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Outlet profile

South China Morning Post (Opinion)

Hong Kong-based, Alibaba-owned; generally Beijing-accommodating on China/Hong Kong issues, internationalist on trade

Owned byAlibaba Group Holding, which bought the SCMP media assets from SCMP Group (Kerry Group) in a deal completed in April 2016. Jack Ma, a co-founder and still a major shareholder, has said he has no wish to interfere in the newsroom.
FundingAdvertising, digital subscriptions and paywall revenue, events and content partnerships, with ownership backing from Alibaba. It is a commercial company, not state-funded.
On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

The SCMP was founded in Hong Kong in 1903 and was long the city's leading English-language newspaper. It was owned for decades by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and then, from the 1990s, by the Malaysian Kuok family's Kerry Group. Alibaba announced in December 2015 that it would buy the group's media assets for about HK$2 billion (US$266 million), and the deal closed in April 2016. Alibaba said day-to-day editorial decisions would be made by newsroom editors, and Jack Ma said he had neither the experience nor the desire to interfere. Critics, including some press-freedom advocates and former staff, have argued that the paper has grown more cautious on sensitive mainland and Hong Kong topics since the sale and since Beijing tightened control over Hong Kong after 2019. The company has said it aims to give a fuller picture of China to a global audience, and supporters point to its extensive reporting on China's economy, technology and politics. Its opinion pages mix staff editorials, in-house columnists, and contributions from academics, analysts and commentators in Asia and the West, which gives them a wider range than the paper's news pages. In 2026 its editorials and commentary have criticized Trump administration tariff policy, including efforts to rebuild tariffs after the Supreme Court ruling, the use of Section 338 against Canada, and forced-labour-based Section 301 tariffs. At the same time, it has covered US-China summitry and trade talks with attention to how Beijing is likely to respond.

Sources

  1. Alibaba acquires South China Morning Post
  2. Can an Alibaba 'Morning Post' Aid China's Image Overseas? (ChinaFile)
  3. SCMP Editorial: US tariff threat over forced labour looks like old wine in new bottle
  4. SCMP Outside In: Trump's latest tariff tantrum unlikely to end well for US
  5. South China Morning Post (Wikipedia-style overview)

Profile compiled 2026-10-27; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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