A veteran journalist who worked for over 20 years at China’s largest financial media group, serving as the head of the news center’s reporting department, recently gave an interview with New Tang Dynasty Television on the topic of the Chinese state media’s extensive censorship and fake news practices.
He categorized China’s media landscape into four major sectors:
- Traditional Media – This includes newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. These are controlled by various levels of the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda departments in a top-down hierarchical structure, where each level monitors the one below it, ultimately leading to self-censorship.
- State-Run Internet Media – This refers to the websites of major state-controlled media outlets. These platforms operate under the same strict supervision as traditional media.
- Privately-Owned News Websites – While these websites do not have a direct government organization overseeing them, they fall under the control of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). The CAC put pressure on website owners, who in turn instruct their editors on what content is acceptable, effectively enforcing censorship through an indirect but systematic approach.
- Independent (Social Media a.k.a. “Self-Media”) Platforms – This sector appears relatively free on the surface, as it lacks an official regulatory body. However, platforms like WeChat implement strict content review mechanisms and follow CAC directives. As a result, accounts and groups are frequently deactivated. “I myself have had my accounts deactivated four or five times, which is considered relatively few. Some of my friends have been banned more than 20 times,” the journalist stated.
Source: Epoch Times, March 9, 2025
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/25/3/8/n14454037.htm