On the eve of “Journalists’ Day” on November 8, the All-China Journalists Association announced the winners of the two most prestigious national prizes for reportage: the China Journalism Award and the Changjiang Taofen Award. A total of 373 articles, features, commentaries, and video news reports received the China Journalism Award (divided into four special awards, 75 first prizes, 109 second prizes, and 185 third prizes), and 20 were chosen for the Changjiang Taofen Award. But so servile and anodyne were the top four winning news pieces that it prompted some observers to declare: “News is dead.” The four big winners, and the state-media outlets that produced them, are listed below:

“Xi Jinping unanimously elected Chinese president, PRC CMC [Central Military Commission] chairman” (Xinhua News Agency, category: news)

“Bolstering Spiritual Strength to Bring About the Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation: In-Depth Study of the Essence of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s Key Speech at the Symposium on Cultural Inheritance and Development” (People’s Daily, category: commentary)

“Election of New Leaders of State Institutions” (China Media Group, category: live broadcast)

“Eastern Theater Command Organizes ‘Joint Sword’ Military Drills and Combat-Readiness Patrols Around Taiwan” (PLA News Media Center, category: news) [Chinese]

In contrast with the propagandistic, cookie-cutter headlines topping the list of winners, the full list reveals a number of more interesting headlines and in-depth reporting on topics including crime, corruption, economic inequality, natural disasters, local news, and human interest stories. A few samples from among the first, second, and third place winners:

First Prizes:
“Gaopi Township’s Battle Against the Typhoon: Five Spine-chilling Days and Nights” (Nanfang Daily Media Group, category: correspondent report)

“Chinese Doctors on the Silk Road” (Hunan Broadcasting System, category: public-opinion guidance reportage)

“Why Does It Take a Provincial Investigation Team to Find Out the Truth About a Rat’s Head?” (People’s Daily, category: supervision-via-public-opinion reportage)

Second Prizes:
“Migrants Find Cities Won’t Accept Skills Certificates Earned Elsewhere” (Workers’ Daily, category: news)

“Shandong-to-Lairong High-Speed Railway Project Reported to Authorities for Cutting Corners and Concealing Serious Safety Hazards” (Economic Information Daily, category: supervision-via-public-opinion reportage)

“Six Questions: Why Are Those Harvesters in Nanyang, Henan, Stuck on the Highway?” (China National Radio, category: supervision-via-public-opinion reportage)

Third Prizes:　
“I Was a Telecom Fraudster in Northern Myanmar: Confessions of a Criminal Gang” (Xinhua News Agency, category: correspondent report)

“A 57-Minute Phone Call Made the Difference Between Life and Death” (Inner Mongolia Radio and Television, category: special feature)

The “Kneeling on the Ground to Beg for Water” Series (Anhui Online, category: reportage series) [Chinese]

As the CCP continues its relentless efforts to enforce compliance and docility among media outlets, there is diminishing space for quality investigative journalism in China. Despite this, many Chinese reporters and media outlets continue to pursue stories that focus on informing readers, serving the public interest, and holding the government and other powerful interests accountable. (For more coverage of investigative journalism in China, see CDT’s extensive Chinese and English archives on the topic.)

Two recent English-language articles provide insight into the changes and impediments that have affected investigative journalism in China. The first article, by China Media Project’s David Bandurski, noted that this year’s Journalists’ Day was marked by the expanded presence of “local convergence media centers” controlled by local propaganda departments and an increased focus on “merging news and propaganda”:

As Journalist’s Day celebrations were reported across the country in the past week, one of the most tell-tale signs of what journalism means in China today came as local officials made constant references to “news propaganda” (新闻宣传), which refers explicitly to the use of the news form to conduct state propaganda activities and reach the goals of the leadership.

In a speech to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Xinhua News Agency in 1991, Politburo Standing Committee member Li Ruihuan (李瑞環) said that the key purpose of the “news propaganda front” — and the role, in other words, of the press — was to “comprehensively and accurately propagate the Party’s basic line.”

In Yingkou, a prefectural-level city in China’s northeastern Liaoning province, the local report on Journalist’s Day festivities noted that 10 local journalists had been honored with excellence prizes for their “outstanding contributions to news propaganda.” In Dejiang County, Zhejiang, journalists were urged to “continuously create new prospects for news propaganda” (不断开创新闻宣传新局面). [Source]

In a long-form piece for the Made in China Journal, Tucker Wang-Hai explored the role of “China’s waixuan jizhe (foreign-aimed journalists) in the internet age”:

Another significant change in recent years is how foreign-aimed journalists have developed a more multifaceted understanding of their role. They have evolved from traditional storytellers to content marketers and brand managers—a shift that has largely been driven by the advent of social media platforms and their quantifiable metrics.

[…] First, more and more journalists have started to learn how to engage in commercial hustling, as exemplified by the adoption of social media ads and paid boosting options provided by social media companies. Facebook and YouTube ads—a function initially designed for digital businesses—have been leveraged by Chinese journalists as a shortcut to promote content to a wider readership. Moreover, journalists have begun to conduct audience analysis to provide better targeted content. The age, language, location, gender, interests, and even time zones of social media users have become common considerations before posting content. Additionally, journalists are now savvy about stretching their advertising money on social media. For example, when they want to reach English speakers, most have acknowledged that ‘it’s cheaper to advertise to people in India than in the United States’. Most notably, journalists have largely learned how to do this by themselves, as most senior employees at the media management level are not social media savvy and, therefore, cannot provide systematic guidance.

Second, journalists have also started to expand their outreach work by cooperating with non-media actors such as provincial or local-level publicity offices (地方外宣) and communication departments of state-owned companies (企业外宣). These collaborations are encouraged by the CCP, which has been demanding the strengthening of foreign propaganda efforts by these two types of bodies (Lyhne-Gold 2024; Zhi 2019; Yi 2024). Many newsrooms have now established business partnerships with local governments and state-owned companies, offering their content production teams and space on their relatively established pages on foreign media platforms to post content for these ‘clients’.

[…] Last, journalists have taken on additional roles on an irregular or semi-regular basis. These include collaborating with advertising agents to enhance content performance, working with information technology providers to navigate internet issues and access foreign media by bypassing China’s Great Firewall, and negotiating content-sharing agreements with foreign social media influencers or media outlets. What these ad hoc responsibilities have in common is that they place journalists on the front lines of managing digital content production mechanisms, often with limited support from their employer. [Source]