Sing Tao Daily

The Sing Tao Daily (also known as Sing Tao Jih Pao) is among Hong Kong's oldest Chinese language newspapers. It is owned by Sing Tao News Corporation, of which Kwok Ying-shing is chairman. Its English language sister paper is The Standard.

Sing Tao's Toronto edition is partly owned by Star Media Group, the publisher of the Toronto Star, a Torstar Corporation company.

History
Sing Tao Daily is the oldest Chinese language daily newspaper in Hong Kong, having commenced publication on 1 August 1938.

The first overseas edition of the paper was launched in 1963 in San Francisco, where the group’s first overseas office was set up in May 1964.

In 1992, Sing Tao Daily, encountering financial difficulties, established a joint publication with the International Culture Publishing Corporation, a front organization for China's Ministry of State Security according to Alex Joske.

Until 2002, the parent company of Sing Tao Daily was Sing Tao Holdings; since then it has been Sing Tao News Corporation.

In June 2021, a real estate developer's daughter from mainland China purchased a majority stake in the company.

In August 2021, the U.S. branch of Sing Tao Daily started to register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) at the order of the United States Department of Justice. The company said the incident involved libel and it would seek legal actions.

Political stance
The Sing Tao has a long pro-government history. Before the handover of Hong Kong to China, it supported the Kuomintang and British Hong Kong government; and once Hong Kong was transferred and turned into a special administrative region, the paper turned its support to the Beijing government. Sing Tao’s reporting on China now aligns with that of state-run media from Beijing.

Reports of Chinese Communist Party influence
A 2001 article by the Jamestown Foundation claimed that two of Sing Tao 's owners were members of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and one editor had previously worked for China Daily. According to a Hoover Institution report, Sing Tao was purchased by a pro-Beijing businessman in May 2001, who soon after partnered with the Xinhua News Agency to establish a joint venture, leading to the formation of an information-service company named Xinhua Online. It is another formerly independent Chinese newspaper that has fallen under Beijing’s control. In 2013, an analyst at Freedom House wrote in a report submitted to the Center for International Media Assistance that in recent decades, Sing Tao 's management and owners began practicing "self-censorship," "high-risk" contributors were terminated, and journalists left due to an "unpalatable editorial policy." Topics such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, human rights in Tibet, and Taiwanese independence were minimized or avoided.