Lingua Sinica Newsletter, 20 February
News, analysis, and commentary on Chinese-language media from the PRC and beyond.
Welcome back to Lingua Sinica.
It’s been two years since I began as Managing Editor of the China Media Project. Putting together these fortnightly newsletters has been one of my favorite parts of the job, so it’s with some sadness that I have to say this will be my last newsletter as CMP Managing Editor.
The China Media Project does amazing work monitoring and analyzing developments in the PRC media space, but getting Lingua Sinica off the ground and helping it get where it is today makes me feel a little like I’m saying goodbye to my baby. Applying CMP’s rigor to Chinese-language media outside of the mainland PRC has been a fascinating exercise and one with a lot of personal meaning, particularly as the media environment in Hong Kong has increasingly come to resemble that of the mainland and as diaspora and exile outlets have stepped up to the plate.
I’m very proud of the work I’ve done or been a part of from the editor’s desk, but I’m also itching to get out from behind that desk and out of what Taiwanese call the “Celestial Dragon Kingdom” (天龍國) — a One Piece-inspired jab at the Taipei bubble so disconnected from the rest of the country. After a good, long stay back home in Hong Kong, I’ll be relocating to Taiwan’s stunning east coast and returning to the life of a freelance writer — get in touch to work together!
Without further ado, I hope you enjoy my last newsletter as Managing Editor. If you’re a fan of these, you might be heartened to know it likely will not be the last one I’m involved with: Our plan is for me to jump in from time to time as guest editor — even from the shores of the Pacific.
Ryan Ho Kilpatrick
CMP Managing Editor
NEWSPEAK
Every Year is “China Year”
In our last newsletter, we reflected on the debate between “Lunar New Year” and “Chinese New Year,” musing that it would all be so much simpler if in English, as in Chinese, it was simply the “New Year” or “Spring Festival” — no national descriptor attached. It seems we spoke too soon.
This year, the phrase "China Year" or "Chinese Year" (中國年) has appeared with unprecedented frequency in state-run PRC media outlets. China News Service, part of the United Front Work Department and one of just two official wire services in the country, launched a series called My Chinese Year (我的中國年) to mark Spring Festival this year, looking at how Hongkongers, Macanese, and a diasporic Chinese were marking the annual holiday.
People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official newspaper of record, also joined in with a series pointedly titled “Our Holiday — Happy Chinese Year” (我们的节日 | 欢乐中国年). Stories appeared on local government websites from the Tian Shan mountains in far-western Xinjiang to subtropical Yunnan near the Myanmar border and the country’s biggest metropolis, Shanghai. “Our Holiday” also appeared on other state media outlets such as the China Daily, published by the CCP’s “Central Leading Group on Foreign Propaganda” (中央对外宣传小组), and official broadcaster CCTV, which ran its own separate “China Year Blessings” (祝福中國年) program on how foreign friends were celebrating under the tutelage of PRC diplomatic missions.
Events covered in the series took place nationwide: in Beijing, Shanghai, Harbin, Guangdong, Sichuan, Jiangxi, Guizhou, Xinjiang, Jiangsu, Inner Mongolia, Hebei, and 12 other locations. They were hosted by the Propaganda Department’s Central Guidance Commission on Building Spiritual Civilization, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the All-China Women’s Federation, the Propaganda Department of the Communist Youth League, the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Service Center, and the National Radio and Television Administration.
“China Year” itself has been around for as long as aggrieved nationalists have bemoaned the use of the more inclusive “Lunar New Year” in English. Over the years, even Chinese speakers within the PRC appear to have been confused, asking on online bulletin boards what it means or why they have to say it. But the explanation has always been clear: this is about marking our territory. With state media now leading the charge, expect every year from here on out to be “China Year.”
NEWSMAKERS
No Room at the Inn
Last Saturday, the Hong Kong Journalist Association (HKJA) was due to hold its annual fundraising dinner at the Regal Hongkong Hotel in Causeway Bay. Just two days before the event, though, the hotel unexpectedly canceled their booking, telling the city’s biggest media union that they were experiencing “water leakage causing unstable power supply.”
The story got weirder when local media outlets turned up at the hotel or posed as guests to make their own bookings, and were informed that there was no such leakage or power problem. When Hong Kong Free Press director Tom Grundy arrived to livestream from the hotel, he stumbled into a matchmaking event taking place in the same venue the HKJA had booked.
It’s not hard to imagine what was likely going on behind the scenes. Hong Kong’s government and state media have been waging war on the union for years, seemingly intent on forcing it to disband due to the constant pressure and threats. It’s not just local businesses that are falling in line and turning their backs on the HKJA either — even international media outlets that claim to stand for press freedom elsewhere are discouraging staff from joining and punishing those who take leadership positions. Last year, Selina Cheng was fired from the Wall Street Journal mere weeks after she was elected chair. For the full story, read our article “Code of Silence.”
Regal’s cancellation of the HKJA dinner happened to come on the same day Cheng appeared in court to initiate private prosecution proceedings against the Journal, alleging that she was terminated due to participation in a union — a violation of local labor law. Could it all just be a coincidence? At time of publishing, it has just emerged that a second hotel, the Eaton HK, has also canceled the HKJA’s booking with no explanation. If that is just a coincidence, it’s quite literally an unbelievable one.
Readers who wish to support the HKJA can participate in an online auction planned for next Friday, February 28 or peruse their online store.
(MIS)INFORMED
Civic Groups in Distress
How do you say schadenfreude in Chinese?
In the wake of the unprecedented shutdown of the foreign aid agency USAID under the Trump administration and billionaire Elon Musk’s seemingly unaccountable Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), some Chinese-language media outlets have seized on the funding crisis to target civil society organizations — especially those engaged with human rights and democracy work in Taiwan, or concerning China.
Taiwan’s China Times (中國時報), a paper published by the Want Want food conglomerate and known for its pro-Beijing stance, adopted a sensationalist tone last week in covering the USAID shutdown. It amplified false claims posted to a Facebook account called "Golden Rooster meets Dog" (黃金雞O狗) that suggested the aid agency was tied to Open Society Foundations (OSF), the private funding organization founded by financier George Soros. This absurd claim prompted a public clarification from National Chung Cheng University communications professor Lo Shih-hung (羅世宏), a co-founder of the Taiwan FactCheck Center (TFC), a non-profit dedicated to combating digital misinformation. Posting a rebuttal to Facebook, Lo made clear that his organization had never received USAID funding, and as for support from OSF, “But, why not?” he asked. While Lo admitted such funding sources can be controversial for some, they provide transparent support without interfering in the operations of groups like TFC.
Generally speaking, the issue of US funding has been highly controversial in Taiwan, where some have voiced support for Trump’s axe-chop approach to governance. The controversy has sometimes also broken along party lines, with some on the right in Taiwan, aligned with the pan-blue KMT, arguing that support has gone largely to pan-green DPP groups. An image accompanying the misinforming post by “Golden Rooster Meets Dog” showed dogs lining up with their feeding bowls, and the bright green slur: “Green-affiliated vermin organizations” (綠蛆側翼組織):
Taiwan's Central News Agency (CNA) was more measured in its reporting of the USAID story and its impact on Taiwan. It focused on the fact that USAID has provided less visible but nevertheless essential work in areas like disaster management training and emergency response in Taiwan. It quoted Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Michael Sobolik as saying that the administration’s hardline approach to cuts “jeopardizes good programs that advance US national interests.”
Setting the professional bar as usual, Initium Media responded to the crisis earlier this month with a nuanced feature about the aid agency and its global role. Its sober and measured conclusion: “Although USAID's suspension may have limited direct impact on Taiwan, it could be interpreted as a major shift in America's long-term strategic positioning, potentially shaking strategic confidence in the US among allies.”
REDLINES
America’s Joyous Calamity
In Chinese state media, the spirit of “delight in disaster” (幸災樂禍) was particularly palpable in reports on how Musk and Trump are now targeting the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Free Asia — state-funded outlets that the Hong Kong state-run daily Ta Kung Pao (大公報) described as “perennial mouthpieces for the US government’s foreign propaganda.”
On the other side of the Pearl River Delta, the state-run Macao Daily (澳門日報) used the exact same wording for the outlets, which have become known for their critical reporting on China, their close coverage of rights violations in Xinjiang, and reporters’ contacts with activists. It also noted, without any perceptible appreciation for the irony, that Musk and Trump had accused VOA and RFE/RFA of being “far left organizations” that were “doing propaganda for China.”
In mainland media, the tone was far less restrained. Guancha (观察者网), a nationalist news site founded by venture capitalist Eric X. Li, called VOA and RFA weapons of “global psychological warfare.” Web portal NetEase (網易) dubbed the outlets “America’s sharpest tool in the Cold War,” aimed at toppling Communist regimes through “color revolutions” — a constant fear for China, and Xi Jinping in particular, since the fall of the Soviet Union. Just reading the headline is not something we condone, but to ascertain official media’s mood about the possible deaths of VOA and RFA, it was only necessary to look at the first part to a headline for another NetEase piece: “To the immense gratification of everyone!” it began, or daaih faai yàhn sām (大快人心) — a phrase usually used to herald the punishment of evil-doers.
Anti-Anxiety Pills
Xi Jinping seeks to comfort business leaders
Yesterday's front page of the CCP's official flagship newspaper, the People's Daily (人民日报), was a left-hook, right-hook punch of assertions from the leadership offering reassurance to China's private sector on the one hand, and assertions of technological strength on the other. The most prominent positions of the paper — the space under the masthead and the space to its right, the “newspaper eye” (报眼) — focused on Xi Jinping's meeting on Monday with private entrepreneurs, balancing pledges of unflagging support with assertive reminders of the CCP's guiding role.
"The Party and state's basic policy direction regarding private economic development has been incorporated into the socialist system with Chinese characteristics,” Xi told entrepreneurs this week. “It will be consistently upheld and implemented — it cannot change, and it will not change."
The official terms listed below were among those figuring most strongly on yesterday’s front page, reflecting two basic goals and frames: 1) boosting private sector confidence while maintaining party control; and 2) promoting technological independence amid international competition. CMP has written in the past about the term “anti-anxiety pill” (定心丸), which has been used through the years in official-speak to refer to measures to calm the business and investment community.
A Rare Rebuttal
Defending China's FDI landscape from online negativity
In an uncharacteristic front-page defense last week, the Chinese Communist Party's flagship People's Daily newspaper responded to claims online about foreign capital flight from the country. The commentary, by reporter Luo Shanshan (罗珊珊), rejected threads prompted by an unnamed internet influencer about "the large-scale withdrawal of foreign investment.”
While foreign direct investment fell 27.1 percent in 2024, the commentary acknowledged, the number of newly established foreign enterprises rose by nearly 10 percent. Using Walmart as a case study, it argued that these numbers reflected not a wholesale retreat, but rather the adaptation of China’s market. While the retail giant closed some traditional outlets, Luo wrote, its Sam's Club division opened store number 52 just two months ago.
The article, which was shared widely across online platforms, further countered the suggestion that China no longer needs foreign investment, or that it is unfriendly to foreign investors. Sure, China is not so desperate for outside capital investment as it once was, said Luo, but foreign capital nonetheless remains a "key hub" (关键枢纽) of the "dual circulation" economy — this being the economic strategy announced by Xi Jinping in 2020, essentially building domestic consumption while remaining globally engaged.
Luo stressed that China remained open, and he pointed to policy moves like hosting import expos and reducing negative lists for foreign investment as proof of that openness. For foreign investors, Luo insisted, the country remained in the lead, evidenced by a refrain he said was echoed among business leaders: "The next 'China' is still China" (下一个'中国'，还是中国).
TRACKING CONTROL
Leaving Hong Kong in the Dark
Since our last issue, there has been a double-whammy of bad news in Hong Kong — developments affecting all Hongkongers but the city’s journalists and researchers in particular.
First, shareholder activist David Webb announced that his eponymous database Webb-Site Reports will likely go offline in the coming year. In a post last week, Webb, who has been battling cancer for five years, predicted he only has months to live — and this site is unlikely to outlive him. Since 1998, Webb-Site has provided an extensive database on companies and other organizations and people in Hong Kong, sourced from the public domain. It also tracks membership of over 800 statutory and advisory bodies — everything, as Webb puts it, “from the Executive and Legislative Councils down to the Dogs and Cats Classification Board.”
A special callout of appreciation to Webb from the team here at the China Media Project, where we have often made use of this essential resource for our own investigations.
Then, the next day, the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (PORI) said it would “suspend all its self-funded research activities indefinitely, including regular tracking surveys conducted since 1992… or even may close down,” citing the “current environment.” The announcement came weeks after PORI CEO Robert Chung was taken in by police to assist with investigations into its former deputy CEO Chung Kim-wah, who was added to a wanted list last December over alleged violations of Beijing-imposed national security law. The group’s offices were previously raided by police for helping organize an unofficial primary.
Since it was founded as HKUPOP in 1991, PORI has been the city's most reputable and reliable public pollster, providing regular checks on residents' sentiments toward a variety of important issues and government figures. This enabled us to track era-defining trends like the ascendancy of localism. Webb-Site has also been an invaluable resource for financial info, mapping out the links between Hong Kong’s richest and most powerful that they would often rather keep on the down-low. As authorities have tightened public access to private company information, it has only become more important over time.
It has also been disappointing to see the editor’s alma mater play a part in both stories. Like the China Media Project, HKUPOP was hosted by the social sciences faculty at the University of Hong Kong until 2019, when their polling data so irked the government that state media initiated an ongoing smear campaign. HKU also recently declined to host the Webb-Site archives. This is how once open and free societies slip into authoritarianism — not with headline-grabbing mass arrests and police raids but simply letting important institutions die natural deaths and ensuring that the “current environment” is so hostile that no one will dare to rescue or recreate them.
AI WATCH
Dragons’ Den
Attention turns on the unique role of Hangzhou in AI
Amid China’s triumphant rhetoric around DeepSeek, an AI company presented as China’s answer to OpenAI, the country’s netizens have spotted an intriguing pattern about China’s tech innovators. Six tech companies that have recently taken China and the world by storm are all young, privately owned startups based in Hangzhou. These include DeepSeek, robot developers Unitree, and Black Myth: Wukong games devs Game Science. Poster boys for the city’s entrepreneurial oomph, their almost mythical stature has earned them the moniker “Hangzhou’s Six Little Dragons” (杭州小六龙).
They are also inspiring envy from other regions that want a slice of the action. Neighboring Jiangsu’s official provincial media outlet published a series of articles asking what Zhejiang had that its own provincial capital, Nanjing, does not. China Business Network (第一财经) describes the gnashing of teeth among Shenzhen’s netizens since Unitree’s founder left the southern tech hub to start his company in Hangzhou instead. Former Global Times editor Hu Xijin urged state-operated enterprises to be less afraid of failure and embrace innovation — like one of the “little dragons.”
Other sources, however, do not attribute the dragons’ success to the local startup environment. Instead, they say, we have Xi Jinping to thank — his “Digital Zhejiang” initiative, according to state broadcaster CCTV, is the real root of Hangzhou’s innovation. But it bears noting that state media frequently rewrite history to build legitimacy in the present. The policy, enacted while Xi was Zhejiang Party Secretary in 2003, attempted to boost IT development and education in the province. They also note Xi’s big plans for Hangzhou, imagining it as a “Silicon Valley paradise.” Hangzhou firms were also well-represented at a recent symposium Xi held with private-enterprise tech CEOs.
A reporter from the Securities Times (证券时报) traveled to the HQ of each “little dragon” to suss out Hangzhou’s secret sauce. The ingredients, they concluded, are fairly straightforward: a company’s intense focus on a problem, Hangzhou’s comfortable cost of living, and — most importantly — the municipal government’s generous subsidies for new startups and its hand-off approach to oversight.
For regular coverage and early access to AI trends in China, subscribe to Alex Colville’s ChinaChatbot.
GOING GLOBAL
Banking on Chinese Film Success
While the animated feature Ne Zha 2 has been smashing box office records in China, inspiring editorials about how the country “no longer needs Hollywood,” PRC-produced films have yet to challenge Hollywood when it comes to mainstream appeal in foreign markets. A new initiative between the Central Propaganda Department and UnionPay, however, is aiming to change that.
The framework agreement, signed in Beijing late last year, will see the state-owned financial services giant, which operates the country's dominant bank card and payment network, sponsor events promoting Chinese films internationally. Their first trial run kicks off this week in Valletta, the capital of the island country of Malta — a Chinese New Year Film Festival, running until March, that kicks off with screenings of the breakdancing blockbuster One and Only (热烈) and concludes with the epic high-fantasy Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms (封神第一部：朝歌风云).
UnionPay’s part in this soft power push is not just limited to underwriting events. It is also hoped that the card provider’s payment system can be used to encourage cardholders to watch more Chinese films, leveraging its global network for “overseas marketing” and providing discounts and “consumption subsidies” for cardholders to attend events like the film festival.
It comes as no surprise that the scheme is being soft-launched in Malta. The tiny but strategic Mediterranean island has maintained close ties with China since it achieved independence from the United Kingdom in the 1960s. In 2023, Malta’s Foreign Minister assured his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, that they are “China’s friend in Europe.” At the same time, Wang expressed hope Malta could serve as China’s “bridge” to Europe. Today, Malta is famous as a tax haven and online gambling hub. It also operates a “golden passport” scheme selling EU citizenship for about one million euros, with some 87 percent of recipients hailing from the PRC.
"Films have increasingly become an effective channel for national diplomacy and cultural exchange," the CPD Film Bureau’s deputy director Mao Yu (毛羽) said during the signing ceremony in Beijing. With the agreement framed as another step to make China a "strong film power" (电影强国), UnionPay has already agreed to support 22 more film events globally.
CHAIN REACTIONS
Cracking Open China’s State Publishing Empire
Go book-shopping in Hong Kong and you may be surprised by the range of stores to choose from. Three local chains — JP Books (三聯書店), The Commercial Press (商務印書館), and Chung Hwa Book Co. (中華書局) — run up to a dozen locations each. Not bad for a city where book publishers and sellers are reeling from political controls and only around 14 percent of residents — less than half the international average — say they like reading “very much.”
But all of these are different faces of the same media empire that single-handedly controls over 80 percent of the local publishing market and runs over 50 retail stores territory-wide. It is also an empire within an empire, falling under the auspices of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government, long rumored to run the Special Administrative Region from the shadows.
Look out for an in-depth investigation from us into the Sino United Publishing empire later this month — the latest in our ongoing “Media in Focus” series.
SEEN IN TIAN JIAN
The stories below were included in Tuesday’s edition of our Chinese-language outlet on media, Tian Jian (田間). Read them first. Become a free subscriber!
SUMG and RedNote: An Intergenerational Media Meetup
Shanghai's most powerful media group is now joining hands with one of China's hottest social media platforms to bridge the generation gap. Late last week, the Shanghai United Media Group (SUMG), a conglomerate controlled by the city's CCP committee, announced a strategic partnership with the social platform RedNote, or "Xiaohongshu" (小紅書), which saw a short-lived surge of American users last month as they fled TikTok amid an impending US ban (only to confront the new specter of active content censorship).
According to the partnership, SUMG and RedNote will explore “new integration models“ (融合新模式) — this being code in China for traditional media outlets, searching for transitions to new digital forms. Coverage in the Chinese media called the tie-up “a breakthrough“ for the transformation of “mainstream media” in the country, referring in this context not to legacy media, as in many other media environments, but specifically to CCP-run media. SUMG, which has long been among China’s most innovative media groups, hopes that it can leverage the partnership to more effectively reach younger Chinese consumers with its content.
Hai Xia: Retirement of a “National News Face”
One of China's most recognizable television personalities is now making a career leap to the country’s state-controlled education system. According to a report last week by the news app of the official Beijing Daily (北京日报), Hai Xia (海霞), long a host of the CCP’s nightly flagship news bulletin Xinwen Lianbo (新闻联播) on China Central Television (CCTV), has been appointed as Academic Vice President of Henan University. Hai, who last appeared in 2023 on the official newscast, one of the country’s most important outlets for direct political messaging by the leadership, has served since May 2023 as deputy director of the Announcer Management Center at China Media Group (CMG), the state-run parent company of CCTV, directly under the Central Propaganda Department.
Ever since she debuted on Xinwen Lianbo in 2007, Hai Xia has been a “national news face” (新聞國臉), stiffly — even, at times, robotically — intoning the Party-led news of the day, always beginning with the itinerary of the CCP’s top leader, first Hu Jintao and later Xi Jinping.
Beyond her broadcasting career, Hai Xia has served since 2008 as a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a political advisory body under the direction of the CCP that brings together representatives from various professions, organizations, and ethnic groups to participate in national policy discussions. She has also been a doctoral supervisor at Communication University of China (CUC). Back in January, she was appointed as a member of Henan Province's Political Consultative Conference, the local advisory assembly. An article in the pro-Beijing Hong Kong Commercial Daily (香港商报) last week touted the significance of the “Hai Xia phenomenon” (海霞現象), saying that Hai's post-broadcast career offered a new model for how state media personalities could transition into broader public service roles and maintain their impact.