China — news channels live

CCTV — China Central Television — is China's state broadcaster and stands at the centre of the country's broadcasting. It runs the largest network in China across dozens of channels, and its main evening bulletin, Xinwen Lianbo, is transmitted simultaneously on all national channels, carrying the state's official agenda uniformly across the country.

The organisation's international arm is CGTN. CCTV's own channel broadcasts in Chinese and is directed largely at the domestic audience; its YouTube account reaches Chinese-speaking viewers abroad.

It should be watched in the knowledge that it is the state broadcaster and that its editorial line is set within party direction.

CGTN — China Global Television Network — is the international arm of the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, restructured under this name in 2016. It publishes separate channels in English, Spanish, French, Arabic and Russian and has established regional production centres in London, Nairobi and Washington.

CGTN Europe is the organisation's London-based European service. China's foreign policy, the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese economy and China–Europe relations carry marked weight in its agenda.

The channel is funded by the Chinese state and carries the state's official account; it has been the subject of regulatory scrutiny in some countries for that reason, and readers should watch knowing it. Equally, for a reader who wants China's official position on a development from the source, it is first-hand.

China Daily is China's English-language state newspaper. It addresses foreign readers and the international community living in China, and publishes separate editions for Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa.

Its function is to carry China's economic and political agenda to an international readership in English. Being a state publication requires readers to weigh its copy in that frame; equally, it is a useful source for following China's official economic policy and development priorities directly.

NTD — New Tang Dynasty Television — is a United States-based channel broadcasting in Chinese and English. It follows an openly oppositional line towards the Chinese Communist Party and gives substantial space to human rights violations and censorship in China.

The organisation is associated with the Falun Gong movement, a connection that is relevant to understanding its editorial line and worth holding as a reader.

It is included here to make visible the Chinese-language journalism that stands opposite Chinese state broadcasting. Comparing how the same event is told on CGTN and here makes the position of both sources visible to the reader.