Guangming Daily had a valuable central-level administrative rank but was the country poorest major publisher, while "Nanfang" had money to invest but its administrative rank was restricting the publisher to obtain new publication number or expand outside their home province Guangdong.

[9] On 1 September 2011, the newspaper was taken over by the Publicity Department of the Beijing municipal committee of the Chinese Communist Party [zh].

[1] In 2013, it was reported that Dai Zigeng, a publisher of the newspaper, had verbally resigned due to political pressure from the propaganda authorities.

[10][11] In 2014, it was reported that the municipal propaganda department had acquired the remaining 49% stake from Nanfang Media Group.

[12] According to the South China Morning Post, an English newspaper from Hong Kong, the general public were afraid that The Beijing News would be turned into a "propaganda mouthpiece".