[9][10] The predecessor to Xinhua was the Red China News Agency (紅色中華通訊社; Hóngsè Zhōnghuá Tōngxùnshè), founded in November 1931 as the Chinese Soviet Zone of Ruijin, Jiangxi province.

[11] In the direct aftermath of the Chinese Civil War, the agency represented the People's Republic of China in countries and territories with which it had no diplomatic representation, such as British Hong Kong.

[21] In September 2022, Fu stated, "Xinhua will never depart from the party line, not even for a minute, nor stray from the path laid down by General Secretary Xi Jinping".

[24] In 2010, Xinhua acquired prime commercial real estate on Times Square in Manhattan and started an English-language satellite news network.

[26] The CCP's internal media system, in which certain journals (neican) are published exclusively for government and party officials, provides information and analysis which are not available to the public.

[27] Xinhua produces reports for these internal journals that contain information that the CCP considers too sensitive for public consumption and can pertain to subjects for security and intelligence purposes.

[30] The Chinese government's internal media publication system follows a strict hierarchical pattern designed to facilitate party control.

[34] Xinhua's branch in Hong Kong was not just a press office, but served as the de facto embassy of the PRC in the territory when it was under British administration.

It was named a news agency under the special historic conditions before the 1997 handover, because the People's Republic did not recognize British sovereignty over the colony, and could not set up a consulate on what it considered to be its soil.

[38] His predecessor, Xu Jiatun, was also vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Basic Law Drafting Committee, before fleeing to the United States in response to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, where he went into exile.

[42][43] In November 2018, Xinhua News Agency and the Associated Press (AP) of the United States signed a memorandum of understanding to expand cooperation.

[52][53] Xinhua has criticized perceived foreign media bias and inaccurate reporting, citing an incident during the 2008 Tibetan unrest when media outlets used scenes of Nepalese police arresting Tibetan protesters as evidence of Chinese state brutality[54] with commentary from CNN's Jack Cafferty calling China's leaders "goons and thugs".

[55] During the May 68 events in France, Xinhua and PRC embassy press office staff were reported to exploit civil unrest to undertake industrial espionage at French factories.

Government oversight of the media increased after the protests – top editors at the agency's bureaus in Hong Kong and Macau were replaced with appointees who were pro-Beijing.

[63][64] In January 2018, The New York Times published an investigative report on social media promotions, alleging that the US-based company Devumi was providing "Twitter followers and retweets to celebrities, businesses and anyone who wants to appear more popular or exert influence online."

[65] In 2019, Xinhua was criticized for perceived bias in its portrayal of the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests as violent and illegitimate, which led Twitter to ban it and other state-sponsored media outlets from ad purchases.

[67][7][68][69] In 2022, journalist Joshua Kurlantzick noted that Xinhua's coverage of the pandemic, while being "sometimes factual and on the face of it little different in style from other newswires, often downplayed the threat of the virus within China and to other countries", and that it frequently highlighted the efforts of doctors and citizens in combating the virus, while ignoring the ways China had initially covered up the signs of an outbreak and Chinese citizens' growing anger at the government's response.

[73][74][75][76] During the 2022 Chinese military exercises around Taiwan, Xinhua published an altered image of a Taiwanese Chi Yang-class frigate near the coast of Hualien County appearing to be a People's Liberation Army Navy vessel.