Southern Metropolis Daily

Southern Metropolis Daily (SMD) is a for-profit tabloid newspaper located in Guangzhou city, China, and its circulation is throughout the greater Guangdong and Pearl River Delta region. SMD is a constituent of the Nanfang Media Group, which is under the supervision of the Guangdong committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The newspaper publishes daily, with 72 pages and multiple sections relating to consumer products, international affairs, sports, and other topics of the public interest. SMD is best known for its investigative reporting. SMD has been involved in multiple scandals and controversies. Its best-known controversy is the publishing of the 'Sun Zhigang incident' which resulted in the repeal of the force repatriation law. This publishing also resulted in the imprisonment and torture of SMD journalists Cheng Yizhong, Li Minying, and Yu Huafeng. SMD's motto is "writing for the people." in 2005, Cheng Yizhong was the laureate of the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize for his resistance to Chinese censorship laws and police corruption. Southern Metropolis Daily (SMD) was first created in 1995. It is located in the Guangzhou City of the greater Guangdong and Pearl River Delta area. It was first established as a weekly newspaper under the name Southern weekly. It was created as a constituent branch of the Nanfang media group, all of which are a part of the Southern Media Group. The name Southern Metropolis was extended to Southern Metropolis Daily in 1997 by The Nanfang Media Group, by which it was also established as a tabloid media form. SMD competes with other daily newspapers in the Guangdong region; including but not limited to Information Times, Southern Weekly, Yangcheng Evening News and Guangzhou Daily. The SMD headquarters was created in 1997, located in Guangzhou China which is where it still resides. SMD is written in simplified Mandarin SMD has a circulation of 1.845 million people. SMD is a public media production company. It is ranked first amongst all local newspapers in the city of Guangzhou.