About Qiannan Daily

Qiannan Daily

Qiannan Daily (黔南日报, Qiannan Ribao) is a Chinese-language daily newspaper published in Duyun, Guizhou, as the official newspaper — the organ paper — of the Chinese Communist Party's Qiannan Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture Committee. It is the prefecture-level party paper of Qiannan, a mountainous autonomous prefecture in southern Guizhou whose population is drawn largely from the Buyi, Miao, Shui and other ethnic communities of the Miaoling mountains. From its base in the prefectural capital, the paper covers prefectural policy, economic development, poverty alleviation and rural affairs, culture and tourism across Qiannan's counties and county-level cities, and its pages are carried on Guizhou's provincial digital newspaper platforms alongside the Guizhou Daily group's titles.

The newspaper and its institutional role

Within China's party-press system, every autonomous prefecture maintains an organ paper that publishes the decisions of its party committee and documents the work of its government. The Qiannan Daily performs that function for Qiannan: it is the authoritative print record of the prefecture committee, read by officials, institutions and enterprises throughout the prefecture, and the channel through which prefectural policy is announced and explained. Its status as the committee's organ distinguishes it from commercial metropolitan papers — it speaks for the prefecture's leadership, and its front pages are given to the committee's meetings, campaigns and development priorities.

The prefecture it serves

Qiannan Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, established on 8 August 1956, covers some 26,195 square kilometres of the Yunnan–Guizhou plateau's eastern slopes, in the Miaoling mountain country drained by the upper reaches of the Wujiang, Hongshui, Qingshui and Duliu rivers. Its population of roughly 3.24 million is notably multi-ethnic: by the prefecture's own statistical profile, Han residents account for about 45 per cent, the Buyi for about 31 per cent and the Miao for about 13 per cent, with Shui, Maonan and other communities making up much of the remainder. The prefecture comprises two county-level cities, Duyun and Fuquan, nine counties and one autonomous county, Sandu, home of the Shui people. For the Qiannan Daily, governing and reporting across that ethnic and geographic diversity is the paper's basic condition.

Duyun, the publishing centre

The paper is published in Duyun, the prefectural seat, a city set in a basin among the Miaoling hills about an hour's drive from the provincial capital, Guiyang. Duyun is the prefecture's political and commercial centre and its transport hub, and it lends the prefecture one of its best-known products: Duyun Maojian tea, a green tea whose name was conferred by Mao Zedong in 1956 and which ranks among China's celebrated teas. The Qiannan Daily's newsroom sits in this small mountain capital, at the centre of a prefecture whose counties stretch from the suburbs of Guiyang to the Guangxi border.

Coverage: development and rural affairs

The paper's reporting follows the prefecture committee's agenda. Economic development in Qiannan means, above all, the transformation of a poor mountain region: road and rail building through difficult karst terrain, the growth of tea, fruit and other mountain agriculture, the relocation and support of rural households, and the long poverty-alleviation campaign in which Guizhou was a principal national battlefield. The Qiannan Daily documents that work county by county — the new roads, industries and schools of Libo, Dushan, Pingtang, Luodian and the other counties — combining prefectural policy announcements with field reporting from villages and townships. Rural news, agricultural technique and the practical affairs of farming communities form a large share of its pages, reflecting a readership that remains heavily rural.

Science and scenery: FAST and the karst

Qiannan holds two assets of world standing that recur in the paper's coverage. In a natural karst depression in Pingtang County stands FAST, the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope — the largest single-aperture and most sensitive radio telescope in the world, built with China's independent intellectual property and now a centre of astronomical research and science tourism. In Libo County, the Xiaoqikong scenic area forms part of a UNESCO World Natural Heritage site, its cone karst and primeval forest voted among China's most beautiful landscapes. More recently the prefecture has promoted a third emblem, the traditional horse racing of Sandu. The Qiannan Daily covers the telescope, the heritage landscapes and the ethnic festivals as the prefecture's calling cards — the subjects through which a remote mountain prefecture presents itself to the country.

Ethnic culture and tourism reporting

Qiannan's Buyi villages, Miao festivals and Shui traditions give the paper a cultural brief as rich as its development brief. Its culture and tourism pages report the prefecture's ethnic festivals, horsetail embroidery and other crafts, village tourism in places such as Libo and Sandu, and the prefecture's efforts to convert karst scenery and ethnic heritage into income for rural communities. In the prefecture's own branding — showcased, for instance, at the 2026 World Brand Moganshan Summit, where Qiannan presented FAST, the Libo karst and its horse-racing tradition as three world-class name cards — the Qiannan Daily is both chronicler and participant, the prefecture's own medium carrying its story outward.

The land between the rivers

The geography behind the paper's rural reporting deserves a word of its own. Qiannan sits on the southeastern slopes of the Yunnan–Guizhou plateau, where the Miaoling range divides the Yangtze and Pearl River watersheds: the Wujiang flows north from its northern counties, while the Hongshui, Qingshui and Duliu rivers drain the south toward Guangxi. It is a landscape of limestone peaks, forested valleys and terraced fields, in which level land is scarce and every road is an engineering work. The prefecture's counties — Libo, Guiding, Weng'an, Dushan, Pingtang, Luodian, Changshun, Longli and Huishui, the Sandu Shui Autonomous County, and the cities of Duyun and Fuquan — are strung along those valleys. Much of the Qiannan Daily's development coverage, from bridge and expressway building to the siting of industries and schools, is the story of knitting that difficult terrain into a single functioning prefecture.

Digital presence and provincial platforms

Like other Guizhou party papers, the Qiannan Daily now publishes within a converged provincial media environment. Its pages are carried on Guizhou's provincial digital newspaper platforms alongside the titles of the Guizhou Daily group, giving the prefecture paper a digital edition readable far beyond its mountain circulation area. That presence matters for a prefecture whose people increasingly work and study outside it: the paper of record for Qiannan's government is also a link home for Qiannan people in Guiyang and beyond, and a source through which provincial and national readers follow the prefecture's affairs.

Place in Guizhou's press system

Guizhou's party press is headed by the provincial Guizhou Daily in Guiyang, beneath which each prefecture and prefecture-level city maintains its own organ. The Qiannan Daily is the southern tier of that system — the principal print voice of a prefecture that borders Guangxi and looks south as well as north to the provincial capital. Its significance is the significance of the prefecture party paper throughout China: unglamorous, official and indispensable, it is the dated, printed record of how a multi-ethnic mountain prefecture is governed, developed and presented to itself. Historians of Guizhou's transformation — the decades in which a prefecture of Buyi, Miao and Shui villages acquired a world-class radio telescope, a World Heritage landscape and modern road and rail links — will find in its files the day-by-day local account against which the larger story can be checked.