About Sing Tao Media Group Canada

Sing Tao Media Group Canada

Overview

Sing Tao Media Group Canada (加拿大星島傳媒集團), commonly shortened to STMG, is a Chinese-language media group headquartered in the Toronto area, in Markham, Ontario. Its flagship product is Sing Tao Daily (星島日報), for decades Canada's largest Chinese-language newspaper and today a digital-only news service published at singtao.ca. Around that flagship, the group operates a portfolio of Chinese-language websites, the Sing Tao A1 Chinese Radio service in Toronto, the bilingual luxury lifestyle magazine eliteGen, the Vancouver magazine Canadian City Post, and a range of digital marketing, events and e-commerce services aimed at Chinese Canadians.

The group's history in Canada stretches back to 1978, when the Sing Tao brand — founded in Hong Kong forty years earlier — began publishing in this country. At its peak the newspaper printed separate editions in Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary and was widely described as the largest Chinese-language daily in Canada. The print editions ended on August 28, 2022, in a much-reported pivot to digital publishing, but the newsroom did not close: Sing Tao continues to report and publish daily online, and in 2024 its journalists made Canadian media history at the National Newspaper Awards. Since 2023 the company has been jointly owned by a private Canadian corporation and the Hong Kong-based Sing Tao News Corporation.

History

The Sing Tao name originates in Hong Kong, where the Sing Tao newspaper group was established in 1938 and grew into one of the city's major Chinese-language publishers. The Canadian chapter began in 1978 as a Hong Kong-owned Chinese-language newspaper serving the growing Chinese immigrant communities of Canada's largest cities. Published in traditional Chinese characters, with a Cantonese orientation inherited from its Hong Kong parent, the Canadian Sing Tao built its position on a dual news offering: extensive coverage of Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan supplied through the parent group, combined with original reporting on Canadian national and local affairs by its own journalists in Canada.

By the 1990s the paper had editions in Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary and was regarded as the largest Chinese-language newspaper in the country. In 1998 its ownership structure changed when Torstar Corporation, publisher of the Toronto Star, became joint owner of the Canadian operation alongside Sing Tao's Hong Kong parent. The partnership linked Sing Tao editorially as well as commercially to the Toronto Star: the Chinese-language paper held rights to translate and republish Star journalism for its readers.

The paper's editorial practices have periodically drawn scrutiny. In 2001, Falun Gong practitioners in Canada sued the group's Canadian operation over an article, republished from the parent group's output, that likened the movement to the September 11 terrorists; the claimants sought more than C$13 million in damages, according to the South China Morning Post's report of the filing. In 2009, the Toronto edition's top editor, Wilson Chan, was dismissed after it emerged that he had heavily altered a Toronto Star article about Tibet before publication, removing criticism of the Chinese government. The episode was later examined in the Globe and Mail, and National Post journalist Tom Blackwell and author Jonathan Manthorpe have both characterised the newspaper's editorial stance on China as pro-Beijing — a characterisation readers should weigh alongside management's public statements that the paper is an independent voice focused on the local Chinese-Canadian community.

Under chief executive Calvin Wong, who joined the company in 2003 and became CEO in 2017, Sing Tao Canada repositioned itself from a traditional newspaper publisher into a multi-platform content and marketing company, expanding its websites, social media, video, events and e-commerce offerings. That strategy culminated in the biggest structural change in its Canadian history. On July 25, 2022, the company announced that the daily print newspaper would cease publication on August 28, 2022, after more than forty years, with eighty-three staff across the country affected by the transition. Management stressed that the journalism itself would continue in digital form, and that its magazine titles would carry on.

Two further changes followed in 2023. Torstar's quarter-century involvement ended, and the group passed into joint ownership by a private Canadian corporation and Sing Tao News Corporation. On April 1, 2023, Calvin Wong retired as CEO — remaining on the board of directors — and was succeeded by Anson Wong, who had joined the company in 2008 as general manager of its radio operation and later served as vice-president of business ventures. The new leadership framed its goal as building "one of Canada's leading audience companies" on a solutions-based marketing model.

The digital-era newsroom won national recognition soon afterwards. At the 2024 National Newspaper Awards, a Sing Tao team won the inaugural Special Topic Award for "Embracing Canada," a four-part series on the second wave of Hong Kong immigration to Canada — the first time in the awards' seventy-five-year history that journalists were honoured for work produced in a language other than English or French. Sing Tao journalists were finalists for the same award again in 2025, for reporting on the human cost of British Columbia's overdose crisis.

Content and Coverage

Sing Tao's news coverage, published in traditional Chinese, combines three streams of content. The first is international and China-region news — Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan — drawing on the resources of the Hong Kong parent group. The second is Canadian coverage produced by its own reporters in its Toronto and Vancouver newsrooms, spanning federal and municipal politics, immigration policy, education, health, business and community affairs of direct relevance to Chinese Canadians. The third is service and lifestyle journalism: the company's websites carry up-to-the-minute news together with finance, sports, entertainment, property, food and leisure content.

The flagship website, singtao.ca, launched in 2000 and is presented in three local versions for Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary readers. Alongside it, the group runs dushi.ca, launched in 2009 in simplified Chinese and oriented to immigrants from mainland China, and ccue.ca, launched in 2007 as a leisure site focused on travel, dining, beauty, parenting and shopping for Hong Kong immigrants. Its magazine publishing includes eliteGen, a bilingual Chinese-English glossy described by the company as a national luxury lifestyle magazine, with a digital edition at elitegen.ca; Canadian City Post in Vancouver; and, from 2022, Sing Tao Headline, a traditional-Chinese lifestyle magazine published weekly on Saturdays. The group also operates Sing Tao A1 Chinese Radio in Toronto, whose website offers presenter profiles, live and archived programmes and broadcast schedules, and it stages community events and provides marketing services to advertisers seeking Chinese-Canadian consumers.

Audience and Reach

Sing Tao serves Canada's Chinese-language population, the country's second-largest ethnic group, which the company sizes at roughly 1.7 million people nationwide. Its core readership is Cantonese-speaking — singtao.ca is described in the group's own company profile as the leading Chinese media website for Cantonese-speaking Canadians — while dushi.ca addresses the growing Mandarin-speaking, mainland-born segment in simplified characters.

Audience figures published by the company itself, drawn from Google Analytics data for October 2022 in its 2023 company profile, put the group's digital reach at more than 900,000 users, 16 million monthly page views and over 200,000 social media followers; these are company-reported figures from that date, not current independently audited numbers. Former CEO Calvin Wong has described Sing Tao to the advertising trade press as "the gateway and vehicle" for businesses wanting to reach what he called the $61 billion Chinese-Canadian market. The group's competitive position strengthened by default in 2026, when its longtime rival Ming Pao Canada — the last Chinese-language daily still printing in Canada after Sing Tao's 2022 print exit — closed, leaving Sing Tao's digital service as the country's principal remaining Chinese-language daily news operation.

Digital Presence

Digital is now the group's core business rather than an adjunct to print. Singtao.ca operates as a desktop and mobile news service with local editions for its three historic print cities, supported by the group's companion websites, mobile apps, e-newsletters and social media channels. Since late 2019 the group has also run Sing Club (singclub.ca), an e-commerce platform aimed at Chinese Canadians, launched with more than five hundred products and product information in customers' first language, with affiliate partnerships with established brands. The corporate website, stmg.ca, presents the group's advertising, marketing and events services to business clients.

Ownership and Organisation

Sing Tao Media Group Canada is jointly owned, since 2023, by a private Canadian corporation and Sing Tao News Corporation, the Hong Kong-listed publisher that owns the global Sing Tao brand. Between 1998 and 2023 the Canadian business was jointly owned by Torstar Corporation and the Sing Tao group in Hong Kong. The company is headquartered in Markham, Ontario — listed at Suite 201, 25 Royal Crest Court — and maintains newsrooms and offices in Toronto and Vancouver.

The chief executive since April 2023 is Anson Wong. The senior team appointed alongside him included Raphael Lai as chief operating officer, Alice Chui as vice-president of radio, Leslie Yip — also associate publisher and editor-in-chief of eliteGen — as vice-president of business solutions, Tina Chow as vice-president of sales and marketing, and Lelia Leung as general manager for Western Canada. Former CEO Calvin Wong remained on the board after stepping down.

Contact and Availability

Sing Tao Media Group Canada's head office is at Suite 201, 25 Royal Crest Court, Markham, Ontario, L3R 9X4, in the Greater Toronto Area, with additional offices in Toronto and Vancouver. Its news is published daily, in traditional Chinese, at singtao.ca, with local versions for Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary; the group's services and advertising information are presented at stmg.ca, its radio service at a1chineseradio.ca, and the eliteGen magazine at elitegen.ca. No print edition of Sing Tao Daily has been published in Canada since August 28, 2022; readers who remember the printed newspaper will find its successor exclusively online.