People's Daily · Lablypedia

History

The paper was established on 15 June 1948 and was first published in Pingshan County, Hebei. It was formed from the merger of the Jin-Cha-Ji Daily and the newspapers of the Jin-Ji-Lu-Yu base area. On 15 March 1949, its office was moved to Beijing, and the original People's Daily Beijing edition was renamed Beijing Liberation Daily. The newspaper ceased publication on 31 July 1949, with a total of 406 issues published. Since the newspaper was the official newspaper of the North China Bureau of the CCP, it was historically known as the North China People's Daily or the People's Daily North China Edition. At the same time, in order to indicate that the newspaper was published in Pingshan County, Hebei, it was also called the People's Daily Pingshan Edition. On 1 August 1949, the People's Daily became the official newspaper of CCP Central Committee.

Ever since its founding, the People's Daily has been under direct control of the CCP's top leadership. Deng Tuo and Wu Lengxi served as editor-in-chief from 1948 to 1958 and 1958–1966, respectively, but the paper was in fact controlled by Mao Zedong's personal secretary Hu Qiaomu.

At the outset of the Cultural Revolution, the leadership of many news outlets was purged; Wu Lengxi replaced Deng Tuo as the paper's editor-in-chief. Amid the treacherous political currents of the period, the People's Daily lost its editorial direction. On the afternoon of 31 May 1966, Chen Boda led a work team in what he described as "a small coup" at the paper, seizing control from Wu Lengxi and the editorial board. Following this, the People's Daily and Red Flag came under a work team headed by Chen, then head of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, and came to be known as the "Two Newspapers and One Journal," along with People's Liberation Army Daily. On 1 June, the People's Daily published a militant editorial entitled "Sweep Away All Cow Demons and Snake Spirits," advocating for the Cultural Revolution and struggle against "rightists."

In the late 1970s, the editor-in-chief, Hu Jiwei, as part of China's larger debate over the role of journalism, argued for the primacy of the "people's spirit" asserting that state media should report truthfully to represent the interests of the public, remain independent from the structural party, and ensure that "party spirit" aligned with human nature. He maintained that the press should serve as the "eyes and ears of the CCP" to accurately reflect reality and convey the voices of the citizens to the leadership. While his reformist stance was endorsed by CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang, it faced opposition from hardline ideologue Hu Qiaomu, who advocated for the absolute primacy of the "party spirit" and, along with other party conservatives, forced Hu Jiwei to resign in 1983. Despite that, the People's Daily continued to follow Hu Jiwei's vision in the 1980s, notably featuring Liu Binyan's investigative journalism.

During the 1989 student movement, the People's Daily became a contested ground between its sympathetic staff and hardline party leaders. Under pressure, the paper published the April 26 editorial, penned by deputy publicity minister Zeng Jianhui at the direction of Deng Xiaoping, which sharply escalated tensions between the government and protesters. On 4 June, the day of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the People's Daily was the only major newspaper in China to report on its front page that the army had killed civilians in Beijing, juxtaposing the news amid official government announcements. Many headlines and layouts in that day's issue served as implicit protests; for instance, the international page was headlined by students protesting the government massacre during the Gwangju Uprising, while a report on a sports meet for people with disabilities was headlined "An Unconquerable Heart." Following the massacre, the paper's leadership was purged, and editor Wu Xuecan was sentenced to four years in prison.

The People's Daily maintains a unit called People's Data that conducts overseas social media data collection and analysis for police, judicial authorities, and CCP organizations. People's Data also has data sharing agreements in place with various companies such as DiDi and Temu's parent company Pinduoduo. In 2022, the People's Daily launched a commercial software service called Renmin Shenjiao (People's Proofreader) that provides outsourced content censorship. The People's Daily also provides artificial intelligence companies in China with training data that CCP leaders consider permissible. In 2024, the People's Daily released a large language model-based tool called Easy Write.

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Content

The People's Daily is published by the People's Daily Press, a ministerial-level institution. The agency is also responsible for the publication of the nationalist tabloid Global Times. The newspaper is published worldwide in four editions:

Mainland China Edition: Mainly for readers in mainland China
Hong Kong Edition: Mainly for readers in Hong Kong
Overseas Edition: Mainly for readers outside mainland China and Hong Kong
Tibetan version: mainly for Tibetan readers in the Tibet Autonomous Region and Tibetan-populated areas in Sichuan, Yunnan, Qinghai, Gansu and other provinces of China.

The Mainland Edition is the domestic edition, and the name of the edition is not clearly stated. The Mainland Edition initially had four pages, and later developed to 24 pages from Monday to Friday, 12 pages on Saturday and Sunday, and eight pages on holidays. From 2019, it started to have 20 pages on weekdays and 8 pages on weekends and holidays, which have been printed in full color. In addition, the People's Daily Publishing House issues reduced-print bound volumes of the People's Daily, one volume every half month, 24 volumes per year, and the content and layout are basically the same as the original newspaper.

Overseas edition

The overseas edition of the People's Daily was launched on 1 July 1985, and was originally published in traditional Chinese characters. After 1 July 1992, it was changed to simplified Chinese characters. Haiwainet is the website of the overseas edition.

In March 2018, BBC News pointed out that Haiwainet was the real body of All American Television, located in Pasadena, California and that Haiwainet's American channel and All American Television were "one institution with two names". However, Haiwainet denied the allegations and stated it "had no relationship with All American Television" or with the station's executive director Zhang Huijun. Subsequently, the Seattle-based All American Television Corporation (AAT Television Corporation) also issued a statement saying that it had no relationship with All American Television.

Internet

The People's Daily also maintains a multilingual internet presence and established the People's Daily Online in 1997. The website of People's Daily includes content in Arabic, French, Russian, Spanish, Japanese and English. In comparison to the original Chinese version, the foreign-language version offers less in-depth discussion of domestic policies and affairs and more editorials about China's foreign policies and motives. The People's Daily in recent years has been expanding on overseas social media platforms. It has millions of followers on its Facebook page and its accounts on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. An unusually high proportion of its followers are virtually inactive and are likely to be fake users, according to a study by the Committee to Protect Journalists. The People's Daily also maintains agreements with foreign newspapers to republish its content.

Editorial style

The newspaper is the official "mouthpiece" (Chinese: 喉舌; lit. 'throat tongue') of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. It is often viewed as most representative of the mainstream perspective of China's government and the CCP leadership's priorities.

A large number of articles devoted to a political figure, idea, or geographic focus is often taken as a sign that the mentioned official or subject is rising. Editorials in the People's Daily are regarded both by foreign observers and Chinese readers as authoritative statements of official government policy. Distinction is made between editorials, commentaries, and opinions. Although all must be government-approved, they differ sharply on the amount of official authoritativeness they contain by design, from the top. For example, although an opinion piece is unlikely to contain views opposed to those of the government, it may express a viewpoint, or it may contain a debate that is under consideration and reflect only the opinions of the writer: an editorial trial balloon to assess internal public opinion. By contrast, an official editorial, which is rather infrequent, means that the government has reached a final decision on an issue.

Writing practices

The People's Daily employs "writing task groups" (Chinese: 写作小组; pinyin: xiězuò xiǎozǔ) of various staff to compose editorial pieces to signal the significance of certain pieces or their relationship to the official views of the CCP. These groups are published under "signatures" (i.e., pen names: 署名 shǔmíng) that may correspond with the topic and weight of a piece, and what specific government or CCP body is backing it, often with homophonous references to their purpose.

Reactions

During the AIDS epidemic, the People's Daily downplayed the epidemic domestically while "presenting AIDS as a relatively innocuous social problem for the country."

A 2013 study of the People's Daily coverage of the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak reported that it "regurgitated triumph and optimism" and framed the outbreak as an "opportunity to showcase China's scientific achievements, and the strength of national spirits, as well as the wise leadership of the party and effective measures to protect the lives of ordinary citizens."

In February 2020, the People's Daily published an article stating that the novel coronavirus "did not necessarily originate in China." In March 2020, the online insert of the People's Daily, distributed by The Daily Telegraph, published an article stating that Traditional Chinese medicine "helps fight coronavirus." In May 2020, the People's Daily stated that the novel coronavirus had "multiple origins." In November 2020, the People's Daily published a claim that COVID-19 was "imported" into China. In January 2021, the People's Daily inaccurately attributed deaths in Norway to the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. A 2023 discourse analysis published by the Journal of Current Chinese Affairs found that the People's Daily's English-language coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic "appears to be in the thick of the global information war; it never provides just information, but always also has an angle, argues a point, or defends China's position in response to an accusation."

In 2020, the United States Department of State designated the People's Daily a foreign mission, thereby requiring it to disclose more information about its operations in the U.S.

In 2021, ProPublica and The New York Times reported that the People's Daily was part of a coordinated state propaganda campaign to deny human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

In 2023, the People's Daily sparked a backlash on Chinese social media for exhorting citizens not to complain about their own poverty or boredom.

In 2025, the People's Daily published an op-ed under LeBron James's byline, with an appended note stating that it had been compiled after being interviewed by a reporter for the newspaper. James's representative said that the piece was not written by him, but was based on a series of non-exclusive group interviews given during his trip to China.