Tai Kung Pao

Ta Kung Pao (simplified Chinese: 大公报; traditional Chinese: 大公報; pinyin: Dàgōng Bào; formerly L'Impartial) is the oldest active Chinese language newspaper in China. It was founded in Tianjin in 1902, but the current Ta Kung Pao was established by the government of the People's Republic of China after the Chinese Civil War. Widely regarded as a veteran pro-Beijing newspaper, it covers a range of political, economic and cultural topics.

The current circulation of Ta Kung Pao newspaper is estimated to be 400,000 copies (in print), of which 160,000 copies are distributed in Hong Kong, 210,000 in Mainland China, and 30,000 for the rest of the world. The daily visits of its online version is estimated to be 150,000.

In the final years of the Qing dynasty, Ying Lianzhi, a Catholic Manchu aristocrat, founded the newspaper in Tianjin on 17 June 1902, in order to, in Ying's own words, "help China become a modern and democratic nation". The paper put forward the slogan Four-No-ism" (四不主義) in its early years, pledging to say "No" to all political parties, governments, commercial companies, and persons.

It stood up to the repression at the time, openly criticising the Empress Dowager Cixi and reactionary leaders, and promoted democratic reforms, pioneering the use of written vernacular Chinese (baihua). Readership fell after the Xinhai Revolution in 1911 and Wang Zhilong (王郅隆) bought it in 1916. Still, the newspaper was out of business by 1925 due to the lack of readership. On 1 September 1926, however, Wu Dingchang (吳鼎昌), Hu Zhengzhi (胡政之), and Zhang Jiluan (張季鸞) re-established the newspaper in Tianjin. With "no party affiliation, no political endorsement, no self-promotion, no ignorance" (不黨, 不賣, 不私, 不盲) as its motto, the newspaper's popularity quickly rose again because of its sharp political commentary, especially of the Japanese as the Second Sino-Japanese War began.

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