Founding On March 28, 1924, the Kuomintang
Central Executive Committee decided to establish a news agency under the party's propaganda department and required local party branches and members to provide news materials. On April 1, CNA was founded in
Guangzhou and began to distribute news wires as the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee Propaganda Department Agency. Chiang agreed to the recommendations and appointed Hsiao as the director of the newly-formed CNA in 1932. The agency moved out of the Kuomintang headquarters in Dingjiaqiao,
Nanjing to three
longtang buildings on Shoukang Lane in
Xinjiekou. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, commercial newspapers relied heavily on CNA wires, including
Chinese Communist Party-owned
Xinhua Daily, which nearly 89% of its content originated from CNA. The agency's scale and financial support from the Kuomintang during a wartime economic downturn also caused privately owned competitors, including Kuowen News Agency, The agency's headquarters were relocated to
Taipei in 1949 during the
retreat of the government of the Republic of China to Taiwan at the end of the
Chinese Civil War. On October 2, 1950, longtime Kuomintang propaganda official Tseng Hsu-pai became the first CNA director in Taiwan. Despite the
corporatization of the agency in 1973, it continued to receive heavy government subsidies, and remained Taiwan's official agency. At the time, CNA journalists received preferential treatment on various occasions, mostly government-related press conferences. After
Chiang Ching-kuo became president, he brought media leaders closer to the Kuomintang by appointing them to the party's central standing committee. Tsao Sheng-fen, the president of CNA,
Central Daily News and
China Daily News, was joined the committee in 1981. During democratic reforms of the 1990s, opposition parties the
Democratic Progressive Party and the
New Party criticized CNA's relationship with the Kuomintang and that 80% of its funding came from the state. Some in the Kuomintang also criticized CNA for being the only party-run cultural enterprise that was unable to sustain a profit. A bill attempting to reform the CNA as a national news agency in 1993 also failed due to a boycott by legislators
Tai Chen-yao and Su Huo-teng. Under Tang Pan-pan, who was appointed CNA director in December 1992, the agency introduced a series of reforms that aimed to make it more competitive and relevant. Tang appointed veteran journalists from
Broadcasting Corporation of China, another Kuomintang-run media company where Tang had been employed, to lead the CNA newsroom. He also recruited 65 journalists, or 16% of CNA staff, whom Tang described as "forces of reform". CNA launched products beyond text-based news wires, including audiovisual and television news, and encouraged publishing wires throughout the day instead of concentrating on a late-afternoon window. In November 1993, it set a daily record for the most number of wires published at 531. Although CNA was no longer operated by the Kuomintang, it was still subject to political influence by the ruling party. As of 2022, it is still Taiwan's official news agency, and received part of its funding from the
Executive Yuan. News anchor Hu Wan-ling was appointed the president of CNA on October 30, 2023. ==See also==