Sing Tao Daily, which has 16 overseas editions and is circulated in 100 cities around the world, has been forced by the U.S. Justice Department to register as a “foreign agent”. This came as a shock to many Americans, as well as to the Chinese language media community in the United States because Sing Tao Daily is part of a private company in Hong Kong. It was traditionally a conservative, right-leaning media that has been quite neutral in its coverage of local news in North America and has been critical of the Chinese Communist government. Many people did not expect it to be classified as a “foreign agent” under the CCP.
So how did the paper transform from a conservative independent media outlet into a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party? And how many more are there?
