Can Politico Pull Off Its New Partnership With a Chinese-Owned Paper?

On Tuesday, Politico announced a content-sharing partnership with the Hong Kong-based newspaper South China Morning Post (SCMP). “POLITICO readers will see on our pages today something new and important: the first stories reflecting the publication’s commitment to illuminating the U.S. relationship with China,” the publication’s editors wrote in a statement. In explaining their choice of partnership, the editors called the SCMP “the only independent English-language publication in the region.”

Someone forgot to do their fact-checking: The SCMP is not strictly independent.

The paper is owned by the Chinese Internet giant the Alibaba Group, which runs the country’s most popular e-commerce platform, as well as many other businesses. Alibaba is often compared to Amazon, since the two companies are roughly the same size and operate in some of the same spaces. And Amazon’s chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, owns a newspaper as well — The Washington Post.