Do Chinese Media Accept English Press Releases? What Foreign Teams Need to Know

Do Chinese media accept English press releases? The honest answer is that a small group of English-language outlets do, but the large majority of mainland Chinese desks expect a Simplified Chinese submission and will not edit your English copy for you. If you send an English release to a Chinese-language newspaper or portal, the most likely outcome is a polite request to resubmit in Chinese, or no reply at all.

This guide draws the line between the outlets that genuinely read English and the ones that only publish in Chinese, explains why the split exists, and gives you the cost and workflow for getting from an English draft to a published Chinese story. Every price below is a 2026 agency or vendor rate range, labelled as such. The language question is the first thing we settle with every foreign team before any outlet shortlist is built.

Do Chinese media accept English press releases at all

A handful of Chinese outlets are published in English by design and treat an English submission as normal. The rest are Chinese-language properties aimed at domestic readers, and they work in Chinese internally. The practical rule we use is simple: if the masthead itself is English, send English; if the masthead is Chinese, send Chinese. There is no third category that quietly accepts both.

Which Chinese outlets publish in English

China's best-known English-language outlets were built for an international audience and are the realistic targets for an English press release. China Daily, the national English-language newspaper, published its first issue on June 1, 1981 and reports a worldwide circulation of more than 500,000. The Global Times English edition launched on April 20, 2009 as the English sibling of the 1993-founded Chinese paper. CGTN runs English-language television and digital output aimed at overseas viewers. A few provincial and trade titles also carry English sections, but their pickup of unsolicited releases is limited.

Why most mainland desks require Chinese

The reason is not politeness but audience and workflow. A Chinese-language desk writes for Chinese readers, and its editors, sub-editors and fact-checkers all work in Chinese. An English release lands on a desk that would have to translate it before anyone can judge the story, which is not their job. Under Chinese advertising law the published text also carries compliance responsibility, so the desk wants the final Chinese wording in its own hands. None of this is a rejection of your news; it is a language boundary that protects the outlet as much as it slows you down.

What happens if you send English to a Chinese desk

In our experience the three realistic outcomes are: the desk asks you to provide a Chinese version before it will consider the story; the desk forwards your English draft to a partner who translates it, usually at your cost; or the release is filed and forgotten. The second outcome is common but slow, because translation is queued behind the desk's own work. If speed matters, translating first is almost always faster than waiting for the outlet to do it. A team that leads with a clean Chinese draft removes the single most common cause of silence.

How much does translating a release cost

Professional translation of a typical 400 to 600 character release runs about 126 to 270 yuan at agency rates in 2026, depending on subject complexity and turnaround. That is the cheapest line in the budget and the one most teams try to skip at their peril. If you also want placement, a single central-affiliated outlet runs roughly 800 to 3,000 yuan, a provincial portal 200 to 1,500 yuan, and a commercial portal 50 to 500 yuan. A wire service adds its own fee plus word overage of about 195 to 275 USD per 100 words over the base limit. The translation step is small compared with placement, yet it gates everything downstream.

Should you pitch English first, then translate

A reasonable workflow is to lead with a one-page English abstract or pitch when you first contact an English-language outlet or a bilingual editor, then supply the full Chinese release once interest is confirmed. For Chinese-language desks, lead with the Chinese version from the start. Sending both an English pitch and a Chinese draft in the same message removes the most common cause of silence, which is the desk assuming translation is its problem. For background on what makes a Chinese draft publishable, see our guide on translating a press release into Chinese.

Frequently asked questions

The questions below cover the edge cases teams ask us most often.

Can I publish an English release on a Chinese wire? China-focused wires carry Chinese-language distribution; an English-only release will be returned for translation before it is placed, so the Chinese master has to exist first.

Do English outlets translate my release for me? China Daily and similar titles edit and sub-edit your English, but they expect a clean English draft, not a rough one that needs rebuilding.

Is translation required even for a bilingual editor? Yes. If the eventual published piece is Chinese, the desk needs the Chinese text it can stand behind under advertising law.

If your announcement needs to reach Chinese readers, the step you cannot skip is the Chinese version. Services such as CN NEWSWIRE fold translation and placement into one workflow so the English draft and the published Chinese story stay consistent. The next move is to decide which outlets you actually target, then translate once and pitch everywhere from that single Chinese master.