On the evening of April 12, Wilson Chan, the managing editor of Sing Tao Daily, and his editorial team gathered in their stark, fluores­cent-lit office at Adelaide and Parliament to put together the next day’s newspaper. Reporters worked in one area, translators in another. On the building’s ground floor, an enormous printing press spat out the reams of local reporting, Hong Kong pop culture and news from China that make Sing Tao the number one Chinese newspaper in Toronto.

Since 1998, when Torstar purchased a majority share in the paper, Sing Tao editors have been allowed to translate and reprint their choice of Star stories—a significant advantage for a 13-person news department engaged in fierce competition with three other Chinese dailies. That evening, the editors selected a piece by Star reporter Nicholas Keung about Chinese Canadians’ response to recent protests in Tibet, a topic that was dominating the news. Headlined “Chinese Canadians conflicted on Tibet,” the story painted a nuanced picture of the local reaction to the Olympic torch protests. According to Keung, Chinese Torontonians were proud of their homeland and angry at the West’s attacks on China, but they were also critical of the Chinese government and its human rights record. The article quoted Gloria Fung, a Chinese Canadian political observer, and Cindy Gu, publisher of a free anti–Communist government news­paper called The Epoch Times, both of whom accused the Chinese government of trying to equate patriotism with party loyalty, of using nationalism as a tool to stay in power.

When Sing Tao arrived on the streets the next morning, Keung’s article ran on the front page. The byline said “Special from the Toronto Star,” but Keung’s article and the Sing Tao translation were two very different pieces. In Sing Tao’s version, Gu’s and Fung’s comments had been removed, as had a section that described Taiwan’s resistance to the mainland. Some of the quotes had been altered to mirror the Chinese government’s official line on the protests. In one, the word “Tibetans” had been replaced with “Tibetan separatists”; in another, the words “so-called” were placed in front of “human rights abuses.” The translated story began with two new paragraphs accusing the West of one-sided reporting and offering this summary of the situation: “Most immigrants from mainland China stand on the side of the Chinese government and support the suppression of the rampant Tibet independent forces before the Beijing Summer Olympics.” The headline had been changed as well: “West uses Tibet issue to attack China, inspiring patriotism among overseas Chinese.”