Every senior executive and financial manager with China oversight responsibility should know about are Cai Jing and Chinaview.cn.  If you are really interested in the official news releases of the Chinese communist party, you can go to the English version of the People’s Daily – now with Google ads.

CaiJing  (http://english.caijing.com.cn/ )is an independent financial newspaper that lines up roughly with the Wall Street Journal.   The English site is heavy on editorial and advice for policy makers (check out   their advice for the next president of the US.  (Spoiler alert – strategic relations are important) ).  CaiJing has had their share of trouble with the authorities in the past, but now they seem to be publishing and posting regularly.  Theirs is a corporate view of China, and they can be counted on to expose, criticize and analyze far more than most Chinese journals.  

On the other side of the coin is ChinaView.cn.  This is printed for English readers by Xin Hua, the official Chinese news agency.  You can view this as an arm of the government, so when you look at ChinaView.cn you get a snapshot of how Beijing wants the world to be seen.  They include wire-service articles on a range of subjects – with a heavy dose of officially produced reports and stories.  At first glance it appears to be fairly balanced – but it really isn’t.  Absent are references to events and stories that  Beijing deems inappropriate.  It’s an important site for letting folks overseas understand exactly what passes for politically-correct in Beijing.

For those of you who REALLY want to see what the communist party is thinking and talking about, there’s no substitute for the People’s Daily. This is interesting for a few minutes, but you won’t get any serious news or information here.  If you think it is good to know what Beijing wants you to think they are thinking, and this is a good spot for that.