About China Press Online (Malaysia)

China Press Online (Malaysia)

China Press Online is the news website of China Press (中國報; pinyin Zhongguo Bao), the Malaysian Chinese-language daily newspaper, published at chinapress.com.my. It must be distinguished from two other publications with similar names: The China Press of the United States, an unrelated American Chinese-language title, and the historical English-language China Press of Shanghai. The outlet profiled here is the Malaysian paper founded in Kuala Lumpur on 1 February 1946 by Tun Henry Lee Hau Shik, better known as H. S. Lee. China Press is Malaysia's second-best-selling Chinese daily, with a circulation of about 154,000 copies, and its website, launched in 2015, has become one of Malaysia's most popular Chinese-language news portals; as of November 2022 it was considered the most popular Chinese-language news portal in the country. The title is now part of Media Chinese International Limited, the dual-listed Chinese-language media group.

Founded by H. S. Lee in 1946

China Press was first published on 1 February 1946 in Kuala Lumpur by Henry Lee Hau Shik, a Hong Kong-born tin-mining magnate who had established himself in Selangor and Perak in the 1920s and who became one of the founding figures of modern Malaysia. According to the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies' record of his private archives, Lee founded the paper in 1946 with the intention of countering the Communist newspaper Min Sheng Pao and its propaganda in the unsettled period after the Second World War. Lee went on to help found the Malayan Chinese Association in 1949, played a key role in forging the electoral alliance with UMNO in 1952 that later became the Alliance Party, served as Minister of Transport from 1955 to 1957 and became the first Finance Minister of the independent Federation of Malaya from 1957 to 1959. The newspaper he founded has therefore been intertwined with Malaysia's political founding generation from its first issue.

Suspension after the 13 May 1969 riots

The paper's early decades were marked by the crises of the young Malaysian state. In 1969 China Press was suspended for a month following its publication of a court news item in the aftermath of the 13 May Incident, the communal riots that shook Kuala Lumpur that year. The suspension is one of the frequently cited episodes in Malaysian press history, illustrating the tight limits placed on newspaper reporting in the emergency atmosphere that followed the riots, and it remains part of the paper's institutional memory as it reports on Malaysian politics today.

Relaunch, growth and the night edition

China Press relaunched in 1986 and grew rapidly: by 1988 its daily circulation had risen from 20,000 to 100,000 copies, making it at that time the fastest-growing newspaper in Malaysia. Building on that popularity, the paper launched its evening edition on 19 May 1990 with the mission statement "Today News Tonight Know". The evening or night edition became a signature of the title — China Press is unique among Malaysian dailies for its afternoon and evening publishing cycle, which gives its readers an end-of-day reading pattern, and its night edition is the leading paper of its kind in Malaysia, with a circulation of about 48,000 copies. Audit Bureau of Circulations figures for July to December 2015 put the main daily's circulation at 154,538 copies, with 48,207 for the night edition and 9,686 for the daily e-paper, confirming China Press as the second most popular Chinese daily in Malaysia by circulation in 2015.

Ownership: Nanyang Press, the MCA takeover and Media Chinese

In 1993 Nanyang Press, publisher of Nanyang Siang Pau, took over the management of China Press, and in that year Nanyang Press also acquired a full stake in the paper, forming what was then the largest Chinese-language press group in Malaysia. A more controversial chapter followed on 31 May 2001, when Huaren Holdings, the investment arm of the Malaysian Chinese Association, acquired a 72.35 percent stake in Nanyang Press Holdings, the publisher of both Nanyang Siang Pau and China Press. The Committee to Protect Journalists protested that the acquisition threatened two of the few relatively independent voices in the Malaysian media, and civil-society groups campaigned against the takeover. Ownership shifted again in October 2006, when the MCA sold a 21.02 percent stake in Nanyang Press Holdings to Ezywood Options, a company owned by tycoon Tiong Hiew King — a transaction that, according to the Southeast Asian Press Alliance, left some 85 percent of Chinese-press circulation in Malaysia under Tiong's control and galvanised dozens of organisations to demand media-law reform. In April 2008 Nanyang Press merged with Sin Chew Media and Ming Pao Enterprise to create Media Chinese International, under which China Press is published today.

The chinapress.com.my portal

The online operation that this profile covers is comparatively recent. According to Media Chinese International, chinapress.com.my, the paper's news website launched in 2015, became one of the most popular Chinese-language news portals in Malaysia as its visitor numbers and hit rates climbed rapidly. By November 2022 China Press was considered the most popular Chinese-language news portal in Malaysia — an inversion of the print hierarchy, in which the title ranks second behind Sin Chew Daily. The site, which styles the paper in its own branding as the most influential Chinese newspaper in Malaysia, publishes continuously updated Malaysian and international news in Chinese, carries the paper's e-paper and night-edition journalism, and maintains an active social presence, including its @mychinapress account. For many Malaysian Chinese readers the portal, rather than the afternoon print edition, is now the primary way they encounter the 1946 title.

The 2005–06 show-cause letter and press freedom

China Press has figured in Malaysian press-freedom debates beyond the 1969 suspension and the 2001 takeover. In 2005–06 the paper fought a Home Ministry show-cause letter issued over a headline that identified a detainee's nationality — a case documented by IFEX and the Southeast Asian Press Alliance as a noted Malaysian press-freedom dispute, in which the ministry questioned the paper's reporting and the paper defended its journalism. The episode sits in the longer pattern of Malaysian newspaper regulation under the Printing Presses and Publications Act, which has historically required annual publishing permits and given the Home Ministry wide powers over titles, a framework within which all of Malaysia's Chinese dailies, China Press included, have had to operate.

Position among Malaysia's Chinese dailies

Within Malaysia's Chinese-language press, China Press occupies a distinctive place: founded later than Kwong Wah Yit Poh (1910), Nanyang Siang Pau (1923) and Sin Chew Daily (1929), it built its identity on speed, its afternoon cycle and popular appeal rather than on seniority, rising from 20,000 copies at its 1986 relaunch to the country's second Chinese daily and, online, to the country's leading Chinese news portal. It is one of the five well-established Chinese-language newspapers in Media Chinese International's portfolio, alongside Ming Pao, Sin Chew Daily, Nanyang Siang Pau and Guang Ming Daily, in a group whose five dailies publish 13 editions with a combined daily circulation of about one million copies. China Press Online carries that print inheritance into digital form for Chinese-speaking Malaysians at home and abroad.

What the site publishes today

Today chinapress.com.my delivers the full span of the newspaper's reporting in digital form: national Malaysian news and politics, crime and court reporting for which the paper has long been known, business and markets, entertainment, sport, community news from across Malaysia's states, and international coverage with a particular focus on China and the wider Chinese-speaking world. The afternoon heritage of the print paper translates online into a site built around the day's developing stories as they complete, while the e-paper preserves the paginated edition for traditional readers. As the digital arm of a title founded in the first year of post-war Malaya by one of the country's founding finance ministers, China Press Online connects one of Malaysia's oldest continuous newspaper institutions with the mobile-first habits of its contemporary audience.