Welcome back to Lingua Sinica.
I hope you all enjoyed a restful and peaceful Mid-Autumn Festival. The holiday is traditionally a time for family reunions and for mooncakes. In Hong Kong, it’s also a celebration of brightly colored lanterns in the parks. And here in Taipei, it’s all about outdoor barbecue — anywhere, and just about everywhere.
But for the social media team at the People’s Daily on Monday, the Moon Festival — as it can also be called — was about Xi Jinping. That’s right, there is always a way to keep China’s top leader at the center of the frame (see REDLINES below). This edition brings more substantial stories too — including new restrictions on public and media access to Hong Kong property records, a troubling media scandal in Taiwan involving the head of a political party and a journalist from the country’s official news agency, and a surprisingly critical choice this week by a Chinese-language paper in the Philippines with generally close China affiliations.
I also want to highlight once again the importance of our Lingua Sinica database, where our monitoring of PRC media engagement activities globally is consistently turning up important — and often untold — stories in China’s global push for influence. One case in point from the past week: Scooper News. Read on to learn more.
Enjoy.
David L. Bandurski
CMP Executive Director
CHAIN REACTIONS
China’s App for Africa
The scoop on Scooper News, one of the most important African news apps you’ve probably never heard of.
As the Lingua Sinica team logged a recent cultural exchange with Africa into our database last week, one media partner in particular — a news app — grabbed our attention. The exchange concerned a deal between the Ugandan government-controlled Vision Group and Beijing’s municipal television authority to distribute Chinese dramas. Apparently smoothed along by the Chinese Embassy in Uganda, the deal included the distribution of Beijing-produced content through Scooper News.
What is Scooper? The news and entertainment app was launched in 2019 by Chinese smartphone maker Transsion Holdings, a technology leader in global emerging markets. Scooper aggregates trending news, videos, and entertainment tailored for users in Africa and elsewhere in the Global South — along with news from state outlets like China Daily and Xinhua News Agency.
With 50 million monthly active users across Africa, Scooper News could be one of China’s biggest success stories when it comes to worldwide distribution and impact for a media product. Created by Transsion subsidiary Transbyte, the app claims more than 300 global media partners, including India’s Daily Post, Nigeria’s This Day, and Kenya’s Mediamax. Scooper News is usable and attractive in ways most top-down state efforts at external communication (國際傳播) can only dream of.
We’ve flagged this fascinating story, and plan to delve deeper into the app and Transsion founder George Zhu (竺兆江) — “Africa’s Mobile King” (非洲手機之王) — in a future report. For more on this story and its linked entities, visit the Lingua Sinica website.
CONTROVERSIES
Political Pulparrazzi
Allegations of collusion between a political party chairman and a journalist working for Taiwan’s state news agency trigger resignations, criminal charges, and the closure of a media outlet.
Late last month, Taiwan’s Mirror Daily (鏡報) revealed that Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), the chairman of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) — the country’s third-largest party in the Legislative Yuan — had since 2021 organized a paparazzi network to follow political figures, including ruling-party politicians, in search of dirt. At the center of the scandal was journalist Hsieh Hsing-en (謝幸恩), who allegedly served as a ghostwriter and paparazzi recruiter for Huang — first while holding a business card from the online outlet RWnews (菱傳媒), and later while employed full-time by the state-run CNA (中央社). Hsieh published stories favorable to Huang on the financial news site Taiwan People News (民報) under the pen name Hsiao Yiyi (蕭依依).
Following the revelations, and before CNA’s internal investigation had concluded, Hsieh announced her resignation in a letter whose expressed Fourth Estate ideals starkly contrasted with the conduct described in news reports. “I deeply believe that the media’s pen should be fearless of power and unafraid of storms, serving as an important force in democratic society to supervise authority,” Hsieh wrote.
CNA’s president responded to the scandal by saying the agency had received complaints two years earlier but lacked sufficient evidence to act. The agency has filed breach of trust charges against Hsieh, stating that her actions have “seriously damaged” its reputation. RWnews, which had provided Hsieh with business cards — something often necessary to access reporting events in Taiwan — announced its shutdown immediately after its president admitted collaborating with Huang. This was apparently a decision by Taiwan Steel Group, which purchased the outlet two years ago.
SPOTLIGHT
Sources in Arms
In a crackdown earlier this year that sent ripples through China’s popular online gay erotica scene, known as “Boys’ Love” fiction, or BL, police engaged in cross-border “remote fishing” (遠洋捕撈) operations that swept up mostly female writers publishing on a Taiwan-based platform called Haitang Literature City (海棠文化線上文學城).
Yesterday, our Chinese-language sister publication Tian Jian (田間) published an in-depth account based on the experiences of Chinese journalists who worked against the odds to break the media silence. The reporters encountered numerous obstacles, including sources too frightened to speak, editors rejecting story pitches (because Haitang’s servers were in Taiwan), and the constant fear of becoming targets themselves. Despite the risk, the journalists affirmed the importance of the work — and the closeness that can develop with sources. “When you do sensitive reporting, it’s very special,” one reporter told Tian Jian. “It’s like [journalists and sources are] engaged in battle side-by-side, strategizing together about how to keep everyone safe.”
Read the full story HERE.
“When you do sensitive reporting, it’s very special. It’s like [journalists and sources are] engaged in battle side-by-side, strategizing together about how to keep everyone safe.”
「在日常新聞報導中，媒體代表的公共利益與採訪對象的個人利益經常有衝突，但在做敏感議題報導時很特殊，它有點像我們一起完成一個戰鬥，一起想怎麼保護好自己。」
TRACKING CONTROL
Alibaba’s AI Bias Problem
A test of the Chinese tech giant’s leading language model reveals that in some cases, English-language answers are more guided by the leadership’s priorities than Chinese ones.
Are Chinese-made AI models more likely to censor Chinese-language queries? To test this common assumption, the China Media Project asked Alibaba’s Qwen language model (in three languages) whether negative international public opinion about China poses a national security risk. Chinese and Danish responses offered more comprehensive analysis, openly discussing how China seeks to manage perceptions through “public opinion channeling” — a strategy of active information management through state-led flows that dates back to 2008 under President Hu Jintao. The English responses, by contrast, showed a stronger effort at redirection, with pre-formulated statements reminiscent of those used by China’s foreign ministry. “Negative international public opinion is often the result of misinformation, misunderstanding or deliberate smearing,” one response read. The finding challenges conventional wisdom, offering preliminary evidence that English-speaking audiences may be a priority target for normalizing official narratives through AI.
Read the full story at the China Media Project.
SHORT STORIES
| Hong Kong |
Promotion Unlocked
Sun Shangwu (孫尚武), deputy editor of the state-run China Daily (中國日報) newspaper, will become deputy director of China’s central government Liaison Office (中聯辦) in Hong Kong, according to a report by Hong Kong’s Sing Tao Daily. The 56-year-old Sun, the paper reported, has “extensive foreign propaganda experience” (外宣經驗豐富) and will oversee external communication work for the office, which also closely controls such outlets as the Ta Kung Pao (大公報). This “extensive” experience is an apparent reference to Sun’s launch in 2021 of China Daily’s “Media Unlocked” (起底) studio, a combative social media brand that claims to produce “investigative documentaries” (调查纪录片) but more often peddles outright disinformation targeting critics of China in the West. “Media Unlocked” recently launched a personal attack on Simon Fraser University’s Darren Byler, who has criticized internment camps in Xinjiang.
Registry Restrictions
Hong Kong’s Legislative Council has passed a land registry reform bill that will restrict public access to property records in the territory. Under the new rules, only “designated persons” — lawyers, accountants, surveyors, and former property owners — will be able to access the registry, while journalists will be explicitly excluded. In an op-ed published yesterday by HK01, lawmaker Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) warned the restrictions would “severely undermine press freedom and the public’s right to oversight.” Past investigative reports exposing land scandals and official misconduct relied heavily on land registry searches. Tik called on the government to include media workers among designated persons and establish exceptions for public interest inquiries.
Mainly Incorrect
Hong Kong’s Legislative Council Secretariat, the administrative body supporting lawmakers, informed members last week that the English term “Chinese Mainland” (中國內地) must now replace past references to “Mainland China” under orders from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs — a clear effort to foreground PRC sovereignty. Pro-Beijing Executive Council member Ronny Tong Ka-wah (湯家驊) voiced support for the move, praising the Foreign Ministry for its “painstaking care” in clarifying proper terminology. He argued that “Mainland China” implies there are multiple Chinas.
| Taiwan |
Justice Arrives Late
Hong Kong outlet CRNTT (中評社) issued a public apology to Taiwanese director Lo Ging-zim (羅景壬), one of the creators of the recently popular political thriller series Zero Day Attack (零日攻擊), after it labelled him as a “corruption defendant” in an August news report. Lo filed a defamation lawsuit against CRNTT last month, after which the agency removed the article and issued an apology, admitting to “editorial negligence” (編輯部疏失). The false claim followed a smear campaign led by Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang (KMT) Party that falsely alleged Lo’s team had received government funds and then failed to fulfill the terms of a contract. Company records in Hong Kong show that CRNTT is linked to the official China News Service, under the CCP’s United Front Work Department. Lo noted in a Facebook post after the apology that misinformation spreads instantly while “justice, no matter how swift, can only arrive late” (哪怕正義再快，也只能遲到).
Disaster Distorted
The overflow of barrier lake in Hualien County on Taiwan’s central east coast amid heavy rain last month left at least 18 dead and six missing. In the wake of the disaster, cable news outlets TVBS and EBC edited the remarks of some local residents to make it seem they were attacking Taiwan’s vice president, Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴). This prompted affected families to issue online statements expressing frustration over the misleading coverage. “We are a simple family impacted by the disaster,“ read a statement on Threads from the daughter of one woman appearing in the reports. “We have not taken any political position, and even more do not wish to be exploited as tools for political manipulation.”
| Philippines |
Breaking Ranks
The long-established Filipino Chinese newspaper Chinese Commercial News (菲律賓商報) devoted substantial coverage in its October 7 print edition to a Reuters investigation published on Monday alleging China hired a Manila-based marketing company to conduct information operations in the Philippines. The report detailed how InfinitUs Marketing Solutions allegedly used fake social media accounts to undermine support for President Marcos’s pro-U.S. policies and weaken the Philippines-U.S. security alliance. The newspaper’s prominent treatment of the story is notable given that it is generally seen as China-leaning and lists the Chinese embassy, China News Service, and other official Chinese media as “friendly links” on its website.
For more on the Chinese Commercial News and other media and related stories in the Philippines, use the Lingua Sinica database.