The daily certainly has improved a lot since it started some good 25 years ago and gives a fair overview of international news. Better even is its website. Still, reading it remains an art to understand what can be written, what is taboo and how the government wants its image to be. So, one needs to “read between the lines”. Or scrutinize what is left out.
A good example is the coverage of the British sailors being captured (or should we say – kidnapped?) by Iran. China Daily diplomatically leaves out that the UK has satellite data to prove the ship was not in Iran territory and that the sailors were on a mission to intercept smugglers. Basically a UN mission. That would too clearly prove the Iranians are wrong. But that would not be nice for the “Iranian friends” (definitely not MY friends, a government trying to go back to medieval times and just create trouble). Obviously news about “some” African countries going through pretty hard times is also filtered. Not exactly good PR for China but of course they have another opinion. Fortunately we have other sources to know what is really going on…