About Rise Weekly

Rise Weekly

Overview

Rise Weekly is a free Chinese-language weekly newspaper published in Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, by Rise Media Group Ltd. It appears together with a companion property paper, Rise Homes, and the two titles are distributed across the metropolitan area at no charge to readers. Rise Weekly carries news, people stories, culture, education and daily-life coverage; Rise Homes is devoted to property, development and the housing market. The publisher presents the pair as a combined weekly package aimed at Chinese-speaking residents of the Vancouver region.

The newspaper is the print flagship of Rise Media, a Chinese-language publishing company founded in 2015. On its own website, the company states that both weeklies have published continuously since 2015 and have passed their 500th issue — a run consistent with an unbroken weekly schedule over that period. Alongside the regular weeklies, Rise Media produces special print editions, including wedding guides and voter guides for federal, provincial and municipal elections. Rise Weekly is published in Chinese, is free of charge, and circulates in Metro Vancouver; its assigned home city in this directory is Vancouver, and its publisher's office is in Richmond, the Metro Vancouver city with one of Canada's largest Chinese-speaking populations.

History

Rise Media was founded in 2015 by new immigrants who, in the company's own account, had previously worked professionally in journalism, cultural communication and marketing in China. It set up in the Richmond–Vancouver area and built its business around free-distribution Chinese-language print at a time when Metro Vancouver's established Chinese dailies were beginning to contract. The two weeklies, Rise Weekly and Rise Homes, have been published together since 2015, and the company says its editorial work has been recognised by news and cultural awards in Canada and abroad, though it does not name the awards on its website and no specific award is claimed in this profile.

The paper's voter guides and election coverage brought it national attention during and after the 2021 federal election. In June 2024, The Bureau, an investigative outlet run by journalist Sam Cooper, reported on Canadian Security Intelligence Service documents concerning Rise Media's role in the campaign in Richmond, British Columbia. According to that reporting, a Rise Media video interview with Liberal candidate Parm Bains was published ten days before the vote, and on the same day Rise Weekly carried a front-page advertisement and an endorsement article urging Richmond's Chinese-Canadian voters to support Bains and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The reporting also described the Chinese Canadians Goto Vote Association, a voter-mobilisation group formed by Rise Media journalists during the campaign, campaigning alongside Bains. These accounts were allegations drawn from intelligence documents, reported as such, and they became part of the material aired around Canada's Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference.

People associated with the voter-engagement work have publicly disputed the characterisation. In a submission to the Foreign Interference Commission, community organiser Ivan Pak described partnering with Rise Weekly on candidate interviews in the 2025 federal election campaign, writing that Rise Media sent invitations to all major federal parties, that most responded positively and that the Conservative Party declined to take part. The submission denied that the initiative aimed to promote Liberal candidates, and noted that Rise Media had published an article featuring Conservative MP Kenny Chiu during the 2019 election. The Commission's final report, released in January 2025, concluded that foreign interference had occurred in the 2019 and 2021 elections but did not affect which party formed government, while noting that results in a small number of ridings may have been affected, though this could not be said with certainty. Rise Weekly itself has continued publishing through this period, and its publisher's website, live when this profile was researched in October 2026, presents the two weeklies as current, ongoing titles.

Content and Coverage

Rise Media describes its editorial territory as politics and public affairs, real estate, business and law, immigration and education, culture and the arts, and community life in British Columbia. Within the combined weekly package, the division of labour is explicit: Rise Weekly takes news, people, culture, education and daily life, while Rise Homes handles property listings-style coverage, development news and the housing market — a significant beat in Metro Vancouver, where housing costs are a central concern for the newcomer and established immigrant households the papers serve.

The special editions show the same settlement-focused logic. Wedding guides address family and consumer life; voter guides for federal, provincial and municipal elections walk Chinese-speaking readers through Canadian democratic processes, candidates and voting mechanics. The company's candidate interviews — video conversations with election candidates, run in partnership with community voter-engagement groups in both the 2021 and 2025 federal campaigns — extend that civic-education strand into digital video. Immigration and education coverage addresses readers navigating study permits, settlement and schooling; business and law coverage addresses readers running companies and buying property. The result is a general-interest community weekly whose mix is weighted toward the practical concerns of immigrants building lives in British Columbia, with the companion property title monetising the real-estate advertising that has historically sustained free Chinese-language print in Vancouver.

Audience and Reach

Rise Media defines its readership plainly: established, higher-income Chinese Canadians, and newcomers who are settling, working, buying property and raising families in Metro Vancouver. That self-description matches the papers' format and distribution — free copies placed across the metropolitan area, including the Richmond and Vancouver neighbourhoods where Chinese-speaking residents are concentrated. The Bureau's election reporting, for example, noted that Chinese-Canadian voters made up about half of the electorate in the Richmond riding where Rise Weekly's endorsement appeared.

The publisher publishes no audited circulation figures, and this profile claims none. The verifiable indicators of scale are the ones the company itself states: two free weeklies distributed across Metro Vancouver, published together every week, continuously since 2015 and past their 500th issue, supplemented by special editions and election-period voter guides. The papers operate in a Chinese-language media market that has thinned considerably: Sing Tao Daily ended its Canadian print editions in 2022 while continuing online, and Media Chinese International announced in January 2026 that it would close its Canadian Ming Pao operations, ending the country's last Chinese-language daily newspaper. Against that backdrop, a free weekly pair still in print is a notable survivor, serving readers — particularly older and newly arrived residents — who continue to rely on Chinese-language print.

Digital Presence

Rise Media's public digital footprint centres on its corporate website at riseweekly.com, which presents the company's titles and publishing record, and on the video and social distribution that surrounds its election work. Candidate interviews produced with community partners have been published as online video — a submission to the Foreign Interference Commission, for instance, linked to a YouTube video of one such interview — and Chinese-language social platforms, above all WeChat, were the channels through which the voter-mobilisation campaigns associated with the paper's journalists reached readers during the 2021 campaign, according to the intelligence-based reporting of that episode.

The website itself functions as a company and titles showcase rather than a daily news portal: it sets out the two weeklies' frequency, language, circulation area and publishing history. This profile makes no claim about online traffic, as no independently verified figures for the site are published. A direct check of the site in October 2026 found it live and presenting Rise Weekly and Rise Homes as current publications, and business listings continue to show Rise Media as an active business at its Richmond address.

Ownership and Organisation

Rise Weekly is published by Rise Media Group Ltd., the company named on its website. The company was founded in 2015 by immigrant journalists and media professionals from China, as described in the History section above. It publishes the two free weeklies, Rise Weekly and Rise Homes, and produces special print editions. No parent company, external owner or individual proprietor is named in the sources reviewed for this profile, and none is asserted here. Business directory listings place the company's office at Suite 200, 6061 No. 3 Road in Richmond, British Columbia — within Metro Vancouver, and consistent with the papers' circulation area and with the directory's assignment of Vancouver as the home city.

Contact and Availability

Rise Weekly and Rise Homes are free Chinese-language newspapers, published together weekly and distributed across Metro Vancouver, British Columbia. The publisher, Rise Media Group Ltd., is listed in business directories at 6061 Number 3 Road, Suite 200, Richmond, BC, with the telephone number +1 778-379-8188 and weekday office hours; readers and advertisers can also reach the company through its website, riseweekly.com. The papers are published in Chinese. In line with this directory's practice, the public business email field for this profile is left empty.