Xinhua

Xinhua News Agency is China’s national news agency and one of the largest state news organisations in the world. Its predecessor, the Red China News Agency, was established on 7 November 1931 and renamed Xinhua in January 1937. It is a ministerial-level public institution directly under the State Council.

Media assets

News agency: the Xinhua wire, operating around the clock in 15 languages and supplying text, photography, graphics, audio and video to more than 8,200 news organisation users worldwide, with its external China-news service in Chinese, English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Portuguese

Newspapers and periodicals: more than 20 titles, among them Xinhua Daily Telegraph, Reference News, Economic Information Daily, China Securities Journal, Shanghai Securities News, Outlook and Banyuetan

Television and digital: China Xinhua News Network (CNC), whose television operation began in 2010; Xinhuanet, Xinhua’s principal online platform, in which Xinhua holds 51 per cent and whose operating company is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange; and the agency’s mobile and social media platforms

Internal information: Xinhua’s Reference News Editorial Department produces research and reference reporting for official readers at different levels as part of the agency’s formally stated eyes and ears and think tank functions. Separately, the publicly available newspaper Reference News compiles and translates foreign reporting

Network: more than 220 domestic and overseas branches, including 31 provincial-level branches in mainland China and 184 overseas branches, seven of them regional headquarters, together with ten sub-branches and reporter stations, a reporter in Taiwan and a People’s Liberation Army branch at headquarters

Ownership and governance

Xinhua is one of China’s central principal media institutions and holds ministerial institutional rank as a public institution directly under the State Council.

Fu Hua, born in August 1964, has been President and Secretary of the agency’s Party Leadership Group since June 2022 and remained in post in August 2026. He is a member of the 20th CCP Central Committee and came to the post from Beijing, where he had been deputy head of the municipal propaganda department, deputy secretary-general of the municipal Party committee, and Party secretary and publisher of Beijing Daily. The agency’s published leadership roster comprises Lü Yansong, Zhu Haili, Liu Jian, Ren Weidong, Huo Xiaoguang, Xi Yanchun and Xu Yuchang.

Source of funding and budget

Xinhua’s consolidated 2026 departmental budget covers headquarters editorial and business departments, domestic branches, overseas branches, and subordinate newspapers and public institutions. Total resources are CNY 6.485 billion, composed as follows: general public budget appropriation CNY 1.900 billion, 29.3 per cent; institutional income CNY 3.282 billion, 50.6 per cent; institutional operating income CNY 79.7 million, 1.2 per cent; other income CNY 565.4 million, 8.7 per cent; use of non-fiscal appropriation surplus CNY 498.5 million, 7.7 per cent; and previous-year carryover CNY 159.4 million, 2.5 per cent. Adding CNY 116.6 million of carried-over fiscal appropriation brings identifiable fiscal resources to approximately CNY 2.017 billion, or 31.1 per cent of the total.

The pattern is not confined to a single budget forecast. Xinhua’s 2025 departmental final accounts, published in 2026, record actual current-year income of CNY 6.588 billion, comprising fiscal appropriation of CNY 2.125 billion, institutional income of CNY 3.388 billion, operating income of CNY 6.6 million and other income of CNY 1.068 billion. Direct fiscal appropriation was therefore approximately 32.3 per cent of actual income. The 2024 departmental budget reported public budget appropriation at 27.3 per cent of total resources. Across the 2024 budget, the 2025 outturn and the 2026 budget, direct appropriation runs between roughly 27 and 32 per cent.

The ultimate source of the majority category is not disclosed. Xinhua defines institutional income as revenue earned from carrying out its professional and associated activities, without identifying customers. There are evident reasons why part of it may originate in public resources: the agency supplies thousands of Chinese media organisations, reports more than 130,000 institutional users of its economic information services, and serves government bodies as well as enterprises. State Media Monitor counts revenue by ultimate source rather than accounting form, so state-derived income of that kind would count toward the funding condition. No published breakdown establishes how much, and State Media Monitor does not assume a proportion.

Editorial independence

Xinhua has a formally assigned role as the state’s centralised and unified release channel for defined categories of authoritative Party and government information. For central government announcements and authorised texts, its function is not simply to report official positions but to transmit the authoritative wording on which other media rely. A 1982 decision of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee established its legal status as the state’s centralised and unified news release organ, and rules dating from 1950 provide that central government announcements are released through Xinhua, with the Xinhua text controlling where wording differs. Its Domestic News Editorial Department is responsible for major authoritative news releases and its External News Editorial Department for news authorised by the Central Committee for release.

The agency’s own documents describe its political identity in explicit terms. Its 2026 departmental budget states that staff must remember they are Party people before Xinhua people, that Xinhua performs the Central Committee’s mouthpiece, eyes and ears, and think tank functions, and that coverage of Xi Jinping’s thought and image is its foremost task. Its 2025 social responsibility report affirms the Party spirit principle and the requirement that media be run by political professionals.

No legislation, charter, independent board or external oversight mechanism exists to assess or guarantee its editorial autonomy. Journalists and analysts consulted for State Media Monitor in March 2024 and April 2026 describe the agency as the principal instrument of Party messaging, corroborating the primary evidence above.

AI and digital policy

State Media Monitor identified no publicly disclosed Xinhua-wide editorial policy specifying model provenance, mandatory human verification or systematic disclosure of AI-generated material to audiences.

Adoption is nonetheless extensive, if incompletely documented. Xinhua’s 2025 social responsibility report identifies a self-developed intelligent production engine, Editing Assistant, and records an AI-created video among its international communication products. Its 2026 departmental budget describes in-depth research into large model applications in media and the introduction of a series of intelligent newsgathering and editing tools. In May 2026 its state key laboratory launched Xinhua Zhixin, a full-chain trusted intelligent communication solution developed in response to generative AI. Xinhuanet reports using AI editorial assistants, generative tools and AI agents across its media and information service activities. The agency also introduced AI-synthesised news presenters as early as 2018.

What remains undisclosed is the governance framework: which models are authorised for which editorial tasks, what human review requirements apply, and when AI assistance must be disclosed to audiences.

China’s regulatory framework applies to covered internet information services. The deep synthesis provisions, effective January 2023, require technical identifiers for generated or edited information and conspicuous labels for specified forms of synthesis. The Measures for Labelling Artificial Intelligence-Generated and Synthesised Content, effective 1 September 2025, established the explicit and implicit labelling framework more systematically. Synthetic presenters fall within those provisions.

Classification rationale

Xinhua News Agency is classified Captured Public/State-Managed (CaPu), revised from State-Controlled.

It is state-owned and directly state-governed. Xinhua is a ministerial-level public institution directly under the State Council. Its President is appointed through the central cadre system and is a member of the CCP Central Committee. State Media Monitor identified no independent governing board, protected appointment mechanism or external body charged with guaranteeing editorial independence.

Its editorial agenda is directly subordinated to the Party-state. Xinhua formally describes itself as performing the Central Committee’s mouthpiece, eyes and ears, and think tank functions, and its own budget documentation states that its staff are Party people before Xinhua people. It holds a formally assigned role in the centralised and authorised release of Party and government information, including categories of official material for which its wording constitutes the authoritative text.

The condition not demonstrated is predominant state funding. Xinhua’s consolidated 2026 departmental budget totals CNY 6.485 billion and covers headquarters operations, domestic and overseas branches, subordinate newspapers and public institutions. General public budget appropriation accounts for 29.3 per cent of total resources; including carried-over fiscal appropriation brings identifiable fiscal resources to approximately 31.1 per cent. Institutional income is the largest category at 50.6 per cent. The 2025 final accounts confirm the pattern, with direct fiscal appropriation at approximately 32 per cent of actual current-year income, and the 2024 budget reported 27.3 per cent. The public accounts do not identify the ultimate customers behind the institutional and other income. Because government bodies, state media and state-controlled enterprises are among Xinhua’s potential customers, part of that revenue may itself be state-derived under the State Media Matrix, but no published breakdown establishes how much.

CaPu therefore reflects the financing evidence, not editorial independence. Xinhua is among the most directly Party-controlled media organisations in the dataset in governance and editorial terms, and it illustrates that the category is not a measure of moderate capture. State Media Monitor simply cannot demonstrate that state-derived funding reaches the 50 per cent threshold that State-Controlled requires. A customer-level breakdown of institutional and other income could change that conclusion.

August 2026