[6][7] In the final years of the Qing dynasty, Ying Lianzhi, a Catholic Manchu aristocrat, founded the newspaper in Tianjin on 17 June 1902, in order to, "help China become a modern and democratic nation".

[8] The paper put forward the slogan "Four Noes" (四不主義) in its early years, pledging to say "No" to all political parties, governments, commercial companies, and persons.

[citation needed] It stood up to the repression at the time, openly criticising the Empress Dowager Cixi and reactionary leaders, and promoted democratic reforms, pioneering the use of written vernacular Chinese (baihua).

As the war raged on, the newspaper's staff fled to other cities, such as Shanghai, Hankou, Chongqing, Guilin and Hong Kong, to continue publishing, but local editions were abandoned as the Japanese captured more and more territory.

Ta Kung Pao, along with the New Evening Post and Wen Wei Po, were charged with inciting an uprising by negatively reporting on the colonial authorities' response to a fire in Tung Tau Tsuen.

[10] A mass demonstration began in 1953 after protesters became dissatisfied with the Hong Kong government following a fire in the Tung Tau squatter area.

[11] : 104–106  On March 5, New Evening Post, Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao reprinted an editorial from People's Daily, the newspaper of the CCP Central Committee but removed references to "massacre of our countrymen" to avoid violating Hong Kong's Sedition Ordinance.

Ta Kung Pao, its owner Fei Yiming and publisher Li Zongying received to nine and six months of prison sentence and fined a few thousand Hong Kong dollars.

[11]: 109 In January 2019, Ta Kung Pao published an article stating that a "secret envoy" of president Tsai Ing-wen had met with three Hong Kong localist camp activists from the pro-independence group Studentlocalism.