A lot has changed in the 36 years that Joseph Leung has spent in San Francisco. The city welcomed its first Chinese-American mayor, Ed Lee, in 2011, and this year may elect its first Chinese-American congressional representative.

As the city’s Asian population has grown, its Chinese voters have gone from being neglected by politicians to becoming a coveted voting bloc in their own right.

But also in recent years, the number of Chinese-language news outlets and the volume of their original reporting have dropped sharply. Sing Tao Daily, the largest Chinese-language newspaper in San Francisco, where Leung worked for decades before announcing his retirement in September, is among them.

In the early 2000s, Sing Tao’s San Francisco editorial team had some 13 reporters covering the Bay Area, including three dedicated to investigative reporting, according to Leung. Today, it is down to three.

Leung, 64, isn’t worried about the Chinese community losing its power, though. “I’ll make up the difference,” he said calmly.

Leung already knows his next move: He plans to cover important stories through his online project, Tianwen Media, which attracted some 30,000 subscribers on YouTube within three days of its launch. Instead of boots- on-the-ground journalism, Leung will continue to do what he’s best at: longform interviews and commentary. 

Leung, for decades, was known as the face of Sing Tao. His abrupt retirement from the newspaper stunned his vast following in the Bay Area and resonated among Hong Kongers scattered throughout the world. Videos speculating about his exit drew hundreds of thousands of views within days. 

Leung, who joined Sing Tao in 1990 as a City Hall reporter, considers establishing the paper’s credibility in San Francisco his greatest achievement. “People see Sing Tao as the voice of the Chinese community,” he said. “When politicians respect Sing Tao, they are respecting the Chinese community.”

Sing Tao “really grew along with and evolved with the rise of the Chinese-American community in the city,” said political consultant David Ho. The rise of Rose Pak, the legendary Chinatown power broker who was Ho’s mentor, helped propel Sing Tao to prominence.

But Leung said that as Sing Tao, a newspaper brand from Hong Kong, became entangled in tensions between Beijing and Washington, its U.S. operations were required to register as a foreign agent in 2021 because of its Hong Kong-based parent company. In a critical distinction, Sing Tao is not considered a foreign agent of the Chinese Communist Party. 

Sing Tao reporters must identify themselves as working for a foreign agent when interviewing U.S. government officials, said Leung. “The impact is significant.” While the designation hasn’t affected Sing Tao’s news coverage, he said, it has hurt its image, added financial burdens and prompted some self-censorship. “We’d think twice when writing about the U.S.-China relations.”

But Sing Tao “isn’t foreign,” said former longtime San Francisco City Hall legislative aide Sunny Angulo. “This is a backbone of the Bay Area. It represents the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of Bay Area residents, small business owners, families, seniors.”

There were other problems that affected the newspaper. Sing Tao Daily’s U.S. Western edition’s budget was set by the newspaper’s parent company. As the city grew more expensive, Sing Tao’s meager salaries, often just above San Francisco’s minimum wage, made it increasingly difficult to attract and retain aspiring reporters.

In an in-person interview in a mix of Mandarin and Cantonese, Leung said it was his decision to leave. Over several hours of conversation, Leung never raised his voice. Sing Tao’s “corporate structure does not meet the community’s needs,” he said simply. He answered patiently, even to pointed questions, explaining how he arrived at his views without evasion. 

Watching Sing Tao’s San Francisco newsroom shrink left him “heartbroken,” Leung said. “Three reporters can’t possibly be enough. Issues in the community are getting more complicated.”

The rise of Sing Tao

Sing Tao is rooted in a specific period and place in the history of Chinese-Americans in San Francisco and the United States. The power dynamic has improved a lot over the years, though even today Sing Tao is “not yet” treated equally by city officials, said Joyce Chen, Leung’s longtime deputy. “There’s still a long way to go.”

Over the years, Leung says, Sing Tao’s mission was to be a bridge connecting the Chinese- and English-speaking communities, to advocate for the city’s Chinese community and fight for more Chinese-American representation in government. 

Because of this goal, Sing Tao’s coverage could be less critical than that of its English-language counterparts, and often served as a cheerleader for the community. Being “a defender of the community’s interest,” Leung claims, does not conflict with journalistic ethics.

In his early years at Sing Tao as a reporter, Leung felt that the city’s Chinese residents were not respected. Before public records moved online, in the early 1990s, Leung says he and other City Hall reporters spent a large chunk of their time visiting government offices and courts, reading through the latest press releases and official meeting schedules.

He still remembers a reporter for an English-language publication trying to take a stack of documents away from Leung, accusing him of pretending to be a reporter — because the other reporter had “never heard of” Sing Tao. 

Things began to change when Leung started writing bilingual editorials, several a week, about issues that mattered to the city’s Chinese residents. Days after a column criticized a housing policy for interfering too much with the rights of property owners, he says, then-Mayor Frank Jordan visited Sing Tao’s headquarters in South San Francisco for the first time. 

He would not be the last politician to visit. As the 1995 mayoral election approached, Jordan’s rival, longtime state assemblyman Willie Brown, began to stop by Sing Tao as well. After Brown defeated Jordan, he became a regular guest on one of Leung’s Sing Tao radio shows, Free Talk, giving Chinese residents a rare chance to ask the mayor questions directly by calling into the show. 

After that, it gradually became standard practice for anyone with political aspirations to visit Sing Tao and pay their respects. “Sometimes there were too many visits for us to handle,” said Leung.

Sing Tao as a local political force

At its peak around 2002, Leung said, Sing Tao Daily’s Western edition had a circulation of 50,000, with most of that centered in San Francisco. If you assumed (as Leung did) that each copy was read by three people, that came to 150,000 readers, within a niche demographic that was difficult for elected officials to reach by other means. 

During the years when Ed Lee was mayor, Sing Tao’s relationship with power was consolidated as the city welcomed its first Chinese-American mayor and a Board of Supervisors with five Asian members. Sing Tao gained more access to city departments and offices.

Leung’s wife, Sally Leung, served as a longtime confidential secretary for Mayor Lee, with responsibilities involving communications with the Chinese community. 

Sing Tao maintained its local influence after Lee’s death in 2017. Even as print newspapers lost ground, Chinese American voters became increasingly sought after.

As the only Chinese-language media that endorses candidates, Sing Tao’s imprimatur has become one of the most coveted in San Francisco.

Sing Tao “is a formidable factor when we’re talking about elections, their opinions matter. Their journalistic coverage of candidates, or not covering certain candidates, matters,” said Thomas Li, president of the Edwin M. Lee Asian Pacific Democratic Club, which leans moderate and usually endorses a different set of candidates than Sing Tao. 

“Their coverage and their endorsement line up pretty nicely. If you get their support, you also get their headlines, and that is invaluable. As a candidate that does not get their support, you are being locked out of a whole population that wants to hear from you.”

Leung, who became Sing Tao’s editor-in-chief in 2002 and publisher in 2017, broadened those endorsements to include a wide range of offices, including those in other counties. “Our only criterion for endorsing,” said Leung, “was that their policies benefit the Chinese community and that they are a person who keeps their word.”

Occasionally, Leung said, “there were some clueless ones who wanted to make a deal with us … for more coverage or our endorsement. I’ve never accepted any of them.”

“The editorial became very strong over the years under his guidance. He knew how to leverage city hall to take our community seriously,” Ho said.

Over the years, Sing Tao also supported advocates from progressive Asian nonprofits, said Ho, including in the fights for civil rights and housing.

The newspaper also walked in lockstep with the particular kind of progressive politics emerging from Chinatown, endorsing Chesa Boudin for district attorney in 2019, Aaron Peskin for mayor in 2024, and Tom Steyer for California governor in 2026. (It endorsed Julie Christensen, a Mayor Lee appointee and the moderate candidate, over Peskin in the 2015 race for District 3 supervisor.)

Its approach, however, represented the mix of different values within a Chinese community that is far from a monolith: Pro-public transit, for example, but also pro-car. Sing Tao endorsed Boudin over moderate Chinese-American candidate Nancy Tung in 2019, but also called for more police officers following waves of anti-Asian hate. It advocated for low-income tenants, but also for middle-class homeowners. 

Leung became so well-connected and respected at City Hall that San Francisco twice declared a date to be “Joseph Leung Day,” once by former Mayor Brown in 2002 and once by the Board of Supervisors in 2025. San Francisco also declared two “Sally Leung Days,” honoring Joseph’s wife, who now works at the San Francisco Police Department.

Overseas influence

Under Leung’s leadership, Sing Tao assumed a role that transcended merely chronicling the goings-on of the community. Sing Tao raised $2.2 million locally to help rebuild schools destroyed by the magnitude 8.0 earthquake in Sichuan, China in 2008. In 2020, Sing Tao joined other community groups to raise over half a million dollars for the families of those who died fighting the pandemic in Wuhan, according to Leung.

Sing Tao’s YouTube channel gained a good portion of its subscribers during the 2019-2020 protests in Hong Kong, when Leung’s show catered to Hong Kongers who viewed the movement as violent unrest (“黑暴”) and sought a sense of belonging in a divided society.

“It was a great encouragement to me,” said Leung, who was born in Hong Kong in 1962 and majored in Chinese literature at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Leung moved to the United States in 1988, nearly a decade before the United Kingdom handed Hong Kong over to China at midnight on July 1, 1997.

Leung, who has the slightly bookish manner of a teacher of Chinese history, said, “I still consider myself a Hong Konger.”

What’s next?

Now Leung is starting over with his new project Tianwen, which roughly translates to “Dare to question the world.” 

Leung plans to live up to that name, he said. He’ll cover the White House. He’ll cover Congress. He’ll cover the trade war with China, and the genuine concern that people with ties to both countries have about whether their assets or businesses might be put at risk. He will report on how San Francisco’s government affects the local Chinese community. And it seems he will do it mostly by himself, on YouTube.

Leung is particularly focused on the congressional race between Sen. Scott Wiener and Supervisor Connie Chan. 

Leaving Sing Tao “will give me more freedom to support Connie,” Leung said in one of his last shows on Sing Tao TV. Tianwen’s recent video featuring Chan drew 79,000 views in the 24 hours after its launch on Sept. 28. Wiener’s Oct. 6 longform interview on Sing Tao TV with other interviewers, by comparison, got just a shade over 6,000 views in two days.

Asked whether it was fair for Sing Tao to cover Chan far more than her competitors — a question some have raised over the past year to challenge the outlet’s integrity — Leung was dismissive. Chinese readers are naturally more interested in Chinese candidates, he said. 

“There has never been a Chinese American member of Congress from San Francisco,” Leung said. That is even more important now, he said, given that “there are various federal policies that are unfair to Chinese Americans.” 

Sing Tao has yet to release its endorsements for San Francisco’s November election. It is unclear whether it will maintain its progressive endorsement pattern under new leadership, given the appeal of courting loyalty among a broader and more conservative readership of middle-class Chinese homeowners.

Tianwen, it seems, will reflect the views of its founder and executive director. Leung will be analyzing and commenting on national and international issues he believes matter to his audience, and amplifying the local individuals and positions he wants to empower. 

Leung’s new outlet won’t print newspapers that can be delivered to every grandma at mahjong tables or grocery stores in Chinatowns. Its main channels are online — largely on YouTube, where Leung’s followers can find him. And Tianwen will almost certainly be making endorsements soon: Keep an eye out, Leung added.