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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Onlineis 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.
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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.
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.
Speculation about Xi Jinping’s waning influence intensified late last month following news of his planned absence from this week’s BRICS summit in Rio, on top of reports suggesting his presence in China’s state-run media has declined. Willy Wo-Lap Lam at the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief noted that “citations of Xi’s name have become thinner and thinner in authoritative official media,” raising questions about potential leadership changes as China approaches its next Party congress.
However, our analysis of front-page headlines in the Party’s official People’s Daily challenges this narrative. Comparing the second quarters of 2024 and 2025, we found that Xi appeared in headlines 177 times versus 157 times respectively — a modest decline likely explained by incomplete June 2025 data. More significantly, Premier Li Qiang, Xi’s closest competitor, showed virtually no change with 45 appearances in 2024 and 43 in 2025.
While these headline counts cannot capture insider dynamics or leadership effectiveness, they hardly suggest a power shift in the Party’s most important publication. Xi’s dominance in China’s authoritative media remains intact — contradicting speculation about his declining grip on power. The data suggests China’s most powerful leader in generations continues to command overwhelming media attention. Read more on this at the China Media Project website.
The World Journal (世界日報), a Chinese-language outlet with online and print editions across the United States, reported that graduating Harvard University student Yurong “Luanna” Jiang (蔣雨融), who is from China, received polarized reactions to her graduation address at the Ivy League institution. While some Chinese netizens praised the “international vision” shown in Jiang’s speech — titled “Safeguarding Our Humanity” — others criticized her message as a false story of inspiration for ordinary families. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Jiang’s background was scrutinized after her speech went viral in China. Netizens found that she is the daughter of Jiang Zhiming (蔣志明), executive director of the Chinese state-backed environmental organization China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (中國生物多樣性保護與綠色發展基金會). Given Harvard’s annual tuition and living costs would demand around 700,000-800,000 yuan, or between 96,000 and 110,000 dollars, they questioned Jiang’s claim to have come from an “ordinary” family and suggested — without proof, mind you — that her admission may have benefited from elite connections. Over on his Substack account, the exiled Hong Kong activist Nathan Law Kwun-chung (羅冠聰) noted Jiang’s used in her speech of the words “shared future” in close proximity to the word “humanity” — suggesting possible echoes of one of Xi Jinping’s core foreign policy concepts.
