Within mainland China, the newspaper targets primarilydiplomats, foreignexpatriates, tourists, and locals wishing to improve their English.[1] The China edition also offers program guides toRadio Beijing and television, daily exchange rates, and local entertainment schedules.[12] It has been used as a guide toChinese government policy and positions of theChinese Communist Party.[13][14] Scholar Falk Hartig describes the newspaper and its various international editions as an "instrument of China'spublic diplomacy."[1][15]
China Daily'seditorial policies have historically been described as slightly moreliberal than other Chinese state news outlets.[1][16][17] Its coverage of the1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre was overwhelmingly sympathetic to the student protests with many of its journalists joining in at the height of mass demonstrations.[18] The newspaper's coverage of the2002–2004 SARS outbreak was reported to be more critical, fact-driven, and less laudatory than that of thePeople's Daily.[19] A 2018discourse analysis fromUppsala University found that prior toXi Jinping's accession, manyChina Daily articles portrayed their government as a particular kind of democracy, with democratic ideals such as the implementation of universalsuffrage (in Hong Kong) and grassroots elections sometimes endorsed. After his accession, articles became more negative in tone toward democracy and shifted focus to portraying the "vices" of democracies in the West, particularly the United States.[20]
Scholars have describedChina Daily as effectively controlled by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party.[1][2][3] Ideologically, it tends to adopt similar perspectives to thePeople's Daily.[21] According to its 2014 annual report,China Daily is formally managed by theState Council Information Office (SCIO), which was formed from the Central Propaganda Department in 1991.[4][22] The SCIO holds regular meetings with journalists and editors fromChina Daily on what they should publish.[22] In 2014, the SCIO was absorbed into the CCP's Central Propaganda Department.[23] The SCIO has stated thatChina Daily is "one of our most important tools in carrying out external propaganda".[24]
A formercopy-editor (or "polisher" as termed atChina Daily) for the newspaper described her role being "to tweak propaganda enough that it read as English, without inadvertently triggering war."[25] Journalist Michael Ottey described his time working forChina Daily as "almost like working for a public relations firm" and added "it wasn't really honest journalism. It was more 'Let's make the Chinese government look good.'"[26] Writer Mitch Moxley, who worked atChina Daily from 2007 to 2008, wrote in 2013 that many of the articles published in the newspaper's opinion pages "violated everything [he] had ever learned aboutjournalistic ethics, includingChina Daily's own code: 'Factual, Honest, Fair, Complete.'"[27]
China Daily was officially established in June 1981 after a one-month trial.[28] It was initially led by Jiang Muyue, with Liu Zhunqi as editor in chief.[18] It was the first national daily English-language newspaper in China after the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949. Its initial circulation was 22,000, which grew to 65,000 by the following year.[28] The paper was a departure from other Chinese newspapers at the time: it was "aWestern-style paper", in content, style, and organizational structure.[28] By July 1982, the newspaper had plans to publish editions in the United States, the United Kingdom, and tentatively Australia.[28] Initially, it struggled to find English-speaking journalists.[28]
China Daily introduced anonline edition in 1996 and a Hong Kong edition in 1997.[30] By 2006, it had a reported circulation of 300,000, of which two thirds were in China and one third international.[18] In 2010, it launchedChina Daily Asia Weekly, atabloid-sized pan-Asian edition.[30]
In December 2012,China Daily launched an Africa edition, published inNairobi, the capital ofKenya.[31][32] This edition aimed expand theChina Daily readership, of both African people and Chinese people who live in Africa, and showcase China's interests in Africa.[32]
In 2015,China Daily published a fakeop-ed which the publication claimed was penned byPeter Hessler. They combined part of the transcript of an interview he had done with comments from another person interviewed as well as completely fabricated parts and ran it as an op-ed under Hessler's byline without his knowledge or permission.[33] The fabricated op-ed contained made up praise for China and misrepresented Hessler's own words by taking them out of context.[34][35] According to theAssociated Press, the editorial repeated Chinese Communist Party talking points andChina Daily refused to retract it although it subsequently removed the English language version of the op-ed.[36]
In 2018, the paper fabricated a quote by the mayor ofDavos, Switzerland, Tarzisius Caviezel.[37]
A January 2020 report byFreedom House, a U.S.non-governmental organization, noted thatChina Daily had increased its spending from $500,000 in the first half of 2009 to over $5 million in the latter half of 2019 for increased print runs.[38][39]China Daily said it had a circulation of 300,000 in the U.S. and 600,000 overseas.[39]
In June 2020,China Daily awarded a tender for a "foreign personnel analysis platform" to theCommunication University of China to scan social media and automatically flag "false statements and reports on China."[44]
In September 2020, India'sMinistry of External Affairs issued a statement saying that comments made byChina Daily were falsely attributed toAjit Doval.[45] In September 2023, the US Department of State accused the Chinese government ofinformation laundering by using a fictitious opinioncolumnist named "Yi Fan" writing inChina Daily and other outlets to present state narratives as "organic sentiment".[46][47][48]
In March 2025, U.S. congressional Republicans banned the distribution ofChina Daily onCapitol Hill.[52] The same month, UK members of Parliament requested a review of free delivery ofChina Daily to legislators.[53] In August 2025, the propaganda department of theShaanxi provincial CCP committee signed a cooperation agreement withChina Daily.[51]
In a 2004 journal article,University of Sheffield professor Lily Chen stated thatChina Daily was "essentially a publicly funded government mouthpiece".[54] Judy Polumbaum stated in theBerkshire Encyclopedia of China (2009) thatChina Daily "resists definition as a simple mouthpiece" and has a "distinctive, if quixotic, status".[18] In 2009,China Daily was called "the most influential English language national newspaper in China" according toUniversity of St. Thomas scholar Juan Li.[21] It is known for original reporting.[18] Non-governmental organizationReporters Without Borders has accusedChina Daily of engaging in censorship and propaganda.[55][56]
Media outlets such asThe New York Times,NPR,Quartz, andBuzzFeed News have published accounts ofChina Daily's dissemination ofdisinformation related to the2019–2020 Hong Kong protests.[59][60][61][62][63] In September 2019,China Daily's official Facebook account stated that Hong Kong protesters were planning on launching terrorist attacks on 11 September of the same year.[64][65]
In May 2020,CNN,Financial Times, and other media outlets reported thatChina Daily censored references to the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic from an opinion piece authored byEuropean Union ambassadors.[66][67][68][69] In January 2021,China Daily inaccurately attributed deaths in Norway to thePfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.[70] In April 2021, theEuropean External Action Service published a report that citedChina Daily and other state media outlets for "selective highlighting" of potential vaccine side-effects and "disregarding contextual information or ongoing research" to present Western vaccines as unsafe.[71][72] In October 2021, theGerman Marshall Fund reported thatChina Daily was one of several state media outlets propagating a conspiracy theory concerning theorigins of COVID-19.[73]
In January 2022,China Daily alleged that the U.S. planned to pay athletes to "sabotage" the2022 Winter Olympics.[74] In March 2022,China Daily published an article in Chinese[75] which falsely claimed that COVID-19 was created byModerna, citing a page onThe Exposé, a British conspiracist website.[76][77]
A 2019critical discourse analysis ofChina Daily's coverage ofChinese Muslims found them to be portrayed as "obedient and dependent Chinese citizens who benefit from the government's intervention."[78] In January 2021, aChina Daily article praised a report from theChinese Academy of Social Sciences, stating that government policies inXinjiang had "emancipated" the minds ofUyghur women so that they are "no longer baby-making machines".[79][80] The article drew condemnation as being a justification for reproductive policies whichpersecute Uyghur people,[81][82][83] and sparked calls forTwitter to remove links to the article.[84][85][86] Twitter removed a reposting of theChina Daily article by the PRC's official U.S. embassy account and subsequently suspended the account for contravening its stated policy against "dehumanization of a group of people".[87]
^ab"2014 Annual Report".State Institution Registration Authority (in Chinese). 1 June 2015. Archived fromthe original on 6 August 2016. Retrieved7 June 2016.
^Thurston, Anne F.; Turner-Gottschang, Karen; Reed, Linda A. (1994).China Bound: A Guide to Academic Life and Work in the PRC (Revised ed.). Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. p. 38.doi:10.17226/2111.ISBN978-0-309-04932-0.
^Heuvel, Jon Vanden;Dennis, Everette E. (1993).The Unfolding Lotus: East Asia's Changing Media: A Report of the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University in the City of New York. The Center. p. 33.OCLC623928917.
^"How the People's Republic of China Seeks to Reshape the Global Information Environment".United States Department of State. 28 September 2023.Archived from the original on 28 September 2023. Retrieved29 September 2023.PRC officials sometimes attribute relevant content to specific authors under false names, likely to conceal the PRC's role in producing it and falsely purporting to represent legitimate, organic sentiment in a given region. In addition, PRC officials are known in some cases to attribute such manufactured commentaries to 'international affairs commentators' and then use other individual, non-official accounts to promote these commentaries. As one example, the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) uses a manufactured persona named Yi Fan, often credited as a 'Beijing-based international affairs commentator,' to deceptively promote pro-Beijing views on a wide variety of topics and regions.
^"突发：英媒宣称，研究证实新冠病毒是美国公司制造" [BREAKING: British media claims that research confirms that the new coronavirus was made by a US company].China Daily (in Simplified Chinese). 24 March 2022.Archived from the original on 19 October 2022. Retrieved19 October 2022.
This list is incomplete. This list does not includeEnglish-language newspapers in Hong Kong, nor does it include Portuguese-language only newspapers in Macau. It does not include any newspapers in the current/post-Chinese Communist Revolution Republic of China area (Taiwan), nor in Taiwan under Japanese rule.
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