Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reportedly paid American cash to a Chinese Communist Newspaper for advertising.
It has been reported that during her re-election campaign in 2022, Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez spent money on campaign advertisements in a newspaper called Sing Tao Newspapers.
This newspaper is the US subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based Sing Tao News Corporation and was deemed by the Department of Justice to be overly supportive of the Chinese government. As a result, the newspaper was required to register as a foreign agent in August 2021.
According to the report, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s re-election campaign spent nearly $1,500 on advertisements in Sing Tao Newspapers, which publishes in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The decision to work with the newspaper was made after the Department of Justice had designated it as a foreign agent.
Additionally, fellow Democratic Representatives Kevin Mullin and Grace Meng, as well as Republican Representative Nicole Malliotakis, also paid between $1,000 to $7,000 to display their campaign ads in the paper. This was not the first time Rep. Ocasio-Cortez was featured in Sing Tao Newspapers, as prior to its designation as a foreign agent, the paper covered her participation in a 2020 foreign-language media roundtable.
On Facebook, AOC said, “Wait, so you’re applauding a newspaper of an authoritarian regime that attacked peaceful protestors in Hong Kong?” one user asked. “Shouldn’t you criticize them?”
Sing Tao News Corporation operates the oldest Chinese-language newspaper in Hong Kong and claims to be privately owned and unconnected to the Chinese Communist Party. However, recent investigations found that the majority stake was purchased by the daughter of a wealthy mainland property developer.
Moreover, over half of the content published in the US by Sing Tao is sourced from Star Production Limited, a company based in Shenzhen, China. Given the strict control that the Chinese government, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, exerts over the dissemination of news within China, this has led to warnings about potential biases in the content produced by Sing Tao.
Council on Foreign Relations reported, “China has one of the world’s most restrictive media environments, relying on censorship to control information in the news, online, and on social media, censorship guidelines are circulated weekly from the Communist Party’s propaganda department and the government’s Bureau of Internet Affairs to prominent editors and media providers.”