People’s Liberation Army Daily

The People’s Liberation Army Daily is the official newspaper of China’s Central Military Commission and describes itself as the Party’s mouthpiece within the armed forces. First published on 1 January 1956, it has since February 2018 formed part of the PLA News Communication Centre, the military’s consolidated multimedia organisation within the Central Military Commission Political Work Department system.

Media assets

Newspapers: PLA Daily, published under domestic serial number CN 81-0001/(J), and China National Defense News, both within the military newspaper operation centred on PLA Daily Press. PLA Daily is published seven days a week and distributed by subscription and retail as well as through the armed forces

Digital: the PLA Daily app; China Military Bugle, the News Communication Centre’s flagship mobile platform launched formally in March 2024 and exceeding 10 million downloads by May 2025; China Military Online at 81.cn; and the Ministry of National Defense website

Periodicals and related Centre media: the Centre brings together military titles including PLA Pictorial, Military Correspondent, founded in 1958 and devoted to military journalism research, and World Military, alongside broadcasting, video and publishing operations

The organisational parent is the PLA News Communication Centre, formed in February 2018 by merging PLA Daily Press with the military’s other principal news media. Xinhua reported at the paper’s seventieth anniversary that the Centre has 91 new media publishing endpoints reaching 360 million users. China Military Online and the Ministry of National Defense website are Centre-level platforms rather than assets belonging independently to the newspaper; their inclusion here reflects the integrated structure created by that consolidation.

Ownership and governance

PLA Daily is not a state-owned newspaper supervised from outside the military. It is an organ of the Central Military Commission embedded in the military political work structure, with the Political Work Department as its supervising authority. That department performs the military’s central Party, political, ideological and personnel functions.

The relationship is stated in the paper’s own institutional language. Marking the seventieth anniversary on 31 December 2025, Xi Jinping sent a letter of congratulation instructing PLA Daily to remember its mission of belonging to the Party and serving the military, to implement the requirement that newspapers be run by politically responsible leadership, to maintain the correct political direction and public opinion orientation, and to strengthen its role as the principal channel of military publicity and opinion guidance. Central Military Commission Vice-Chairman Zhang Shengmin read the letter at a commemorative meeting in Beijing the same day.

Personnel management operates inside the military system, though not exclusively through uniformed service. The News Communication Centre employs both serving military personnel and military civilian personnel, and recruits publicly into editorial, reporting, publishing and engineering positions. Promotion, professional title assessment and rank advancement proceed within the military personnel management framework.

Source of funding and budget

PLA Daily publishes no separate budget or financial statements, and detailed expenditure for individual Chinese military units is not disclosed through the civilian central government budget system.

The available evidence nonetheless makes the funding condition clearer here than for any other Chinese outlet in this dataset. PLA Daily operates as part of the armed forces’ political and information apparatus, and its personnel, facilities and media operations sit within the military institutional structure. Its 2025 social responsibility report states that the newspaper strictly implemented the Central Military Commission’s prohibition on paid services and that neither the organisation nor its personnel engaged in any form of business operation during the year. The same statement appeared in its 2024 report.

The newspaper does have paid circulation, so it would be inaccurate to say that no non-state revenue enters the operation. PLA Daily is available by subscription at CNY 20.80 a month in 2026 and CNY 0.80 per retail copy, and official material states that it is to be subscribed to at squad level in accordance with military requirements, which makes much of that circulation institutional rather than open-market.

Editorial independence

PLA Daily defines itself as the Central Military Commission’s organ and the Party’s mouthpiece in the military, so its editorial purpose differs institutionally from that of a broadcaster notionally expected to serve an autonomous public interest remit.

Its 2025 social responsibility report states that it implements the Central Military Commission chairman responsibility system, publicises the decisions and deployments of the CCP Central Committee and the Commission, observes the ideological work responsibility system and ensures correct political orientation, public opinion orientation and values. During 2025 it published more than 2,600 editorials, commentaries and theoretical articles connected with Xi Jinping’s thinking and the Party’s political and military agenda. The report is similarly explicit about strategic communication, describing the paper’s work on Taiwan independence positions, criticism of Japanese policy and international military reporting as public opinion guidance supporting China’s political, diplomatic and military struggles.

The absence of a counterweight is structural rather than incidental. No independent governing body, statutory autonomy guarantee or external editorial regulator can override military political authority, and editorial personnel operate within military personnel, political security and secrecy systems in addition to the controls applying to Chinese journalism generally.

AI and digital policy

PLA Daily has adopted artificial intelligence in production more extensively than previously recorded. The News Communication Centre operates the Military Media Smart Cloud as an integrated production and command system, and the paper’s own account of its digital transformation identifies intelligent proofreading, intelligent editing and a military media large model among the technologies supporting production across newspaper, television, websites, apps and social platforms, with the system described as delivering one network for news production, one screen for integrated command and one cloud for information flow.

Its 2025 coverage supplies a direct example. In the early hours of 8 March 2025, a new form of PLA Daily was reviewed on the Centre’s integrated command centre screens: twelve pages combining text, images, video, audio, VR, H5 and AI-created products, introduced by the digital reporter Mulan. It was the sixth year the paper had produced a holographic edition for the annual parliamentary sessions. China Military Bugle likewise launched with AI dialogue, digital presenters and intelligent text-to-audio news.

China’s general rules for deep synthesis and AI-generated content impose identification requirements on covered internet information services, including the explicit and implicit labelling obligations that took effect on 1 September 2025. Military media operate public-facing internet platforms, but State Media Monitor identified no publicly available military media guidance explaining how those rules are implemented, and it would be unsafe either to declare military media exempt or to assume the general rules apply identically to every military publishing activity.

Classification rationale

PLA Daily remains classified State-Controlled Media (SC).

It is state-owned and Party-military governed. PLA Daily is the official organ of the Central Military Commission and operates within the PLA News Communication Centre and the Commission’s Political Work Department system. Its institutional leadership, personnel management and editorial chain are internal to the armed forces. No independent board, appointments mechanism, autonomy charter or external editorial oversight exists.

It is predominantly state-funded. Unit-level military budgets are not publicly disclosed, so State Media Monitor does not claim a complete financial breakdown. But the paper’s institutional financing sits inside the military system, and its own 2025 report states that it carries out no business operations under the Central Military Commission’s prohibition on paid services. Paid subscriptions exist, largely on an institutional basis, but no material commercial activity was identified capable of displacing military financing as the newspaper’s principal support.

Its editorial agenda is directly determined within the Party-state military structure. PLA Daily describes itself as the Party’s mouthpiece in the armed forces, Xi Jinping has instructed it to maintain the correct political direction and public opinion orientation and to serve as the principal channel of military publicity, and its own responsibility report documents implementation of higher-level political and ideological directives.

August 2026