No. 1 US News App Founded and Controlled by Chinese Entities
Hello, everyone, welcome to “Inconvenient Truths”. I am your host Jennifer Zeng.
Today I will talk about a very shocking and important story, that is, America’s No. 1 news aggregation platform, or local news app, called News Break, was actually founded, and is controlled and backed by the CCP. Not only that, this news app uses an advanced technology called “interest-based” engine to collect your information, including what you like, what you share, what you bookmark, what you like and bookmark but don’t share, etc, to decide what to push to you. The same technology has been used in China to help the CCP spread its propaganda effectively and efficiently, and to tell the story in the way that the CCP likes. If you happen to be one of its 45 million active monthly users, you must listen to all what I am going to say today, as this is related to a very important story: Who will own America?
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“The Nation's #1 Intelligent Local News App”
Now, let’s go to our story today.
First of all, what is News Break?
According to its own website, News Break is America’s “#1 Intelligent Local News App”. It ranks No. 1 in both Google Play and Apple Store.
An article at protocol.com says New Break has 45 million monthly active users and had 24 million installs via the App Store and Google Play in 2020, and was the most downloaded news app of last year.
News Break Uses "Interest-Based Engine" to Push News to 45 Million Americans
News Break’s core technology an "interest-based engine" (兴趣引擎) “, and the key to its success is an AI-curated personalized and localized news feed tailored for each user. It is mostly invested in the so-called "long-tail" needs, which means it caters to various niche interests, instead of only a few popular products.
News Break’s founder Jeff Zheng said to Chinese media that News Break uses “recommendation + search + subscription + intelligent interaction” to achieve its goal.
The content is recommended according to the user’s browsing preferences so that everybody gets different content. News Break gathers information from users’ searches, subscriptions, and online interactions to recommend relevant channels and content for users to subscribe to.
So this is called an “interest-based engine”.
In Zheng’s eyes, content demand can be divided into time-sensitive and non-time-sensitive categories. Non-time-sensitive content can be further subdivided into three categories based on three kinds of user reactions: click and share, click without sharing or bookmarking, and click without sharing but bookmarking.
He said, “The last category of content that users like to read and are willing to bookmark, but are unwilling to share, or are not appropriate for sharing, is closely related to personal long tail needs and has greater personal value. For News Break, the last category of content is its main focus.”
Another selling point of News Break is that it says it focuses on local news. And it is not only a news aggregator, but also a Nextdoor and Craigslist. It also provides classified information such as local job listings, events, restaurants, deals and services for specific communities.
Well, that’s a short briefing for those who don’t know much about News Break yet.
News Break, Yidian Zixun, and Jeff Zheng
Now, let’s go check a little bit of the background of News Break: Who founded it? Who controls and runs it? Which means, who is pushing highly “personalized” content to 45 millions or more Americans?
According to publicly available information, News Break is owned by Particle Media. It was established by Jeff Zheng in April 2015, and is the English version of Yidian Zixun, a Chinese news aggregation app in China, which was also founded by Jeff Zheng.
According to his LinkedIn page, Jeff Zheng obtained a Ph.D. in computer science at the University at Buffalo after he gained a Masters in Science degree at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He gained his Bachelor of Science degree from Tsinghua University in China.
He joined Yahoo in 2006 and became the founding head of Yahoo! Labs China in 2011.
In 2013, he founded Yidian Zixun, which can be translated as “one byte of information,” and acted as the CEO.
On the “Brand” page of Yidian Zixun, there used to be such a milestone:
Screenshot of the “Brand” page on Yidian Zixun’s website. This block was already removed from Yidian Zixun’s website.
The title of this milestone is “American Company”, or “Company in the US”. The description is:
“In April 2015, Yidian Zixun established Particle Media, an affiliate company in Silicon Valley, to launch its global strategic deployment, and the English version of Yidian Zixun, News Break, was recommended by the U.S. App store twice in a row and has become a popular news aggregation application in the United States.”
However, this important “milestone” was removed after Boston-based “The Wire China” published an in-depth investigation revealing News Break’s deep ties with China.
When The Wire China did that report, and asked about the relationship between News Break and Yidian Zixun, News Break said the statement on Yidian’s website was inaccurate and that its legal department would send a letter asking that it be removed.
When I did my follow up investigation, I found that if I search with the Chinese characters for “In April 2015, Yidian Zixun established Particle Media, an affiliate company in Silicon Valley”, I could get a lot of results.
A search with the Chinese characters for “In April 2015, Yidian Zixun established Particle Media, an affiliate company in Silicon Valley” led to a lot of results.
However, when I clicked on some of the results, I was led to “404” error messages, which means the articles have been removed.
404 error message when clicking on articles containing relationship between News Break and Yidian Zixun.
404 error message when clicking on articles containing relationship between News Break and Yidian Zixun.
But articles on relatively smaller sites can still be found that mention Yidian Zixun establishing Particle Media in Silicon Valley, such as this one and this one published by bloggers on Sohu.
I have archived these two articles, and will put a link to the archived article to the transcript of this show. You can check my website at jenniferzengblog.com to get these articles if you are interested.
News Break and Phoenix TV
According to a report on one of China’s major web portals sina.com, from October 2014 to December 2016, Phoenix New Media acquired a 44.2 percent stake in Particle Media, a portion with a fair value of $135.3 million. It later sold out part of its share, but still held 3.63 percent of Particle Media as of 2019.
So this is to say, at the beginning stage of News Break’s founding, almost half of it was owned by Phoenix New Media.
Please note that Particle Media is also the parent company of Yidian Zixun, and the second-largest shareholder of Yidian Zixun is Xiaomi, which is China’s second-largest cell phone maker with military ties.
Remember I did a program of Xiaomi before? If you haven’t watched it, go back and take a look, so that you can connect all the dots together.
Phoenix New Media’s parent company is Phoenix TV. Its CEO Liu Shuang was formerly the COO of Phoenix TV and a special assistant to Phoenix TV’s founder and former Chairman Liu Changle.
There is little information available on Particle Media, especially on Chinese websites. However, a pdf file of Phoenix New Media’s update on the sale of its shares in Yidian Zixun tells us this:
Particle Media was registered in the Cayman Islands on July 22, 2013, as an exempted company, and on July 30, 2013, one week after its registration, Particle (HK) Ltd. was registered in Hong Kong to complete the shareholding transaction between Particle Media and Phoenix New Media.
According to The Wire China, Jeff Zheng founded Particle Media Inc. in Delaware in 2015, with its company headquarters in Mountain View.
Jeff Zheng is also currently a shareholder of Yidian Zixun in Beijing.
A company profile of Yidian Zixun showing that Jeff Zheng (郑朝晖) is still a shareholder.
So did you see the connections?
Phoenix Satellite Television Holdings Limited was established on March 31, 1996, with headquarters in Hong Kong. It was initially a joint venture among Murdoch’s News Group, Today’s Asia Ltd. held by Liu Changle, and China Central TV (CCTV)’s subsidiary “China Wise International Limited.”
At that time, News Group and Today’s Asia both held 45 percent of Phoenix TV, while China Wise International held 10 percent. Liu Changle was appointed as the Chairman of the Board and CEO.
Phoenix TV was the first overseas TV station to be legally allowed to broadcast in China. It was granted landing rights by the National Radio and Television Administration of China in 2003.
Phoenix TV, Liu Changle, and the CCP
Phoenix TV has long since been known as a mouthpiece of the CCP, although its headquarters is in Hong Kong. Its news reporting has always been consistent with the stance of the CCP.
Liu Changle once said, “CCTV is the big brother, we are the little brother.”
A commentator told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times in 2005 that when entertaining his guests at a banquet in Shenzhen in 1998, Liu Changle said that the CCP’s Ministry of State Security had given him $2 million for him to set up a television station.
Liu Changle was born in Shanghai on Nov. 5, 1951. His father Liu Xiangyi was a senior CCP official.
Liu joined the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the CCP around 1970, and served as an officer in the political propaganda department of PLA’s 40th Group Army in Liaoning Province.
From there he somehow went to study at Beijing Broadcasting Institute, which later became the Communication University of China, and graduated in 1980.
I guess it was the CCP army that sent him to study there, because during that time there were no entrance examinations for universities. Students were admitted through a so-called “recommendation system”. If you behaved well, and the CCP liked you, you could go to study in universities via “recommendation” by your workplace, or your local CCP leaders.
After graduating from Beijing Broadcasting Institute, Liu Changle joined the Central People’s Broadcasting Station (later translated as China National Radio) in 1983 and worked as a reporter, editor, and news commentator. He was then promoted to the rank of senior management, and was sent overseas by the CCP in 1988.
In June 2006, China Mobile Communications took a 19.9 percent stake in Phoenix TV, and Liu Changle’s Today’s Asia thus became Phoenix’s largest shareholder with a 37.54 percent stake.
And who is behind China Mobile? It is Jiang Mianheng, the eldest son of former CCP leader Jiang Zemin. Jiang Mianheng has been called the “King of China Telecom” for many years in China.
After China Mobile’s investment in Phoenix TV, Liu Changle obtained absolute control over Phoenix TV.
Phoenix New Media called this acquisition a major breakthrough, because before this acquisition, there was another shareholder who held the same amount of stake as Liu. After this acquisition, Liu Changle’s company became the biggest one.
In 2009, late Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Szeto Wah said that “not only is Phoenix TV a CCP-funded and controlled media, but the main people in charge also have a national security background. Since no one believes what Beijing’s CCTV says, they are using Phoenix to suppress dissidents.”
Jeff Zheng and Yidian Zixun Help the CCP Control Internet Information
When Jeff Zheng was the CEO of Yidian Zixun, he brought in Phoenix New Media as a shareholder and quickly turned Yidian Zixun into an official voice of the CCP.
According to Sina.com, by the way, you can see this is also an archived copy of that article. I always archive CCP’s articles, because if you don’t, they can be deleted.
Anyway, this article says that the CCP’s Internet Information Office, which is in charge of controlling information on China’s internet, brought the internet information offices of 31 provinces onto Yidian Zixun’s platform, and this would turn Yidain Zixun into “an all-around publishing platform of the Internet Information Office focused on spreading the spirit of Xi Jinping’s speeches and strategic ideas.”
The article also says that Yidian Zixun established in-depth partnerships with many local governments, including 116 new official media outlets in Xinjiang.
In addition, many government and military departments; the Belt and Road Initiative; and more than 8,000 self-publishing media personnel, industry elites, celebrities, opinion leaders, and entertainment stars all set up accounts on Yidian Zixun’s platform, creating huge attention and rapid growth for Yidian Zixun.
So, one year after that article was published, in 2017, Yidian Zixun became one of the top 3 apps in the personalized news industry.
A 2016 report of the CCP’s State Council’s science webpage described how Yidian Zixun used “long tail” personalized technology to help the CCP’s propaganda and information control efforts in Xinjiang by “enabling the localized and accurate delivery of government information and full coverage of information in Xinjiang,” and “telling the Xinjiang story well.”
News Break is the English Version of Yidian Zixun
We talked a little bit of News Breaking being the “English version” of Yidian Zixun a while ago. Now let me give you some further evidence and how deep the connections are.
On April 30, 2015, the Phoenix website published an article with this title: “Yidian Zixun Enters the US, Founder Goes to Supervise the Battle”.
The article says, “Recently, Yidian Zixun announced the latest progress of its internationalization strategy: the founder will go to the United States to supervise the English market, and has recruited more than a dozen senior engineers and scientists in Silicon Valley, and will launch the English version [of Yidian Zixun] at the end of the second quarter.
“According to an official statement by Yidian Zixun, the establishment of its U.S. company is a key step in the globalization of Yidian Zixun, which will use the world’s first ‘interest-based engine’ to enter the U.S. market and take advantage of the founding team’s resources and contacts in the United States to replicate Yidian Zixun’s successful model and become a truly innovative Chinese Internet company with global technological influence. ”
Now, let’s check the bigger picture of this matter.
At the end of 2015, the CCP proposed to construct a “1+6+N” model of international propaganda work. What you are seeing is a very, very long article published at the CCP’s most important mouthpiece The People’s Daily regarding strategy and the achievements of the CCP’s international propaganda campaign in the past 40 years. The title of the article is, “Linking China and Foreign Countries, Communicating with the World: A Review of the Development of International Propaganda in the 40 Years of Reform and Opening Up.”
According to this article, a “1+6+N” model was proposed.
And what is the “1+6+N” model?
Another long article published in the Global Media Journal of Tsinghua University gave us some explanation.
The title of this article is “Three Waves of China's International Communication (1978-2019).” Or we can also translate it as “Three Waves of China's International Propaganda Campaign”, as the CCP’s communication is just propaganda. We all know the CCP has a Ministry of Propaganda, right? The CCP itself calls it “Ministry of Propaganda”, and they don’t think there is anything wrong with the word “propaganda”, or what lies behind the word “propaganda”. They are the things the CCP must do to brainwash people.
Anyway, the article says, on Feb. 17, 2016, Xi Jinping first proposed building a “flagship international communication media with Chinese characteristics.” With the establishment of China Global Television Network (CGTN) in December 2016, it then became clear that the role of “1” should be filled by CGTN, “6” referred to the CCP’s six major mouthpieces of People’s Daily, Xinhua News, CCTV, China Radio International, China Daily, and China News Service, and “N” is for other English-language websites, platforms, and institutions that have the potential to “perform international communication functions” for the CCP.
So, if we use this model to measure it, News Break falls into the “N” category. “N” means “numerous” here.
How Will the CCP “Own America”?
So, what are you thinking now after learning all the facts I just presented?
Do you know what I thought when I first found out about these shocking facts and connections?
Joe Biden recently said that Xi Jinping told him that China will "own America" in the next 10-15 years.
So do you think that is only a joke? How will the CCP “own America” ? By buying over all the lands? Kill all the people in the US and send their people here?
Well, maybe they would if only they could.
But how about feeding Americans with CCP controlled information, and little by little, changing people’s thoughts, shaping their views, and the way they look at things, and making them think exactly the same way as the CCP does?
If the CCP can achieve that, they own America already, and with the least cost.
So do you really know everything about the CCP’s ways and strategies? Why could News Break become the No. 1 News app in the US within just 5 years?
The other day I saw a sentence: “You don’t know what you don’t know.” On the surface, it sounds silly. Of course I don’t know what I don’t know. But digging further, you will realize the terrifying reality about how others, including AI are controlling what you know and what you don’t know.
So don’t you think the CCP will “own America” a lot faster with 45 million Americans using the News Break app, and being fed information by this CCP controlled “interest-based engine”? I learned from a reader of the Epoch Times that when he bought a phone from T-mobile, this app was already pre-installed.
By the way, I am now also contributing to the Epoch Times on a freelance basis.
I am glad to see the article I co-authored about News Break has been shared more than 300o times since it was published 2 days ago. A lot of people said they immediately uninstalled it after they read this article.
So, I hope you can also share this show as widely as you can. The article I wrote for the Epoch Times is a new piece, and I couldn’t add any of my personal views in that article.
But this show is my own, so I can freely express my thoughts here, which I believe are also very useful and important. So please do help us spread the message.
This is not a joke. This is about who is going to own America.
Well, that’s all for today’s Inconvenient Truths. Thank you very much for your time and support. Bye for now and See you again on Thursday!
6/7/2021 *
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