China Youth Daily has been in the news lately because of a long-winded but pleasantly anti-establishment open letter written by one of the paper’s editors: a veteran reporter from Sichuan named Lu Yuegang.
China Youth Daily has been publishing since 1951. Distributed nationwide, it has always had a large reader base because universities and high schools were forced to subscribe. Nonetheless, it is a good and well-respected Chinese newspaper. According to their website, China Youth Daily has sells about half a million copies every day.
The China Youth Daily is a different entity from Beijing Youth Daily. Although both were founded by the Communist Youth League, Beijing Youth Daily is now controlled by the Beijing municipal government while China Youth Daily is controlled by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League.
For plenty on Lu Yuegang and his letter, have a look at the excellent blog Zona Europa: a full translation of the letter is here, and a compilation of articles about Lu (in the Financial Times, South China Morning Post etc.) is here. China Youth Daily is online here. The pictured front page is today’s edition. Click to enlarge.