Dow Jones partners with Chinese media outlet, says partner TMTPost

News Corp's publisher of the Wall Street Journal appears to make an under-the-radar venture into Chinese-language media by enabling a Chinese version of Barron's.

Dow Jones, part of Rupert Murdoch's media empire and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, apparently has partnered with TMTPost [CN] [EN], a 13-year-old Chinese media outlet, in launching a Chinese-language news site bearing the name of Barron’s, the established American financial news provider.

TMTPost announced the “major strategic cooperation” with Dow Jones on April 8. It further announced the launch of the Chinese version of Barron’s on Saturday, June 28.

The news has previously not been reported in English.

TMTPost is founded and run by Ms. Zhao Hejuan, a Chinese media veteran with significant experience at Caixin, Caijing, and China CBN (now known as Yicai), three finance-focused outlets. Zhao is widely respected for her investigative reports, including corruption at the Chinese equivalent of the FDA. Caixin, a widely respected Chinese business media outlet that has employed Zhao for a few years, reported that her email was hacked in July 2011.

She will assume the role of the publisher of the Chinese version of Barron’s, according to the April announcement, which didn’t specify the editorial process or whether it was a content licensing deal.

TMTPost, referring to Tech, Media, and Telecom, was founded in 2012 and primarily provides news and analysis in these sectors. In China, it is not considered part of its state media apparatus.

In the April announcement published by TMTPost, reproduced mainly in the about page of the Chinese Barron’s site, Almar Latour, publisher of The Wall Street Journal and CEO of Dow Jones, was quoted as saying in Chinese

世界各地的投资者都是如此依赖可靠的新闻、分析和全球市场洞察来做出明智的决策，并决定如何扩大投资组合。我们与钛媒体集团的合作对于帮助全球投资者了解复杂的中国财富和投资生态系统至关重要，也确保了华语投资者们都能以自己的母语获得最优质、最可靠的信息。此次合作也标志着《巴伦》在快速发展且财富日益增长的华语市场扩张进程中，迈出的重要一步，我很高兴能够让更多用户享受到《巴伦》上丰富的世界级新闻和信息

Investors around the world are so reliant on reliable news, analysis and global market insights to make informed decisions and determine how to expand their portfolios. Our partnership with Titanium Media Group is critical to helping global investors understand the complex Chinese wealth and investment ecosystem, and ensures that Chinese-speaking investors all have access to the highest quality, most reliable information in their native language. This partnership also marks an important step in Barron's expansion into the fast-growing and increasingly wealthy Chinese-speaking market, and I'm excited to make the wealth of world-class news and information available on Barron's even more accessible to our subscribers

Zhao was quoted as saying

道琼斯公司是世界领先的财经新闻与数据平台，也是新闻出版商的典范。我们为此项合作的达成感到非常兴奋，也倍感骄傲。此次合作也标志着钛媒体发展中一个激动人心的里程碑，我们感谢道琼斯公司对钛媒体的信任，以及对钛媒体在引领中国商业和科技创新交流中的认可。
凭借我们广泛而深入的内容体系，钛媒体将发挥自身在编辑、语言、数据分析和资源网络等方面的专业优势，致力于在全球快速变化和挑战不断升级、全球地缘政治紧张局势日益复杂之际提供可操作的战略见解。
我们期待成为Barrons’s巴伦中国快速增长的一部分，并支持‘全球华人’的财富之旅

Dow Jones & Company is the world's leading financial news and data platform and a model news publisher. We are very excited and proud of this partnership. This partnership marks an exciting milestone in the development of Titanium Media, and we thank Dow Jones & Company for their trust in Titanium Media and for recognizing Titanium Media's role in leading the exchange of business and technology innovations in China.

With our broad and deep body of content, Titanium Media will leverage its expertise in editorial, language, data analytics and resource networks, and is committed to delivering actionable strategic insights at a time of rapid global change and escalating challenges, as well as increasingly complex geopolitical tensions across the globe.

We look forward to being part of the rapid growth of Barrons' Barron's China and supporting the ‘Global Chinese’ in their journey of wealth.

The April TMTPost announcement says Zhao will assume the role of publisher of the Chinese version of Barron’s, and “subsequently, offline publications in Chinese-speaking regions around the world will be considered as appropriate. In addition, Barron's China will combine with Dow Jones' global resource network to organize Barron's conferences and other series of events in Asia every year, and release Asia-Pacific Data Ranking, etc., in order to enable Chinese business leaders to better integrate into the world.”

Although TMTPost’s April announcement said “TMTPost and Dow Jones officially and jointly announce” their cooperation, it appears that Dow Jones hasn’t publicized the move.

Dow Jones is part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The Australian-American media mogul, who officially retired in 2023, in the past made multiple attempts to enter the mainland media market, including significant stakes in Hong Kong-based Star TV and Phoenix TV, which target the mainland audience. But his “Chinese dreams never became a reality,” the BBC observed in 2011.

In more recent years, the tone of China coverage by News Corp.’s media outlets is primarily seen as negative in China. A 2020 column in the Wall Street Journal’s conservative opinion pages, titled “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia,” evoked considerable anger in China by adopting the derogatory label historically used to describe China, particularly during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the country was perceived to be in a state of decline.

After China announced the expulsion of three of the paper’s journalists, citing the headline, 53 reporters and editors at the Journal asked top executives to consider changing the headline and apologizing, The New York Times reported at the time. The piece remains available today.

The relations of media outlets in China and the U.S. soured significantly since the first Donald J. Trump administration expelled many journalists from China’s state-run media from the U.S in 2020. Beijing retaliated by kicking out American journalists. China’s state media outlets are often portrayed by the U.S. media as spreading propaganda and misinformation. At the same time, Chinese platforms frequently criticize U.S. media for misrepresenting and smearing China, sometimes as de facto tools in a U.S. grand strategy.

A cursory browse of the Chinese-language site of Barron’s reveals that its content focuses on economic, financial, investment, and industry news.