About People's Railway Daily

People's Railway Daily

People's Railway Daily (人民铁道报, Rénmín Tiědào Bào; the paper's Chinese title is Renmin Tiedao, and its masthead shortens to People's Railway) is the newspaper of China's national railway system. Published in Beijing in Chinese by the People's Railway Daily Press under the supervision of China State Railway Group — the state-owned operator that runs China's railways, formerly the Ministry of Railways and China Railway Corporation — it reports railway operations, construction, safety, passenger and freight services and railway culture for staff and readers across the national network. Its masthead is written in the handwriting of Mao Zedong.

Founding in 1949

The newspaper was founded in Beijing on 1 May 1949, months before the proclamation of the People's Republic of China, as the organ of the new railway administration then being assembled by the Military Commission's Ministry of Railways. The first issue had a print run of 5,000 copies. It was born with the unified national railway itself: the railway authorities created in early 1949 were charged with repairing war-damaged lines and unifying the fragmented regional networks, and the newspaper served as their internal and public bulletin from the start.

Suspensions and the 1979 revival

The paper's publication was twice interrupted by politics: it was suspended in 1957 and again in 1966, at the start of the Cultural Revolution. It resumed publication on 1 January 1979, at the opening of the reform era, and has published continuously since. The 1979 revival restored the railway system's own daily voice just as China began the vast expansion of its rail network that the paper has documented ever since — from steam-era reconstruction through electrification, speed increases and the building of the world's largest high-speed rail network.

Distribution: subscriptions and trains

From 1 January 1991 the newspaper moved to self-organised distribution. Its two distribution channels reflect its unique readership: conventional subscription, and mobile sale aboard passenger trains, where the paper is sold to travellers by on-board vendors. Few newspapers anywhere have a captive readership of long-distance rail passengers built into their distribution model, and the train-sales channel made People's Railway a familiar sight in Chinese railway carriages for decades. The paper's unified domestic publication number is CN 11-0096 and its overseas distribution code is D958.

Publisher and headquarters

The paper is published by the People's Railway Daily Press, whose offices are at No. 3 Beifengwo in Beijing's Haidian District, beside the railway administration's historic headquarters area west of Beijing Railway Station. The press is supervised by China State Railway Group Co., Ltd. The newspaper's institutional lineage follows the railway administration itself: created under the Military Commission's railway ministry, it served the Ministry of Railways for most of its life; when the ministry was abolished in 2013 its operating functions passed to China Railway Corporation, renamed China State Railway Group in 2019, and the paper passed with them.

What the paper covers

People's Railway Daily reports the working life of the national railway: operations and dispatching, new line construction and openings, safety campaigns, passenger and freight service, the work of the railway bureaus and stations across China, and the culture and welfare of the railway workforce — historically one of China's largest single groups of industrial employees, organised in a famously self-contained system with its own schools, hospitals and housing. It also covers the railway's political and ceremonial life, from Spring Festival travel mobilisation to the inauguration of landmark lines, and publishes the system's official announcements and commendations.

Digital presence

The press operates the People's Railway Net (人民铁道网), the railway system's official news website, which carries the newspaper's reporting and railway news online. Through the site and the wider China State Railway Group digital channels, the paper's coverage of timetable changes, new services and railway policy reaches passengers as well as staff.

Place among China's organ newspapers

People's Railway Daily is one of the classic Chinese "system newspapers": an organ paper serving a single great state industry. Classifications of Chinese newspapers have long cited Renmin Tiedao (People's Railways) as a textbook example of the trade and professional newspaper category, alongside the papers of other ministries and systems. Founded when the People's Republic itself was months away, suspended twice and revived in 1979, it remains in print as the daily record of the world's largest railway system and of the workforce that runs it.

Born with the unified railway

The newspaper's founding was part of the creation of a single national railway out of the liberated areas' separate lines. The Military Commission's Ministry of Railways was decided upon in January 1949, under Minister Teng Daiyuan, and held the first national railway work conference in Shijiazhuang in January–February 1949; by June 1949 the ministry's map of Chinese railways recorded some 26,000 kilometres of line, of which about 22,000 kilometres were operable. People's Railway Daily, launched in Beijing on 1 May 1949 with its first run of 5,000 copies, was the new system's bulletin from its first spring — reporting repair, unification and operation to railway staff scattered across a war-damaged network.

The railway the paper serves today

The system behind the paper is now China State Railway Group, the state-owned enterprise formed from the Ministry of Railways' operating arm: created as China Railway Corporation on 14 March 2013 when the ministry was abolished, and renamed China State Railway Group on 5 December 2018. It operates China's passenger and freight railways, including the international through trains, under the industry regulation of the Ministry of Transport and the National Railway Administration. People's Railway Daily passed from the ministry to the corporation and then to the group, remaining throughout the railway system's own newspaper — its masthead still in Mao Zedong's handwriting, its offices still at Beifengwo in Haidian, and its pages still the daily record of the network's operations, construction and workforce.

Reading the paper

For readers outside the railway system, People's Railway Daily is most often encountered in its historic second channel: on sale aboard long-distance trains, where it has been part of the furniture of Chinese rail travel since self-distribution began in 1991. For readers inside the system, it is a working tool — the channel for operating notices, safety campaigns, commendations and the endless incremental news of a network that never stops: line openings, timetable changes, equipment introductions and the seasonal mobilisations for the Spring Festival and summer travel peaks. That double readership, professional and passenger, gives the paper a character distinct from every other Chinese organ newspaper: it is at once a house journal for one of the world's largest workforces and a traveller's newspaper, printed in Beijing and read at speed across the whole continent-sized network it reports.

Few newspapers in the world can claim the paper's combination of credentials: founded in 1949 before the state it serves had been proclaimed, printed first in a run of five thousand copies, suspended twice by political campaigns and restored in 1979, distributed since 1991 by its own organisation through subscriptions and the trains themselves, and still published today, under a masthead in Mao Zedong's hand, as the daily newspaper of the largest railway system on earth.

It is, in short, the railway's own daily chronicle, kept continuously since the first spring of the People's Republic.