How to Write a Chinese Press Release That Editors Actually Publish
A Chinese press release is not a translated English one. It is shorter, flatter, more literal, and built around a paragraph formula that Chinese editors expect to see. Here is the structure, with examples of what machine output looks like next to what an editor will publish.
Key takeaways
- A standard Chinese corporate release runs 600–1,200 characters — much shorter than the 500-word English convention, not longer.
- The first paragraph carries time, place, subject, event and reason in one or two sentences. Editors decide from that paragraph alone.
- Write in the third person with a dated, factual lead. First-person enthusiasm (我们很高兴地宣布) is the clearest signal that a text was translated rather than written.
- Quote attribution follows company → title → name, and the quote itself should say something specific rather than express delight.
- Use full-width Chinese punctuation throughout. English commas and mixed scripts inside Chinese sentences are the errors that get noticed first.
Most English-language press releases that fail in China are not badly written. They are written in the wrong shape — and how to write a Chinese press release is less a question of vocabulary than of structure. A Chinese release is shorter, flatter and more literal than its English equivalent, and it is organised around a paragraph formula that Chinese editors expect to find in the first hundred characters.
What follows is the structure we use when preparing a release for Chinese media, with the specific conventions that separate a text an editor will publish from one that reads as a translation.
Length: shorter than you expect
A standard corporate release in Chinese runs 600 to 1,200 characters, including the closing company description. That is noticeably shorter than the 400–500 word English convention, and the difference is not an accident of language density. Chinese business journalism is compact by habit, and editors treat length as a signal of how much of the text is actual news.
Practical consequence: put everything that matters in the first three paragraphs. Anything after that is background, and a meaningful share of it will be cut.
The title
Aim for 20–24 Chinese characters. State the fact. Do not use questions, do not use wordplay, and do not stack adjectives.
- Weak: 重磅！某公司引领行业新未来 (sensational, contains a superlative-style claim, says nothing)
- Workable: XX公司发布新一代智能仓储系统，已在12个仓库投用 (says what, and gives a number)
The second version tells an editor what happened and gives them a reason to open it. The first gives them a compliance problem and no information.
The lead paragraph
This is the paragraph that decides the outcome. Chinese news writing expects it to contain the five elements in one or two sentences: when, where, who, what and why.
The pattern is: date, place, subject, event, reason or significance.
10月9日，XX公司在杭州宣布完成1,000万美元A轮融资，本轮由XX资本领投。公司计划将资金用于扩充华东地区交付团队。
Everything needed to decide whether the story is real is in two sentences: a date, a city, a named company, a specific amount, a named investor and a stated use of funds. No preamble.
Compare the same information written the way an English release would open:
我们很高兴地宣布，XX公司已成功完成A轮融资，融资总额达1,000万美元，这标志着公司发展历程中的一个重要里程碑。
This version is not ungrammatical. It is simply wrong for the format: it opens with the company's feelings, delays the fact to the third clause, and ends with a claim that carries no information. An editor reading it learns nothing in the first line.
Voice: third person, no enthusiasm
Write about the company, not as the company. Use the full registered name at first mention and a short form afterwards. First-person plural (我们) belongs in a customer email, not in a news release.
| English habit | Chinese release convention |
|---|---|
| We are thrilled to announce… | 10月9日，XX公司宣布… |
| our revolutionary platform | 公司发布的XX系统 |
| A significant milestone for us | Drop it, or replace with a number |
| Best-in-class performance | Prohibited wording — replace with a measurement |
Paragraph rhythm
Two to four sentences per paragraph, and one idea per paragraph. Chinese business prose avoids long subordinate clauses and prefers short declarative sentences joined by commas. If you are working from an English draft, this usually means splitting rather than translating one-to-one: a single English sentence with two subordinate clauses typically becomes two or three Chinese sentences.
Quotes
One or two quotes, each attributed in the order company → title → name:
XX公司创始人兼首席执行官张金恒表示：“华东地区的履约成本在过去两年下降了约30%，这是我们选择在这里扩产的主要原因。”
Two things make this work. The attribution order is the Chinese convention, and the quote itself contains a fact and a decision rather than an emotion. A quote reading 我们对未来充满信心 (“we are confident about the future”) will usually be removed by the editor as filler.
Numbers, dates and units
| Item | Convention | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Date | Year, month, day — never slash notation | 2026年10月9日 |
| Quantities | Arabic numerals | 12个仓库、3,000名员工 |
| Currency | Name the currency when it is not CNY | 1,000万美元、2亿元人民币 |
| Percentages | % with the numeral, or 百分之 in formal prose | 35% ／ 百分之三十五 |
| Large numbers | Use 万 and 亿, not thousands separators alone | 5,000万元 (not 50,000,000元) |
The currency row matters more than it looks. An unlabelled 1,000万 will be read as CNY by a Chinese reader, so a USD amount that is written without the unit understates itself by roughly an order of magnitude.
Punctuation and script
- Use full-width Chinese punctuation throughout: ，。、；：！？（） and Chinese quotation marks.
- Do not alternate between Simplified and Traditional characters.
- Do not mix English words into Chinese sentences unless the English term is the established industry usage — and if you do, keep it consistent.
- Pick one form of the company name and use it everywhere. Switching between the Chinese registration and the Latin brand name mid-document reads as a compilation from two sources.
The closing boilerplate
Finish with a short 关于XX公司 (About) block: three or four sentences covering what the company does, when it was founded, where it is based, and one verifiable scale figure. Then a single contact: 媒体垂询 plus one email address and one website.
Do not end with a call to action. Chinese news format has no space for 立即注册 or 点击了解更多 — a call to action in the final paragraph is the single clearest indication that the text is an advertisement rather than an announcement, and it is the most common reason commercial submissions are routed away from news channels.
The order of work: how to write a Chinese press release, step by step
The teams that get this right do it in a specific sequence: settle the news peg, check the wording against the advertising rules, write the Chinese text for the Chinese format, and only then translate into English if an English version is needed at all. Translating first and fixing later is what produces releases that are accurate, compliant, and still get rejected — because the shape is wrong.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a Chinese press release be?
A standard corporate release runs 600 to 1,200 Chinese characters, including the closing company boilerplate. That is shorter than most English releases, and it is deliberate: Chinese business journalism is dense and editors prefer a tight, factual text. Long releases are not rejected, but the extra material is usually cut, and what survives is whatever was in the first three paragraphs.
Can I use machine translation for a Chinese press release?
Machine translation is a reasonable starting point for internal understanding and a poor one for publication. The output is usually grammatically correct but carries English sentence rhythm, mixes in first-person enthusiasm, and misplaces currency and unit conventions. Chinese editors read it immediately as translated content, which lowers the perceived credibility of the announcement. Budget for a Chinese writer rewriting the text rather than editing the machine output.
Should a Chinese press release be bilingual?
Only if the outlet publishes English. The vast majority of the thousands of outlets used in commercial distribution publish Simplified Chinese only, and including an English block adds length without adding reach. Keep the Chinese release Chinese, and publish an English version separately on your own site where overseas readers and search engines can find it.
Do Chinese press releases use a dateline like FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE?
No. The English wire conventions of FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE and a city dateline are not used. The date belongs inside the first paragraph — 10月9日，XX公司在杭州宣布… — and the fact that the release is going out now is understood. Adding English wire headers to a Chinese document is one of the fastest ways to make it look like an untranslated import.
How many quotes should a Chinese press release include?
One or two, each attributed to a named person with their company and title. Chinese business writing uses quotes sparingly and expects them to add information rather than sentiment — a market observation, a plan with a timeline, or a reason for a decision. A quote that says the team is excited is usually removed.