China's media market is routinely treated as a single list of outlets. It is not. The outlets that matter for a corporate announcement sit in several distinct layers, and each layer answers to its own logic: central news agencies that set the agenda, national portals that aggregate it, commercial platforms that chase reader traffic, trade publications that go deep in one industry, and local outlets that cover a city or a province.
Two consequences follow. First, the same announcement lands differently in each layer — a central outlet is looking for policy relevance, a commercial portal for reader interest, a trade title for technical substance. Second, cost is not proportional to prestige. A regional outlet with a serious business desk can deliver better-qualified readers than a national site that republishes releases into a low-traffic channel.
The guides below map those layers, explain what each one is actually for, and show how to build a shortlist that fits the announcement you have rather than the one you wish you had.
1 guide in this section
Treating Chinese media as one list is the most expensive mistake in a China PR campaign. The ecosystem has six distinct layers with different gatekeep…
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