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Tag: Xi Jinping

The Great Broadcasting Retreat

Written by Dalia Parete on . Posted in Features and Analysis. No Comments on The Great Broadcasting Retreat

Sometimes “streamlining” is just another name for deep and painful attrition. Over the past two years, this and other euphemisms — like “optimization” and “transformation” — have swept like a wildfire across China’s local broadcast sector. Taken together, they tell a simple story about the rapid contraction of local television and radio under a barrage of cost-cutting directives from the central government. The goal is two-fold: cutting costs, and shifting resources toward newer forms of digital production — part of a broader rebuilding of China’s media infrastructure that the China Media Project has called “Centralization+.”

Announcing the closure of two of its local channels this month, the top state-run broadcasting group in the municipality of Chongqing spoke of “optimizing and integrating media resources” and “adapting to new trends in media convergence.” In practice, this meant shutting down channels the government considers redundant and shifting resources — money, staff, and content — away from traditional broadcast and onto the internet and digital products. The announcement, released by China’s main broadcasting authority, SARFT, makes clear that Chongqing is following directives from the government and national work conferences. This isn’t a local editorial choice but a centrally directed plan.

Chongqing is not an isolated case. It is part of a nationwide wave of broadcast closures that has been accelerating since 2023, when SARFT launched its campaign to “streamline and specialize” China’s radio and television landscape. According to the Chinese industry tracker website Shexiangren Wang (摄像人网), at least 51 TV channels were shut down across China in 2024, and in 2025 that number jumped to at least 75, hitting provincial-level broadcasters in Shanghai, Gansu, Shaanxi, Jiangxi, Xinjiang, and Hunan, among others. Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province, became the first provincial capital in the country to be reduced to a single television channel in 2025. A separate report from SARFT’s research center confirmed that 79 channels and frequencies were formally eliminated in 2024.

Part of the story is how uncompetitive local channels have become, owing both to technological change and to institutional inertia: CCP-run media tend to be inflexible and formulaic, shaped by the bureaucratic structures that govern them. Shexiangren Wang notes that education channels offered little beyond policy meetings. TV shopping, with its long-duration pitches and infrequent purchases, could not match the speed and scale of e-commerce — what Shexiangren Wang called the “short, fast, and flat” model of online retail. Movie and drama channels, meanwhile, were stuck with aging content and shrinking advertising revenue. The closures have targeted public channels, education channels, shopping channels, and movie and drama channels — categories the government considers redundant or uncompetitive with internet platforms, all outpaced by digital offerings delivering the same content faster and on demand.

The campaign of attrition at local broadcasters does not seem to be slowing down. The Shexiangren Wang report indicates that Guangdong, Sichuan, and Shenzhen are all expected to close or merge additional channels in 2026. The broader pattern is clear: the government is shrinking traditional broadcast — meaning fewer channels and fewer editorial voices — while redirecting money, talent, and content toward digital offerings.

Local Television Channel Closures in 2025
Over the past year, at least 75 channels shut down across 57 cities, as Beijing pushes to consolidate the country’s sprawling state media system and cut costs at the local level.

Rather than a simple retreat from broadcast, the closures reflect a deliberate reorientation. The Chongqing announcement calls on the group to “fortify the main position of internet communication” (筑牢互联网传播主阵地) — language drawn from a broader Party framework that treats media platforms as ideological territory to be held and defended. It also calls for “systematically transforming mainstream media” (推进主流媒体系统性变革) — a phrase that carries specific weight in the Chinese context, where “mainstream media” refers to Party-run outlets tasked with setting the public agenda and shaping opinion.

The imperative is to remake those outlets into something citizens will actually use. That is a hard sell in a media landscape dominated by platforms like Bilibili, a video site built on user-generated entertainment, and Xiaohongshu, known outside China as RedNote, a lifestyle and social commerce platform where hundreds of millions of users go for content that is personal, playful, and not entirely oriented around the ideological goals of the party-state. A 2025 People’s Daily article used the same language to describe Party media’s role as the frontline of ideological control, calling on state outlets to “advance onto the internet main battlefield” (挺进互联网主战场) as a “main force” (主力军).

Rather than a simple retreat from broadcast, the closures reflect a deliberate reorientation.

While real success in the media market will likely remain a challenge, the authorities seem encouraged by the numbers for new state-led digital offerings. Provincial state media app downloads grew by an average of nearly 35 percent in 2024 — 34.9 percent in downloads and 45.2 percent in registered users — according to SARFT’s research center’s annual report. Platforms like Mango TV (芒果TV), a video streaming platform under the state-run Hunan Broadcasting System; Elephant News (大象新闻), an app-based news product from Henan’s provincial broadcaster; and Touch News (触电新闻), the digital product from Guangdong’s provincial broadcaster, each crossed 100 million downloads, with 28 provincial apps surpassing 10 million.

The closures and the digital push are, in the end, two sides of the same coin: a leaner broadcast sector that costs less to maintain, and a rebuilt online presence the Party hopes will keep it not just relevant, but dominant, where the public’s attention has shifted.

One issue conspicuously absent from the official framing of these closures is what happens to the people who worked there. The announcements speak of “optimizing resources,” but say nothing about how employees at Chongqing Economic Radio or the Fashion Shopping Channel — the outlets impacted by the most recent restructuring in Chongqing — might have been affected. Precise figures on job losses across the sector are difficult to come by. Official announcements are silent on the question, and broadcasters do not typically publish staff counts. The data that does exist points in one direction. Beijing’s broadcast sector alone shed more than 2,600 jobs in 2024, according to an annual statistical report from its city-level broadcast authority. The nationwide toll, across more than 125 channels closed in 2024 and 2025, is almost certainly substantial.

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To learn more about the trend of local “media convergence” in China and the remaking of the infrastructure of “international communication” (国际传播), or “external propaganda” (外宣), download our CENTRALIZATION+ paper below, produced with funding from the Swedish Psychological Defense Agency (MPF).

Centralization-2Download

Xi Jinping: A Year in the Headlines

Written by Alex Colville on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on Xi Jinping: A Year in the Headlines

Last year, an apparent drop in the frequency of appearances by President Xi Jinping in the state media — alongside cancelled participation in international gatherings such as the BRICS summit — invited speculation that China’s strongman was losing his grip on power. Closely observing the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily newspaper, we argued last July that these shifts were overstated. It was just too early to tell.

The headline results for 2025 are now in. So what observations can we now make about the standing of China’s top leader?

Before we jump into the analysis, it’s important to note again for those less familiar with CCP-run media that the People’s Daily is a constrained and consensus-based Party flagship paper with a high level of consistency in terms of pages and text density over its history — with highly formalized and repetitive language (more on that below). This is a key reason why the paper, a political signalling platform rather than a space for news or discussion, lends itself to frequency analysis.

The Center Holds

First off, we saw no change in the decisiveness of Xi-centric discourse, nor did we see any rising challenges from other members of the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) — an important indicator of shifts at the top. In the full year 2025, Xi Jinping appeared in close to 600 headlines in the People’s Daily, more than three times the number of headlines logged by China’s premier, Li Qiang (李强), the country’s second ranking party official.

At no point during the past year did this performance gap narrow in the flagship paper. Xi’s lead remained commanding, as it has done throughout his tenure. As readers can see from the graph below, the performance of all PSC members remained steady in 2025, with moderate declines for both Li Qiang and Zhao Leji (as well as Li Xi) against 2024 levels.

You may notice that above we referred to Xi-centric discourse rather than Xi-centric “coverage.” This is an important distinction, and critical to understanding how CCP media operate within China’s political and media systems. The articles in the People’s Daily do not just “cover” events on the political calendar in the same way that media elsewhere in the world do.

While coverage in a Western newspaper of a political leader’s attendance of a major diplomatic summit would warrant perhaps one report around key issues and points of relevance — with perhaps separate op-eds that reflect independent viewpoints — in China’s system of power signalling it results in a separate article for each diplomatic exchange that resulted. Consequently, a front page during a busy period for Chinese diplomacy can sometimes feel like a Xi Jinping identity parade.

During a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in August last year, the People’s Daily ran a front-page article for each head of state with whom Xi met.

Why is this ridiculousness necessary?

The Politics of Repetition

In the political system operated by the CCP, repetition is a crucial form of signaling and demonstrating power. This is an absolutely essential part of the People’s Daily’s role. Repetition is a basic way to instill the “main line” (主线) and ensure that the CCP media, as “mouthpieces” (喉舌) of the Party, are the “weathervanes” (风向标) pointing the political direction. This is why six handshakes at a single diplomatic summit become six distinct reports on the paper’s front page.

Understanding the political role of repetition also helps us contextualize another important observation from our 2025 numbers — the fact that headline mentions of Xi Jinping, while decisively in the lead, are also notably down.

When we look at headline appearances for members of the PSC (above), as well as front-page image counts (below), we can see that Xi had seen a notable decrease in appearances on both counts.

What does this mean?

In our analysis back in July last year, we noted that headline counts and images closely follow calendar events, and that over time the total counts can balance out. In other words, Xi’s counts may seem down in July, but then surge in August or October with a busy calendar or a concerted campaign of messaging around events such as Party plenums. Now, with all the data for 2025 accounted for, we can see that this downward trend was no error.

Headline mentions of Xi Jinping, while decisively in the lead, are also notably down.

It is true that Xi made fewer headline appearances this past year in the People’s Daily than in the two years previous. How dramatic was the shift? Xi’s appearances saw an overall drop of 21 percent in 2025. It was a similar story in image counts, where there was a 19 percent drop from the preceding two years. That is not negligible. And yet, as we said at the outset, name checks in front-page headlines for other PSC members remained uniform across all of these years — and far below the soaring heights enjoyed by Xi.

Does this quantitative drop signal a power drain?

While there is always room for error in the perilous business of CCP gazing, the broader context of People’s Daily signaling cautions against over-interpreting this decrease in frequency. First of all, we see continued wall-to-wall “coverage” — again, this is repetition and signalling — of Xi in People’s Daily, combined with a lack of any real challenger. This indicates that he is decisively in control of the narrative, and certainly that he remains the “core” (核心).

Secondly, there are other ways, beyond imperiled leadership, to understand these numbers. One possibility is a general drop in the number of global trips Xi made in 2025. As reporters and analysts have noted, Xi has delegated appearances at major international summits to his premier, Li Qiang. Skipping some of these summits naturally lessened Xi’s 2025 tally — which is to say that it lessened instances not just of “coverage,” but of repetition.

For those tempted to read too much into those absences, it’s important to note that Li’s attendance of these summits in particular did not drive a corresponding increase in article and image numbers for the premier. This is not because those events were not covered, but because they were not repeated like incessant drum beats to promote the leadership core.

The repetition that to most of us appears senseless, and even ridiculous, is a privilege enjoyed only by the man at the apex.

As we enter 2026 and Xi Jinping edges another year closer to the next Party Congress (2027), China’s repetition complex is something to carefully observe. Will the downward trend in his numbers continue? Only time will tell if there is real strength in Xi’s numbers.

Spare Words Win Wars

Written by LS Staff on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on Spare Words Win Wars

On many or even most days, the front page of the People’s Liberation Army Daily (解放軍報), the flagship newspaper of China’s top military leadership body, the Central Military Commission (CMC), is a mirror of the Party’s People’s Daily. But on Monday this week one of the most prominent pieces was an oddly unique report about — would you believe it? — how “proper writing wins battles.”

No, this was not an argument about information warfare (which the PLA pursues actively), and certainly not about how the pen is mightier than the sword. This was a message from the PLA leadership about the need to cut down on bureaucratic jargon, lest it have real consequences on the battlefield. What we can glean from this cautionary article is that official verbosity — a byproduct of China’s highly politicized military and leadership apparatus — is a genuine concern within the upper ranks.

The commentary promotes improved “writing styles and speaking styles” (文风话风) within the military, and argues that clear, concise communication directly impacts military effectiveness. To support its case, the piece claims that Communist military orders during the Civil War were terse compared to verbose Nationalist communications. While noting the problem as a general concern, the piece praises certain PLA units for adopting “concise, practical and new” (短实新) directives, with one unit limiting command documents to a single page and cutting message processing time by 50 percent. These examples demonstrate, the piece argues, that “proper writing and speaking styles can win battles” (好的文风好话风能够打胜仗).

The piece traces a direct lineage from Mao Zedong’s 1942 “Oppose Party Formalism” (反对党八股) speech in Yan’an — which attacked bureaucratic jargon using folksy language — to Xi Jinping’s 2012 “Eight-Point Regulation” (八项规定) that sought to curb official rhetoric. But this may be a losing battle. After all, specialized political jargon, which gives rise to verbosity and ritualistic repetition, is hardwired into the system.

“The style of our writing is the style of our troops; the efficiency of our language is the efficiency of our combat. The battlefield has no room for niceties and nonsense — a few wasted words, a single wasted minute, could mean more bloodshed and sacrifice.”

Molding the Message

Written by Dalia Parete on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on Molding the Message

In many countries, training the next generation of journalists means fostering the skills needed to go after the story and report in the public interest — serving the needs of the audience. In China, where media work is defined by the ruling Communist Party as essential to maintaining regime stability, journalism education takes a fundamentally different path. The profession exists not to hold power accountable, but to serve what Xi Jinping calls “the Party’s news and public opinion work” (党的新闻舆论工作).

That reality was on full display on October 11, 2025, when journalists, university representatives, and officials from the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department, the Ministry of Education, and the All-China Journalists Association (ACJA) convened in Beijing for the 2025 edition of the “China Journalism and Communication Forum” (中国新闻传播大讲堂). The ACJA, though ostensibly a “non-governmental organization,” in fact serves as an important layer of media control, regularly taking charge of training and licensing journalists to ensure compliance with the Party’s objectives.

Held every year running since 2020 — even through the years of Covid-19 lockdown, a sign of its critical nature — the journalism and communication forum serves as a key mechanism for synchronizing state media practices with academic training, ensuring that Party control over journalism flows seamlessly from classroom to newsroom. It functions as an annual training exercise, reinforcing the reporting frameworks that journalists and educators must follow to serve Party objectives. While the mandate to serve the Party has always been at the heart of media under the CCP, Xi Jinping has strongly reiterated the principle, telling media in February 2016 that they must be “surnamed Party” (必须姓党).

Marxist View of Journalism Definition
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Marxist View of Journalism
马克思主义新闻观
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The “Marxist View of Journalism” is a shifting set of ideas that prescribe and justify the Chinese Communist Party’s dominance of the news media and application of controls on information. The concept defines journalism in China as fundamentally distinct from Western journalism, particularly rejecting the notion of the press as a fourth estate. At its core, it means that the CCP must and will control the media profession in order to maintain control over public opinion and maintain its hold on power. The concept is central to the training and licensing of journalists in China.

Since launching in 2020, the forum’s themes have consistently focused on news gathering standards and international communication — a crucial topic as China seeks to enhance its global media influence — and, since last year, the integration of artificial intelligence into journalism practice. Over the past six years, the forum has invited 199 news workers to deliver lectures, according to a read-out this week from the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA), the official government press and publication regulator that is in fact the same body as the Party’s Propaganda Department. Successive forums have produced 192 long-form video courses and 500 short video courses that have, according to the NPPA, reached more than 200,000 journalism students and faculty at over 700 universities nationwide.

Held over the weekend at the Communication University of China (CUC), this year’s forum brought together 32 lead instructors from 22 news organizations, and was attended by representatives from 11 universities. But beyond skills-based capacity building, the focus is on fostering what the leadership calls the “Marxist View of Journalism” (马克思主义新闻观), which justifies CCP control of media to maintain social and political stability.

The theme of this year’s forum was not truth-telling, or how media can remain sustainable amid competition from digital platforms and social media, or any of the topics generally found at journalism-related events worldwide. It was “New Thought Leads the New Journey: Journalists’ Adherence to Principle and Innovation” (新思想引领新征程：记者的守正与创新). “Thought” in this context was a reference to “Xi Jinping Thought,” the ruling ideology of the country’s top leader. “Adherence to principle,” meanwhile, was about remaining true to Party orthodoxy. And “innovation”? This was simply the idea that media must adapt their methods and their models — even as they are, as ever, ideologically tethered to the Party.

Whitelist Wipeout

Written by Tian Jian on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on Whitelist Wipeout

Last month, China’s top internet control body, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) released its latest “whitelist” of approved news sources from which internet platforms are legally permitted to repost news content — a system that has become a cornerstone of information control under Xi Jinping. Journalists over at our Chinese-language sister publication Tian Jian (田間) combed through the list last week to compare it with the 2021 version of the roster. What did they find?

The most noteworthy change was the omission of a more outspoken news outlet, Sanlian Life Weekly (三聯生活周刊), a respected news magazine that had recently published sensitive investigative reports, including coverage of Beijing flooding and a rare story about cross-regional arrests. Both stories were subsequently deleted from Chinese internet platforms.

The scrubbing of Sanlian from the roster echoes the 2021 removal of Caixin Media, another respected outlet that has struggled over the past decade to maintain professional space. The updated 2025 list grew from 1,358 to 1,459 approved sources, with most additions being local government platforms — likely reflecting Beijing’s strategy to strengthen propaganda capabilities at the local level. Guangdong province alone added 59 new government-affiliated outlets.

A Parade of Revisions

Written by LS Staff on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on A Parade of Revisions

China’s 80th anniversary military parade last week showcased more than advanced weaponry — it culminated weeks of historical reframing aimed at repositioning the CCP as the decisive force in World War II’s Pacific theater. Through state outlets like China Youth Daily and the Ministry of State Security-linked American Academy (美国研究所), Beijing promoted narratives claiming the CCP served as the “backbone” (中流砥柱) of resistance, years before America’s “belated” Pearl Harbor entry.

PLA soldiers march in the 2015 parade in Beijing to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. SOURCE: Wikimedia Commons.

The campaign accused American historians of deliberately downplaying China’s role for “political advantage,” claiming US academia systematically ignored how Chinese forces “tied down Japanese military strength” while America remained absent. This reframing serves Xi Jinping’s broader goal of displacing American global leadership and creating “a new type of international relations” by rewriting foundational narratives of the current world order.

For more on this story visit the China Media Project.

A Short-Lived Longevity Chat

Written by LS Staff on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on A Short-Lived Longevity Chat

Last Friday, the Reuters news agency withdrew from global circulation a four-minute hot-mic video that had shown Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin leaning close and exchanging odd small talk about human longevity and organ transplantation.

A screenshot of New York Times coverage of the hot-mic discussion, which made thousands of media worldwide.

Captured during Beijing’s military parade on September 3, the open-mic exchange was initially distributed by China Central Television (CCTV), the country’s state-run broadcaster, which had exclusive broadcasting access to visiting leaders. CCTV apparently had not considered that off-the-cuff conversations — including Putin and Xi discussing the possibility of humans living to 150 years through biotechnology and organ transplants — might be captured and become news. Within 24 hours of the release of the Reuters version of the video, the exchange had been picked up by more than 1,000 global media clients and had gone viral on social media.

On Friday, the legal team at CCTV accused Reuters of “misrepresenting facts” in its editorial treatment of the footage, and withdrew permission to distribute the video. Reuters responded by defending its accuracy, but nevertheless complied with the state-run broadcaster’s demands. The incident highlights China’s ability to control access to official events and to restrain global media narratives around topics it regards as sensitive — even retroactively removing content from international news organizations.

The Many Faces of the People’s Daily

Written by Bertie Lyhne Gold on . Posted in Features and Analysis. No Comments on The Many Faces of the People’s Daily

hink “state media” in China and you’re likely to conjure an image of the People’s Daily (人民日报). The daily newspaper, directly run by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee since 1948, prides itself on being the “mouthpiece” (喉舌) of the Party leadership. And a role this important demands regimentation and structure: a staid face to communicate the thoughts of the CCP core. 

But while it is the most representative of the Party leadership, the People’s Daily newspaper, first launched in 1946, is not the only face of this Party-run media group. The paper’s parent organization, the People’s Daily Press (人民日报社), is in fact a sprawling media empire. The group oversees a portfolio of 34 periodicals as well as a wide array of newer digital products. It runs a health magazine, a history journal, a newspaper for gearheads, and even the RV Times (房车时代), a periodical for recreational vehicle enthusiasts. 

The story of the group’s growth over the years is the story of the PRC media space as a whole, where commercialization and partial privatization were actively encouraged in the reform era, and where more recent developments have made it clear once again that the Party maintains ultimate control.

The People’s Daily on the day the People’s Republic of China was founded on October 1, 1949, and the PRC’s 70th anniversary in 2019.

A Fresh Wind Through Chinese Media

In the China of Chairman Mao Zedong, the People’s Daily was one of only a handful of officially sanctioned newspapers run by the CCP — known, fittingly, as “Party-papers” (党报) —  to cover the entirety of the newly founded People’s Republic of China. It adhered strictly to Mao’s notion of “politicians running the newspapers” (政治家办报), according to which any printed articles, particularly lead editorials (社论), had to be aligned with the interests of the Party. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (文化大革命) of 1966-1976, those interests were Mao’s personal political interests, and the chairman’s writings dominated the “two newspapers and one journal” (两报一刊) system, in which the three most influential PRC publications, including the People’s Daily, the People’s Liberation Army Daily and Red Flag journal, reigned supreme.  

In the early years of China’s reform and opening up under Deng Xiaoping (邓小平), the number of nationwide publications in China remained small for a country of its size. In 1979 there were just 69 “Party-papers” in print. This contrasts sharply with the latest figures from the National Press and Publication Administration (国家新闻出版署), or NPPA, an agency under the Party’s Central Propaganda Department that supervises print publications in China. The NPPA recorded 2,405 newspapers published in the country in 2023. 

An advertisement is the People’s Daily showcasing the many brands under the People’s Daily umbrella.

This number began its climb from two to four digits in the 1980s, as economic reforms brought a rethink of the role in the media. The term “news reform” (新闻改革) signaled a new openness, including an assessment from the leadership under Deng Xiaoping that the “falsehood, bluster and emptiness” (假大空)  of the media from the 1950s onward had to a large extent contributed to the chaos of the period, from the Great Famine through the Cultural Revolution.

Tragically, the push toward greater freedom of speech in the 1980s, seen in the launch of more reform-oriented newspapers like Shanghai’s World Economic Herald (世界经济导报), was brought to a brutal end by the Tiananmen Massacre of June 4, 1989. 

But by the mid-1990s, as economic reforms were reinvigorated and accelerated, the spirit of change again swept over the media in China. This era also saw significant liberalization in the industry, with the number of periodicals rising rapidly as a result. Publishing was never a free marketplace of ideas — government licenses remained necessary for any operation — but new voices did begin to emerge. More market-oriented “metro papers” (都市类报纸) served China’s rapidly urbanizing population, oriented around the consumer — of goods and information. The equation meant more readers, more sales, and more ad revenue, a new way for outlets to exist independent of state financial support, even as political ties to the system remained paramount. From time to time, these papers challenged the authorities by reporting more openly on corruption and other political and social issues. 

Even the People’s Daily joined the trend, launching its own metro newspaper, the Beijing Times (京华时报), in May 2001. In what has been called the “golden age for metro newspapers,” higher salaries and more comfortable working conditions made the Beijing Times and other commercial competitors attractive to a new generation of young journalists. According to a 2017 account, the “direct approach” and “sharp commentary” found at the Beijing Times in the 2000s made it “like a fresh wind sweeping through Beijing’s then-dull media market.”

Going Public with the People’s Internet

The rise of the internet in China after 1994 was another jolt for the media industry, even though it was heavily regulated from the start to ensure that news gathering remained in the hands of the Party.  Inside China, Chinese-language internet portal sites like Sohu.com, launched in 1996, and Sina.com, launched in 1998, could serve as content aggregators — reposting content from Party media and registered commercial spin-offs — but could not themselves maintain teams of journalists. But they revolutionized the consumption of information, even inviting discussion in the comment (跟帖) section underneath news articles. 

Contrasting reports from 2006 on corruption charges against the vice-mayor of Beijing illustrate the differences between Party papers and their commercial spin-offs. At left, the Beijing Times places the corruption story prominently on the front page. At right, the People’s Daily includes only a small note on page 4.

The People’s Daily was quick to follow suit, entering this space on January 1, 1997, with the launch of its online portal, People’s Daily Online, or renminwang (人民网). As the group’s “About Us” page explains, the emerging online space offered “unique advantages” including “communication value” (i.e., more interactivity) and “technological value.” Today, the official portal site continues to publish a digitized and downloadable version of the People’s Daily print edition, runs the Chinese Communist Party News Network (中国共产党新闻网), and moderates a “leader’s message board” (领导留言板). This last feature, which China’s government has cited as an example of democratic governance, claims to allow citizens to directly pose questions to officials or express their views, but in fact is little more than an officially curated comment service — serving to promote the idea of Party responsiveness rather than enable real accountability. 

People’s Daily Online is structured more like a conventional company. Listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange as People.cn Company Limited (人民网股份有限公司) since April 2012, it has its own investor relations page and publishes its annual returns, the latest of which boasts revenues of 2.1 billion RMB (290 million dollars). Like any other company’s annual reports, People.cn’s are replete with references to the firm’s profits. But unlike those of most publicly listed companies, their reports blend profit talk with performative loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. Investors are reminded, in the management analysis section, that the company strictly adheres to “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era.” Career openings at the company also list “loving the Party” and having “strong political integrity” as job requirements.

Building an Empire

But while the print edition of the People’s Daily falls directly under the CCP’s Central Committee, People’s Daily Online has a series of private buy-ins from investors that complicate its identity. The group’s annual reports reveal their top ten shareholders, compiled into the diagram below. Amongst others, the company’s biggest investors include state-owned investment bank CITIC Securities (中心证券), state-owned telecommunications giant China Mobile (中国移动通信), and the Hong Kong Securities Company (香港中央结算), wholly owned by the Hong Kong Exchange and Clearing Limited (HKEX) that runs the territory’s stock exchange. While the print edition is run unambiguously as part of the Party-state, its online counterpart retains some reform-era features of a legitimate digital news company — although just a little digging reveals that the Party-state is still firmly in control.

Screenshot

Combined with the shares held by the Global Times — a nationalistic tabloid wholly owned by the People’s Daily — the People’s Daily Press has a controlling 56.55 percent stake in People.cn. Even the apparently private minority buy-ins, however, are in fact different arms of the Party-state itself. Take, for example, China Asset Management (华夏基金), which holds 0.65 percent of People’s Daily Online shares and is registered under the State Council. Other investors like China United Network Communications Group (中国联合网络通信), or “China Unicom,” China Telecom (中国电信), and China Mobile Communications are all state-owned enterprises (SOEs) overseen by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, which is directly under the management of China’s central government. 

So how profitable is the People’s Daily Online? A 2019 article in the industry publication China Newspaper Industry (中国报业) summed up media developments over the previous year in China with a series of bearish keywords. The top three: “decline” (下滑), “loss” (流失), and “avalanche” (雪崩).

While the print edition of the People’s Daily falls directly under the CCP’s Central Committee, People’s Daily Online has a series of private buy-ins from investors that complicate its identity.

But People’s Daily Online doesn’t seem to be faring so poorly. Their 2019 Annual Report logged a 40 percent profit increase from the year before, and they kept growing the next year. Despite a pandemic slump, their profits are on the rise again. 

How the outlet manages to be so profitable, however, is not necessarily down to just newsstand sales, subscriptions, or advertising revenue.  In the United Kingdom, the People’s Daily Online’s London bureau (People’s Daily Online UK Limited) is based near Hyde Park’s famous Speakers’ Corner, a historic site for free speech and public debate — and famous, too, for having some of the most expensive real estate in the country. The latest financial statement for the UK bureau shows a loss of 2.8 million US dollars, offset only by the 3 million US dollars provided by its head office in Beijing. We have also documented this phenomenon at China Daily USA, where the stateside operations of the state-run newspaper are run at a considerable loss thanks to millions in direct funding from China Daily HQ.

The People’s Daily Online also runs Global Times Online (环球网), the digital edition of the nationalistic tabloid Global Times (环球时报). Ownership of the newspaper is split 60-40, respectively, between the People’s Daily Online and the Global Times Press (环球时报社) — the latter of which also sits directly under the CCP Central Committee. Haiwainet (海外网), the website of the overseas edition of the People’s Daily, is split along the same lines by the People’s Daily Online and the People’s Daily Press.

China Energy and Automobile Communication Group (中国能源汽车传播集团有限公司) is responsible for the People’s Daily’s stable of specialized trade publications (专业行业报). The Group is wholly owned by the People’s Daily Press — again, directly under the Central Committee. Its properties include China City News (中国城市报), a weekly bulletin aimed at “party and government leaders” involved in “urban planning, construction, and management,” as well as China Automotive News (中国汽车报), a print weekly and digital news outlet for fans of cars and engineering. 

One Voice, Many Channels

For most companies around the world, corporate social responsibility reports are used to demonstrate how the business has had a positive impact on society and the environments in which it operates. It is underpinned by the idea that for-profit institutions still have a responsibility to the broader community. The People’s Daily Press files its own “social responsibility reports”  (社会责任报告), but theirs have a distinctive twist: instead of demonstrating their philanthropic deeds, they are used to demonstrate their unwavering loyalty to the Communist Party.

In their latest report, they remind readers that the outlet  “strictly adheres to the principle of politicians running the newspapers” — the phrase that was first raised by Mao in the 1950s as he asserted his dominance over the media as a means of consolidating political power, and has since come back in vogue as Xi Jinping has similarly tightened controls on the media. This means that all of the group’s ventures are bound ultimately to the same basic principle: Party first, profit second. This is true whether they are app-based new media outlets like Visual World (视界), at right, sending state-produced video material straight to your mobile, AI text generation tools like “Easy Write” (写易), or just the dry, Xi-filled pages of the flagship People’s Daily newspaper.

Mao’s old phrase, applied in state media today to stake the CCP’s claim over emerging digital media, encompasses the enduring truth behind the many faces of the People’s Daily empire. While this media giant continues to transform through the process of Party-led commercialization that began in the reform era — seen in its diverse inventory of media properties — its core remains unchanged. It is still, in its own words, “the throat and tongue and eyes and ears of the CCP Central Committee.” The principle holds true whether it is reporting on the latest Party plenum or the latest make of luxury camper.

A Forum Fizzles

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on A Forum Fizzles

So the first Ministerial Meeting of China’s Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) didn’t top your news agenda? Despite the grandiose terms in which leaders have previously described this third initiative to signal the country’s global leadership in key areas — including also security (GSI) and development (GDI) — state media apparently made little effort to externally publicize what was meant to be its opening party of sorts. Just a smattering of English reports touted the gathering, which took place in Beijing on July 10 and 11. Serbia seemed the only nation to formally announce its participation as a diplomatic matter.

First introduced in March 2023, this initiative is built around a broader concept of “civilization” that Xi has trumpeted since the 20th National Congress of the CCP in October 2022 as a new grandiose concept to shore up his own domestic legitimacy [READ “China’s ‘Xivilizing’ Mission”]. So far, however, the GCI has been relatively understated as a foreign relations strategy. China’s leaders might have hoped to move it centerstage, but they seem not to have even preannounced the ministerial meeting.

Remarks shared by the Central Propaganda Department-run Guangming Daily on the GCI meeting from former Indonesian president Megawati Saekarnoputri.

Naturally, there was a bit of fuss about the meeting in the pages of the People’s Daily, where a congratulatory letter from Xi Jinping made the front page on July 11. In his message, Xi stressed that at this critical juncture in international affairs, civilizational dialogue must transcend isolation and conflict. According to state media, the event attracted more than 600 political, cultural and educational leaders from approximately 140 countries and regions. Among the participants, featured in a CCTV+ video that received a paltry 247 views, was “American Tai Chi practitioner Jake Pinnick,” who called for dialogue and cooperation.

Also emerging from the event was a global“action plan” (行动计划) for civilization. The plan shows a strong focus on developing nations in the Global South. More on that in due course.