Sitting back in early January with the latest edition of Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily, one of the country’s leading metro newspapers, daily news readers were treated to a splashy page-one story about how China’s national plans for artificial intelligence development — known as “AI+” — were being unleashed in every sector of the economy and society. But the cover, importantly, was itself proof of how AI is transforming another crucial sector: the media.

The cover featured a striking figure 8 — or infinity symbol — in gradient colors of teal, orange, and yellow, floating above a miniature cityscape. Around this mathematical representation of limitless potential were arrayed digital icons depicting various sectors transformed by AI: doctors consulting computer screens, autonomous vehicles, smart classrooms, and connected urban infrastructure. At the bottom of the bright page, down below its characteristic masthead — and its motto, “Making China’s Best Newspaper” — were the words “created with JimengAI.”

The cover signaled an important departure for a newspaper that for decades had been known for its bold front-page graphics and striking photojournalism. It is certainly just the beginning of a trend that will reverberate through China’s media sector. The country’s newspaper industry in particular has faced major challenges in recent years, with sharp declines in print circulation and the closure of 55 newspaper titles in 2023, pushing outlets to cut costs and accelerate digital transformation. 

Talk of AI-led transformation in the media sector goes back at least six years to 2019, when surveys showed that 73 percent of Chinese journalists expected significant impacts on their profession due to AI technology. Meanwhile, state-run research institutes advocated strategically integrating AI across “news collection, production, distribution, reception and feedback” to comprehensively enhance “public opinion guidance capabilities” — in other words, to improve the party-state’s capacity to control information.

In recent months, as developments in AI have accelerated, there have been rising concerns about the future of the journalism profession in China — which has already been jeopardized, something far less talked about, by stringent political controls under Xi Jinping. When AI can ask questions, correct grammar, find information, and even write articles, many wonder if journalists will become obsolete. Writing earlier this year in China Youth Daily (中国青年报), a paper under the Chinese Communist Youth League that from the 1980s through the 2000s was known for its sometimes breakout reporting, journalist Zhang Tiankan (張田勘) voiced the hope and the anxiety: “Machine and robots free people from heavy physical labor and boring work, to do more important work, or let people become supervisors — and this beautiful prospect has today been partly realized,” he said. “But other worries have also arisen.”

Et tu, Graphic Designers?

It remains to be seen what the changes at Southern Metropolis Daily will mean for its visual designers and photojournalists. But the paper, which has been known through the years for its sometimes stunning page ones, has clearly not given up on its visual team entirely. 

Since January the newspaper has continued to feature strong news photography on the front page, such as its vivid full-page images during the Myanmar earthquake last month, or its stark cover back on April 5 showing then just-removed South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol in profile. 

Still, one wonders if the writing is on the wall. 

Since the start of the year, a total of 36 front pages at the Southern Metropolis Daily have been generated with the help of AI, accounting for 35 percent of total covers. The vast majority of these have been produced by staff with the help of Jimeng AI, an AI image generation tool developed by Faceu Technology, a subsidiary of ByteDance — meaning these visuals were brought to you by the same company that gave the world TikTok. 

Other images are produced using YuanBao AI (元宝AI), an AI assistant developed by the technology giant Tencent. A few were also made using Doubao AI (豆包AI), another Bytedance creation that until the DeepSeek burst onto the scene was regarded by some as the country’s number-one chatbot, with more than 60 million active monthly users by November 2024.

On average, Southern Metropolis Daily is producing two to three AI-generated front pages per week. One perhaps revealing gap occurred from March 5-11, corresponding with the “two meetings” of China’s parliament and political advisory body. During that period, none of the covers in the newspaper dealing with the political meetings in Beijing were generated using AI. In fact, they retreated into conservatism, using all-red backgrounds and stiff images from the Great Hall of the People. Even as the paper strained at its chains to provide visual interest, it was clear that the aesthetic from on high was all about sticking to the austere.

The transition to AI is certainly the order of the day, and media across the country will continue to harness the technology to save time, cut costs, and remain on the cutting edge. But for media whose role is focused through the lens of Chinese Communist Party control, certain optics will remain impervious to change. 

Don’t expect AI-generated images of Xi Jinping — authorized ones, at least — any time soon. 

On Tuesday, China’s military released a propaganda video called “Vanquishing Evil” (降妖除魔) that framed military exercises encircling Taiwan in a show of military force as a blockbuster of mythic dimensions. Complete with video game references, the propaganda spot, promoted widely by state media, made it all seem like a testosterone-fueled game for adolescents — rather than drum-beating about aggressive actions that could set off a deadly regional conflict.

Staged by the Eastern Theater Command of China’s People’s Liberation Army, the video — released as China announced joint military drills in waters around Taiwan — employed supernatural imagery from the Chinese classic “Journey to the West” (西遊記) to depict the military operations as an epic battle morally justified.

Slicing through bellicose montages of naval vessels, jetting aircraft, descending parachutes, and hustling ground forces, were title cards with martial arts terminology — overlaying video of the mythological Monkey King (孫悟空), the chief protagonist of the above-mentioned novel. These appeared to have been lifted directly from a popular video game, “Black Myth Wukong” (黑神话：悟空), which last year became the first major Chinese game to achieve breakthrough success in the West.

In Taiwan, meanwhile, audiences were not enjoying the theater.

Taiwan’s Presidential Office responded swiftly to the PLA’s exercises, with spokesperson Kuo Ya-hui (郭雅慧) saying that President William Lai (賴清德) had directed national security and defense agencies to monitor the situation closely. “In the face of external threats, our government will continue to defend our democratic and free constitutional system,” Kuo said. “We have the confidence and ability to safeguard national sovereignty, protect people’s safety, and maintain social stability.”

The PLA video made the rounds on midday news shows across Taiwan, and the country’s Central News Agency quoted China’s Global Times newspaper as saying that “the film seamlessly connects Sun Wukong’s demon-slaying abilities with the PLA’s powerful combat capabilities, highlighting the PLA’s aim to fight against and eliminate independence movements.”​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

In recent weeks, Taiwanese President William Lai has faced a torrent of criticism from China after he characterized Beijing as a “hostile foreign force” (外部敵對勢力) during a March 13 national security meeting. This rhetorical escalation came alongside Lai’s announcement of plans to restore military trials​​​​​​​​​​​​ amid a surge in Chinese espionage cases, with official data showing 64 people in Taiwan were indicted for spying for China in 2024 (three times that in 2021).

China’s official state media have portrayed Lai as a “parasite” gnawing away at Taiwan’s well-being and future — another theme featured in propaganda from the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command on Tuesday.

The PLA video’s five title cards all draw from “Journey to the West” mythology, repurposing supernatural abilities from China’s literary heritage as modern military capabilities. The first, “Vanquishing Evil” (降妖除魔), frames military action as a sacred duty to eliminate demonic forces, while the last, “Immobilization Technique” (定身术), represents the ability to paralyze an opponent’s defenses through electronic warfare and precision strikes.

While Beijing frames its military posturing as fantasy-inspired heroism, Taiwanese citizens face the sobering reality that these metaphorical “demon-vanquishing” techniques represent actual missiles, blockades — and presumed plans for invasion. The gamification of conflict may entertain mainland audiences. But across the strait, the consequences could not be more real.

According to rare reports today from Chinese media, an environmental crisis is unfolding along a stretch of the Leishuei River in Hunan province that impacts the prefectural city of Chenzhou (郴州), home to more than four million people. Abnormal concentrations of thallium — a highly toxic, colorless heavy metal that causes organ damage and cancer through water contamination — have reportedly prompted the city to activate a Level IV emergency response, and residents are stockpiling drinking water.

In neighboring Guangdong province, the Southern Metropolis Daily (南方都市报), a commercial newspaper published under the state-run Nanfang Daily Group, splashed the crisis across its front page today, with the headline: “Thallium Abnormality in Hunan’s Leishuei River.”  

According to reports from both the Southern Metropolis Daily and Caixin Media, the crisis began nearly a week ago, on March 16, as automatic monitoring stations along a section of the river between the cities of Chenzhou and Hengyang, population 6.6 million, showed abnormal thallium levels, “causing trans-municipal pollution and threatening downstream water safety” (造成跨市污染，威胁下游饮水安全).

Jimu News, an online official outlet from Hubei province, immediately to the north of Hunan, reports that both Chenzhou and Leiyang cities have established emergency command centers to address abnormalities in local water quality in the Leishuei basin. Local officials have insisted that drinking water remains safe in the area impacted by the abnormal readings. However, Shanghai’s The Paper said in a report this afternoon, adding wider context to the breaking story, that abnormal thallium concentrations had been detected in 17 out of 22 drinking water sources along the Xiangjiang River in Hunan province, a separate basin, since 2020 — pointing potentially to wider and more longstanding public health risks.

It was only yesterday that that local government in Chenzhou finally acknowledged publicly through its government website what local officials had been responding to for a week: “Water quality in some sections of the Leishuei basin has shown abnormalities.” This public statement came seven days after automatic monitoring stations first detected abnormal thallium levels on March 16, and six days after Yongxing County activated its Level IV environmental emergency response, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

In a city where Buddhist rock carvings have gazed over the Yellow River valley for more than a millennium, local officials are now on their own sacred mission — to join the Chinese state in amplifying its message to the rest of the world.

On Wednesday this week, Chinese Communist Party officials gathered at the offices of the official Luoyang Daily (洛阳日报) to inaugurate the city’s new Luoyang International Communication Center (洛阳国际传播中心), the latest addition to China’s expanding network of provincial media hubs designed to “tell China’s story” to international audiences. For Luoyang — an industrial center in central China’s Henan province that served as imperial capital during multiple dynasties — the new center aligns ancient heritage with contemporary propaganda objectives.

The state-run China Daily newspaper reported that the center will “integrate government, media, academic institutions and social resources to build a comprehensive, multi-level international communication system.” The paper, which is itself a key external propaganda organ published by the Information Office of the State Council — essentially the same office as the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department — called the initiative “an important platform for Luoyang to promote high-quality development of international communication and enhance international discourse power” (提升国际话语权).

Since 2018, and accelerating since 2023, the Chinese leadership under Xi Jinping has called on provincial and city-level governments to join the national push to raise the country’s “discourse power” — hoping to close what it sees as a gap with the influence of the West — by launching local “international communication centers,” or ICCs. These are meant to leverage the resources of local media groups and propaganda offices, along with partnerships with universities and other entities, to promote Chinese cultural, economic and political influence.

Alongside the launch of the Luoyang center, officials announced the formation of the “Luoyang International Communication Alliance” (洛阳国际传播联盟), which according to official reports comprises more than 100 members from various sectors with overseas experience. The Luoyang ICC has also signed cooperation agreements with four local universities, including Henan University of Science and Technology — presumably to develop content and recruit talent for international messaging efforts. Foreigners from a number of countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Belarus, South Korea, and Morocco, were present at the launch ceremony, promoted as “Luoyang International Promotion Ambassadors” (洛阳国际推荐官).

Whether these provincial centers will significantly influence international opinion remains to be seen. State media reports, including from China Daily, claim that since preliminary operations of the Luoyang ICC began in December 2024, the center has “actively expanded overseas communication channels” and produced more than 600 articles and videos — content that reportedly attracted attention from China’s own Foreign Ministry. Aside from occasional announcements about the ICC’s formation posted on Instagram and Facebook by the state-run China News Service, however, we could find no evidence of any meaningful international impact.

In a stark illustration of media corruption in China, a prominent financial blogger named Kou (寇某), who ran a pair of prominent consumer-related social media channels, was sentenced on March 12 to more than 10 years in prison for “news extortion” (新闻敲诈). The case, which unfolded between 2022 and 2023, highlights a chronic problem in the country’s controlled media environment. By fabricating false news stories about companies and threatening reputational damage, he systematically extorted over 700,000 yuan through manipulative tactics that exploit the vulnerabilities of China’s information ecosystem, according to a report by the Xinmin Evening News (新民晚报), a paper under Shanghai’s state-run SMG.

The recent reporting stems from the completion of Kou’s legal case and ongoing efforts, officials say, to clean up the online information environment — serving as a warning to other potential offenders. The channels in question, “Consumer Financial Channel” (消费金融频道) and “Payment Encyclopedia” (支付百科), were previously included in a 2023 list of cautionary cases issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the country’s top internet control body. That list accused the channels of exploiting the principle of “public opinion supervision” (輿論監督) — a term associated with media monitoring and even investigative reporting — to commercially exploit companies. 

Kou’s “Consumer Financial Channel” was also profiled last year in a feature story from Shanghai’s The Paper (澎湃). In addition to Kou’s case, that story detailed a 2019 case in which a young couple in Shanghai illegally established 41 fake news websites, systematically publishing over 100,000 negative articles about companies and individuals across 20 provinces. By charging 500 yuan per negative article and targeting thousands of businesses, the couple earned over 1 million yuan in less than a year through their online extortion scheme.

What are the vulnerabilities of China’s information ecosystem to which the Xinmin Evening News report referred?

One crucial underlying issue is the state’s control of the press environment itself, which has led to rent-seeking behavior by powerful state media journalists who can threaten exposure of alleged malfeasance and demand “hush money” (封口費). Importantly, cases of news extortion over the past two decades in China have often implicated powerful state-run media as well as outright fraudsters. The most notorious example is the 2002 “Gold Nugget Case,” where eleven reporters, including four from Xinhua News Agency, accepted cash and gold nuggets to cover up a mining explosion that killed 37 workers, highlighting the deep-rooted corruption within China’s media landscape.

Nestled in the south of the diamond-shaped Ningxia region, the city of Guyuan radiates the sort of charm for which China’s ancient northwest has become known. Once a stopover on the northern Silk Road, the city is home to the towering Xumishan grottoes, a collection of Buddhist cave temples dating back to the fifth century A.D. Now, with the help of a state-run media giant, the local government hopes to translate its cultural capital into global impact. 

In a ceremony last week, local propaganda officials in Guyuan signed an agreement for framework cooperation with China Daily, the government-run multiple-language outlet that serves as one of the country’s primary communication vehicles. The agreement corresponded with the official launch of the local “Guyuan International Communication Center” (固原国际传播中心), a rebranded entity under the local propaganda office that will leverage local media content production — and the China Daily relationship — to promote Guyuan to the world. 

The local initiative is yet another point of implementation of Xi Jinping’s national strategy since 2018 to strengthen China’s global discourse power (话语权) through a campaign of grassroots storytelling — empowering local governments and media groups to add their voices to China’s collective voice. To date, the China Media Project has documented the launch of 28 provincial-level international communication centers (国际传播中心), or ICCs, and at least 50 at the city and district level — most of these established only since 2023.   

Guyuan officials said their new international communication center marked “a new page in our city’s overseas communication work,” adding that they aimed to showcase the city’s “beautiful natural scenery, profound cultural heritage, simple and hardworking customs, and specialty agricultural products” to international audiences.

Going Vertical

The framework agreement with China Daily points to another important aspect of Xi’s national push: The vertical integration of provincial, city and district-level ICCs with more influential and resource-rich central media groups, which can help to push local stories globally.

While presented as revolutionary approaches to enhance China’s global voice, these vertical integration efforts often amount to little more than performative compliance with central directives. The local implementations often lack substance beyond recycled rhetoric about “turning new chapters,” focusing more on communicating upward to leadership than outward to international audiences. It remains to be seen whether the local ICC push championed under Xi Jinping will result in meaningful global engagement.

Coverage of the ICC launch by the official Guyuan Daily, published by the city’s CCP Committee, referred to the tie-up with China Daily as a “central-local CP” (央地CP) partnership — “CP” being shorthand in this case for “coupling,” or peidui (配对). Similar terms have frequently been used in other cases over the past three years to refer to vertical integration in the context of global propaganda efforts, suggesting such arrangements are on the rise. 

In an article on ICC development published in December last year, the official communications magazine Media (传媒) wrote that, “The collaborative model between central media and local media is becoming increasingly important in advancing the construction of local international communication centers.” It cited the example of China Daily’s cooperation agreement with Nantong Radio and Television Media Group in Jiangsu, which resulted in the formation of Nantong International Communication Center (南通国际传播中心), the province’s first city-level international communication center.” In February 2024, the city of Cangzhou in eastern Hebei province formed its international communication center (沧州市国际传播中心) through a partnership with Xinhua News Agency.

The Tuscan textile city of Prato, home to thousands of fashion shops and warehouses and one of the most concentrated Chinese populations in Europe, can now boast formal links to China’s growing national network of local centers that are meant to revolutionize its state-led global communication.

In a ceremony held this week, Prato’s “Green Dragon Club” (青龙俱乐部), a local Chinese community center and dragon boat club, was presented with a pair of plaques designating it as both the “overseas communication base” and the “liaison office” of the Wenzhou International Communication Center (温州国际传播中心).

This international communication center, or ICC, is one of a growing number of local hubs in provinces and cities across China meant to harness the strength of local media groups — in coordination with local propaganda offices — to supercharge the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party to “tell China’s story well,” and strengthen its “discourse power” globally. As CMP has previously reported, Zhejiang province has led the charge in forming local ICCs. By our latest count, it now hosts 16 local centers — five times the national average.

The ceremony at the “Green Dragon Club” was attended by a top Wenzhou media official, Liu Shenyang (柳深扬), identified in a report by the weekly Europe Chinese News (欧洲华人报) as the editor-in-chief of the Wenzhou News Media Center (温州市新闻传媒中心), a local government-run media office founded in 2023 — and identified at the time as a “new milestone in the development of [the city’s propaganda work.” Liu was previously the top official at the city’s state-run television and radio broadcaster.

It is unclear how the new “overseas communication base” of the Wenzhou ICC will operate in practice, and how it means to drive China’s agenda in Italy or Europe beyond. But it was an opportunity, at the very least, for Wenzhou officials to claim a small victory in their effort to heed Xi Jinping's call to "restructure the pattern of [China's] international communication."

“This recognition brings our cooperation to a new level," Liu said as he unveiled the pair of plaques in Prato and, according to the Europe Chinese News report, "made commemorative gifts to major Chinese community organizations."