writing under the byline “Taipei Girl Looks at Mainland China” (台北女孩看大陆), Guo has become a recurring fixture in China’s state-run and tightly controlled media, where only one narrative on Taiwan is accepted — that “unification” with China is inevitable, and the deepest desire of the population.

Born around 1990, Guo graduated from the advertising department at Taiwan’s Fu Jen University before moving to Beijing in 2012 for graduate studies at Peking University. Her generational perspective — contrasting Taiwan’s current struggles with China’s (much-mythologized) current prosperity — reinforces the state narrative that Taiwan would benefit from closer ties leading eventually to what China views as “unification,” and many Taiwanese view as annexation. In a 2018 interview with Beijing Youth Daily, she reflected on feeling both amazed and ashamed during her initial Beijing experience to discover that while Chinese typically saw the positive aspects of Taiwan, the reverse was not true.

Guo Xueyun, China’s not-so-secret weapon on Taiwan issues, on the lecture circuit. SOURCE: Tianjin University.

Guo’s transformation from struggling student to prominent author is of course also a story of concerted institutional backing. Her debut book, Taipei Girl Looks at Mainland China (台北女孩看大陸), was published in 2016 by People’s Literature Publishing House (人民文學出版社), controlled by China Publishing Group (中國出版集團有限公司) — a government company under the State Council. Her 2022 novel, I Am in Beijing (我在北京), was released through Jiuzhou Publishing House (九州出版社), a publisher directly controlled by the Taiwan Affairs Office (中共中央台灣工作辦公室), the CCP body that coordinates propaganda and messaging toward Taiwan.